|
on
August
5th to the Virginia Foundation for Research and
Economic Education (Virginia FREE).
Virginia
FREE was the group that made controversial ratings
of Democrats
as better on business issues than Republicans.
Chichester’s
speech, approvingly published on the op-ed pages
of newspapers such as the Roanoke
Times, was a clarion call to tax reform (read:
tax increases) to deal with Virginia’s needs:
I
get so frustrated when I hear my colleagues say,
"No one is coming up to me on the street and
saying they're undertaxed!"
Of
course they're not. No one in Stafford
County
is telling me we
need to renovate a dilapidated fire hazard in Capitol Square, but we do. No one is telling me we should replace our antiquated,
inadequate telecommunications system for our state
police, but we should. No one is telling me that our
courts are overcrowded and understaffed, but they
are.
Barnie
Day breathlessly hailed Chichester’s speech in the Daily Press, quoting Sophocles and
placing the impact of Chichester’s speech alongside Lincoln and Churchill.
On a more practical level, shortly after Chichester’s
speech/op-ed, Del. Allen Louderback, R-Luray, a
member of the legislative tax reform commission,
actually placed meaningful tax reform ideas on the
table. Was
there a connection? Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress, while skeptical of any real
tax reform becoming law, nonetheless gave grudging
credit to Louderback for keeping “meaty items on
the menu.”
The
case against tax reform that is not “revenue
neutral” is still being actively advocated. In the Washington Post, Chris
Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute argued
against increases in sales tax and corporate tax
that he ascribes to Governor Warner. With Warner not putting specific proposals
on
the table yet, Edwards may need to address his argument to
Chichester
and Louderback.
Another
Worry
Just
when you thought there weren’t enough problems for
the state budget, Margaret
Edds of the Virginian-Pilot
tells us to start worrying about prison
overcrowding. She
quotes estimates of new prison bed needs that are as
high as 8,000 by 2010.
Commuter
Tax Update
Norbert
Michaels, a policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation, reviewed the District
of Columbia budget for the Washington
Post and found no justification for claims that
a commuter tax on Virginians and Marylanders is
needed. “The District doesn't need to collect more
tax revenue -- it needs to do a better job with what
it already gets,” Michaels concluded.
Damage
Control
The
Department of Environmental Quality, and, by
implication, Governor Warner, took a beating over
their handling of James River
trash barge regulations. It fell to Secretary of Natural Resources
W.
Tayloe Murphy, Jr., to respond to a critical Daily
Press editorial and change the subject from
trash to Warner’s overall environmental record. Murphy recited a laundry list of initiatives
while conspicuously avoiding any mention of trash
barges.
Political
Round-Up
Hugh
Lessig and Terry Scanlon of the Daily
Press profiled the two star-crossed candidates
for state Republican Party chairperson, while Bob
Gibson of the Daily
Progress reviewed the sordid details of the
eavesdropping scandal that finally created the
opening … Is Northern Virginia “entitled” to a
spot on the 2005 GOP ticket? R. H. Melton
of the Washington Post explored that question. Although State
Sen. Bill Bolling, R-Mechanicsville, is well ahead in the race for the
Lieutenant Governor nomination, Congressman and
would-be kingmaker Tom Davis is a leading proponent
of putting a Northern Virginian in that spot. Davis’ choice is his protégé (and,
apparently, so much more), Del. Jeannemarie
Devolites, R-Vienna, now running for the senate. Another name mentioned is Prince William
County Supervisor Chairman Sean Connaughton.
Jesse
Todd of the Daily
Press compared Virginia politics and its
celebrity politicians to California’s and found
them wanting. He
offered this snarky commentary:
We
do dull here, even though some Republicans have
lately tried to liven things up by breaking the law
in their efforts to eavesdrop on Democratic
conference calls. One would think that if Democrats
statewide had anything worth listening to, they
would be saying it loudly.
Education
Round-Up
In
a rare find on the op-ed pages, a teacher actually
praised the Standards of Learning tests.
Susan
O’Brien Saccomando, a Fairfax County teacher
writing in the Washington Post, made the case that
the SOLs are working because students can’t pass
just by “showing up.” Meanwhile, Radford
Professor Vincent
Hazleton blew the lid off conventional wisdom
that says intercollegiate athletics are
self-supporting. In a Roanoke
Times piece, he pointed out that the average
student at a Virginia state university pays almost
$648 as an “athletic fee.” R.
H. Melton of the Washington
Post criticized the new Alliance for
Virginia’s Students for “tiptoe[ing] around the
elephant in the room -- the new taxes that many
advocates say are essential to meeting the roughly
$1 billion in documented school funding needs.”
Shameless
Self-Reference
Your
“Virginia Pundit Watch” correspondent was
mentioned in Pamela
Stallsmith’s
front page, below-the-fold article on blogging
in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. His
musings on blogging and national events were also
heard on the August 15th edition of
C-Span’s “Washington Journal,” hosted by Brian
Lamb. The
streaming video of that appearance is available here.
Now,
my fifteen minutes are up.
--
August
25, 2003
|
