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Summer
Budget Savings
As
we while away the long days of summer, let's give
some thought to creative ways of getting more for
our tax dollars. Here are some suggestions, some
old, some new.
This
summer is a good time to look at some issues
facing our state and to think about how to
confront them more creatively. Some of these
thoughts I’ve written about before, but they
bear repeating.
On
transportation, it is important to keep in mind
that we are spending some $9.5
billion on this item in the 2007-2008 biennial budget, so
don’t get the idea that nothing is being done. The
General Assembly should fully review the monies
already available to see if they could be spent
more wisely. It makes little sense to raise our
taxes if the money won’t be spent
effectively.
If a company
was going to spend billions of dollars
for a product then it would want to make sure that
every dollar is being spent well. Shouldn't that
logic apply
when the product is roads and rail, too?
Administrative reforms at VDOT should be complete
before the Commonwealth invests more money to its
care.
The
private sector should be brought in as a full
partner in our long-range transportation strategy
through vastly expanded private maintenance of our
roads that could save hundreds of millions of
dollars; with more HOT lanes and toll roads and
Bus Rapid Transit systems, and with more private
partnering to reduce cost of government mass
transit systems. The major goal of any new monies
spent on transportation should be to
relieve the vast congestion problems in the
Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia -- the
economic engines of Virginia. These are the
crisis points and they should be tackled first,
along with the economic corridors of I-81 and I-64
to Virginia Beach.
The General
Assembly should “allow” regions to set up
their own new tax/spending remedies for
transportation with voter approval. It’s
hard for the legislature to argue both that
it won’t provide funding for local
transportation solutions while denying localities
at the same time the ability to work
their way out of their transportation problems.
Local leaders should be empowered to create their
own “fixes,” and if the public doesn’t like
what it sees, let the chips fall where they
may.
By
the way, where
is the promised “lock box” for the
Transportation Trust Fund that our Governor and
our legislative readers have been promising?
Here are some thoughts on other
issues facing our state.
Colleges and
universities are now required to send student data
to the state police to run against the national
sex-crime registry. It makes more sense to
keep that data at the campus level and require
them to run their data base of students and
employees against this sex crime data base.
Then the campuses can give all “hits” to the
state police for follow up. This would keep student data bases more secure.
Virginia should expand cable reform to allow
competition across the state rather than on a
county by county basis. It is clear that
cable competition is a good deal
for consumers. We’ve seen this with our
telephone bills: When competition becomes
reality, cable providers knock down their prices
substantially.
Let’s stop delaying
the construction of new sources of energy.
The Department of Environmental Quality should
never have allowed a 2-1/2 month extension for
public comment over Dominion Power building an
expanded nuclear facility as its current North
Anna site. To approve such delays only
encourages those extreme environmentalists who
opposed sensible progress. Dominion’s North Anna
nuclear power site provides a safe, clean source
of energy. Without clean nuclear
power, we would have to rely on coal, oil and
natural gas, which is simply dumb on the face of it.
The
state should embrace this expansion of clean
energy supplies and the General Assembly should
weigh in as necessary.
With the state in full partnership with the
private sector to expand the Coalfields
Expressway in Southwestern Virginia, it is high
time that we look at this new transportation asset
as a way to bring more tourism and business to
southwest Virginia. Why is the Skyline Drive
south of Roanoke not the tourist attraction and
economic magnet that this same road is in North
Carolina? Can the new Coalfields Expressway
help change this? It is downright silly for
North Carolina to have the largest single tourist
attraction in the nation – the Blue Ridge
Parkway – and the Virginia extension of that
same beautiful highway to be a relative “dud”
economically. Some business brainpower,
creative thinking and possible tax incentives
ought to be brought to the table. Building
this new Coalfields Expressway
without tying it to the Skyline Drive would be a
disservice to the taxpayers.
New
studies showing the Chesapeake Bay and our rivers
to be overly polluted should tell us that new and
creative alternatives to “clean up” are needed
if we are to see these waterways achieve their
economic potential. “No till” farming could
have a tremendous impact on cleaning up our waterways. The
idea is catching on and you will be hearing more
about it over the next few months.
--
July 26, 2006
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