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

DATE: SATURDAY, January 21, 1995                   TAG: 9501240011
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRIEFLY PUT . . .

It's BPOL - the Business, Professional and Occupational License tax - that Allen wants the General Assembly to repeal ASAP.

"Business, Professional and Occupational License" being something of a mouthful, the proposal to kill the local-option tax has given a new acronym to the world beyond policy-wonkdom. "Beep-ole," from BPOL, is how they pronounce it in Richmond. The question is whether abolishing it might put Virginia localities in a fiscal DPOL.

GOV. ALLEN, who is partial to cowboy boots and snuff-dipping tobacco, has duded up the governor's office in a style that another Republican - big-game hunter Teddy Roosevelt - would surely appreciate.

Hides of a kangaroo and a springbok are draped over formal chairs, a deer hoof serves as a coat hook, and a mounted boar's head shares a wall with Thomas Jefferson's portrait. The decor also includes moose antlers, the skull of a bull, a stuffed armadillo and a crocodile's head.

The wild-and-wooly new motif in the once-patrician office has apparently provoked some chatter. Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews of Hampton claims that, after a recent sit-down with the governor, he left with wild animal hairs all over his suit.

That's better than blood. And no one, yet, has seen the head of a humbled lawmaker mounted on Allen's wall. Still, in addition to handing out pens when he has legislators in for bill-signing ceremonies, the governor might consider presenting his guests with lint brushes.

THEY'VE MADE a movie about King George III, but reportedly had to take the III out of the title. The fear: Moviegoers might worry that they'd missed the first two flicks. Oh well. Films to look forward to: Henry, Richard, Louis.