RICHMOND -- Responding to concerns raised at a meeting last weekend, Gov. Tim Kaine has offered a plan to give families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims greater access to an eight-member panel investigating the campus killings.

Kaine has designated a member of his handpicked panel to serve as a liaison to relatives of the 32 students and professors who were killed by a lone gunman April 16. And he has asked the panel's chairman to meet with family members to discuss issues it will address in a report to the governor later this summer.

Kaine promised to improve communication between the panel and victims' families last Saturday, when he held a 2 ¹₂-hour meeting with family members at the Capitol. Some relatives had complained they were being excluded from the panel's work and feared the investigation would overlook key questions about the shootings and the responses of police and Tech administrators.

"The major concern they have is they want the report to be very thorough and the recommendations to be very thorough," Kaine said Friday.

Kaine asked the panel to designate member Carroll Ann Ellis, the director of the Fairfax County Police Department's Victim Services Division, to serve as a liaison to the families. Kaine said some relatives "expressed that if they had just one liaison to go to, that would make their lives easier."

Ellis "has really proved immensely valuable because of her background in victim services," Kaine said.

The governor also asked the panel to provide weekly e-mail updates about its work to family members. The panel's next public meeting is July 18 at the University of Virginia.

Kaine said his effort "has been generally well-received." But some family members raised questions Friday about whether Kaine's plan will make it harder for them to communicate with the panel.

Holly Adams-Sherman, the mother of slain student Leslie Sherman, said in an e-mail that the plan "risks adding bureaucratic layers" that could keep families from communicating directly with the panel or the governor's office.

"I am skeptical of changes to our current privileges to communicate directly with whomever we elect," Adams-Sherman wrote.

Kaine insisted that families remain free to contact any individual panel member or the governor himself.

"They all have my direct number, and they know that they can call me directly," Kaine said.

Several relatives of the Tech victims have said they were getting little information about the panel's work and the direction it plans to take in its investigation. Kaine has asked the panel's chairman, Gerald Massengill, to meet with the families before the panel drafts its report to discuss the issues it intends to cover.

Kaine said input from families will be critical even after the panel issues its report in August, because the report "isn't the be-all and end-all of whatever legislative and policy changes might be considered.

"Some of the dialogue will be a public policy dialogue that may go beyond the panel's report," he said.

Kaine appointed the panel within days of the shootings and asked the group to examine all aspects of the tragedy. But the panel's authority was murky until June 18, when Kaine issued an executive order defining its mission and powers.

Kaine's order helped the panel overcome legal barriers to accessing the academic and mental health records of gunman Seung-Hui Cho, the troubled student who took his own life after killing 32 and leaving 25 wounded.

On the day Kaine issued his order, a Montgomery County General District Court judge granted the panel's request for audio recordings and documents from a December 2005 hearing in which Cho was ordered to receive outpatient mental health treatment. And Tech officials have begun compiling Cho's academic records for the panel, university spokesman Larry Hincker said.