The View From Over Here

Weak Ethics Reform and Nats Hitting

As soon as the jury’s surprising guilty-on-nearly-all-counts verdict was announced in the trial of former Governor Bob and Mrs. McDonnell, talk of reforming Virginia’s totally lax ethics rules began anew. Last week Governor Terry McAuliffe said he was creating a high level task group to recommend serious reforms of law governing gifts to elected officials in Richmond. His target was to receive proposals for the legislature to consider and pass in the 2015 session. He named former long-time (uh, oh!) Congressman Rick Boucher, a Democrat, and former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, to lead the reformers.

This twosome promptly disclosed their priorities in a newspaper op-ed column. In sum,—not too much real reform. Their priority will be to assure access of the business community to legislators. Does anyone really think that business lobbyists are the ones lacking access? And, do the corporates need rules assuring that they can continue to give gifts of meals, high class sports tickets, luxury travel, and lots more?? Seriously, they stressed the need for rules assuring business—not average citizens—more access! If Rick and Bill’s first public statement truly is indicative of where Terry McAuliffe’ “reform” is headed, it means just more of the same for Virginia which is already a national symbol for capitol corruption.

Reston has two of the better representatives in Richmond in long-time Delegate Ken Plum and long-time State Senator Janet Howell. Both voted for the weak reform bill passed in the last session—a measure that Governor McAuliffe vetoed, correctly noting it was not adequate. To date, both Reston legislators have said they support calls for reform, but have not stepped up to advocate for or lead the necessary charge for genuine reform. Both seem to be going through the motions, not really fired up on the subject. One area legislator reminded me that his/her legislator salary was low and had not been increased in a very long time. In this context, that sounded almost like a rationale for taking gifts to supplement their pay, rather than voting for an increase which I would much prefer.

Let’s hope that this time around we’ll see and hear more from the generally respected Reston contingent visibly fighting to stop the corruption seeping everywhere in Richmond.

New subject. As I feared, the Nationals’ best in baseball pitching staff was not sufficient to overcome the team’s weak hitting in the first round of the NL playoffs. They lost in 4 games to an underwhelming Giants team. The Nats number three and four hitters, the heavy-hitting heart of the order Jayson Werth and Adam LaRoche, combined for two little hits in thirty three trips to the plate, while the leadoff hitter was only 2 for 20! The pitching did its job, holding the Giants to just six earned runs in four games. But, it wasn’t enough to overcome pathetic hitting which yielded just 5 runs in the three games the Nats lost.

I can’t say “Just wait ‘til next year”. We need some off-season trades to beef up a batting order that just is not worthy of the playoffs, much less the World Series.