A decade ago, the joke around Richmond was that even VDOT’s road crews had one of those rubber stamps that said, “Confidential. Governor ’s Working Papers.”

At the time, Republican George Allen was governor.

What a difference a decade makes.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, now wants to restrict a governor’s ability to keep governors’ “working papers” secret, especially when it comes to budget-related documents.

Speaking at the Virginia Coalition for Open Government’s annual conference, in Williamsburg, Griffith said governors’ ability to shield budget figures and analysis from legislative scrutiny contributes to mistrust between the two branches.

The state’s Freedom of Information Act, which requires most government meetings and documents to be available to the public, exempts the governor ’s working papers.

Just eight months after he was being hammered in the editorial pages for what was seen as an assault on open government (see General Assembly, page 1), Griffith called for a tightened working-papers exemption.

Making budget figures and analysis public is one of the more pressing open-government issues, Griffith said.

Griffith was careful to note that the problem is the system, not Gov. Mark Warner. In 2001, for example, the Senate distrusted then-Gov. Jim Gilmore’s budget figures as they related to the car-tax cut, leading to the budget impasse of that year.

Governors have a secretary of finance and an entire Department of Planning and Budget to continually crunch numbers, analyze them and figure out how the state’s finances look. Lawmakers, on the other hand, must rely on the much smaller staffs of the two legislative money committees. They are “routinely denied access” to the data that underlie governors’ budget proposals, Griffith said, comparing it to trying to buy a car but being told you can’t look under the hood.

Griffith recalled that in 2002, Warner asked all state agencies to submit ways in which they could make cuts of 7 percent, 11 percent and 15 percent. Republican legislators wanted to see those agency plans, but Warner withheld them as his working papers. Almost three years later, Griffith still wants to see those plans.

Del. Phil Hamilton, R-Newport News, said the legislative money committees couldn’t justify having the same size budget staff the governor has unless they were full-time legislators, something he does not want. “If the information is there, why is there this great fear to share it with the decision-makers?” Hamilton asked at the VCOG conference.

Griffith said after the meeting that he’s not likely to actually introduce a bill to get rid of, or restrict, the working-papers exemption in the 2005 General Assembly session. Instead, he will seek to tie that into legislation that would allow governors to serve two consecutive terms. He could later decide to pursue the exemption as separate legislation, he said.

Legislators contend that if Virginia governors are allowed to serve consecutive terms, the executive would have too much power. Legislators will seek to reduce a governor’s authority before allowing consecutive terms. Griffith said he spoke with Warner and agreed that they should look at some trade-offs or compromises to advance legislation to give future governors the constitutional right to seek a second consecutive term.

However, Warner believes the balance of power between lawmakers and the governor is fair and appropriate. Virginia is the only state that limits the governor to one term with a constitutional bar against seeking a second consecutive term.

Ellen Qualls, Warner’s press secretary, said Griffith may have painted the governor’s powers as somewhat more broad than they are.

“The governor is not currently persuaded that the powers of the Virginia governor are more extensive than those of the other governors in the nation or unfair in the balance with legislators,” Qualls said. “The governor is not persuaded that the balance is wrong.”

Warner also is not convinced that there is a need to trim the exemption for governor ’s working papers, she said.

“Legislators can already go to the Department of Planning and Budget and [the state treasurer] and ask specific questions,” Qualls said. “It gets to be what I consider a bit of a red herring” that they argue they are kept in the dark about budget information.

Qualls said that Warner wanted candor from his agency heads as they prepared tentative cuts that might not be implemented. “The actual decisions that were made were all included in the governor’s budget,” she said. “We have decades of precedent we are trying to protect. ”

“This governor has been more inclusive and open about budget information than most,” Qualls said. “The legislature has been an active partner in our efforts to fix the state’s finances. ”

Griffith disagrees. Legislators are kept in the dark “like mushrooms in the cellar. ”

– Excerpted from stories by Chelyn Davis, Free Lance-Star, and Bob Gibson, Daily Progress