Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, July 1, 1994 TAG: 9407010063
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A16 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Even so, Democratic legislators are getting exercised over Gov. George Allen's promotion of what many families value most - a good income.
Democrats worry aloud that the Allen administration is beginning to look like a GOP Mom-and-Pop operation. However partisan the inspiration for the critics' worries, they do have a point.
Seven of Allen's top appointees either have spouses who also have found jobs in the Allen bureaucracy, or are married to Republican state legislators. Four others on the Allen administrative team have kids or siblings who've found gainful employment with state government.
The familial connections include Kay Cole James, secretary of health and human resources, whose husband, Charles E. James, is director of the Department of Personnel and Training; Betsy Beamer, Allen's secretary of the commonwealth, whose husband, Jim Beamer, is a governor's lobbyist at the General Assembly; Beverly Sgro, education secretary, whose son, Anthony Sgro, is a government-policy adviser; and Gail Morgan, deputy secretary for commerce and trade, whose husband, Harvey Morgan, represents Gloucester in the House of Delegates.
By Democrats' estimate, such kinfolk pull in salaries totaling more than $1 million a year.
They're worth it, insist administration spokesmen, who challenge the grousing opposition to find people better qualified for the jobs in question. The spokesmen remind critics that former Gov. Douglas Wilder appointed his nephew, Mike Brown, to head the State Elections Board.
Which may not be nepotism on quite the scale with which the Allen administration is practicing it. But, of course, everything is relative.
The issue gets more worrisome when you consider the common theme underlying both Gov. Allen's family employment service and his extraordinary firings of top government functionaries.
One Friday last month, Allen axed the heads of 14 state agencies, including some very experienced and nonpartisan career professionals. Among the heads lopped off: those of the Virginia Lottery, the Department of Environmental Quality, the Virginia Employment Commission, the Health Department.
Governors have changed agency heads before, but never in memory with so broad or dramatic a sweep as this. On top of which, Allen has been making appointments to various boards and commissions with unusual partisan zeal.
The nepotism, in this context, looks worse. It seems part of a pattern that treats state government as a personal fiefdom, and that implies disregard, if not disdain, for the claim that state employment is merit-based.
by CNB