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

DATE: FRIDAY, October 20, 1995                   TAG: 9510200060
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY AND LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A CLOSER LOOK AT WHO'S SAYING WHAT ABOUT WHOM

That's the message the General Assembly candidates from both parties have been delivering recently in literature they've been mailing to voters.

Here's a closer look at some of the charges, and countercharges, the candidates are making:

The charge: House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Roanoke County, devotes a mailing to the subject of unequal funding between rural school systems in Southwest Virginia and affluent ones in Northern Virginia. A chart shows "Dick Cranwell position: Increase education funding $147 million" and "Trixie Averill position: Cut education funding $92 million." For authenticity, Averill's position carries a footnote, referring to a Sept. 13 story in The Roanoke Times.

What's not being said: The Sept. 13 story never mentions Averill's position on education funding. Instead, it focuses on Averill's support for Gov. George Allen - who did propose cutting $92 million from education and higher education funding earlier this year. In the story, Averill lists several issues on which she disagrees with Allen, but education isn't one of them.

Cranwell's mailing implies that her silence equals support. Actually, in this case, he's close to being right. Averill says she may not have backed the full $92 million in cuts, but that Allen was generally doing the right thing by focusing on tougher academic standards instead of spending.

"As usual, [Cranwell] is making himself sound like the sole savior of education and making it sound like Allen wants to send people back to one-room schoolhouses," Averill says. "That's ridiculous. Cranwell doesn't give a damn about reform. He just wants to throw money at the schools, and money doesn't teach - and neither do teachers sometime, for that matter."

Specifically, Averill says she backed Allen's decision to ax Radford University's New College of Global Studies, which opponents thought was too loaded with "frills" and not enough basic education.

"As for the Cooperative Extension Service at Virginia Tech, none of that money [being cut] went to hard-core programs. And even the threat of cuts has forced Extension to restructure," which she thinks is a good thing because it'll save taxpayers money.

"So yes, I did support the governor," she says.

The charge: Republican Newell Falkinburg has sent out a mailing attacking Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum, D-Roanoke, for not being tough on crime. The mailing states: "Chip Woodrum says he's tough on crime. Here's the truth ... Woodrum voted against state-mandated criminal background checks for school employees."

What's not being said: Woodrum did vote against a bill that would have mandated full-scale criminal background checks for school employees. But he said it would have amounted to an "unfunded mandate" that could have cost school systems millions. Each background check, Woodrum says, would have cost $35 or more.

Woodrum was chairman of a criminal records study committee in the late 1980s that oversaw passage of a bill allowing school systems that formally requested to conduct full-scale background checks on employees, including fingerprinting, to do so. Since then, state law has mandated background checks only for those localities. "I authorized it, and I voted for it," Woodrum says.

During this year's General Assembly, an effort was afoot to mandate background checks for all localities. Woodrum did not support it. The bill passed the House, 55-42, but was defeated in the Senate.