THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 30, 1994 TAG: 9409300535
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY AND LAURENCE HAMMACK
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
Members of the House of Delegates and the Senate have voted overwhelmingly to kill parole in Virginia.
Although each body passed a slightly different bill Thursday, legislators were confident that a committee would reach a compromise in time for a final vote today.
``We're going to lock up these monsters,'' Sen. H. Russell Potts, R-Winchester, said on the Senate floor. ``And that's what they are. Thugs and monsters.''
The Senate voted 33-6 to back Gov. George F. Allen's plan to end parole, while the House margin was 88-10 on a similar plan worked out as a compromise between key House members and administration officials Wednesday.
The Allen plan to end parole had sharply divided voters along racial lines, according to a Mason-Dixon poll released earlier in the week. On Thursday it had the same effect on the General Assembly.
All 13 of the state's African-American lawmakers voted against the plan. Only one white senator and two white delegates - Sen. Joseph Gartland, D-Fairfax, and Dels. Jay DeBoer, D-Petersburg, and Clifton ``Chip'' Woodrum, D-Roanoke - followed suit.
``If it had contained preventative measures, I would have voted for it,'' DeBoer said.
``But as it is, this bill won't make Virginia one bit safer. It's futile and expensive. . . . It's going to cost taxpayers a lot of money, and I predict that, 10 years from now, the legislature will look back and say it was a big mistake. And wherever I am when that happens, I'm coming back to say, `I told you so.' ''
In a speech to the House, Del. William P. Robinson Jr., D-Norfolk, spelled out the position of the Legislative Black Caucus.
``The African-American community of this state is disproportionately victimized by crime, and we disproportionally populate the prisons,'' he said. ``The only way that's going to change is if this body will remember its commitment . . . to help us save the young people of this commonwealth.''
Republicans maintained that the state already spends enough on prevention programs. Ending parole will prevent crime by incapacitating those who commit it, they said.
``The real irony of this bill is that the people who will benefit from it the most will never thank us because they will never know who they are,'' said Del. Randy Forbes, R-Chesapeake.
Although the two bills passed overwhelmingly, they contained little funding for a plan that the House staff has estimated could cost up to $2.2 billion. The House agreed Thursday to spend $21 million on new prisons to ease the immediate problem of local jail overcrowding. The Senate, which passed a more expensive bill, allocated $37 million for the same thing.
Lawmakers plan to argue about the rest of the money when they meet again in January. They are predicting a long partisan battle.
Allen has said he plans to seek permission from the General Assembly to borrow $367 million for the first phase of prison construction. The rest of the money, he said, could come from voter-approved bonds.
But some Democrats this week threatened to withhold support for the loan, forcing Allen to ask voters to approve the entire amount.
Allen himself has opposed running up debt without voter approval, according to a letter he wrote in 1992 that Democrats have been circulating all week.
But voter-approved bonds must cite specific locations for prisons. And because the state could run out of rural, economically depressed regions in which to build them, voters might reject the financing of prisons planned near their communities.
Allen also has lost the opportunity to have the General Assembly commit money to his plan in a vacuum.
``When we come back in January, we'll have not only corrections, but higher education (and) transportation all on the table,'' said Del. Thomas Jackson, D-Hillsville.
``Then I think we'll have a better perspective as to the priorities and the limitations of funds.''
At least $195 million of next year's funds should go toward intervention and crime prevention programs that will not be included in the bill to end parole, members of the Legislative Black Caucus said at a news conference early Thursday.
``We spend most of our money on the wealthy,'' said Sen. Yvonne Miller, D-Norfolk.
``We need to spend money on poor people. Their housing is deplorable, there are no jobs and (their) schools are the worst in the state. We know what we have to do to reduce crime. We just don't have the will to do it.'' MEMO: LaFay is a staff writer for The Virginian-Pilot. Hammack is a staff
writer for The Roanoke Times & World-News.
KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY SPECIAL SESSION PAROLE CRIMINAL
JUSTICE SYSTEM PRISONS CRIME BILL VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT
OF CORRECTIONS by CNB