In our latest Washington Post piece, Paul Goldman and I stick up for Bob McDonnell. Or that’s one way to read it.
The bigger issue is retroactivity, and how it’s applied in the 2011 law — signed by McDonnell — which gives the state the power to strip public sector retirees of their VRS pensions if they have been convicted of a felony.
Attorney General Mark Herring, at the Governor’s request, look into the matter and said yes — the state can, indeed, take the money. But nowhere in his opinion does Herring or his staff address the constitutional issues surrounding retroactive punishment. This has long been abhorrent to the American sense of justice:
Assume a Virginian works an entire lifetime, contributing to the VRS in return for certain promises made by the government, and following the rules then in place. Several decades later, he or she makes terrible mistake, long after the pension is vested.
Should this person lose everything? What if the person has family and faces financial ruin without this pension? McDonnell disgraced his office and himself and hurt the state’s reputation. We get it.
But stripping him of all pension benefits strikes us as far more punishment than meted out by Judge Spencer’s two-year sentence. It’s vindictive, not justice. It raises serious constitutional questions.
Herring should have taken the side of individual rights and declared the 2011 law insufficiently clear on the issue of retroactivity until the Virginia General Assembly addresses the matter in 2016.
Until then, the law should not be enforced.
This would have preserved the General Assembly’s role in setting policy. At the same time, with the 2015 elections settled, it would allow legislators to revisit the constitutional issues and decide whether Virginia really wants to adopt a policy smacking of King George III’s discredited version of “justice.”
Bob McDonnell lost everything in his dealings with Mr. William — his reputation, his future, and likely his freedom. The bloody minded will say that’s not enough.
The General Assembly needs to fix the mess it created – and yes, that Bob McDonnell signed.
