Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 13, 1994 TAG: 9401260019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray L. Garland
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
George Felix Allen, who has been galloping hard for more than two years now, seems very much aware he must maintain the rapid pace that brought him to this grand moment in his relatively brief political career. He surely does not intend last Nov. 2 to be the final time he asks the people of Virginia to show him their good will.
Transitions have a way of being messy affairs when one party yields control to another. President Clinton is far from staffing his administration after more than a year. Despite the flap over Allen's request for letters of resignation from senior bureaucrats (pending possible reappointment), the governor-elect and his people have seemed to have matters well in hand.
The chief challenge in any transition is to convey an image of being firmly in the saddle, moving steadily ahead on your agenda, not easily rattled nor rolled, and they have met that.
Democrats - still narrowly in control of the General Assembly - are hunkered down and anxious, far from over the shock of the colossal wreck of the good ship Mary Sue, upon whose opulent cargo of sweet perquisites they had counted so much. They are still wondering what hit them and when it will strike again.
Some of that party had faced Republican governors before. But this is completely different and totally unexpected: a Republican governor with a landslide at his back and with his party holding close to half the seats in the legislature. In fact, had they won seats proportionate to their share of the vote in contested elections, Republicans would now hold a majority in the House of Delegates - despite being outspent almost two-to-one.
What with the normal decompression from the campaign mode and the holidays intervening, 11 weeks is not a lot of time to get ready to assume the command of the vast apparatus of state government. Allen has wisely forestalled consideration of higher road-user taxes and changes in the state's parole system at the 1994 regular session of the General Assembly.
Whether the new governor and attorney general can ready well-developed proposals abolishing parole by the special session of the legislature Allen has said he will call April 20 is an open question. It might have been better to have waited a few months longer for a more thorough cooking of the radical dish that ultimately will be served up.
But a Virginia Commission on Sentence and Parole Reform has been holding meetings and should have some ideas ready to share with the panel Allen will appoint to advise him on the subject.
On the issue of parole and sentencing, Allen has the advantage of a rising tide of public clamor demanding a tougher stance on crime. And the effect of whatever is done will not be manifest for some time, possibly years. That said, it is extraordinarily important that what is done be done right.
Soon after taking the oath of office, Allen will sign an executive order creating a Blue Ribbon Strike Force to study all operations of state government, to report by the end of the year on ways in which it can be reformed and streamlined. The Strike Force will be led by Otis Brown, a former official in the Godwin and Holton administrations, and will contain almost 60 members drawn from the interlocking worlds of business and politics.
An efficiency study on which 60 people sit might seem inefficient by definition. But Allen doubtless intends it to be divided into numerous subcommittees taking small pieces of a very large pie.
What seems missing here is a role for professional management consultants who can take a nuts-and-bolts approach to the actual conduct of business in every state agency. There's no way 60 otherwise busy people, supported by only a small secretariat, can conduct the kind of systematic review of all operations needed after a long period in which they have been tremendously expanded.
State government needs the kind of on-line improvements in productivity that private enterprise has routinely accomplished in recent years to give more output with less input. We can already read the future from the past: increases in mandated or unavoidable costs in such areas as health and prisons soaking up all the new money and crowding out other programs.
If the Strike Force is smart, it will recognize the limitations of its format and ask the governor and the legislature to find the money for a true management study that will examine every detail of staff and facilities utilization, procurement, tax collection, data processing, employee benefits, etc. We've had broad-brush studies in the past, but we've never had a root-and-branch review of all agencies by outside specialists.
It's likely that George Allen will be a major player in Virginia politics, and perhaps nationally, for some time to come. After all, he won't even be 42 until March 8! In his Strike Force on greater efficiency in government, and the Commission on Parole Abolition, he has laid down cornerstones on which to build a reputation for effectiveness in governance to equal that mastery of practical politics he has so capably demonstrated.
Allen comes to the governorship at a young age, but having earned it the old-fashioned way, by perseverance and hard work. Defeated in his first try for the House of Delegates, he came back and won. When a congressional seat unexpectedly opened up, his steady nerve saw him through. Redistricted out of Congress by gleeful Democrats, he started over, trusting his star when many were doubtful. Down in the polls and desperately short of campaign funds during the summer, he never gave way to self-pity nor lost his cool. In sum, a bravura performance to date, but only a curtain-raiser for the tasks he must now command.
\ Ray L. Garland is a columnist for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB