ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 11, 1997 TAG: 9701130100
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
FOR IGNORING a political flack's absurd battle plan to discredit the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, decision-makers in Gov. George Allen's administration are to be commended.
Well, maybe not commended. It's reassuring the administration includes some folks with a modicum of sense. But let's not forget how the governor did respond to JLARC's scathing criticism of the Department of Environmental Quality. He attacked the messenger.
The notion of one state agency (DEQ) suing another (JLARC) for libel is laughable, per se. The proposal to leak misleading stories to the press is reprehensible. If these and similar ideas from the fertile imagination of the environmental department's politically appointed, highly paid PR chief had been pursued, the main effect would have been to make the administration look even more ridiculous than leaking of the unimplemented plan has made it look.
But even while rejecting the proposed tactics, the Allen administration embraced the underlying strategy. Rather than pledge to improve lax enforcement of environmental-protection laws, or to offer counterarguments to the substance of the criticism, the governor dismissed JLARC itself as a partisan tool of legislative Democrats.
That would come as a surprise to the several Democratic governors whose actions or inactions have been zinged by JLARC in the past. It would come as a surprise, too, to national observers of state government, who give credit to Virginia for maintaining an independent, credible watchdog agency like JLARC.
In adopting a partisan take on JLARC, Allen was resorting to a pattern established in the early years of his governorship. Remember his summary dismissals of long-time top officials at agencies previously regarded by governors of both parties as nonpartisan? His efforts to short-circuit the State Council of Higher Education? His attempt to put political appointees in control of all information given to the public and lawmakers?
Allen's Democratic critics are not themselves without sin. Reform of redistricting and judicial-selection, for example, is stoutly resisted by Democratic lawmakers intent on keeping those processes in their own loving hands. But the failure of the legislature to end the inappropriate politicization that is traditional to a couple of areas of state government is no warrant for the executive to extend inappropriate politicization into virgin territory. Innocence is not easily restored.
In his state-of-the-commonwealth speech this week, Allen pointed with pride to the economic-development record of his administration. He has much to crow about: The state's technical resources for economic development have improved, and the governor has worked industriously to woo employers. But development isn't a function only of salesmanship and site selection, roads and water lines.
The greatest service a public official ultimately can perform in the interests of economic development is to ensure that government in general operates effectively and efficiently. The state's heritage of soundly administered government is compatible with consistent enforcement of environmental laws. It is put in peril when politics is substituted for professionalism.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB