Former Sen. Quayle picked for Va. Parole Board

It turns out Fred Quayle’s separation from state government service will be short-lived.

Gov. Bob McDonnell has named the former state senator from Suffolk to the Virginia Parole Board, an appointment with a four-year term and a $52,000 annual salary.

Quayle’s 20-year career in the Senate recently ended after he declined to seek re-election last November. He made that decision after he and a fellow Republican senator, Chesapeake’s Harry Blevins, were drawn together in Democrats’ redistricting plan.

Quayle, 75, is the newest addition to the five-member Parole Board, which can grant, deny or revoke parole and detain parole violators. It also has the power to give early release to geriatric inmates.

Out of the roughly 30,500 Virginia prison inmates, about 4,800 remain eligible for parole because they were incarcerated before the state abolished it in 1995.

McDonnell named four other board members last February; Quayle’s term begins next month.

Reached Friday, Quayle said he he’s looking forward to the position after years in the legislature dealing with laws involving parole and punishment.

He sponsored a 2004 law to give financial restitution to people wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for serious crimes and has been an advocate for legislation to relax punishment for technical parole violators.

One of his more recent legislative accomplishments was a 2010 law to exempt Virginians from individual insurance mandates, a cornerstone of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s challenge to the federal health care act widely despised by Republicans.

While that was a red meat bill to the GOP base, the moderate Quayle last spring lamented what he sees as an increasingly partisan atmosphere in politics as he looked back at his legislative career.

An attorney by trade, Quayle hasn’t practiced law in several years. He's taught government and political courses over the years at Old Dominion University, but said he isn’t teaching this semester.

-- Julian Walker

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