Cruisin' Chuck: Vacation More Important than Fixing Transportation

Is vacation more important than doing your job? Evidently, during the special transportation session held in 2008, Del. Chuck Caputo had better things to do than serve the people of the 67^th District. The better thing was a cruise. According to the Washington Post’s Virginia Politics blog, Amy Gardner reports that Caputo is getting slammed for this by his opponent, Jim LeMunyon. Of course, Caputo mentioned that he would be able to return on a day’s notice if anything important came up. I guess dealing with transportation issues, especially since most of your district commutes into the city every day for work, is not that big of a deal.

LeMunyon calls Caputo out on his vacation:

“Chuck Caputo missed 15 important votes. A close reading of the House Minutes from the Special Session suggests there was quite a bit of jockeying on the House Floor and behind the scenes related to various transportation bills and amendments. As most voters know, it’s common in a legislative process that important decisions are often made behind the scenes. It’s unfortunate that the people of the 67th were not represented behind the scenes or on the House Floor in a way that would have made the overall result of the Special Session more beneficial to Northern Virginia.”

“Missing these votes is also contrary to his claim that improving transportation has been his top priority since he was elected. Chuck Caputo should have been in Richmond providing leadership and working on a bipartisan basis to broker a deal ensuring critical transportation funding for Northern Virginia. Maybe this explains why he recently removed the following statement from his website: No one has done more to improve transportation in Western Fairfax County than Delegate Caputo.”

“The 67th District has arguably the worst traffic congestion of any of the 100 House Districts in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The votes Chuck missed were, by any objective measure, some of the most significant pieces of transportation legislation in many years. Regardless of the closeness of the votes, the people of the 67th District deserved to be on the record.”

“As I have said all along, Chuck Caputo is a decent man and good citizen. But he let us down by skipping these votes. I applaud him for finally going on the record today about this issue.”

LeMunyon also sent out two mailers into the district, which you can see here and here.