Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993 TAG: 9302160038
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
GOODLATTE GETS STARTED ON JOB 1 - CREATING
REP. BOB GOODLATTE wants to take after his political neighbor, Rick Boucher, and make a name for himself by recruiting new jobs to his district.The sign on the door still says "Jim Olin." Someone has taped a piece of paper over it and typed in the name of the new congressman, although the letters are so small that visitors have to squint to read them.
Most of the furniture was missing when Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke, moved in. Olin exercised his right to buy what had been his personal seat of power for the past decade and take it with him into retirement.
Goodlatte scrounged up a desk and some dilapidated chairs from his law office. Still, the 6th District's new congressman felt right at home when he took over Olin's office in downtown Roanoke last month. Some things, it seems, haven't changed since Goodlatte was a young aide to Olin's predecessor, Caldwell Butler, in the 1970s.
If Goodlatte remembered anything from those days, it was the eye-popping burnt-orange couches in the local congressional office. Somehow, they survived both the Butler and Olin regimes. "I came in here the first time, and there they were," Goodlatte says.
As garish as they are, the sofas have now been pressed back into service to accommodate the never-ending stream of visitors who want just a few minutes, if you please, of the congressman's time.
For Goodlatte, the housekeeping chores still aren't done. In about a month, he'll be moving his Roanoke office from the old CorEast Savings Bank building - which is about to be auctioned off - into the Crestar Plaza at Jefferson Street and Franklin Road.
Nevertheless, Goodlatte has plunged right into keeping what had been one of his main campaign promises, to focus on creating new jobs in the mostly slow-growth district that runs from Roanoke to Harrisonburg.
That's a new role for the 6th District's representative in Washington. Olin, who carved out a niche on agricultural and forestry issues and certain defense matters, did not establish a high profile on economic development.
Instead, Virginia's best-known practitioner of using the congressional office as a sales post is Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon. Boucher and Goodlatte are political opposites. But Goodlatte is an unabashed admirer of Boucher's economic development work and has met with his 9th District counterpart to glean some advice.
"Rick Boucher has done a lot of things and has some effectiveness," Goodlatte says, "although a lot of what he does has to do with his committee assignments, which are business-related. When a lobbyist comes in and asks for your support on a bill, it's easy to turn the question around and say, `Now what are your plans for economic development?' "
That, Goodlatte says, gives business representatives seeking a congressman's help an incentive to tour his district to look at plant sites.
Goodlatte, however, won't have Boucher's distinct advantage of sitting on the Science and Technology Committee, which is where the action is expected when the Clinton administration presents its spending priorities.
Goodlatte spent much of his political capital angling for a seat on the House Agriculture Committee, a nod to the farming interests in the district's northernmost counties of Augusta and Rockingham.
For his second committee assignment, Goodlatte had hoped to win a spot on Science and Technology, which he hoped would give him access to high-technology businesses that might be persuaded to consider locating in the 6th District.
But the Clinton administration has vowed to increase spending on new technologies, setting off a stampede on Capitol Hill to get on Science and Technology. "The committee of the future," The Washington Post recently called it.
When Goodlatte saw he was unlikely to win a seat on the science panel, he set his sights on the Judiciary Committee. Many business bills must pass through there because they have legal ramifications, Goodlatte says, so he hopes he's still positioned to catch the attention of businesses looking to expand.
He might even be able to pick up some pointers from a fellow Judiciary member - Boucher.
So far, the new Congress hasn't done much, as it waits for Clinton to send his legislative priorities down Pennsylvania Avenue.
But Goodlatte has already gotten involved in the economic development.
When Gardner-Denver's new owners announced they were closing the Roanoke drilling-equipment plant and moving some of the 400 jobs to Texas, Mayor David Bowers asked Goodlatte to call the company's executives to see if they'd change their minds.
The hope was that a call from a congressman would lend a certain gravitas that calls from local officials don't have.
"They'll take your phone calls," Goodlatte says, and sometimes that in itself is a breakthrough. In this case, though, the company's mind was already made up.
Still, Goodlatte says, he was able to sound out Gardner-Denver about selling the facility here to the city at a cut rate for Roanoke to market to other industrial prospects.
Nothing has come of that yet, Goodlatte says, but he's hopeful he was able to impress company executives how important they are to Roanoke. "They said they liked the facility, they liked the work force; they just had an unprofitable product line here. They said they'd be willing to take a look at Roanoke" if the company creates new product lines in the future.
Last week, with Congress in recess, Goodlatte was back in the district, meeting with local officials to find out what kind of role they'd like him to play in economic development.
Goodlatte has found many groups working on economic development, but he wonders how well-focused and coordinated some of them are. "One thing I think needs to be done," he says, "is to have the different economic regions of the district focus on some long-term objectives, some things they think they're better able to market than others."
That way, he says, each region would have a well-articulated plan that would give him and other political figures working on the region's behalf a better idea of what types of prospects to pursue.
Goodlatte has frequently found himself working well into the night in his Washington office to catch up on paperwork.
But, true to his conservative nature, Goodlatte has learned that government can't solve everyone's problems. One time when he was working past midnight, the telephone rang in his Capitol Hill office. He answered it and found a distraught constituent on the line.
"How can I help you?" Goodlatte asked.
"Oh, everything!" the flustered woman exclaimed.