DATE: Friday, November 28, 1997             TAG: 9711260006

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B14  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

PAY YOUR OWN WAY FOR GILMORE AND BEYER TO TAKE FREEBIE VACATIONS AT THE GREENBRIER FROM CSX INCREASES VOTERS' DISDAIN FOR POLITICS.

No laws were violated when James S. Gilmore III and Donald S. Beyer Jr. took post-election vacations with their families at the fabled Greenbrier resort hotel in West Virginia at the invitation and expense of Richmond-based CSX Corp., the multibillion-dollar railroad enterprise that owns the inn. But it isn't a pretty picture.

Representatives of Republican Governor-elect Gilmore and soon-to-be former Democratic Lieutenant Governor Beyer dismissed as silly any carping about public officials' resting in luxury at the expense of a corporation. The free vacations were contributions to each man's campaign - contributions that would be reported as required.

And there was plenty of precedent. Gov. George F. Allen accepted the hospitality of the Homestead resort last year. Does the governor stand accused of bad form or corruption? What's good enough for the governor ought to be good enough for the governor-elect and the never-to-be governor.

Beyer can also plead that he shortly will return fully to private life - his term in office will end when the new governor is sworn in.

The governor-to-be's spokesman scoffed at the notion that Gilmore would be influenced in any way by CSX generosity. Who could possibly think otherwise?

But that's a reprise of the same old Thank-God-that-we-are-not-like-other-men explanation that Virginia's honorables always give when asked why the state of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson doesn't outlaw public officials' acceptance of largess from corporate or noncorporate citizens.

William H. Wood, executive director of the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia (and former Virginian-Pilot editorial-page editor), had the right answer. When politicians take such gifts, it reconfirms the view that public officials are bought and paid for by the well-heeled.

Such pecuniary links between most politicians and the rich and powerful whose money helps elect them persuades many that politics-and-government is a rigged game, one that serves the few more generously than the majority.

In response to a Washington Post reporter's question, Wood said: ``If you have an electorate that feels totally disconnected from politicians - and there's no better evidence of that than in this last (Virginia) election, where only 1.7 million of 5 million eligible voters turned out - then anything like this tends to diminish public confidence. The general rule should be: Politicians ought not to accept freebies from anybody.''

He's right. Gilmore and Beyer were wrong. And until politicians wise up and avoid even the appearance of being on the take, politics will be regarded as corrupt by the millions of Americans who want no part of it.

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