Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 11, 1994 TAG: 9410120046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A public hearing on the recommendations is set for 7 tonight in the auditorium of Virginia Western Community College in Roanoke.
That's little more than 24 hours since the report became available in printed form, and then only in Richmond. It's little more than 96 hours, 48 of them a weekend, since the commission's recommendations became available in even electronic form.
And it's to be the only such hearing west of Richmond.
Much of the report is dusty dry, or vague, or of minor moment. If the Allen administration wants to sell the state-owned yacht, for example, who's gonna object? The boost to the commonwealth's coffers might buy a prison cell or two.
Some of the recommendations, however, seem to have less to do with making state government operate more efficiently and reducing waste than with changing public-policy goals. Ideology (or at least regional bias) rather than inefficiency seems behind the recommendation, for instance, to stop state support of institutions like the Virginia Museum of Transportation and the Science Museum of Western Virginia. The same may be true of commission proposals for easing environmental-
protection regulations.
Perhaps many of the proposals have merit; the point here is simply that the report is too far-reaching, and involves too much beyond governmental reorganization, for the kind of hurried look that the commission is providing.
For special interests with a direct stake in the recommendations, the short period given for public evaluation isn't necessarily insurmountable. But that's less true of others, and of the public generally. For them, with some justice, the commission looks as if it's camouflaging proposals to change fundamental policy ends as if they were merely improvements in the means for reaching those ends.
by CNB