Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 6, 1995 TAG: 9504060072
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Residents opposed to locating a privately run prison two miles outside Wytheville have been working to get the courts to unseat two members of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors. Not only are the courts the wrong place to settle a political issue, but at the heart of the controversy is a vote by a Board of Supervisors without the power either to ensure or to prevent construction of a prison on the site in question.
The two county supervisors had been sent to check out other operations of the Corrections Corporation of America. They came back with a favorable impression and, by all appearances, used their best judgment in voting with the board's 4-3 majority to welcome the prison.
In this judgment they are adamantly opposed by residents who fear that the planned prison will smudge the county's reputation and put the community at risk. The sincerity and passion of the opponents are indisputable, but the soundness of their arguments was unpersuasive to a majority of the board. The supervisors considered all available information, including but not limited to comments from the public, and cast their votes.
This is how representative government is supposed to work.
That apparently was also the conclusion of the circuit judge who threw out the petitions, signed by more than 170 registered voters, asking for the ouster of Supervisor Charles Dix, claiming he had misused his office. How had he supposedly violated the public trust? By going on a fact-finding trip and returning with facts that didn't fit the convictions of the prison's foes.
Dix and a couple of other county officials flew at the expense of the prison corporation to one community where a CCA facility is located. This was not illegal, and it is very unlikely that any of them sold out the county's interests for the dubious thrill of a plane ride to Cleveland, Texas.
Whether Dix and his fellow prison supporters are correct in their judgment that the operation would do more good than harm is an entirely separate - and entirely debatable - question. Wythe residents who disagree with that judgment are free to try to remove the whole lot of them - next time their seats come up for election.
That, too, is how representative government is supposed to work.
The opponents' concerns about the prison proposal are not frivolous. But the episode has a comic air because in the end it is of little importance what Charles Dix, or any other member of the Wythe County Board of Supervisors, thinks of the idea. Since the county has no zoning ordinance, there's not much the board could do about it anyway.
Gov. George Allen has said the board's favorable vote will be a factor in deciding whether to offer CCA a state contract to house prisoners. But whether or not private enterprise is involved, prisons will be built in Virginia. A lot of them. And a locality without zoning has no legal recourse for blocking one.
Efforts to pass a zoning ordinance in Wythe County were trampled several years ago by fearful residents who packed public hearings and shouted down the idea. Decisions driven by scared and angry throngs are seldom the wisest. The fear then was that land-use restrictions might eventually hurt the interests of property owners. The fear now is that the absence of such restrictions might hurt their interests.
Residents' best hope is that their fears about a prison will prove to have as little merit as fears about zoning.
by CNB