Hi, All--

Just have a quick question. Under what circumstances can "that", "be", or any other word be omitted for the sake of concision? This question stems from one of the SC Slam questions.

Despite protests from some environmental groups, state highway officials have ordered the construction of roads along the coast to be continued and that the inland toll road be opened to traffic.

a. the construction of roads along the coast to be continued and that the inland toll road be
b. that along the coast road construction should be continued, with the inland toll road being
c. the continuation of road construction along the coast and the inland toll road to be
d. road construction along the coast be continued, with the inland toll road
e. that the construction of roads along the coast be continued and the inland toll road (correct answer)
Thanks!

Your question opens up a Pandora's box of parallelism issues, but here are some facts that will hopefully take care of most of these problems.
* Hopefully this much is obvious, but you can only eliminate words that are the same in the two (or more) parts of the parallel structure.
* 'Be', as well as all its variants (was, is, could be, etc.), can be eliminated in the second part.
* Prepositions can NEVER be eliminated in the second part (see this thread).
* Relative pronouns (who, which, that, etc.) can't usually be eliminated.

Beware: You must be VERY careful in determining what are the first and second parts of the parallel structure. For instance, in the problem you've posted, you are NOT eliminating the word 'that' in the second part; the word 'that' is simply not included in the parallel structure at all. Specifically:

...state highway officials have ordered THAT {{the construction of roads along the coast be continued}} AND {{the inland toll road [be] opened to traffic}}.

If you added another THAT, then you could go ahead and include the first THAT in the parallel structure, thereby keeping the parallelism intact:

...state highway officials have ordered {{THAT the construction of roads along the coast be continued}} AND {{THAT the inland toll road be opened to traffic}}.

Notice that, in this second construction, you can't eliminate the word 'be' - elimination is all-or-nothing in these kinds of things.

I hope that's more illuminating than confusing. :)