By Ray Reed
Published: March 14, 2008
The last remnant of this year’s attempt to win General Assembly approval of a uranium mining study was wiped out in a conference committee this week.
For practical purposes, the uranium issue was laid to rest two weeks ago when a House committee killed a bill that would have established a commission to study whether a Pittsylvania County uranium deposit could be safely mined.
But traces of the issue remained in the Senate budget bill, where Sen. Dick Saslaw, D-Springfield, had inserted an amendment directing a state agency to prepare a plan for writing mining regulations.
When the Senate and House budget bills went into a conference committee near the end of the assembly session, Saslaw’s amendment was still alive, technically.
“We took it out,” said Del. Clarke Hogan, R-Halifax, one of the 12 conferees.
“We said, ‘we’re not going to put that in the budget,’” Hogan said, speaking for the House’s six members of the conference committee.
“That was the end of that. It wasn’t something we debated,” Hogan said.
As a “language amendment” that didn’t involve money, one side’s refusal meant the issue was settled. “This was housekeeping, really,” Hogan said.
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