Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 6, 1992 TAG: 9203060318
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Tech had expected to receive the funding, but had been waiting for confirmation.
Administrators have been told that Tech will receive $3.2 million in the first year of the biennium, as they had requested in an amendment submitted to the legislature.
Originally, $12 million - or 29 percent - had been cut from the department's budget. Tech had asked for $9.2 million to be returned to the budget, but came up short.
Still, said James Johnson, director of cooperative extension, this will be workable.
And Tech will have the opportunity to return to the assembly next year to ask for more funding, said Katherine Johnston, the director of budget and financial planning at Tech. Johnston said it may be several weeks before it is clear exactly how far the money will stretch.
Meanwhile, the Center for Innovative Technology received $10.5 million from the General Assembly, in addition to $6.5 million included in the governor's budget proposal, according to Linwood Holton, director of the Herndon-based center.
Funding originally had been taken away from the CIT for the second year of the biennium, pending a review of the program by the office of budget and planning.
There still will be a review in 1992, according to the conference committee report. But funding won't be dependent on it.
Earlier this year, the CIT did its own internal review and determined that the center was not doing a good enough job showing accountability for its programs.
"I'm not embarrassed about it," said Holton, who was a governor of Virginia during the '60s. "We should be showing people what we're doing. We've had some tremendous accomplishments."
Holton said that for the three years he has worked with the CIT, he has talked to the community about what the CIT does: that is, to help in the transfer of technology and to connect university research with industry problems.
"I've taken that message to Virginia and that includes the legislature," he said. "I think those visits had a lot of influence on our success with the legislature this session. They know us."
He said that CIT is especially important now, "when Virginia is facing a permanent loss of jobs because of cuts in the defense agencies. We can't relax. We have to work to get jobs through new technologies.
"That's what we do."
by CNB