State Sen. John Miller (D-1) describes his district as a “flying elephant.”
The nose and head area are taken up by Williamsburg and parts of James City and York counties. The body constitutes much of Newport News, from its border with Grove to the southern tip of the peninsula. It then stretches across the water, following the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel to Suffolk, where he has a single precinct to represent that makes up the elephant’s tail.
The task before Miller now is to represent those diverse areas in the Virginia Senate as the next round of the General Assembly begins Wednesday. Coming with the two-term senator to the General Assembly are several bills he has already filed, including one that seeks to take the partisan politics out of drawing the lines of political districts.
Miller has introduced bills for years that would take redistricting — a process where political districts are redrawn to account for changes in population — out of the hands of the General Assembly and instead leave the responsibility with a nonpartisan group. He has changed the bill this year, however, asking instead for an advisory referendum to be placed before Virginia voters.
That referendum would appear before voters in November’s election, asking them if a bipartisan advisory commission should be created to propose redistricting plans for political districts in Virignia.
“We’ve got to get the pen out of the hands of the politicians who have a stake in the outcome and give it to people with common sense,” Miller said. “Nobody with common sense would draw [his district’s map]. We so artfully draw these lines that there are only a handful of races across the state where we don’t know the outcome.”
Children are the topic in many of the bills introduced by Miller for this session. One bill seeks to prohibit minors from purchasing e-cigarettes, banning any device that provides inhaled doses of nicotine and liquid nicotine.
“Nobody knows the effects of smoking nicotine vapor,” Miller said. “I expect they’re not good. But let’s not let our children smoke for years and then find out it really is terrible for your health.”
Sen. John Miller
Another bill he has introduced seeks to require at least 30 minutes of physical activity per day for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. He has introduced that bill every session for the past several years, but it has not made it into law due to concerns from school officials who worry that its requirements could result in an unfunded mandate.
“We have so focused on SOLs, teaching to the test and no time for anything else that a lot of schools have cut out recess,” Miller said. “When I went to school, you spent 45 minutes a day out in a field running around. Between that and fast food places, this is the first generation of children that are not expected to outlive their parents, and that’s a crisis. This is one small step to try to address obesity in children. It doesn’t take any additional money or people.”
Miller is also seeking to abolish science and history Standards of Learning tests for third-graders. A bill he has introduced would abolish those tests — just like a failed bill he introduced in 2012 — dropping the total number of SOL tests taken by students during their time in Virginia schools to 32. History is currently tested again in fourth grade and science in fifth grade, so Miller proposes students wait for those tests while focusing on reading and math in third grade.
“We started with 14. We’ve now got 34,” Miller said of the number of tests. “Let’s look at the ones we need to keep. We need to be accountable and know our children are learning, so there has to be some SOL testing, but I just think we’ve gone off the deep end.”
He said “the stars have aligned” this year for reform of the testing. By nixing the science and history tests in third grade, educators could focus on bolstering foundational reading and math skills.
“The tests are so focused on memorization. We’ve got a generation of great memorizers but they can’t think critically, and that doesn’t serve anyone very well,” he said.
Miller is also the creator of a bill that seeks to eradicate the $64 annual license tax on hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles that was written into law as part of last year’s sweeping transportation reforms. The bill would also knock the annual license tax for electric vehicles to $50 per year.
“It’s not that the Prius is not paying its fair share but that there are a lot of other cars that aren’t hybrids that get better mileage than a Prius, but you’re not taxing them,” he said. “If the rationale is that those folks aren’t paying their fair share, let’s look at all the folks who aren’t paying their fair share.”
Other legislation introduced by Miller for this session includes:
- A constitutional amendment that would allow the governor of Virginia to serve two terms instead of one. Virginia governors are currently restricted to a single term, making them the only governors in the nation who can’t serve twice.
- A bill that would restrict charges from payday lenders to a simple interest rate no higher than 36 percent.
- A bill that would require non-interscholastic youth sports programs that use public property to establish policies and procedures from either their local school division or the state’s Board of Education governing treatment of concussions in student athletes.
- A joint study committee that would explore SOL testing and offer potential reforms.
Miller, a Democrat, was first elected to the Senate in November 2007, when he beat Republican Patricia B. Stall. Four years later, he survived a bid by Mickey Chohany, one of the owners of Second Street An American Bistro, to unseat him. He is up for election again in November 2015.
Legislation related to children is not a new direction for Miller. In 2011, he was behind a failed bill that would have created a new category of driving under the influence applicable when the car had a passenger 18 years old or younger. He has also introduced legislation in past years similar to 2014’s effort to create the 30 minutes of daily activity.
Before joining the General Assembly, Miller spent much of his professional life working alongside the statehouse. He got his start as a reporter for television station WVEC, where he covered the General Assembly. After becoming news director at that station, he left the media to work as the administrative assistant for U.S. Sen. Paul Trible, a Republican who represented Virginia in the 1980s. Following his work with Trible, Miller returned to WVEC where he worked as a morning and noon news anchor for six years.
When Trible became the president of Christopher Newport University, Miller joined him there as the vice president for university relations, a job that had him back in front of the General Assembly, representing CNU’s interests. Miller then ran for a House of Delegates sate, losing to Republican Glenn Oder. He was elected to Richmond in 2007.
WYDaily attempted to reach out to the Historic Triangle’s other representative in the Virginia Senate, Tommy Norment, but he did not respond to requests for an interview.