Obenshain worried about an end run on property rights amendment
By Norman Leahy | Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 | Politics, VirginiaJust when it looked like the property rights constitutional amendment was heading for a clean up or down vote on the Senate floor…shenanigans appear to break out. Enough to cause Sen. Mark Obenshain to send out the following message:
To pass a constitutional amendment, it must be approved by the General Assembly twice in succeeding years and in exactly the same form. Then the amendment must be approved at the ballot box by the voters.
Last year, the Property Rights Amendment passed with HUGE bipartisan majorities (the fact that it was an election year no doubt helped). This year, the amendment sailed out of a Senate Committee with a bipartisan 13-2 vote — with all eight Republicans and five of the committee’s seven Democrats in support. As things now stand, the full Senate should vote on the amendment on Monday, and if it passes the House, it goes straight to the voters in November.
Unfortunately, opponents of the Property Rights Amendment have one more play: they want to send the amendment to the Senate Finance Committee — WHERE IT WILL DIE. Let me be clear, if SJ 3 is recommitted to Senate Finance, we will never see it again.
Now, HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO. I need you to contact your Senator and tell him or her to VOTE NO on any motion to send the Property Rights Amendment to the Senate Finance Committee. Our property rights are way too important.
If opponents want to kill the Amendment, let them do it in the light of day – it’s easy. If the effort to send the Property Rights Amendment to the Finance Committee fails, then on Monday the Senate as a whole will get an up or down vote on the measure. Last year 35 Senators voted for the amendment. If they voted for it in an election year, is it too much to ask them to do it now?
Obenshain provides this link for folks to email their Senators on this matter. The phone list is here.
While I think Mark might be slightly excited here, he still has some reason for concern.
With Obenshain’s Privileges and Elections committee voting to report the amendment, the motion to send the measure to the Finance committee will have to be made on the floor. If the matter is left to an unrecorded voice vote, that could be a problem. It takes eight members raising their hands to request a recorded vote (putting it “on the board”) and eight Republican hands had best go up in the air…or there will be hell to pay.
Once on the board, it will be easy to see who is really for, and who is really against, the amendment. Should the vote end in a tie…which is somewhat conceivable…the question then becomes whether Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling could vote to break such a tie. While he can’t vote on the amendment itself, he can vote on procedural matters (that’s how Republicans gained control of the Senate). This would seem to qualify as a procedural issue, so, presumably, Bolling could vote to deny sending the bill to Finance.
The Finance committee itself has a 9-6 Republican majority and is chaired by my Senator, Walter Stosch. While I am unsure as to why Obenshain believes the amendment might meet a sticky end with such numbers, and (hopefully) with the memory that all those Republicans voted for the amendment in the last session, it’s better not to leave things to chance.
Of greater interest to me are the number of Democrats who voted for the amendment in committee. Creigh Deeds, Phil Puckett, Chap Petersen, John Edwards, Ralph Northam…if they don’t vote for passage on the floor, they will have a problem. Deeds ought to be a good vote, as it was through his very active efforts in the last session that the bill was brought back from the dead and managed to pass the Senate.
But we shall see. In the meantime, if you want to give your Senator a jingle on SJ 3, please do.
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About the author
Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Post contributor.
Comments
4 Responses to "Obenshain worried about an end run on property rights amendment"
Lord I hope this thing dies any way possible. It is distrastous public policy. Actually, I can’t even call it policy, it is that bad.
Deeds carried the bill himself this year, which was rolled into Obenshain’s. He’ll be fine. My guess is the reason they want to send it to Finance is that an eleventh hour fiscal impact statement came out on the complementary “lost access/lost profits” definitions bill – over $30M impact annually. Not exactly an insignificant amount. They’ll have to figure out where that fits in the budget.
If there’s a $30 million annual fiscal impact regarding lost access/lost profits, that means that currently that $30 million cost is borne by individuals and business owners.
What justifies burdening them with what should be a public expense?
Rick,
That is a very good point. In an ironic “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too” strategy, the opponents of this amendment contend that there is no legitimate reason for it–that property owners are adequately protected by existing statutes. Then, they turn around and decry the expense the amendment will cause to taxpayers. You can’t have it both ways. If changing the law will create an expense to the public treasury, then someone else is bearing that expense now. It doesn’t just materialize out of thin air.
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