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

DATE: MONDAY, September 13, 1993                   TAG: 9403090029
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WILDER BRIEFING

GOV. WILDER has set a good precedent for statewide election years. He has given the major-party candidates who hope to succeed him a personal briefing on the state's economy and the outlook for the state's next two-year budget.

Assuming that the briefing for Republican George Allen was as comprehensive as the separate one for Democrat Mary Sue Terry, the nominee of Wilder's party, this was a statesmanlike move on Wilder's part, as well as a nice courtesy.

To be sure, neither Terry nor Allen is a stranger to state government. Both are former state legislators; Terry was attorney general for seven years. Even so, neither is privy to all the revenue projections and inside fiscal dope that's at the governor's fingertips.

This assumes, of course, that what he told the candidates is more or less on target. But surely his analysis counts for something.

Wilder, who's had to deal with budget shortfalls from the time he took office in January 1990, said he'd offered to give Terry and Allen an insider's briefing because he wished he'd had such information when he was running four years ago. With it, he said, he would have campaigned differently.

Wilder recalls, for instance, that on the campaign trail he was recommending uses for state lottery revenue that he wouldn't have, had he known what he came to know later.

For the moment, forget that Wilder's Republican opponent and other critics warned throughout 1989 that the state's fiscal house was in disrepair. Wilder and his Democratic predecessor, Gerald Baliles, went to pains to deny it despite growing evidence to the contrary.

The point is that whoever is inaugurated as the next governor on Jan. 15, that person will have to make immediate and important decisions about the 1994-96 budget that Wilder will leave on the table. The gubernatorial contenders ought to be starting to think realistically about how to deal with that budget - for Virginia's sake.

And they ought to be more precise in their pronouncements on fiscal matters during the campaign - also for Virginia's sake.

Wilder has criticized both gubernatorial candidates for making unrealistic statements on state budget matters. If his budget briefings for the candidates serve as a reality check on their rhetoric, it's all the better a precedent.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB