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I CoClIUllClIl Ildl UU1CU Brault over what he believed was Duval’s failure to give him timely assistance in 1979, when Brault’s position as majority leader of the Senate was successfully challenged by Sen. Hunter Andrews of Hampton.
The prestigeous Senate Rules Committee itself became the focal point of intra-Senate warring during the opening day of the session.
The retirement of Sen. Willard Moody of Portsmouth left the chairmanship vacant. Although Sen. Peter Babalas of Norfolk was the fifth ranking member of the 16-member panel, the senators ahead of him already chaired standing committees. Under the rules of both Houses no member can chair more than one. Thus it appeared that Babalas was in line for the Rules chairmanship, a post he badly wanted and for which he would have happily given up his present chairmanship of the Committee on Local Government.
Thinking he had the post locked up, Babalas made a tactical blunder. He began to talk as if he was already the Rules chairman, and some of his ideas did not sit well with the presiding elders of the upper house. For example, he favored having the Senate reorganize every year instead of every four years as is now the practice. This would have meant an annual internal struggle for such jobs as majority leader, president pro-tem, clerk and others. He also wanted to make the Rules Committee chairman the principal liaison officer with the House of Delegates, a responsibility presently reserved for the Senate President protein Edward E. Willey of Richmond. The elders *'decided sttihething had to be done. . . , | / ' ‘jAr ■ plan, evolved to Babalqs chairmanship. It was done by a game of musical chains which rocked the organizational structure of the Senate and lef Babalas fuming with rage.
Andrews, who ranked Babalas on Rules, chose to give up his chairmanship of the Privileges and Elections Committee and take over the Rules Committee. This opened up the P&E slot, which was filled by Sen. Douglas Wilder of Richmond. Wildpr,1 to make the move, had to give up his chairmat&hip of the Transportation Committee, a post which was, in Ulm, filled by Sen. Charles Waddell of Loudoun.
This left Babalas, who was nursing his wounds, still chairman of the Local Government Committee. He was reportedly so furious over this fast shuffle that he boycotted the governor’s “State of the Commonwealth” speech on the session’s opening night.
But such personality squabbles are relatively small potatoes. They have done of the potential for mischief that the growing feud between the House and the Senate could generate. As this is written, the two bodies have been unable to agree on such a usually routine matter as the cut-off dates for the processing of bills.
The main bone of contention between the two Houses, however, is the determination of the Senate to introduce its own version of the governor’s executive budget for the 1984-86 biennium. The budget bill, which this time around will dispense about $15.7 billion for state services, had, until the 1983 session, originated in the House and, in due course been passed to the Senate for its action in the closing weeks. The Senate leaders had long chaffed under this practice, saying it did not give the members time to study the document and discharge their budgetary responsibility as a co-equal body of the legislature.
In 1983, for the first time, the Senate introduced its own budget bill. While the odd-year, short session “mini-budget” was relatively small, it nevertheless caused some extremely tense moments in the session’s closing days before a compromise was reached.
But this year the situation is vastly different. If the lawmakers are forced to give full-dress treatment to two bills dealing with the mammoth biennial spending package, some capitol observers fear it will send the legislature into a period of raucus overtime of unknown duration at the end of the regularly scheduled 60-day session.
Thus it appears, unless the chieftains of the House and Senate can find ways to smooth the ruffled feathers of some of their braves and end the deepening cold war between the two chambers, the remaining six weeks of the ’84 legislature will be a stormy time, indeed, in Mr. Jefferson’s cathedral of government.
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