Alter tne committee reported out tne Dili ana it

Alter tne committee reported out tne Dili ana it was passed by the House, usually in the last two weeks of the session, a sort of ritual dance began. It was sent to the Senate which attached its amendments and returned the amended bill to the House. The House routinely rejected the amendments and called for a committee of conference. Six conferees were then appointed, three from each chamber, who then went to work to reconcile the differences between the two bodies. When their work was done, frequently in the wee hours of the session’s closing night, they sent their compromise version of the bill to the two houses where it was accepted largely on faith by the lawmakers. Obviously there was little time to study the complex document and its revisions.

The Senate had long chaffed under the system. The members argued, with some justification, that the House had weeks to work on the budget legislation while the Senate had only a few days to study it and make its recommendations.

Last year Sen. Edward E. Willey of Richmond, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced that the upper house was taking a new and revolutionary approach to the budget-making process. The Senate, he said, would introduce its own budget bill in the ’83 session and trust the conferees to meld the House and Senate budget versions together at the session’s end.

There were some tense moments in the legislature’s closing days, but as things worked out there was no major crisis. The odd-year budget of $56 million was relatively small and the two bills were “folded” together in a relatively amicable manner.

But next year’s budget will be something else again, and Bagley foresees a dangerous and divisive problem. The leaders of both bodies appear to be digging in their heels to defend their turf in putting together the mammoth ’84-’86 spending measure.

So, with a potential budgetary grid-lock in the making, in late August, Bagley quietly fired off an urgent letter to House Speaker A. L. Philpott of Henry, proposing that procedures be worked out in advance to ward off the possible impasse. Bagley suggested that the matter be referred to a joint subcommittee currently studying the legislative process. He strongly defended the traditional “sequential” process of budget dvelopment. That is, one house would develop the budget, pass it on to the other house for its action, with the differences between the two eventually being reconciled by a committee of conference.

Beside the parliamentary and procedural snarl which two budget bills might produce, Bagley noted in his letter that it would be doubly costly to the taxpayers. This year’s twin budgets ran more than $23,000 to print. If only one bill had been introduced, he says the cost would have been only half that amount.

But since the way in which the budget is to be prepared is not spelled out in either a statute or the State Constitution, the roles played by the houses are defined by the rules of each house. Thus, even if the joint subcommittee could agree on a recommended solution to the problem, there would be no way of enforcing it.

Bagley has spotlighted a major problem which could tie the 1984 General Assembly in knots.

But since the budget bill will be the most critical item faced by the ’84 legislative session, it is doubtful that Bagley or anyone else has the negotiating skills necessary to persuade the princes of the Generaly Assembly to surrender, to any degree, their prerogatives in the writing of it.

If some accommodation is not reached, however, the resulting clash of wills could mean stormy debates and long night bargaining sessions when the lawmakers come to town in January. And it would leave the budget making process as murky as ever.

What Kind Of Justice?