Lawmakers get only middling grades

By News in Brief
Published: September 15, 2008

No Virginia lawmaker got better than a middling grade in a pro-business legislative monitor’s 2008 report card because the General Assembly failed to enact new transportation funding this year.

Virginia FREE deducted 20 percent off the top of every legislator’s 2008 business rating, reflecting the nonprofit group’s disdain at a failed early-summer special session for road, rail and mass-transit funding.

The report, released last week, opens with a commentary about the partisan brinksmanship that doomed the June and July session before it ever began.

The annual business rating melds individual voting records of each of the 140 legislators with evaluations by leading business lobbyists.

On average, the General Assembly’s Republicans scored a 2008 business rating of 59 to the Democrats’ 46.