RICHMOND — In 1989, Douglas Wilder campaigned for Virginia governor with a promise to crack down on gun violence.

He won the election by less than a half percent — becoming the nation’s first post-Civil War black governor — and promised to be a leader for gun control in a historically “pro-gun” state, Sen. Chap Petersen, D-Fairfax, said this week.

The governor made good on his promise, but now the pro-gun Republican majority is looking to loosen some of Wilder's stricter rules on handguns.

To squelch the state’s reputation as the gun runner of the South, Wilder pushed for a one-handgun-per-month limit on gun buying. Over the objections of Second Amendment advocates, lawmakers enacted the limit to prevent gun dealers from shipping handguns bought in Virginia to cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C.

This week, lawmakers pushed a repeal of the limit through the House, 66-32. Petersen may cast a vote on the issue in the Senate.

Delegate Scott Lingamfelter, R-Woodridge, introduced the proposal, H.B. 940, which has been referred to the Senate Courts of Justice Committee for a hearing. 

Virginia lawmakers have chipped holes in the ban since its passage 18 years ago, Petersen said.

“There are numerous exceptions to it,” he said. “If you trade in a gun, you can get a new gun — up to one a day. If you have a valid concealed-carry permit, you can exceed the limit.”

Lawmakers have diluted the limit so much that, in the opinion of gun-control advocates, out-of-state buyers alone are affected. People who would try to buy large quantities of handguns and ship them for use in violent crime and gang activity are still thwarted by the limit, which has no loophole for out-of-state buyers. 

“Right now, we have a good equilibrium,” Petersen said.

But the Republican lawmakers who hold a majority in Virginia’s statehouse see the limit as a restriction on constitutional freedoms. The Second Amendment is a clearly defined right to bear — and purchase — weapons, Delegate Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, said on the House floor Thursday.

“It’s not a gun-owner’s business to decide what someone needs to buy,” said Delegate Mark Cole, R-Fredericksburg, who is proposing multiple pieces of gun-friendly legislation this session.

Lifting the ban also serves practical purposes, he said. Some collectors like to purchase guns with sequential serial numbers; others may purchase a set of pistols, or guns as Christmas gifts.

For Christmas shopping purposes, it’s easier to stuff stockings with handguns in December than spread your gift-buying over two months, he said.

Cole said the ban is outdated because of modern technology and the availability of instant background checks.

State law requires that people who buy guns from a licensed dealer submit to a criminal background check by the Virginia State Police.

Pro-gun groups, such as the the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots organization, support the measure. 

The group is "dedicated to advancing the fundamental human right of all Virginians to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I Section 13 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” according to its website.

But moderates and gun-control advocates are pushing back.

“I think Republicans read the Second Amendment as an absolute right that you will be able to carry guns anywhere; you’ll be able to buy them any place, any time,” said Delegate Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, “And I just don’t believe that.

“There’s two extremes here," Hope said. "I think that our laws that are currently on the books are right in the middle.”

Gun-shop owners and employees seemed reticent to talk about the limit Thursday. A worker for Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, for example, declined comment when reached by Virginia Statehouse News.

RICHMOND — Virginia home-schoolers want the opportunity to represent their towns on the sports field, and supporters of the “Tim Tebow bill” say paying taxes to the school district should make home-schooled students eligible to play.

Tebow, the starting quarterback for the National Football League's Denver Broncos, in 2007 became the first home-schooled athlete to be nominated for the Heisman Trophy while at the University of Florida.

Tebow, who won the Heisman that year, said he was “honored” to represent home-schooled athletes seeking access to public high school athletics, and he has become a hero for the movement.

The House Education Committee was packed Wednesday morning with home-schooled students and their parents, who smiled proudly as the bill sailed through committee in a 14-8 vote.

Delegate Rob Bell, R-Charlottesville, introduced the legislation, but Delegates Randy Minchew, R-Leesburg, and David Ramadan, R-South Riding, have carried similar bills this session. The Family Foundation, a powerful conservative advocacy group in the state, also supports the measure.

Supporting school choice has been a paramount concern for Virginia conservatives. The American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, recently released it's "Report Card on American Education," with a note drawing attention to the the fact that seven of the 10 top-ranked public school systems provide equal access to home-schooled students.Virginia ranked 11. 

Home-schoolers need extracurricular activities for a balanced, well-rounded education, said Svetlana Doughty, a Russian evangelist from Bridgewater. She wants her children to be allowed time on the playing field, and she came to Richmond to support the bill.

