New Ideas, New Leaders   Transportation, education and the environment... We can solve these problems without throwing money at them. It just takes fresh ideas and bold leaders willing to implement them.   The latest surveys indicate that the voting population is not pleased with our elected officials at the state or national level. If these polls are accurate, the negative feelings focus on the fact that our General Assembly and our Congress seem more content in pointing fingers rather than solving problems.   Can our government’s elected leaders turn this around, or will voters start over by “throwing the bums out” in the state elections next year?   For the past two years, transportation has been the major issue facing our state. Our economic future depends upon improving mobility throughout the Commonwealth -- people and goods need to move as efficiently as possible.   Public education is not providing all of our students the skills they need to compete in an increasingly competitive world. Our leaders nibble the edges of the problem, refusing to enact major reforms. The consequence of inaction is a generation of “at risk” students struggling to make it in the adult world.  Clearly, steps must be taken to improve education.   Our waterways and majestic Chesapeake Bay are not as clean as they could be, but government seems convinced that failed policies of the past will somehow improve our polluted waters.  New approaches are obviously needed.   Solutions to these issues mean we must stop thinking that government is the only answer and that what we did yesterday is the only way to handle our problems tomorrow. There are creative solutions to many of these issues if we have the leadership to implement them.   Confronting the mobility needs of our citizens requires new ideas and approaches. A fascinating study by the Reason Foundation details Virginia’s future road construction needs over the next 24 years. This study could be the basis for a “Master Compromise” on transportation. This study, which can be found on the Reason Foundation website, should be carefully read by everyone interested in finding a solution to the “transportation mess” in Virginia. Fewer than 1,000 new road miles need to be built in the right places outside of Northern Virginia at a cost of $3.1 billion. The D.C. metropolitan area needs 1,800 new miles of roads at a cost of $16 billion – Virginia’s cost can be estimated at 60 percent of these numbers or 1,080 miles of new road lanes at a cost of $9.6 billion. So, in today’s dollars Virginia needs about $20 billion of new road construction by 2030. Our leaders should move on these numbers now and figure out how to reach the goals outlined in this important study.   We must remember that the answer to our mobility requirements is not just the amount of money we spend. The answer is in how we spend our limited transportation dollars to improve mobility, and where those dollars come from. Funds required for new construction can come from private sector sources, from tax and fees, and from the savings that can be secured through better managing the Virginia Department of Transportation. Expanding the use of privatized road maintenance to all our primary roads could save $125 million or more each year. That’s $3 billion between now and 2030, fully 15 percent of the total $20 billion needed just by bringing more private contracting to our road maintenance.   Public education needs competition if it is to offer the superior results we know are possible. Improving education could include Tuition Tax Credits for scholarships for “at risk” students; providing Tuition Assistance Grants for students with disabilities; expanding charter schools; revising our reading programs to put phonics back in our classrooms; allowing open enrollment within city or urban school districts so students can attend any school with available classroom capacity; and moving toward a per-student funding formula. Serious accountability and transparency of current education programs should also be required.   Thirty years of environmental mandates, grants, government programs and top-down requirements have not cleaned up the Chesapeake Bay, and our rivers seem to be getting worse. Until a free-market approach to ameliorate the environmental impact of farming becomes a major part of a new government program, we will not clean up our waterways.  Studies show that no-till farming alone can have a huge positive impact on our waterways. Farmers need to be compensated for moving to no-till technology through an environmental credit bank similar to farmers being paid for developing wetlands on their property. This makes so much sense that it is hard to understand why it isn’t a major policy today.   Virginians are seeking leaders who offer a new vision and creative and sensible solutions. The ideas outlined above qualify for those willing to step forward.   -- October 23, 2006