DATE: Thursday, July 10, 1997               TAG: 9707100493

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:   61 lines

POLL ASSESSES STATE WORKERS' VIEWS OF ALLEN POLITICS CALLED IMPORTANT TO VIRGINIA AGENCIES' OPERATIONS.

Party loyalty and connections are more important in state government since Republican Gov. George Allen took office, according to a poll of state employees.

Nearly six out of 10 state workers think politics is more important in the operation of their agencies since Allen was sworn in in January 1994, said the Richmond Times-Dispatch/NBC 12 poll.

Nearly half the poll respondents - 46 percent - rated state employee morale below average. But 57 percent didn't fear losing their jobs, the Times-Dispatch said in a story Wednesday.

As for the upcoming election, 47 percent of the state workers were undecided or declined to state a preference for governor between Democrat Don Beyer and Republican Jim Gilmore. Beyer was favored by 37 percent; Gilmore by 16 percent.

Allen has made cutting the cost and size of state government a centerpiece of his administration. But his claims of savings from a series of buyouts, layoffs and agency reorganizations are disputed by Democratic lawmakers and critics.

The state work force is down by more than 8,300 jobs from a peak of 115,000 at the end of 1993, state officials said.

According to the administration, buyouts of more than 5,500 employees in 1995 alone saved $134 million.

However, a study by the House Appropriations Committee put the annual saving at less than $20 million because of the cost of hiring contractors to do the work that state employees formerly did.

The Virginia Department of Transportation has lost about 1,600 jobs during the Allen years, a 14 percent reduction. More than 90 percent came during the buyout.

The department said the buyout saved it about $53 million a year. But the Appropriations Committee said the job losses fueled a binge of contracts, and VDOT's own figures show a $90 million, 16 percent increase in contracting of highway maintenance work from 1994 to 1996, the Times-Dispatch said.

State Transportation Commissioner David Gehr said the higher spending reflects an expansion of the highway system and efforts to deliver service more efficiently. Highway mileage has risen 0.3 percent, or 319 miles, during Allen's term.

Critics of Allen's cuts also contend that any savings came at the cost of lower-quality government services.

Privatization - allowing businesses to provide services once supplied by the state - has enriched contractors, while Allen's job reductions and the replacement of 80 percent of state agency heads during his term drained the bureaucracy of its most experienced managers and workers, critics contend.

Some former employees said the buyout was poorly planned.

``It wasn't done programmatically - it was just a free-for-all,'' said Dr. Robert B. Stroube, Fairfax County's health services director who was state health commissioner from September 1991 to June 1994.

The Times-Dispatch/NBC 12 poll findings were based on phone interviews June 5-21 with 423 state employees who said they were registered to vote. The poll, conducted by the research department of Media General Inc., which owns the Times-Dispatch, has a sampling error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. KEYWORDS: POLL GEORGE ALLEN STATE EMPLOYEES

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