In 20 states, including Maryland and North Carolina, home-schoolers are allowed to shoot hoops, run track and play other local public school sports. 

Opponents from the Virginia High School League, the organization overseeing the state's interscholastic sports for public schools,are concerned the bill hurts competition in public school sports by giving home-schoolers an unfair advantage over students who must sit in classrooms.

Tebow, was the shining star on his public high school football team. He led Neese High School of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., to the 2005 state championship and in 2006 played for the NCAA Champion Florida Gators.

But some conservative lawmakers oppose the bill.

Delegate Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, said he worries that home-schoolers may be exposed to inappropriate material when introduced to the public school environment and, according to conservative news blog Bearing Drift, vowed to vote against the bill late Tuesday night.

Bell voted for the bill in committee, but did not comment on the nature of the inappropriate material.

Home-schoolers' access to public and private schools varies from state to state.

Delegate Kathy Byron, R-Lynchburg, home-schooled her three children for a year after her husband suffered a serious injury in an accident. She said she “supports school choice” and has heard from constituents in her district who fall on all sides of the issue.

But Byron said she knows little about the bill, which prohibits public schools from outlawing participation by home-schoolers. It also allows schools to charge additional fees to the home-schoolers to cover the cost of uniforms and other expenses. 

Delegate Patrick Hope, D-Alexandria, said he has heard little from constituents in his urban district. He said the area has some of the "best schools in the state," and parents there rarely choose to home school.  

He questioned how the state would monitor whether home-schoolers are scoring straight A’s on their report cards and sinking baskets on the court — or, like Tebow, running and throwing for touchdowns.

Parents who home-school must submit "evidence of progress" at the end of the school year.

Evidence can be a composite score on any national standardized achievement test, an evaluation by a school superintendent or an evaluation letter sent from a licensed teacher, or from a person with a master's degree or higher in an academic discipline. Parents also may submit a report card or transcript from a community college or college, college distance-learning program, or home-education correspondence school.

Hope, a high school athlete, said he remembers having his grades monitored by the school.

In many public schools, if a students fails to maintain good grades they are benched or removed from the team until their grades improve.

Delegate Jimmie Massie, R-Manassas, a high school and college athlete, supports the bill.

Massie said the state keeps tabs on home-schoolers through academic testing.

“A lot of times people have this stereotype of home-schoolers as not very athletic — it's like, go win a spelling bee or something like that — it's an honor for me to be the first one to do that," said Tebow in 2007.

See the bill: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?ses=121&typ=bil&val=hb947

See the committee vote: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+vot+H09V0046+HB0947

See a video:http://youtu.be/6ae6NIeuEVo

• Since 2009, Virginia has ranked 37th in the country for state pension contributions.
• The state deposited $1.85 billion into the system, a far cry from the $3.3 billion ARC set forth by the VRS, according to its 2011 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.
• McDonnell also deferred a $620 million payment to balance the budget in 2010 and is paying the money back at 7.5 percent interest, according to Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

RICHMOND — Delegate Joe Morrissey, D-Henrico County, called a Republican adoption policy proposal “highly discriminatory, mean and cruel.”

Virginia’s Department of Social Servicesin December began allowing faith-based, state-licensed private child-placement agencies in public-private partnerships to discriminate.

When faced with the prospect of “having to provide adoption services to same-sex couples or to unmarried couples of the opposite sex,” he said, Catholic organizations statewide began pushing for the reform.

“They have a deeply held belief against gay couples making good parents, which I completely disagree with,” said Delegate David Englin, D-Alexandria, who voted against the bill in committee.

Morrissey, a father of two, argued that the policy prohibits placing a child with two people in a “loving relationship.”

The provision won’t deter voters, Cole said.

RICHMOND — Ask Virginia House Minority Leader David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, what to expect from the state’s conservative leaders, and he’ll say: “Not only a slew of misplaced priorities, but a classic bait and switch.”

Conservatives tricked Virginia taxpayers by falsely advertising their priorities as jobs and the economy, then used their Republican majority to push social legislation, said Toscano, a native of New York who practices family and real estate law.

Anti-abortion and gun-control issues are examples, the Democrats say.

Republican leaders Monday refuted the bait and switch theory.

“The folks who disagree with us on some of the more hot button social issues would love to make it seem as though we are focused on those issues, when in fact, we are not,” said Delegate Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock.

Gilbert said that despite the GOP push to require ultrasounds for women seeking abortions, and whittling away state gun laws passed to decrease violent crime, Republicans remain focused on jobs and government reform.

