ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 12, 1996 TAG: 9603120113
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RALPH BERRIER JR. STAFF WRITER
Virginia Amateur Sports, the Roanoke-based group that organizes Virginia's Commonwealth Games, didn't get the increase in state funding it had hoped for.
But it didn't get left out of the state's $35 billion budget, either.
That appeared to be a possibility a week ago, when the VAS budget request was left out of the Senate version of the budget bill. Strangely, VAS was listed twice in the House version - once as the ``Commonwealth Games,'' then again as the ``Roanoke Games.''
House and Senate negotiators eventually ironed out the details late Sunday and agreed to a budget that calls for $75,000 of state money to go to VAS. That's the same amount VAS received last year. The group had requested $100,000 for the 1996 Commonwealth Games.
As negotiators haggled for more than a week over which legislators would be included on the budget committee, VAS officials were worried their request would fall through the cracks. Had VAS not received any state money, it could have meant the end of the Commonwealth Games, an Olympic-style sports festival that has been held in the Roanoke Valley every year since 1990.
``We were concerned about [not] getting full funding,'' said VAS president Pete Lampman, who went to Richmond two weeks ago to meet with local legislators. ``We didn't have a contingency plan for the complete loss of funding. We had an emergency plan for reduced [funding]. We would have had to put staff hirings on hold, but the quality of the Games wouldn't have suffered.''
Lampman said Chip Woodrum, D-Roanoke, introduced the VAS budget request on the House side, and John Edwards, D-Roanoke, presented the measure on the Senate side. Lampman also met with senator Virgil Goode, D-Rocky Mount, about the VAS request.
``All the local legislators went to bat for us,'' Lampman said.
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB