Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 9, 1993 TAG: 9303090331
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
CRITICISM WAS HYPOCRITICAL
I WAS EXTREMELY disappointed to read your March 2 editorial, "The session wasn't a complete waste." Your comments on the just completed General Assembly, which began "The do-little legislature," were not only unnecessary but a bit hypocritical.During this short session, we were inundated with legislation as never before. We dealt with 2,800 bills in just a few short weeks. We didn't raise taxes, regulate more businesses or outlaw all guns as you probably would have liked. We did, however, take our jobs much more seriously than you gave us credit. We were so overloaded that many times committees were absent members because of the myriad of conflicting meetings and subcommittee meetings. And, by the way, we did attempt to deal with school disparity in the closing days. You must not have been paying attention because it was one of our hardest-fought battles. We will be back next year to address it.
I contend that you are hypocritical in your name-calling. During the entire session, I received only two calls from your paper, one of which was regarding my knee injury. I'm sure the Roanoke Valley could have done without that report. Your paper seemed to be satisfied to simply run Associated Press stories. When you did have fresh reporting, it was all done from a Virginian-Pilot perspective. Citizens of the valley and Southwest Virginia have no idea how the legislation we passed will affect them.
Before you decide to throw stones, you should first do your job and actually report the news for your readers. J. BRANDON BELL State Senator, 21st District ROANOKE