wnen uie smoke cleared alter adjournment last week, it

wnen uie smoke cleared alter adjournment last week, it was apparent that the big winner was Gov. Chuck Robb.

While the attention of the press and much of the public was riveted on the power struggle between the House and the Senate, measure after measure in Robb’s legislative program worked its way through the Assembly mill.

His $15.9 billion executive budget—far and away the most important item on his legislative agenda-4 was passed largely intact and without a general tax increase. Robb got the money for his 10 percent pay hike for college faculties, the state’s share of a similar increase for public school teachers, an 8.6 percent raise for state employees, 9.6 percent for constitutional officers and 10 percent forjudges. He was given $30 million dollars to set up the Cento- for Innovative Technologies in Northern Virginia, $10 million for use as the state’8 share of the cost of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, and, to help pay the bill, a deferral of the accelerated depreciation tax allowance authorised by the federal government.

Beyond the fiscal concerns, he won approval of a broad plan for reorganizing the state’s executive department, regulatory reform, and reform of the state’s election laws. The Intermediate Court of Appeals, which he strongly supported, narrowly survived.

And, to be sure, he lest rffetf. IBs proposals thsfp1 state agencies serving the handicapped be consol?^ idated, and that steps be taken to insure their legal rights were passed by until next year. His proposed $50 million contingency fond, to be held as a hedge against a downturn in the national economy, was effectively trimmed to $40 million. ' Still, he pronounced himself highly pleased with the session in general, and especially with the budget. “We got about 99 percent of what we asked for, he said.

In spite of this, the governor was repeatedly attacked both in the press and by his partisan critics for “foiling to provide leadership” during the assembly session, and especially during the final frenetic week when the House and Senate conferees sat dead-locked over the budget.

According to these critics, he should have called the leaders of the opposing factions to his office and “knocked heads” to get the dispute settled. Had He tried such an approach, or attempted to turn the Assembly into a mere rubber stamp for his program, these same critics would most assuredly have then attacked him for trying to be a dictator.

As things worked out, it was anything but a rubber stamp session. Although most of his program was enacted, much of it was the subject of extensive and often bitter debate. Some of his measures survived only after major compromises and amendments.

It is true that Robb’s style of leadership as neither is crisp nor as flamboyant as some of his supporters would like it to be, and as some of his critics insist it should be. 1

Still, as the saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. By the same token, the proof of leadership is whether or not the troops are fed to the objective and the mission accomplished.

If that is a fair test, in spite of the thunder and lightening of the Assembly’s closing days, the governor is entitled to high marks—perhaps an “A”—for his leadership during the cantankerous legislative session of 1964. His mission was to get his program enacted into law and for the most part, he did it.