The Virginia state legislature is working too hard and needs more vacation time.
Yes, thatGÇÖs right! Chichester is recommending that next yearGÇÖs legislative session be limited to 30 days. (See the Free Press story at http://www.dailypres...).
Technically, the Virginia legislature is supposed to work 60 calendar days in even years and 30 calendar days in odd years, although the 30 days is frequently extended to 46 days. This makes Virginia one of the states with the shortest legislative sessions in the country. Only a few states, mostly in the South and West GÇôand few of them bastions of representative democracy GÇô even come close. (You can compare them at http://www.ncsl.org/...)
2006 was an unusual year because we had a governor holding the legislatureGÇÖs nose to the grindstone to pass a budget to help Virginia solve our transportation quagmire. So the legislature was in session an admittedly long 246 days this time. But the reason they were held over is because they werenGÇÖt doing their jobs. The Senate and House, you may recall, could not agree on a budget, mainly because the right-wingers in the House were refusing to raise taxes to support transportation improvements.
In most businesses, if people are failing to do their jobs, the response is not to give them more vacation days GÇô itGÇÖs to fire them. And this is precisely what we need to do to our Republican-controlled legislature in the next election GÇô replace them with Democrats who are willing to work as long as it takes to deal realistically and effectively with all of the stateGÇÖs challenges.