Later this week the House Privileges and Elections Committee will take up legislation that would allow Virginia’s governors to serve back-to-back four-year terms, a proposal the panel has killed every year for more than a decade.
The restriction on consecutive terms is unique.
Every other state allows governors to serve at least two consecutive terms. Virginia governors can return to office after sitting out four years, but only one governor has done that, and he served one term as a Republican and one as a Democrat.
Del. Harry Purkey, R-Virginia Beach, who has unsuccessfully tried to convince his colleagues that the Virginia constitution should change for the past 13 years, hopes talks between Gov. Tim Kaine and senior legislators will produce a compromise.
In exchange for giving the governor a second term, Purkey’s bill would give the General Assembly more power over appointments to important state boards.
“I hope we can get something done this time,” Purkey said.
Supporters say allowing back-to-back terms will give a governor time to master the complicated position and have more incentives for planning long-term policies.
Opponents say the second term will create a too-powerful governor who will ride roughshod over the part-time legislature, which is only in session about two months a year.
Even if Purkey’s proposal makes it out of the House, it faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where a proposal to extend the governor’s term to six years has run into trouble.
“We do it better than any other state in the nation,” said Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, who chairs the subcommittee that reviews proposed constitutional amendments. “I don’t think we need to change.”
Illustrating the complexities of changing the governor’s term, Sen. Jeannemarie Devolites, R-Vienna, backs a six-year term but opposes two four-year terms.
“You would have a governor spending the first four ears checking the polls everyday to get re-elected and then they would be a lame duck the minute they are re-elected,” she said.
Though Kaine supports an additional term for the governor, he is noncommittal on whether he’d run for re-election.
“You’d have to ask my wife first,” hesaid.
