Virginia State Senator Mark Obenshain offers his thoughts on Janet Howell’s remarkable abuse of power:
Of course, nobody said carrying conservative bills in a Democrat-controlled Senate would be easy, but I was hoping it would be fair. The other day, however, we witnessed a strikingly raw exercise of power when, in a clear violation of the rules that govern the Senate, the Senate Committee on Privileges & Elections (P&E) refused to allow an up-or-down vote on eight bills that received a negative recommendation in subcommittee.
In fact, the bills were not even on the agenda. When I made a simple and routine motion to add the bills to the calendar, the committee chair, Senator Howell, immediately ruled it out of order. Such a motion is never out of order.
I asked the Chair to state the basis of her ruling – why is it out of order? What rule or authority do you rely upon? I must admit that the reply was not very revealing. Or perhaps it was, in its own way: “Because I believe it’s out of order.”
(As an interesting side note, Majority Leader Dick Saslaw had a bill he wanted to add to the agenda of another committee the other day. I asked whether the motion to add a bill to the calendar was in order; apparently there are two sets of rules, one of the majority and the other for the minority.)
A transportation lockbox (SJ 353 – Obenshain), charter school expansion (SJ 360 – Obenshain), a Right to Work Amendment (SJ 323 – McDougle), the Repeal Amendment (SJ 280 – McDougle), voter identification (SB 808 – Obenshain; SB 864 – Martin) and more – vanished from the committee docket on the whim of the chair.
Thomas Jefferson, in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice, which still governs proceedings in the Senate of Virginia, spoke to just such violations, noting that “the only weapons by which the minority can defend themselves against similar attempts from those in power, are the forms and rules of proceeding which have been adopted … by a strict adherence to which, the weaker party can only be protected from those irregularities and abuses which these forms were intended to check, and which the wantonness of power is but too often apt to suggest to large and successful majorities.” (emphasis added)
To his great credit, the Democratic president pro tempore, Senator Chuck Colgan, delivered a compelling lecture to his fellow Democrats, telling them that even though it was common to steamroll the minority in years past, “It was wrong then and it is still wrong today.” If only the rest of his caucus had been taking notes.
So let’s to through the list:
Mark Obenshain says Janet Howell abused her power as P&E chair…
Steve Martin says Janet Howell abused her power as P&E chair…
Chuck Colgan — the senior ranking Democrat in the Virginia Senate — says Janet Howell abused her power as P&E chair…
THOMAS JEFFERSON says that Janet Howell abused her power as P&E chair.
Janet Howell needs to resign as P&E chair. That she continues to cling to power as a matter of political prerogative should shock any observer of decorous government straight to the core, and it has no place in any environment where “civility” is trumped up as a battering ram. Civility listens to all sides and obeys the rules.
If you ever want to know how democracy really dies, it’s not to thunderous applause… but to reasoning such as “because I believe it’s out of order.” There’s people marching in the streets of Cairo for far less.
