
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 2, 1990                   TAG: 9007030366
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WILDER SHOULD CLEAR THE AIR ON TRIPS

THE GOSSIPS may be interested in Gov. Douglas Wilder's ties to Patricia Kluge, estranged wife of Albemarle County billionaire John Kluge. "We're friends," says the governor regarding the woman he has appointed to the UVa Board of Visitors. An adequate response. That much is his and the Kluges' business.

What is the public's business is Wilder's use of state aircraft to facilitate visits with Patricia Kluge.

A source who works at Albemarle Farms, the Kluge estate, said Patricia Kluge has talked of spending the Memorial Day weekend with the divorced governor at Camp Pendleton, a Coast Guard-run compound in Tidewater. The source said Kluge also joined Wilder on Nantucket Island, Mass., for a four-day weekend in June.

"The logs [of the state airplane and helicopter] speak for themselves," Wilder told an inquiring reporter at a Democratic fund-raiser at The Homestead Thursday. What the logs say is that the copter stopped at Albemarle Farms on the way to and from Camp Pendleton over Memorial Day; and that he used the state jet for the Nantucket trip, landing at Charlottesville-Albemarle airport on the way back to Richmond.

It is already known that Wilder is a peripatetic governor, and not all of his travels have been on public business. The Washington Post says that since he took office in January, he has made at least 18 helicopter trips that did not appear on his public schedule, and whose purpose he will not disclose.

Wilder had said previously he would reimburse the state treasury more than $6,300 for flights on the state plane to Nantucket and Long Island, N.Y. But that announcement was not made until someone had ferreted out information about the flights. And he isn't saying whether he intends to repay the state for personal trips on the helicopter, which costs about $300 an hour to operate.

The impression left is not a good one. Wilder's personal relationship with Patricia Kluge - or both Kluges, whom he describes as friends - need not be the concern of anyone else. He may have his own reasons for keeping that private. But when the relationship somehow involves his use of state aircraft, then to that extent it is a public matter, whether the governor pays for it or not.

Whenever possible, he would do well to use private means of travel under such circumstances. When he does not, he should be frank about the purpose of flying on the state jet or state police helicopter, and he should promptly pay back the state what he owes. That's nothing but good politics, about which this governor should know something.

***CORRECTION***

Published correction ran on July 8, 1990\ Correction

Because of a reporter's error, a story in the morning editions June 29 and an editorial in all editions on July 2 incorrectly identified the agency that runs Camp Pendleton at Virginia Beach. The Virginia National Guard operates the compound.

Memo: correction

by CNB