ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 27, 1996 TAG: 9602270077
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: Reporter's Notebook
SOURCE: BRIAN KELLEY
Tidbits from the Montgomery County beat and my annual field trip to Richmond to view the General Assembly in action.
In the interest of avoiding futility, I hereby pledge that this will be the last time I mention the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors and closed-door meetings in this column for a few months. Last month, I dedicated an entire column to contrasting the public way the county School Board chose its leader with the resort to closed doors by the supervisors.
But three weeks later, on Feb. 5, the same seven supervisors did essentially the same thing to select Ira Long to again chair the Public Service Authority. They held a 10-minute executive session to "discuss candidates for officers."
Whatever that discussion was, it must not have of amounted to much: the PSA board selected the same officers as last year, with the exception of electing newcomer Mary Biggs second vice chairman to replace Larry Linkous.
Because it would appear that these columns failed to inhibit this unnecessary use of closed-door sessions, I'll rest my case.
Except, I'd be remiss - at least in the interest of giving equal time - if I didn't pass on the lecture that Supervisor Nick Rush gave to Margaret Smith, a Riner resident who has been complaining to the board for months about the secrecy surrounding its decision to pursue acquiring land on the Salmons farm in Riner for a new elementary school.
At the Feb. 12 public address section, Smith questioned the need for the secret, or closed-door meetings. "If this in fact was the only property that was being considered, then I really don't understand how that hurt negotiations as far as price of the acreage or anything since there wasn't any other property being considered," Smith said.
Rush responded: "I would like to say that there are no secret meetings of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors. We have executive sessions and the statement [by Smith] was 'How could that hurt negotiations?'
"Well, [if] three of us thought we should go $3 an acre and the other four thought we should go $5, and the other party knew that, then that would hurt your negotiations. They would know who they would have to talk to, who they would have to get to get that upper, more money. That's why we have executive sessions, and there are no secret Board of Supervisors [meetings], at least they are secret from me, too, if they are. I've never been involved in one."
* * *
Youngsters in blue blazers are everywhere at the Virginia General Assembly. They carry messages to legislators. They bring the lawmakers lunch during the daily floor sessions that begin at noon. They are pages.
But they also are children and teen-agers, a fact brought home while waiting in line for a sandwich at Chicken's snack bar in the Capitol's basement.
Let's just call them Page One and Page Two.
P-One was about 12 years old. P-Two looked younger and a head shorter. Both were waiting in line to pick up sandwiches for legislators when P-Two accidentally ran the empty tray he was holding into P-One's back.
The elder page whirled around.
"Say, 'I'm sorry, sir, and it will never happen again,' or you get THIS!" he threatened, showing a fist with the dreaded middle knuckle protruding.
The little guy raised his chin defiantly and shook his head from side to side.
P-One delivered the charley horse.
And so it goes.
* * *
If you've ever wondered why smoking-related legislation has such a rough time in the General Assembly, you need only follow your nose.
Not only is Philip Morris USA a major Richmond employer, but the legislature itself is a throwback to the days when smoking indoors hadn't been banned almost universally. The smell of tobacco smoke permeates the Capitol and nearby offices. It's even there on the floor of the House, though delegates don't usually smoke in public view. Instead, they retreat to the rear of the chamber, into a small alcove that's equipped with an ashtray.
There they can puff the legal weed in relative privacy. And the public in the gallery above or watching on closed-circuit television elsewhere in the Capitol is none the wiser.
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