
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 2, 1993                   TAG: 9309020312
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHAT'S RESIDENCE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

FORTUNATELY for Roanoke, none of those who've offered their names is demonstrably unfit for the job. Aside from that, however, the campaign to succeed retiring Jerome Howard as the city's commissioner of revenue is certainly providing ammunition for the argument that it shouldn't be an elective office.

Marsha Fielder won the Democratic nomination over David Anderson, who had been generally favored by party regulars, for a reason irrelevant to the post: local unions' desire to remind City Council of their political punch. Councilman Howard Musser, a sometime Democrat, responded by filing as an independent candidate in the general election.

The latest irrelevancy to the job is Fielder's acknowledgment this week that, for 18 months during the mid-'80s, she was an apartment-dweller and registered voter in Roanoke - horrors! - f+iCounty.o

Veracity is always relevant, of course. As Fielder concedes, her campaign manager had been wrong to say she's been a city resident and voter since 1981, omitting that 18-month interruption. But assuming the full details are now out, and the earlier obfuscation wasn't the result of a deliberate campaign intent to deceive, this is a piddling omission.

In any event, it's not as if Fielder's past is shrouded in mystery. Her father is Wayne Compton, the county's revenue commissioner. Fielder, 32, has worked in her father's office for most of the years since her graduation from the county's Northside High School.

Leave aside the question of permissible nepotism in the county commissioner's office (yet another odd result of independently electing this official). Leave aside, too, the question of why Roanoke city and county should have separate and duplicative governments in the first place (part of another sorry tale, already oft-told).

The point here is that prior place of residence - not just Roanoke city or county, but the Roanoke Valley or Richmond, or for that matter Virginia or California - has little rational bearing on a prospective revenue commissioner's ability to perform the duties of the office.

These duties consist basically of collecting local taxes, counting the money and sending it to the treasurer's office. Ably heading the office requires good management and organization skills, a knowledge of finance, an eye for detail, computer literacy, and a personable manner with the general public.

The actual duties of the office do not require extensive prior knowledge of the locality, willingness to mount a political campaign, or connections to the right people. Yet, under the current system, these irrevelant qualifications become foremost.

In a better system, the commissioner of revenue would be an appointive office. Worrying about how long any candidate had lived on which side of the Roanoke city-county line would be laughable. The city would be looking not only locally but also regionally and nationally for the best-qualified applicant.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB