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

DATE: THURSDAY, April 29, 1993                   TAG: 9304290093
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Staff report
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WILLIAMS, ALLEN IN FAX FIGHT OVER GOVERNOR'S TUITION ROLE

Two Republican gubernatorial candidates have opened a running debate - by fax machine - over how much the governor can and should do to control skyrocketing college tuitions and fees.

Earle Williams, a retired McLean businessman trying to overtake front-runner George Allen in the GOP contest, triggered the fight with a promise on Monday to keep tuition increases to no more than the rate of inflation if he's elected governor. He accused Allen, a former delegate from Charlottesville, of supporting state budgets in the 1980s that cut aid to the colleges and forced them to increase their charges.

Allen retorted on Tuesday that tuitions are set solely by college administrators and boards of visitors. "I do not believe that those decisions should be made by politicians or bureaucrats in Richmond," he said.

Through Mike Thomas, his campaign manager, Allen also accused Williams of hypocrisy in raising the tuition issue. While Williams served on the state Board for Community Colleges in the 1980s, "tuition rates for community colleges exploded," he said. In one two-year period alone - 1983-85 - those charges went up by 28 percent, Thomas said.

"By Earle Williams' own standards, he would be relentlessly attacked by the Democrats if he were the Republican nominee," Thomas argued. "He is trying to attack George Allen's record by wrongly suggesting that the General Assembly is directly responsible for tuition rates. It is not."

Williams was back on the attack on Wednesday. His campaign issued a statement accusing Allen of arguing that tuition increases are "none of the governor's business."

"If the elected representatives of the people abdicate their responsibility, where shall the people turn?" the Williams camp asked.

The tuition squabble is the latest in a series of by-fax arguments between Williams and Allen. The third candidate in the GOP contest, Del. Clinton Miller of Woodstock, has avoided much of the dueling.

Allen says he has enough commitments from delegates to the GOP's June 4-5 convention in Richmond to claim the nomination; Williams and Miller say the outcome is still in doubt.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB