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By JOHN GOOLRICK
Rappahannock News Special Writer
There is something about getting back to the Virginia General Assembly that makes me feel government can work after all.
Watching Congress operate is sometime akin to having teeth pulled. The system is protracted and wearisome because it is built on such a vast scale to make the laws for a nation of more than 280 million people.
In Richmond, though, a former reporter returning for a day finds, even in the first few days of the session when things are just tuning up, an eagerness on the part of legislators to get things done as quickly as possible.
Several members were complaining that after a week or so few bills were coming to the floor for debate and disposition. They were acutely aware that they would have just 45 days to make decisions on 1,500 or so pieces of legislation that would find their way into the process.
In Washington, by contrast, nothing much was taking place in the new Congress except confirmation hearings that were generally routine except for the now famous case of Zoe Baird. It will be a long while yet before significant pieces of legislative wend their way through various committees and subcommittes to come up for floor votes.
Go to a meeting of the branches of Congress and the chambers will be empty as you probably already know from watching C-span. But attend sessions of the Virginia House of Delegates or State Senate and nearly all members are there prepared to debate legislation and cast their votes. It is refreshing to witness citizen-legislators actually listening to what each other may be saying.
On this day many memories are stirred. Presiding over the House is Speaker Thomas Moss, a friend who was regarded as a young upstart liberal when he first came to Richmond a quarter century ago. In the State Senate majority leader Hunter Andrews is discussing some fine point and, as usual, is three jumps ahead of the opposition. I can recall the cutting wit he exhibited when he first arrived in the Senate in the 1960s and it is good to know his words have lost none of their bite.
There are still people around from the days of the 60s and 70s and early 80s when I spent a couple of
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