Calling the socially conservative agenda bait and switch is an “unfortunate characterization,” Gilbert said.

Toscano pointed to the battle over education, which recently caught the attention of the Pulitzer Prize-winning team at PolitiFact Virginia. PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based newspaper.

“You’ll hear on the floor, proponents of the governor’s budget talk about all the money, (the) greater amount of money we’re putting into education — that’s the bait,” said Toscano. “But the switch is” that local taxpayers are left holding the bill.

Toscano estimated the state has cut per-pupil spending by more than $547 since 2009, leaving fewer teachers responsible for more of Virginia’s public school students.

Republicans frame the education agenda as the largest ever investment in Virginia public schools, and PolitiFact said they are correct.

Gov. Bob McDonnell asked the General Assembly to spend $13.1 billion on public education during the two-year budget cycle that begins July 1. The budget that ends June 30 allots $12.6 billion to schools — meaning McDonnell is asking for a $500 million increase.

But most of that money would be spent to revive the state’s broken pension system, not in the classroom, Democrats said.

“Overall in this, his first budget, the governor is cutting pre-K and K-through-12 education by hundreds of millions of dollars,” said state Sen. Don McEachin, D-Henrico, the Democratic lawmaker who delivered the response to McDonnell’s State of the Commonwealth address Jan. 11.

“Gov. McDonnell says he is prioritizing spending that will drive economic growth, but he proposes cutting $81.6 million from pre-kindergarten, despite all of the evidence that high-quality pre-K actually saves taxpayers money and is among the best long-term investments in economic growth,” said Delegate David Englin, D-Alexandria.

Englin, an Air Force veteran, has partnered with Conservative Caucus Co-Chairman Ben Cline, R-Richmond, this session, to focus on transparency in Virginia’s corporate tax credit system.

McDonnell “says he is drawing a hard line against tax increases, but then he proposes cutting $65 million from money Northern Virginia needs to be competitive in hiring school staff; that is a $65 million real estate tax increase on our community,” Englin said.

Read McEachin’s response to the State of the Commonwealth: http://www.donaldmceachin.com/In-the-News/democrats-respond-to-state-of-the-commonwealth-address.html

Read PolitiFact’s analysis: http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2012/jan/26/donald-mceachin/mceachin-says-gov-mcdonnells-budget-cuts-public-ed/

Read Englin’s response to the State of the Commonwealth: http://vaprogressivecaucus.blogspot.com/2011/12/englin-responds-to-governor-mcdonnells.html

Watch a video of Gilbert’s response: http://youtu.be/FDFqD8DERuY

ALEXANDRIA — Stephen Murmer has been on the wrong side of the chopping block in Virginia's public school system.

“I really don’t think this governor is going to make things any better or any worse with the early evaluations that are happening anyway,” he said. "The tenure rights went into effect to protect educators so they wouldn't get dismissed at the drop of the hat."

RICHMOND — Delegate Kathy Byron, R-Lynchburg, plunged the General Assembly into the murky issue of human papillomavirus, or HPV, on Tuesday, with a proposal that would cut off taxpayer subsidies of vaccines against HPV, a virus associated with genital warts and cervical cancer.

Byron said she wants to “take government out of the equation” by striking the law that requires Virginia Department of Health clinics to provide the vaccine to sixth-grade girls whose parents opt to have their daughters protected against the most common sexually transmitted disease in the U.S.

But lawmakers, who worked hard in 2006 make Virginia the first state in the nation to offer funding for the HPV vaccine after a federal advisory panel suggested it, say they will fight to keep the funding intact.

“We’re going to make it so that poor girls can’t get vaccinated against a virus that can cause cancer, and I think that’s just deplorable,” said Delegate David Englin, D-Alexandria. “The idea that we will deny them that access will cause cancer and cause death, and that’s just deplorable.”

Virginia spent $1,054,238 to provide 6,479 doses of the vaccine last year to 11- and 12-year-olds, according to the state Department of Planning and Budget. That's an average of $162.72 per dose.

A quarter of the money to pay for the vaccines came from general funds, while the rest was provided through Vaccines for Children, a national program dedicated to vaccinating children that is tied to the state’s Medicaid plan.

“Currently, if you are uninsured, or even too poor to afford the co-payment on whatever insurance you have, when you go to a Virginia Department of Health clinic, they have to provide you with the vaccine if you ask for it,” Englin said.

