The hands of time

We'll all be moving our clocks ahead tonight as we spring forward into daylight saving time.

Which reminds me of the General Assembly.

As a reporter for WTVR TV, I covered the state legislature for a few years back in the early 1970s. Things were different then. Conservative Democrats controlled both houses at the Capitol, and there were so few Republicans that they could have caucused in a closet.

Relations between the factions at the General Assembly were slightly more civilized. Senators and delegates prided themselves on being gentlemen and in behaving in a gentlemanly manner. (In 1970, there were no female senators. If memory serves, there was one woman delegate, Mrs. Eleanor Sheppard, who represented Richmond.)

But more to the point, they got things done on time.

Almost always.

On several occasions that I recall, one house or the other just couldn't finish its business by midnight on the last day.

So someone would turn back the official clock in the House or the Senate by an hour or so in order to preserve the fiction that the rules were not being violated.

Think about that. A General Assembly session might be extended by as much as an hour or two.

Nowadays, we're lucky if the legislature doesn't extend its work by a month or two. Today was the day the current session was supposed to end, but there's no state budget for the next two fiscal years yet in sight.

So both houses have agreed to a special session in order to hammer out a spending plan. Lord knows how long it will take them.

It's no longer sufficient to turn back the hands of the official clock.

Now they have to rip whole days from the calendar, or weeks or -- heaven forbid -- months in order to preserve the fiction that the House and Senate are capable of meeting a deadline.