At the 1972 Session of the General Assembly, the Virginia Advisory Legislative Council was directed to study the functioning of the State Compensation Board and to recommend any necessary changes in its operation and makeup. This study was conducted pursuant to House Joint Resolution No. 60.

Your Council appointed Delegate W. Roy Smith of Petersburg to act as Chairman of the Study. Delegate Smith, with the approval of your Council, appointed the following persons as members: Senator George S. Aldhizer of Broadway; David B. Ayres, Jr., State Comptroller, of Richmond; J. Elwood Clements, Sheriff of Arlington County; Delegate Walther B. Fidler of Warsaw; Delegate Arthur R. Giesen, Jr. of Verona; E. P. Greever, Treasurer of Tazewell County; Delegate George H. Heilig, Jr. of Norfolk; Royston Jester, III, Commonwealth's Attorney for Lynchburg; Delegate Raymond R. Robrecht of Salem; Senator H. Selwyn Smith of Manassas; Samuel W. Swanson, Clerk of the Circuit Court of Pittsylvania County; John B. Vaughan, Sheriff of Hanover County and Robert H. Waldo, Commissioner of the Revenue for Chesapeake.

The Committee held its initial meeting on September 26, 1972. At this meeting, Delegate Arthur R. Giesen, Jr. was elected to serve as Vice Chairman.

The Committee has met on a regular basis over the past year to pursue its study.

The Committee held a public hearing in Richmond on November 4, 1972. The hearing was well attended and the Committee heard the comments and suggestions of some fourteen persons. Briefly stated, the opinions expressed by the persons appearing before the Committee were as follows: the compensation board concept is a good concept and should be retained; there is a need for the Board to have more staff support; the Board should have full-time members; local control of compensation of constitutional officers would be undesirable as it would bring local politics into the process of compensating such officers; and there is a need to have persons working for the Board who could make field inspections to determine the real needs of a constitutional officer.

In addition to the public hearing, the Committee prepared two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was sent to all the constitutional officers, the chief executive officer for each locality and the head of the legislative body of each locality. (See Appendix I) The second questionnaire was sent to each state in the United States to determine their method of compensating officers comparable to our constitutional officers. The comments received in reply to these two questionnaires were a very important part of the Committee's deliberations.

The Division of Legislative Services (formerly the Division of Statutory Research and Drafting) provided the staff and secretarial support necessary to undertake the Committee's study.