"Fans of Superman will remember Bizarro World, the incredible cube-shaped planet populated by imperfect duplicates of characters from DC Comics. Well, in terms of the Virginia budget debacle, Richmond might as well be Bizarro World. Every week, every day, every hour, the House Republicans are introducing a new strategy for dealing with the budget. Before we get into this bizarre week, let me recap the budget story so far:

· When session began on January 14, the House Republican leadership made it clear that they were opposed to all new taxes (although early on, it was unclear if a tobacco or gas tax was really a “user fee” or not.) The Governor’s budget was declared dead on arrival.

· The Republican leadership said that the Commonwealth could grow out of our financial problems, so that there was really nothing to worry about. They also dismissed Moodys threat to take away our AAA Bond Rating.

· The Chamber of Commerce endorsed Governor Warner’s budget. The Republican leadership was aghast that businesses would dare to oppose their message.

· Suddenly, the Republicans had a change of heart about the need for additional revenue. On Friday the 13th, Delegate Phil Hamilton requested unanimous consent to introduce HB1488, which eliminated certain sales tax exemptions from businesses. What Hamilton failed to mention was that the extra tax burden on these businesses would obviously be recovered by increasing prices to the consumer. Could that be a backdoor tax increase? Hamilton claimed that this would raise over $550 million over two years, although he acknowledged that his revenue estimates were shaky, at best. Also, the Republican leadership told us that this is NOT a tax increase. (Just wondering: Could there be a connection between HB1488 and the Chamber’s endorsement of the Governor’s plan? Could this be legislating by revenge?) Anyway, this bill was rammed through the House Finance committee without giving the businesses affected any time to prepare a response. It passed on an almost party line vote of 13-8 and immediately sailed through the full House.

· On February 26 the House passed an austere budget that underfunds many core services including education, and is based on the shaky revenue estimates of HB1488. (I voted against it.) The Senate passed a much more generous budget.

· On Friday, February 27 the Speaker named the House budget negotiating team. He passed over many senior members of the body and included only those who oppose tax increases and have taken the hard line that it’s the House budget or no budget.

This week is where it gets truly strange. It began on Monday with a joint press conference starring Republican U.S. Senator George Allen and Democratic former Governor Doug Wilder. First, I had to do a double take. I never thought I’d see the day when these two would share the same stage. But putting that aside, their message was that we should hold a referendum on the budget. OK, I said, these two are just looking for publicity and no one will take this idea seriously. They must understand that if we are elected to do nothing else, it’s to create a budget. I was wrong.

· Tuesday the Speaker of the House and the House budget negotiating team held a press conference with the tag line “referendum or impasse.” In other words, the House team had no intention of compromising with the Senate. The extreme, radical members of the House Republican Caucus would rather shut down the Virginia government than compromise.

· Around this time we learned that the tax department now says that the revenue estimates in HB1488 (remember HB1488??) are way off. The best we will see is $315 million of the $550 million promised and approximately half of that goes back to localities.

· I know this is getting lengthy, but bear with me. Wednesday evening the Associated Press released a story in which House Appropriations
Committee Chair Vince Callahan distances himself from the referendum idea saying, “those weren’t my words.” FYI, he was standing right next to Speaker Howell on the podium at Tuesday’s press conference. Are we supposed to believe that he had a prominent role in a press conference for an idea he opposed?

· In the Thursday papers Callahan was backing off from backing off (and my head is beginning to spin.) Later on, Majority Leader Morgan Griffith gave a very long floor speech supporting the referendum and criticizing the Governor (over and over and over and over.) He must have believed that if he blamed the Governor often enough and loud enough, that like in the Wizard of Oz, no one would notice the (Republican) man behind the curtain.

· And now it’s Friday. According to the morning’s Washington Post, there is no agreement in the Republican caucus about what to do about anything! They don’t have a clue. Bottom line, they have NO LEADERSHIP and no direction. They are flying by the seats of their pants. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again -- tell your friends. Tell them to tell their friends. This nonsense cannot go on. Virginia deserves better leadership than we are seeing from the majority party.

· By the way, the Washington Post article I just mentioned should not be missed. Here is the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31699-2004Mar4.html

· Next week is (supposedly) the last week of the 2004 General Assembly session. Stay tuned for more weirdness from Bizarro World. This would be the best show in town if we didn’t have to live with the consequences.

Mitch Van Yahres (Report from the Virginia General Assembly #8, electronic mail, March 5, 2004)

· You can access information about the bills I introduced at: http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?041+mbr+H94

· Information about all bills and resolutions can be found at: http://leg1.state.va.us\

For related article on this web site, see In Virginia, Those Who Can't Lead ... Get Elected.