Byron, a mother of three, said she was unaware of the financial impact of her bill, and proposed it because of personal conviction.

Whether or not a sixth-grade girl should undergo the three rounds of shots necessary to protect her from the virus, which infects 6 million people annually, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control, should be a decision made by parents and doctors, she said.

Delegate Christopher Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, a gynecologist, questioned Byron’s logic.

Stolle said law requires health departments to send a letter to parents containing information about the HPV vaccine.

“The parents can then, if they choose, get an HPV vaccination,” he said. “If they choose to do nothing, nothing happens.”

Stolle reminded members of the House Health Welfare and Institutions Committee that nationally there are 10,000 new cases of cervical cancer each year, and 4,000 associated deaths.

Only the District of Columbia followed Virginia’s lead in asking sixth-grade girls to get the vaccine, but other states considered similar bills. Emotional debates about the side effects of the virus and the vaccine, and moral concerns about vaccinating preteens against sexually transmitted viruses often ensue.

Physicians waded into the national scene this fall, when GOP presidential candidates raised concerns about HPV vaccines.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry took heat from his opponents during a debate in September for his executive order that would have required the vaccinations. Perry has since withdrawn from the GOP presidential contest.

Then, Minnesota U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann alleged that the vaccine causes mental retardation in “innocent little 12-year-old girls” — a claim later proven untrue by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Bachmann dropped out of the GOP race the day after Iowa's Jan. 3 caucuses.

Byron and The Family Foundation, a statewide conservative advocacy group supporting the bill, said they are not sure if Bachmann’s claims are accurate, but side effects are a concern.

The Virginia League for Planned Parenthood, a supporter of the vaccine, said the health concerns are unfounded.

The bill, HB1112, was approved by committee on a partisan vote and sent to the House of Delegates. Read it: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB1112

See the financial impact of the bill: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+oth+HB1112F122+PDF

Watch a video of Englin: http://youtu.be/-lyE7wjOfRQ

See photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/102093791261817061579/HPVVaccines

By Hannah Hess | Virginia Statehouse News

RICHMOND — More than 300 educators raised their voices in protest of the budget gaps local school divisions are facing because of the General Assembly’s decision to defer Virginia Retirement System payments in 2011.

“Does forcing our local governments to make huge contributions to VRS, to make up for the bad decisions that the General Assembly made last year, does that sound like standing up for education to you?” Virginia Parent-Teacher Association president Anne Carson asked the crowd of educators waving their signs under a gray January sky.

“No,” yelled the teachers, who represented the 60,000-member Virginia Education Association, the statewide organization that encouraged them to carpool to Richmond. Teachers left their local school districts for a lobby day, leaving substitutes in charge of the classrooms.

For Manassas special education teacher Kellie Blair Hardt, 36, retirement funding is a key issue for this year’s General Assembly.

The state’s woefully underfunded Virginia Retirement System is not sustainable, she said, and it’s time to pick up the tab. Last year, the state deferred its payment, adding to the $20-billion gap between what’s been promised to teachers and what the state can afford to pay.

The move amounted to “placing the deficit on the backs of educators who are still in the system, and are not going to retire for 20 years,” Blair Hardt said. “It’s going to hit us and it’s not fair.”

Blair Hardt and her colleagues are beneficiaries of the state pension system. The Virginia Retirement System operates as a defined-benefit system to which public employees dedicate 5 percent of their pay in return for a guaranteed state check, as well as health-care coverage, in retirement.

But the system is not solvent.

Virginia’s $52 billion pension system is at least $19.9 billion short of meeting its obligations to retirees, according to state estimates. Other accounting standards have estimated the budget gap at $50 billion.

Stock market turmoil since the start of the Great Recession in December 2007 has left the state with 66 percent funding for teachers — down from nearly 107 percent funding in 2001. That means, if all the state’s educators retired tomorrow, only 66 percent could get their full benefits.

“Even if it doesn’t benefit them directly, I think every taxpayer would like to see (VRS) solvent,” said House Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights.

Cox and his colleagues are supporting the plan proposed by Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.

McDonnell said more money is needed immediately — he suggested $2.2 billion, the largest employer contribution in the state’s history, including $876 million in state general fund dollars.

The teachers rallied Monday to ensure the state provides the general funds McDonnell has promised, not to find a solution for local schools that must cover the rest. 

Declining property tax revenues resulting from slipping home values make it a challenge for local boards to figure out how to compensate teachers, fund classrooms and pay into the retirement system.

