News Leader - Staunton

March 5, 2007

Our View |: Two good laws

We've criticized the transportation plan crafted by the General Assembly this session — and rightly so, we think; the thing's flawed beyond imagining. However, in the "credit where credit's due" department, we'd like to recognize two good bills passed by the legislature this year.

Attorney Pay

Although this bill passed by both houses of the General Assembly didn't go as far as we would have liked, it does allow court-appointed attorneys who are not public defenders to request a waiver of the cap on their compensation in certain "unusual" cases. According to the bill, time expended and "novelty and difficulty of the issues" in some cases will be used as benchmarks to decide if the pay cap can be waived.

Considering that court-appointed attorneys often provide the only legal representation for indigent defendants in life-and-death cases, it's only fair that they should receive better compensation. We hope the financial incentive will result in a higher level of service.

Wholesale Wine Licenses

Although this measure doesn't exactly resemble the original version introduced by Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, it accomplishes enough to warrant applause. As we noted back in January, a federal judicial ruling had hamstrung Virginia wineries; they could not sell their products directly to restaurants and stores but were forced to go through a distributor. The new measure creates a restricted wholesale wine license that authorizes the licensee to provide wholesale wine distribution services to winery and farm winery licensees that distribute no more than 3,000 cases of wine annually. That measure should circumvent the costly process of wineries going through a middleman.