ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 1997 TAG: 9701140046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
WHEW! What a close call Virginia has had, with the heels of those federal jackboots trying to grind millions of dollars into the state, and all, by way of the Goals 2000 education subterfuge.
Only by the heroic efforts of Gov. George Allen did Virginia manage to avoid having more than $8 million in federal aid rammed into its pockets, aid that would have come with "strings" attached. You know. Like reporting how the money was to be spent.
As if taxpayers wouldn't tolerate the idea of simply handing out millions of their hard-earned dollars with no accountability.
Now, after a two-year holdout, Virginia will be accepting $14.9 million in federal Goals money. But don't panic. Allen wouldn't have touched the filthy lucre had he not first negotiated a hard-nosed agreement that allows the state to use it for one purpose only: to buy computers for classrooms.
Which, actually, is what Virginia could have done with the first two years of Goals money.
The entire two-year drama has been a farce. It supposedly pitted a lone, fiercely independent state government against a monolithic, power-hungry federal machine - which, in this fevered phantasm, is detached somehow from the democratic process that created it and continues to give it legitimacy.
In this vision of America, every federal program is an affront to freedom. And Allen alone among the states' governors - many of whom are, like him, conservative Republicans - had the guts to say no to the addictive flow of federal dollars that buy the people's mindless acquiescence.
In fact, Goals 2000 offers funds to states to help them do what Virginia already had been trying to do under Gov. Allen's leadership: raise educational standards so that students are competitive with those of any country in the world. One hallmark of the bipartisan national-goals initiative, begun as a joint venture by the Bush administration and the nation's governors, is its flexibility in how the money can be used. The administration in Richmond could have taken it from the start to press forward with its own reforms.
Instead, the governor tried to use Goals 2000 as an opportunity for political grandstanding. Some conservatives and religious evangelicals in the Republican Party were thrilled with the governor's high-profile refusal of this sliver of the federal pie upon which the states, Virginia among them, feast regularly.
But the political winds have moderated, and what had looked like a political opportunity showed signs of becoming a political pitfall (with the help, to be sure, of some grandstanding by Democrats in their criticisms of the governor). Luckily, the wind shift occurred at the precise time the governor supposedly browbeat the federal government into loosening its grip on the throats of local school districts - which, in fact, have been clamoring for the Goals money.
How nice that this has worked out at last for Virginia's schoolchildren, who lost only $8.4 million to political posturing.
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