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

DATE: MONDAY, November 20, 1995                   TAG: 9511210009
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A GOOD VOTE BY GOODLATTE

But a pro-environment vote he cast last week showed a welcome if too-rare independence from party-line thinking.

Goodlatte was among 48 House Republicans who, in alliance with the minority Democrats, voted in effect against (1) federal giveaways to Western mining interests and (2) a corporate-welfare measure to benefit an Alaska timber company.

The proposals to forget mining-law reform and to reopen unprofitable - to the taxpayer, that is, but not to the Ketchikan Pulp Co. - timber harvesting in the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska came in the form of riders to the 1996 Interior appropriations bill.

Goodlatte's vote helped send the bill back to its House and Senate conferees. The conferees were instructed to reintroduce mining-law reform, and to eliminate the order to the Forest Service to readopt an abandoned management plan that would allow clearcutting in Tongass and below-cost timber sales to Ketchikan Pulp.

A strong fiscal as well as environmental case can be made against both riders, which may have helped persuade Goodlatte. The Republican revolution would prove less than thoroughgoing if it slashed welfare for the poor while leaving intact such corporate welfare as taxpayer-subsidized giveaways to mining and timber companies.

Moreover, local opposition to hewing the Tongass' virgin forests has been growing among usually development-minded Alaskans, as concerns have mounted about the prospective damage to the booming seafood and tourism industries.

Even so, the small but powerful Alaska delegation to Congress has long pushed for tree-cutting in the Tongass. In voting to recommit the bill to the conference committee, Goodlatte also was defying the wishes of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who on the day of the vote distributed a letter urging the House to pass the bill with riders intact.

This is a commendable contrast with Goodlatte's support for the Gingrich-inspired budget showdown, sending to the White House spending resolutions that begged to be vetoed.

Western Virginians were accustomed to independent, commonsense thinking from Goodlatte's predecessors, Democrat Jim Olin and, before Olin, Republican Caldwell Butler. It's nice to see an example of it from Goodlatte. Let there be more.