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

DATE: MONDAY, April 4, 1994                   TAG: 9404040008
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: David Poole
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THINK OF IT AS POLITICAL `SHELL GAME'

The shell game, as described by William Greider, Rolling Stone magazine's national editor, goes like this:

Congress passes legislation with public-pleasing names like the Clean Water Act of 1990. In the fine print, however, lawmakers see to it that vested interests - including Congress itself - are protected. Congress tells the people, "We did this," Greider said. "A year or two later people realize that nothing happened - or the opposite has happened."

The Virginia General Assembly pulled the same trick this winter with legislation aimed at tightening ethics laws and providing money to shrink the disparity in school funding.

The winking over ethics reform is nothing new. The Democrats who control the legislature laughed off many of the 37 ethics and campaign-finance reforms recommended by a panel commissioned two years ago by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder.

In fairness, the General Assembly passed a few reforms this year. It limited the number of legislators who can serve on the boards of state-regulated companies and tightened reporting of gifts to legislators.

The assembly also imposed a one-year waiting period for lawmakers and state employees seeking to become lobbyists after they leave government service.

Reading the fine print, however, it becomes clear that lawmakers had no intent of closing the "revolving door" between government and special interests.

State-employees-turned-lobbyists have to wait a year, but only to revisit their former agency; there is no wait if they want to lobby the General Assembly as a whole.

Another fast one pulled by lawmakers involved $103 million set aside in the next two years for "school disparity."

The money will be a welcome windfall for public schools across the state, particularly in core cities such as Norfolk and Roanoke.

But it won't address disparity, which is the funding gap between rich and poor school districts. In some cases, the money actually widens the gap.

Poquoson - a Tidewater city that ranks near the bottom in school funding - stands to receive about $11 per student in the first year.

Richmond - which is one of the better-funded school systems in the state - will get about $85 per student.

The state will hand out the $103 million based in part on the percentage of students who receive free lunches. That helps core cities, which have a large number of at-risk students. But it does little for rural counties, where many families who qualify for free lunches are too proud to ask for a handout.

"This is known as politics," Virginia Tech professor Richard Salmon said. "It's a solution that works because some of the real political power resides in urban districts."

So the next time you hear legislators talk about stopping the revolving door between government and special interests and about working to end school disparity, give them a wink and a smile to let them know you're in on the joke.