THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 29, 1995 TAG: 9508290332
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DAVID M. POOLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Short : 41 lines
Ronald Angelone, the state's tough-talking prisons chief, made it clear Monday that he won't take any funny stuff from Democratic lawmakers.
Angelone released a 22-page document that he said should answer a General Assembly panel's questions about management and security during his 1 1/2-year tenure.
He also dismissed some of the panel's concerns, such as the accusation that his department squandered $5,400 for a job fair for potential employees at Greensville Correctional Center.
The event was a success, he said, generating nearly 500 job applications for a prison plagued by high employee turnover. ``Anyone who would like to come forward and say it was (a waste of money), I'd like to talk with them,'' he said.
Jerry Kilgore, public safety secretary under Gov. George F. Allen, said he hoped the report would put an end to the election-year inquiry into the Department of Corrections.
``If we continue down this road, it looks exactly like it looked in the beginning: a political witch hunt,'' Kilgore said.
Del. Glenn R. Croshaw, D-Virginia Beach, the head of a House of Delegates subcommittee charged with prison oversight, said Monday afternoon that he had not read the full report. It was faxed to him five minutes before Angelone and Kilgore held a joint news conference in Richmond.
At first glance, Croshaw said, the report appeared to be a ``whitewash'' similar to Angelone's 36-hour investigation earlier this summer of a gun discovered in the typewriter of a death-row inmate.
``We're not going to engage in a 24-hour, a 48-hour or a 72-hour whitewash of anything,'' Croshaw said. ``We are charged with the oversight of prisons, and we're going to do it in a deliberative and thoughtful way.'' by CNB