THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511230226
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: On the Street
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
Empaneling a special grand jury to investigate the causes of the $12.1 million deficit is a step in the right direction.
Thanks to the city's Circuit Court judges, the citizens of Virginia Beach, now have a chance to get a full and impartial accounting of what happened to their money and who made it happen.
It is only mete and right so to do.
A full airing may take a while, but the cost and the effort should be well worth it in terms of presenting a picture unhampered by political agendas or hasty cover-up efforts.
Leaving a probe to the tender mercies of either the School Board - which is in deep denial, or the City Council, which is in the throes of quivering righteous indignation - would not be in the best interests of the citizenry.
The citizens, after all, are footing the bill for the whole municipal operation. They deserve a clear explanation of how the school administration and the School Board blew their money down the tubes.
Witch hunts are never pretty. Left to parties with obvious self interests to protect, a school budget probe would surely turn into one.
In this case, what is needed is a cold-eyed, relentless march toward the truth, or the closest the 11-member grand jury can get to it.
In other words, if you're a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may kind of person, this is the way to go.
Such a panel has formidable weapons at its disposal to get at the nub of a problem, the biggest being subpoena power to summon the proper records and witnesses.
As has been stated before, testimony is taken under oath. Anyone who even thinks about playing fast and loose with the facts before a grand jury is flirting with some serious criminal charges. Perjury and obstruction of justice come quickly to mind.
We're talking potential jail time here.
A lot of folks, including senators, congressmen and state governors, have learned the hard way. Despite their exalted positions and talent for hyperbole, a goodly number managed to earn themselves an all-expense-paid vacation in the slammer by fibbing before legally constituted investigative panels.
What the special grand jury cannot do is subpoena folks from out of state to testify. This includes former superintendent Sidney L. Faucette, who is now in charge of the Gwinnett County, Ga. public school system.
Faucette, however, seems eager to cooperate with any ongoing local inquiry. When collared recently by local scribes and TV news hounds in Georgia, he announced that he is only too happy to return to Virginia Beach to straighten out some misconceptions about how the school budget went in the tank.
Grand juries can uncover criminal wrong doing from time to time with unfortunate results to offending parties, but such may not be the case here.
While, we would not presume to speculate on what a special grand jury may or may not find in the school budget probe, some interesting possibilities do come to mind.
One is that the panel finds absolutely nothing. Nada. Zilch.
A second is, that after months and months of poring over records and quizzing witnesses wearing three-piece suits and Coke bottle glasses, it determines that the 1994-95 school operating budget actually was crafted by Curly, Larry and Moe.
Hey, weirder things have happened. by CNB