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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Breaking News: Kaine to meet with families of Tech victims

By Michael Sluss

Gov. Tim Kaine said today that he will meet with families of the Virginia Tech shooting victims in an effort to address their concerns about the work of his handpicked review panel and other matters related to the April 16 tragedy.

"They have a lot of serious and legitimate concerns, they have a lot of powerful and understandable emotions, and they have a lot of questions," Kaine told reporters outside the governor's mansion this afternoon. "So I'm trying to answer those as I can."

Several family members of the 32 people who died in the shootings have complained of having no input on the eight-member panel that Kaine appointed to investigate the incident. Relatives of 13 victims released a statement earlier this week expressing anger over "being ostracized from a government-chartered panel investigating a government-chartered university."

Panel members and Larry Roberts, the governor's chief counsel, met privately with several family members following the panel's Monday meeting to discuss some of their concerns. Kaine said he has been in touch with "three or four of the family members" since that meeting and concluded that a face-to-face gathering would be useful.

"It just became clear to me that a session that I would have where I could sit down and listen to the full range of concerns that they have would probably be helpful," Kaine said.

Kaine said will host a meeting for the families in Richmond in the coming weeks. The panel has one more public meeting scheduled for July 18 in Charlottesville and is expected to produce a report in August.

Some family members have demanded to have a representative on the panel, but Kaine said, "I will say that's not a uniform desire and a lot of the family members I've talked to have not expressed that as an issue."

Kaine likened the panel to a jury that must be independent and objective.

"It's a tradition in juries that folks with a direct connection to the event are not on the jury. Not because we have a disrespect for those people. They have an incredibly important perspective that we have to know. But when judgments are being rendered, they should be rendered by people who don't have a direct personal link. That's the way of gaining credibility for the recommendations."

Kaine said he has been in regular contact with families of the shooting victims and wants them to have confidence in the panel's work.

"Every time I talk to a family member, I say, 'Do you want to talk to the panel publicly or privately? I will make that happen,'" Kaine said. "And many have availed themselves of that opportunity. Some have said, 'Look, my grief is private and I don't want to talk to the panel.'"
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