My Virginia Representatives In Action

23 July, 2006. 400 words.

A Virginia “Weekend Without Echoes” post by Thomas Krehbiel

This is a special one-part investigative journalism series about my Virginia legislative representatives. Of course, I didn’t have to leave my chair or talk to anyone, and the information is readily available for anyone else to find, so it might not precisely qualify as “journalism.”

I stumbled on the Virginia General Assembly page the other day, and I discovered that my Virginia Delegate is John O’Bannon, and my Virginia Senator is Walter Stosch. Both are, not surprisingly, Republicans. I should have known they were my representatives before now, but sometimes I slack off on my civic duties. Anyway, I had some spare time, and, being the curious sort, I decided to look up what my representatives have done for me in the 2006 Special Session, which started at the end of March.

At the time of this writing, Delegate O’Bannon has taken the lead in introducing legislation to “commend and congratulate Dr. JoAnne Kirk Henry on her 20 years of exemplary service” to VCU (HJ 5027).

Senator Stosch, being the eager beaver that he is, introduced three bills. He introduced legislation to “commend and congratulate Lisa A. Parrish as the 2006 national president of the United States Junior Chamber” (SJ 5025), to “commend the Goochland High School baseball team on its 2006 Virginia High School League Group A state baseball championship” (SJ 5041), and to “commend Lela Richmond on her 38 years of loyal service to Second Baptist Church, its congregation, and the community” (SJ 5043).

I sure am lucky to have such wise representatives in my state government. Those people might have gone completely un-commended without Stosch’s and O’Bannon’s solid Republican leadership!

I have to wonder why Lela Richmond and the Goochland High School baseball team didn’t receive congratulations along with their commendations? Perhaps they under-achieved. I see that the Goochland baseball team did lose one game. Better luck next time, guys.

(It ruins the humor, but to be fair, I should point out that O’Bannon and Stosch actually did some meaningful work in other legislative sessions.)

The more I find out about the inner workings of the government, the less appealing it sounds. I guess it’s better than anything else out there, but still I think American Democracy has plenty of room for upgrade patches. I mean, do we really need our government representatives to sit around “congratulating” people?

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