DATE: Friday, May 9, 1997                   TAG: 9705090008

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 
                                            LENGTH:   40 lines

FACTS ON THE WEB HTTP://WWW.PILOTONLINE.COM/VOTER/=VOTER ACCESS.

Virginia moves from the backwaters to the forefront of campaign-finance monitoring this week with the creation of an Internet site offering data on candidate contributions and expenditures.

Instead of combing through stacks of paper at the State Board of Elections, curious Virginians can now click onto the World Wide Web and find out what tobacco companies are giving to Attorney General James S. Gilmore III or what labor unions have donated to Lt. Gov. Donald S. Beyer Jr.

In a state where the sky's the limit on the size of campaign contributions, such information may prove invaluable.

Credit for this new capability goes to the Virginia Public Access Project and to Pilot Online, the online partner of The Virginian-Pilot. The access project, formed by a newspaper consortium committed to improving awareness of campaign finance data, is based at Virginia Commonwealth University's Center for Public Policy.

The project is overseen by David Poole, a political reporter on leave from The Virginian-Pilot and The Roanoke Times.

The General Assembly last winter took a small step toward electronic monitoring by the state of who gave what to whom. But the legislature required only that the State Board of Elections be able to accept electronically filed campaign-finance reports within a few years.

It did not demand that all reports be available in electronic form. So it may be many years before the sort of information being gleaned by the Virginia Public Access Project is readily available statewide from government sources.

As money becomes ever more entwined with politics and public policy, it is imperative that the the public know as much as possible about the financial moorings of various candidates.

Public awareness is the best tool yet discovered for minimizing undue influence, and the fact that a bright light has just been cast on political fund raising in Virginia is a development worth celebrating.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu