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By MICHAEL MARTZ
Arundel Newspapen Staff Writer
The General Assembly adjourned its 1986 session at 4:33 p.m. on Saturday, belying its reputation for marathon finales in which the clock stops and weary legislators race the dawn to resolve their differences and go home.
It was, however, characteristic of a session that many legislators say was unusually quiet and uncontroversial, with the exception of an embarrassing series of attempts to rewrite the conflict of interest statute that governs legislative conduct.
“The words that come to mind are mild, non-cotroversial and smooth,” said Del. Kenneth R. Plum (D-Reston).
Virginia’s governors, one departing and the other arriving, all but pre-empted the dominant issues of the session — funding for public education and transportation.
And traditionally contentious issues either never arose (the coal Blurry, uranium mining) or died early deaths (the state lottery, the bottle bill, parental consent for minors to have an abortion).
Former Gov. Charles S. Robb, who left office in January with a vista of national political opportunities opening before him, bequeathed his successor and the Assembly with an $18.4 billion budget that made funding for public education its cornerstone.
“The education thing was almost untouchable,” said Senate Minority Leader William A. Truban (R-Shenandoah), who serves on the “Secret Seven” of the Senate Finance Committee. “It was untouchable.”
When the Assembly adopted the budget, with about $51 million more in appropriations, last week, few changes were made in the Robb program for public education.
The plan will provide about $367 million more in state money to fund the Standards of Quality and require local governments to raise teachers’ salaries by at least 10 percent in the first year of the biennium or forfeit funds in the second year.
The budget provides that amount of money despite its endorsement of a new method of calculating the cost of funding the standards that will enable the state to reduce its share of \ funding eignificantly^in future budt vets. ,:•*
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