Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 10, 1993 TAG: 9312300009
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It was cute. She said it sure was good to see so many folks she'd done business with over the past seven years, including many she hadn't heard from recently. (Hint, hint. Have you contributed to the cause yet?)
Republican lawyers in the crowd didn't laugh. Maybe because they didn't get it.
And aren't likely to get it, as long as a hidebound spoils system remains in place and under the control of Democratic attorneys general. (They've won the post, and goodies-distribution rights, in each statewide election except 1977's.)
Last year, Terry, as attorney general, doled out at least $1.5 million in highway department legal business to private lawyers and law firms with Democratic ties, including many who've financially supported her statewide campaigns in the past and are generously supporting her bid for the governor's office.
That's just one year's portion of nearly $8.6 million in legal fees for private lawyers handling highway right-of-way cases that she approved after taking office as attorney general in 1986.
And the highway department's work is just a portion of the state's legal business being farmed out to private lawyers, most of whom must be approved by the attorney general.
The game is a throwback, of course, to the days when the Byrd organization controlled Virginia by controlling county courthouses; Terry is certainly not the first to play it.
Indeed, Marshall Coleman, the Republican elected attorney general in 1977, might have hurt his chances of becoming governor in 1982 by playing the same game.
Coleman dumped Democratic lawyers handling the highway department's legal work in favor of Republican lawyers. Trouble was, some of the dumped Democrats were pals of former Gov. Mills Godwin Jr., a Democrat-turned-Republican. That helped sour Godwin on Coleman. Godwin thus waited until the last minute, and then gave only half-hearted endorsement to Coleman in the 1981 governor's race.
But so much for ancient history. The issue is this spoils system's longevity into the present.
It will be suggested that everyone does it, that this is simply how politics works. But it doesn't have to be this way.
It may be argued that there are some benefits in patronage as a party-building tool. Most elected officials, Virginia's governor included, use patronage to reward friends and build their party's base.
But the governor's patronage typically involves highly visible appointments to commissions and boards. The attorney general's patronage, through legal work awarded to outside lawyers, is harder to track - and the quality of the work is harder to evaluate.
It might be noted that privatization of some governmental functions is all the rage these days. But to take that argument to its logical end, one might want to insist that the attorney general's office - nesting ground for 128 lawyers, with a fiscal '92 budget of $16.2 million - be done away with entirely.
Meantime, some of Virginia's lawyer-legislators continue to benefit from the attorney general's largesse - at least indirectly, when their law firms get the state's legal business.
A ban on that practice was recommended last year by Gov. Wilder's ethics commission. It was ignored by the legislature, as were most other of the commission's recommendations. Some sort of ban would be nice.
Still, the problems with political patronage aren't limited to party favors and potential conflicts of interest. Also at issue is whether taxpayers are getting the best bang for their bucks when private lawyers are hired to handle the state's business.
Nearly 30 years ago, the federal government told Virginia it could save money on highway right-of-way cases if the attorney general handled them, instead of farming them out. State officials resisted the change then; they've resisted even studying the matter since.
In the current race for attorney general, Democrat Bill Dolan says he would study the idea. Republican Jim Gilmore says he'd hire no outside counsel except on the basis of "merit."
But the governor has overall responsibility for state spending. Candidates for that office should commit now to study - seriously - the merits of doing this sort of business in-house, or at least to demand fairness in the farming out of legal work.
If this puts Terry at odds with her past practices, so be it.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB