THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 31, 1996 TAG: 9608310039
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 55 lines
It is now clear that the defunct Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs operated as a hotbed of partisan zealotry in the Allen administration. More evidence of that came our way recently.
Shortly before the council shut down in July, two of its departing officials rejected a five-year, $750,000 federal grant for Head Start and other programs serving low-income families and children.
When their action became public, it took the administration about as long as it takes to send a fax to realize that this was a whopper of a mistake. If there is a single government program that has a proven track record and makes sense to mainstream America, it is Head Start.
Faster than Democratic Lt. Gov. Don Beyer could hold a press conference, the administration reversed itself. Clarence Carter, the state commissioner on social services, called the letters unauthorized. His office had not known that they'd been sent, Carter said.
In fact, Carter underlings were working on an application for an extension of the same grant when they learned of the earlier action.
Carter promised that the application would be filed posthaste. It now has been. Good.
Still, the confusion isn't fully resolved. Elizabeth Ruppert, the former chair of the recently dismantled day-care council, told The Richmond Times-Dispatch that she and a deputy never sent their letters, but left them for consideration with a deputy secretary of human resources. Whose tongue licked the stamp remains unsettled.
This raises an obvious question: Who's in charge?
Fortunately, it's no longer Ruppert.
It should be remembered that this official and her council were responsible for a recent investigation lambasting their predecessors. That group had won praise for expanding Head Start to rural communities and improving child-care services in the commonwealth. But the old council was ousted by Allen after a state audit showed problems in contracting procedures.
State auditors attributed the mistakes to inexperience. But an Ohio investigator serving Ruppert and the new council interpreted the actions of the earlier one as part of a national conspiracy to infuse day care with a liberal, anti-family, pro-homosexual agenda.
His report was turned over by Allen to the attorney general's office last month. Rational Republicans hope it will disappear quietly into the void. This sort of diatribe serves no one, and certainly not working families anxious for quality day care for their children.
Let's hope the Allen administration has learned a lesson. The political agendas of zealots at the fringe must be deep-sixed in favor of sound, rational policies. The now-discredited letters rejecting Head Start funds are a reminder of the damage that can be done when the wrong people are allowed to play with power.
KEYWORDS: HEAD START by CNB