Hampton Roads blog home

RSS

Recent Entries

Recent Comments

Monthly Archives

If the Navy insists on building a landing field in Western Tidewater – much to the chagrin of residents there – the General Assembly will not stand in the way.

That message was delivered Tuesday when the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee killed a bill that might have required the Navy to get legislative approval for the field. The controversy is over construction of something called an OLF – outlying landing field – and has pitted the Navy and Virginia Beach against their rural neighbors.

The Navy needs a new airfield where pilots at Oceana Air Station in Virginia Beach can practice for night landings on aircraft carriers – a risky task for even the top aces. The requirements are that the strip have thousands of acres and lie in the middle of nowhere so pilots can come down in the dark. The Navy has long praticed on Fentress Airfield in Chesapeake, but surrounding development has rendered the strip too bright.

The Navy has identified three possible sites in Western Tidewater and two in North Carolina. But residents and local politicians don’t want the airfiled, saying it would cause noise, upset the environment and offer no economic advantage.

Virginia Beach, in contrast, wants to make the Navy happy. City officials say Oceana Air Station adds more than $1 billion a year to the local economy. They are still shaking from federal consideration a few years ago of closing Oceana, largely due to development the city had allowed around master air base. Florida, Texas and North Carolina have made pitches for the base.

Sen. Fred Quayle, R-Suffolk, represents several rural Tidewater communities and offered a bill, sb6, at the request of constituents. It would have required the Navy to win General Assembly approval for an outlying landing field in Virginia should Oceana be pulled out of the state. If Oceana stayed put, lawmakers would have had no say on the practice strip.

Amid heavy opposition from Virginia Beach, the Senate committee killed the measure on an 8-5 vote. City officials said the bill could become a vehicle for airfield opponents to attach future restrictions against the Navy. A couple of similar bills are alive in the House, but Senate committee action bodes their demise.

Commuters from western Chesterfield to downtown Richmond pay $4.30 per day and that is OK with the rest of the commonwealth.

There’s lots of angst in Hampton Roads that the region has lost financial clout in the General Assembly.

Two powerful budget brokers from the area didn’t return to the legislature this year. Former Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News, lost a re-election bid amid conflict-of-interest charges. He was a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee and one of the chamber’s six budget negotiators. Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, gave up his seat to wage a successful campaign for sheriff of his hometown. He was a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Problems compounded last week when Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, failed to nab Stolle’s spot on the budget-writing panel. Rather than replace Stolle, Senate Democratic leaders reduced the size of the committee from 16 to 15. That left Virginia Beach, the state’s largest city, essentially without a seat on the committee.

“This is very frustrating to me,” said Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms.

Dana Dickens, president of the Hampton Roads Partnership, a consortium of business, education and military interests, called the loss of financial muscle “huge.”

For all the hand wringing, Hampton Roads is hardly a 60-pound weakling. It still holds six seats on the 22-member Appropriations Committee and four on Senate Finance. Despite the loss of Hamilton, the region still has a budget negotiator in Del. Johnny Joannou, D-Portsmouth. And don’t forget that newly elected Gov. Bob McDonnell spent 14 years representing Virginia Beach in the House.

But that’s little consolation to those who fondly recall the days when Hampton Roads was home to budget committee chairmen Hunter Andrews, Dick Bagley and Stanley Walker – not to mention House Speaker Tom Moss. Only three years ago, in fact, half of the six House budget negotiators were from the region.

They bade farewell to Ken Stolle Thursday night in a manner of pomp and friendship rarely accorded to a retiring state senator.

About 200 lawmakers, lobbyists and business nabobs raised glasses to Stolle, a moderate Republican who represented Virginia Beach for 18 years, during a posh reception at The Jefferson hotel. Stolle, a policeman turned lawyer who became a General Assembly force on law-and-order issues, has left Richmond to serve as Virginia Beach sheriff, an elective position he won in November.

A collection of lobbyists and corporations paid for the reception, which featured a 15-minute video roast of Stolle called “Virginia Beach Vice.” Colleagues ribbed Stolle about his habits of not returning phone calls and being late for meetings.

“I think Ken really believed if he was late for a meeting that everyone got there too early,” said state Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner periodically appeared in the video pleading, “Ken, will you call me back?”

After the screening came more solemn tributes. Stolle was presented the gavel from the Senate Courts of Justice Committee, which he served as chairman. He was lauded as a statesman who was not afraid to break with his party on key issues. Stolle frustrated many Republicans in 2001 when he opposed expanding a promised car tax cut and in 2004 when he helped form a bipartisan coalition that passed a $1.4 billion tax increase.

“When it was about Virginia, what Ken was always willing to do is sit down and try to get a middle ground,” said Warner, who was governor in 2004 and fought for the tax increase. “This country would be a lot better off if there were a lot more people like Ken.”

There may have been more Democrats at the reception than Republicans. Absent were just about all the GOP senators who railed against tax hikes during the last decade. One former Republican delegate who disagreed with Stolle on fiscal issues did show up, however. It was Gov. Bob McDonnell, also from Virginia Beach.

“This is going to be a tremendous loss for the General Assembly,” McDonnell said of Stolle’s departure. “I have tremendous respect for his ability to lead.”

South Hampton Roads is also reeling. Stolle, with a seat on the Senate Finance Committee, was a go-to-guy when the region needed results. We’ll have more about the fallout on another post.

Stolle, 55, has Parkinson’s Disease, a degenerative neurological disorder that can impair motor skills. He said he’s doing fine, however, and recently registered a 98.6 percent shooting efficiency with his nine-millimeter pistol.
In brief remarks, he called his tribute “overwhelming,” adding in jest, “After listening to everything said here tonight, I intend to seek my party’s nomination for governor in 2013.”

More immediately, Stolle plans to lobby the General Assembly against proposed funding cuts to sheriffs. The Virginia Beach department, he said,  would lose about $5 million from its $37 million budget, compromising security in the city jail.

Is Stolle stepping down because he has Parkinson’s Disease or just because he was ready to? It seems to me that he still has plans to be active in the government.  Would it not have made more sense for him to stay and there, where he would have had more influence?