The New Old Dominion

The birds still warble sweet in the springtime, and the Byrds still control the roosts of power in Virginia: a U.S. Senate seat and the Statehouse. But ornithological and oligarchical verities apart, little else of the old order is immune from the spirit of regeneration that has engulfed the state.

Before packing to go home, the general assembly demolished a passel of passe prohibitions: Virginia's ancient predilection for pay-as-you-go budgetary procedures; the inviolability of the state constitution; a ban on sales of liquor by the drink; an end to billing poll-tax payments; an end to racial segregation in jails and prisons. Has the Old Dominion gone liberal? Decidedly not, insists the chief architect of change, Byrd-Democrat Mills Godwin, 53, Governor since 1966. "It's realism."

Suburban Outflow. By whatever name, what is happening in Virginia is enough to unstatus the quo from Accomac to Yorktown. Not only did the assembly approve a record two-year budget of $3.13 billion, up 27.5% from 1966-68; it also gave Godwin authority to borrow $81 million of it. If voters approve in a November referendum, Virginia for the first time this century will float a general obligation-bond issue, a routine fiscal expedient long employed by all but a scattering of states.

No more given to prodigality than his mentor, Senator Harry Byrd (who died in 1966), Godwin is considerably more willing to concede that change is inexorable. When he took office, Virginia's financially starved educational system ranked 38th nationally in dollars spent per pupil, not to mention the illiteracy rate and median school years completed. It ranked dead last among ten Southern states in school expenditures as a percentage of personal income. Yet, thanks largely to the suburban outflow of well-to-do Washingtonians, Virginia's voters today are the wealthiest citizens in the entire South.

Credit Credo. First, Godwin, who played a major role in Virginia's "massive resistance" to school integration in 1959-60, rammed through a state sales tax, boosted public school spending by 35% but resisted the big step: borrowing. This year Godwin took that step. "We cannot refuse to do what has to be done," he insisted. "Most of us would still be living with our in-laws and driving a horse and buggy if it were not for that great institution known as American credit." Though they gulped, most old-line Byrdmen went along. The assembly (in which sat a symbol of change--the first Negro member since 1891) also approved Godwin's plea for a commission to revise the state's revered but outmoded constitution.

Inevitably, departure from sacred tradition has stirred a mild storm of protest. In its eye, Godwin rejects the traditional opprobrium that he is a liberal and a spendthrift to boot. "While I hold this office, Virginia will borrow money only to meet critical needs," he pledges. Actually, Godwin's successor (he cannot succeed himself) will probably have to raise taxes again in 1970 because Virginia, despite its efforts, is barely keeping pace. "There are only two real dangers to Virginia in this second half of the 20th century," says Godwin. "One is that we will cling too long to the old. The other is that we will reach too quickly for the untried simply because it is new."

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