Combining blogging with elected-official-ing is always a challenge. During the off season, there’s time to blog and not much to blog about. But since Sunday when we arrived in Richmond, we’ve had PLENTY to blog about . . . but no time to sit down and write.

Barney Frank says that there are two things that have helped him to achieve succes in politics: a sense of humor and a very short attention span. We have needed both this week. In the space of 15 minutes, I bounced from a conversation about the need for a bond issue to support higher education to a phone call from a reporter on one of my bills to answering questions from a student doing a school project on me. 

I was disappointed that our efforts to make government more transparent met with no success. On opening day, Ken Plum again introduced a rule change that would have required votes in subcommittee to be recorded. It failed on essentially a party line vote. (Bob Marshall broke ranks to vote for the measure.) Similarly, a proposal to televise the proceedings of the House was defeated on a party line vote.

Last night in his State of the Commonwealth speech, Gov. Kaine reminded us all that our time here is short. We serve in a building that is more than 220 years old, and in an institution that dates back to Jamestown. Here’s hoping we can keep that in mind during the next 58 days.