THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 6, 1995 TAG: 9509060002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: By GORDON C. MORSE
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
Summer last, Gov. George Allen used a statewide television hookup to pitch his case for parole abolition and sentence reform. He buttressed the broadcast with seven wrenching testimonials from people who had lost loved ones to violent crime. Parole, said the governor, was the common element in each of these tragic murders.
There's was only one problem: It wasn't true. The governor's plan for ending parole, had it been in place earlier, would have prevented just one of those crimes. Three months later, when finally called on it by the press, Governor Allen acknowledged the error and apologized.
But if there was a lesson in that for the governor, it didn't take. With much at stake in the fall elections, and increasingly defensive over the effectiveness and cost of his correctional policies, the governor and his staff have plainly thrown veracity to the wind.
Three recent events illustrate the point, the first occurring on a Richmond radio station. Pressed on the issue of corrections, the governor offered his signature line, saying that ``if the Democrats had their way, we would still have a lenient, liberal parole system.'' Leaving aside the question of whether Virginia had one in the first place, parole elimination was broadly embraced, supported and co-sponsored by the Democratic membership, including its leadership. The legislation would not have passed without them and, knowing that, Governor Allen surrounded himself with a host of these Democrats during last year's bill-signing ceremony at the state Capitol. Not one has since advocated a return to the earlier policy.
A few days later, an anxious letter by gubernatorial counselor Frank Atkinson appeared in The Virginian-Pilot. Dismayed by the paper's editorial criticism of Allen's pursuit of prison construction to the exclusion of crime prevention, Atkinson declared that ``the commonwealth of Virginia spends $700 million each biennium on various prevention programs.'' Well, not quite.
The $700 million figure is a jury-rigged concoction of disparate programs, including $400 million sent down from Washington for welfare and health care, with another $44 million from local governments. State programs counted as ``prevention'' include a reduced class-size initiative engineered last year by state Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews, along with monies for various health efforts, such as immunization and child care.
Mr. Atkinson also notes that Governor Allen ``supported and signed into law an increase of more than $100 million in school funding targeted specifically at `at risk' children.'' The governor did sign the legislation - another measure introduced by Senator Andrews - but lent the bill no active support during the legislative process.
It is therefore disingenuous at best for Mr. Atkinson to claim that his boss has substantively sought new funding for preventing crime at its source. The Allen administration's budgetary labors have been devoted, almost exclusively, to a massive and expensive prison-construction program.
But perhaps the most outrageous distortion was delivered by Public Safety Secretary Jerry Kilgore. He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that if the Democrats do not want to spend money on more prisons, then they can tell voters ``which murderers, which rapists and armed robbers we're going to let back on the street because of lack of prison space.''
Mr. Kilgore knows - or should know - that this is a false choice. As of Aug. 18, there were 24,522 inmates in the state prison system. Of these, 11,858 - nearly half - were sentenced for nonviolent crimes.
This last prevarication borders on the strange. It's one thing to reject the recommendations of your political opponents, but quite another to ignore your own. While committed to stemming violent crime through increased incarceration, the Allen-organized Parole Abolition and Sentencing Reform Commission - which laid the foundation for the governor's reforms - explicitly argued the benefit of alternatives to incarceration, such as community-based programs and work release. ``Use of these alternatives can and should be increased,'' it recommended.
That being the case, why has not the Allen administration vigorously pursued such alternatives? Why does it condemn the efforts of Democratic legislators (and not a few Republicans) to find less costly ways of punishing selected nonviolent criminals? Why does Governor Allen prefer heated rhetoric to thoughtful remedies?
Right now, the value of prison projects authorized in Virginia exceeds $1.4 billion in state, local and private funds - and it's headed up. That's not much money by Washington standards, but it's a huge sum for Virginia. No new sources of revenue have been provided, and much of the money has been borrowed. Within a finite state budget, the implications of these figures are ominous, particularly for education and other demanding priorities.
Between now and the November election, Virginians need to engage in a thoughtful, honest, factual debate on how best to allocate the commonwealth's resources. Up to this point, however, Governor Allen has promised a free lunch. We can have it all with no hard choices. But that, voters should tell him, is the greatest fraud of all. MEMO: Mr. Morse was a speech writer for former Virginia Gov. Gerald Baliles.
He now lives in Williamsburg. by CNB