"As a freshman senator in the Virginia General Assembly in 1972, Joseph V. Gartlan Jr. rose to the Senate floor to tell his colleagues that their budgetary sense was "appalling." Two years later, the Fairfax County Democrat questioned the ethics of legislators receiving per-diem expenses for days they spent at home.

Fourteen years into his 28-year tenure, he outwitted the powerful speaker of the House of Delegates to kill a bill that would have weakened the state's conflict-of-interest law. The next year, he led the General Assembly's first censure in more than a half-century of one of its members, who happened to be a personal friend.

Gartlan, 82, a heartfelt liberal in the conservative General Assembly for almost a generation, used his influence, longevity and passion to help the environment, mentally ill people and the poor. He died yesterday of sepsis at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital in Fairfax.

"He wore his heart on his sleeve when it came to issues of social and economic justice," Gov. Timothy Kaine (D) said in a statement. Kaine ordered the state's flags flown at half-staff in Gartlan's honor.

"He was a tireless and effective advocate for the environment, the mentally and physically disabled, and for abused and neglected children," Kaine said. "He spearheaded efforts for funding natural resources and human-service programs during his almost three decades of public service. His role was critical in galvanizing the regional efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay."

Gartlan, elected to the Virginia Senate in 1972, served seven terms and represented parts of Lee, Mount Vernon and Springfield in southeastern Fairfax. He had served as chairman of three Senate committees -- Courts of Justice; Privileges and Elections; and Rehabilitation and Social Services. He also served on the Finance and Rules committees.

By the time he retired in 2000, he was co-chairman of the Northern Virginia delegation and was second in seniority in the Senate.

He was considered a master of contemporaneous discourse. His farewell address in 1999 quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ogden Nash, Edmund Burke and Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). His speech prompted a four-minute standing ovation on the floor of the General Assembly.

From 1981 to 1987, he was chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, which coordinates environmental policies among Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, and succeeded in an effort to ban phosphate detergents that left soap suds in the commonwealth's rivers and bays.

Mental-health legislation was a long-standing passion of Gartlan's. He wrote a recommendation on how to modernize Virginia's mental-health laws, an initiative that is pending.

One of the laws he sponsored gave judges full discretion on whether to assign a foster child to the state's social services agency, said Chris Spanos, who ran Gartlan's election campaigns and now works for social service organizations. The law resulted in children receiving treatment for medical and psychological conditions that previously would have sent them to juvenile-justice facilities.

In 1980, he co-sponsored successful legislation to repeal a statute under which up to 8,300 of the state's mental patients had been sterilized, many without their knowledge, during a 48-year period ending in 1972.

"I'm not comfortable living in a state that has a law like this," Gartlan said at the time.

He also joined in the failed effort in 1979 to pass a number of bills supported by women's groups. For two previous years, Gartlan worked on a revision of Virginia's rape and sexual-assault laws.

Opponents amended his bill to allow a defendant in a rape case to use intoxication as a defense, prompting Gartlan to say: "I could have taken the Hail Mary and Apostles Creed and the Ten Commandments and put them in the bill and it would still not have been acceptable."

After concluding that he had become a lightning rod, Gartlan turned over the bill to a colleague, who was able to pass it. That was not the only time Gartlan found himself in political hot water.

"I'd be sitting in my Washington office and he'd call, laughing, from Richmond to say, 'I blew it. Can you put out a flier or something?' " Spanos said.

"He had a quick temper, but you have to understand he was a commonwealth person," Spanos said. "By that I mean he voted what was in the best interests of the commonwealth, not Joe Gartlan, the 36th [Senate] District or Fairfax County, and that would put him at odds with the county board."

Gartlan got into a long-running political feud with then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D), whom he once supported, after disagreeing with Wilder's budget and other priorities. In retaliation, Wilder stripped Northern Virginia of one of two additional state Senate seats that the region was to have under a redistricting plan created by Gartlan.

Three years later, Gartlan killed the outgoing governor's numerous nominations to state boards and commissions. Asked whether he was retaliating against Wilder, Gartlan replied: "How can you elaborate on the obvious?"

After surviving a close race in 1991, which he won by 716 votes, Gartlan lost a race for Democratic majority leader in 1995, but there were few indications that the loss sapped his political power. He joined with others and beat a proposed interstate highway bypass from Interstate 95 at the Quantico Marine Corps Base through Prince William County and past Dulles International Airport to Route 7.

Even after he left office in 2003, he successfully fought to keep Inova Mount Vernon Hospital open and operating.

Joseph Vincent Gartlan Jr. was born in Great Neck, N.Y., and served in the Navy during World War II after high school. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1949 and received a law degree from the university in 1952.

He was an advance man for John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign and Hubert H. Humphrey's 1968 presidential campaign.

Gartlan worked as a lawyer in Washington, in the K Street firm of Melrod, Redman & Gartlan from the mid-1950s until retiring in 1986 to focus on his work in the legislature. During the 1970s, one of his daughters said, he argued a pro bono search-and-seizure case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gartlan, a resident of Mason Neck, was a member of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Mount Vernon.

Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Fredona Manderfield Gartlan of Mason Neck; six children, Michael Gartlan of Fairfax, Ann Gartlan Steele of Yonkers, N.Y., Joan Gartlan of Washington, Peter Gartlan of Alexandria, Paul Gartlan of Coral Gables, Fla., and Joseph Gartlan of Maui, Hawaii; and seven grandchildren." (Patricia Sullivan, The Washington Post, July 19, 2008)