According to a National Education Association analysis, average teacher pay in Virginia is $48,365. This compares to $44,701 in West Virginia; $62,849 in Maryland; $62,557 in the District of Columbia; and $48,648 in North Carolina.

"We have to strike that balance between saddling the taxpayers of any given jurisdiction with carrying on the teachers, and giving the teachers a sufficient income," said Fairfax County School Board member Elizabeth Schultz, of the Springfield district.

Schultz said the state loses out if it can no longer attract the "best and the brightest," who may abandon Virginia for states that offer better pay. 

See a video of the rally: http://youtu.be/06yvJYM2aoY

See an interview with Blair Hardt: http://youtu.be/aJrRSWuTpgQ

See the NEA analysis of state-by-state teacher pay: http://www.nea.org/home/49809.htm

See the NEA analysis of state-by-state teacher pay: http://www.nea.org/home/49809.htm

See photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/102093791261817061579/VEABringsTeachersToTheCapitol

See a J-LARC study on state pension funding: jlarc.state.va.us/meetings/December11/Retirement.pdf

RICHMOND — Ask Delegate Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, about the origins of his zeal for anti-abortion legislation, and he will take you back to the Napoleonic Code — the law governing France in the early 1800s.

When President Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana from the French, the land was governed under the code, which criminalized abortion once a woman could feel her fetus move, he said.

American scholar Sir Edward Livingston, of Louisiana, rewrote the French code to "apply the criminal penalties against induced abortion” at any point after conception, Marshall said Friday. 

Jefferson thought Livingston was a genius, Marshall said, and the conservative lawmaker agrees.

In November, Mississippi voters overwhelmingly defeated a ballot initiative that would have, like Livingston’s rewrite of the code, declared that life begins at fertilization. Supporters had hoped the initiative would prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide.

But less than two weeks after 55 percent of Mississippi voters said ‘no,’ Marshall revived the issue by proposing that the word “person” in Virginia law be construed to include unborn children.

“We require third-graders in Virginia to learn, under our public school standards of learning, that human life begins at conception,” Marshall said. “So that really isn’t controversial.”

Throughout his 20-year career in the House, Marshall has been a tireless advocate against women’s rights to abortion, filing multiple bills to criminalize the procedure.

Last year, he filed a bill to guarantee constitutional rights to unborn children that passed the House 62-36, but the measure was never called for a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Like many pieces of anti-abortion legislation, it stalled in the Senate Education and Health Committee.

But this year, Republicans have the power to stack committees with lawmakers more open to the legislation.

Marshall said Thursday the fate of his bill would likely be in the hands of the 15 senators who may or may not approve of his so-called “personhood” bill. Although Republicans outnumber Democrats 8-7, he said he is still unsure about the outcome.

Opponents are gearing up for battle against the “personhood” law, which would grant a cluster of fertilized cells all of the rights afforded people under Virginia’s constitution.

Delegate David Englin, D-Alexandria, vowed this week that the Progressive Caucus and “many others beyond this caucus, who take a more reasonable, moderate, mainstream view of things, that we are going to be working very hard against that amendment.”

<br />

Women’s rights advocates fear the impact of the bill would be far-reaching enough to criminalize common forms of birth control, and lay the groundwork for overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

“It will criminalize the decisions that the mother, the father and the doctor have to make,” said Delegate Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, who warned that the bill could affect medical procedures used to complete a miscarriage.

Courtney Jones, a grassroots field organizer for Planned Parenthood Virginia and an advocate of reproductive rights, said 98 percent of women will use birth control at some point in their lives, and could potentially be affected by the legislation.

“This is not a Republican matter, not a religious matter, but a matter of planning healthy families,” Jones said. “This is a direct assault on women’s rights in America.”

Marshall refutes critics' claims.

The immediate effect of the legislation would be to give cells property ownership and other legal rights from the moment of fertilization, he said, in effect allowing an unborn child to inherit property.

If a pregnant woman was killed in a car accident, under his law, Marshall said, the driver would be liable for the death of two people.

He called the protests of Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights activists a “sideshow” based on inaccurate information. Missouri has had similar laws on the books since 1989, he said, and no one has prosecuted abortion as illegal or stripped away birth control.

But Marshall said the “personhood” bill would give the state the “constitutional backbone to go back to old laws which criminalized abortion,” if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

The bill, HB1, is before the House Courts of Justice Committee. Read it: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB1

See video of opponents to the bill: http://youtu.be/YMvmi8MUbg4