Albo + Tobacco + $$$ = A Legislative Coward

We bring you this from today's edition of our Tennessee border newspaper, The Virginia Tri-Cities Courier:

Doing the Bidding of Big Tobacco

In a supreme show of political cowardice, six Virginia delegates  acted unilaterally Thursday to prevent a floor vote on smoking ban  legislation.

They thwarted the people's will.

Seventy-five percent of Virginians want a restaurant smoking ban.  So do Gov. Tim Kaine and 28 state senators, including Sen. Phillip Puckett,  D-Lebanon, and Sen. William Wampler, R-Bristol.

In fact, the Senate passed four bills that imposed various  restrictions on public smoking earlier this month. All passed by healthy margins  and had bipartisan support.

Too bad those bills didn't get a fair hearing in the House of  Delegates. Instead, they were consigned to a subcommittee with a reputation for  killing such measures. The outcome was predetermined.

As expected, the Alcoholic Beverage Control and Gaming  Subcommittee dispatched all of the Senate's bills without debate - or a recorded  vote. The gang of six subcommittee members left no official trace of their  nefarious act.

The subcommittee includes four Republicans, Dave Albo, John  Cosgrove, Thomas Gear and Thomas Wright Jr.; independent Watkins Abbitt Jr., who  caucuses with the GOP; and a local Democrat, Dan Bowling of Tazewell.

All six members took campaign contributions from Big Tobacco last  year, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Gear took the most, just  under $5,000; followed by Abbitt, $4,150; Albo, $3,750 and Wright, $1,750.  Bowling and Cosgrove took $1,500 each.

Albo and Gear also dined on tobacco's dime last year and Abbitt  accepted a $122 box of cigars as a gift. Perhaps he plans to smoke them in a  restaurant near his Appomattox home.

Shame on them all. And shame on the House GOP leadership for  allowing these bills to go down without a full and fair hearing and a floor  vote.

The House has 100 members; six percent of its membership should  not decide an issue of such importance to state residents' health and  welfare.

The slimmest of opportunities remains to revive the legislation.  The full House General Laws Committee could ignore the recommendation by the  subcommittee and bring the ban bills back for a hearing. The full committee has  21 members, including nine Democrats. Surely, not all of them are obligated to  the tobacco industry.

We urge the committee to revive the bill and send it to the House  floor for a full and fair debate.

Six delegates - all with financial ties binding them to Big  Tobacco - should not have the final say on smoking ban legislation. Do the will  of the people.

Doing the Bidding of Big Tobacco, The Tri-Cities Courier (Feb. 17, 2008).

We've been blogging on this for two years now.  For more on Delegate Albo's "relationship" with big tobacco, see these below:

Comments