Yuval
Levin, an incisive thinker at the Ethics and
Public Policy Center, recently suggested a reform
agenda for John McCain’s presidential
campaign addressing the challenges of the 21st
century.
Noting
that large public institutions usually fail to
adapt to changing circumstances, Levin declares,
“Lurking beneath the individual concerns and
anxieties that voters express to pollsters is a
broad crisis of confidence, grounded in
apprehension about the escalating failures of
these institutions, from the intelligence
community and giant Wall Street banks, to
entitlement programs, the immigration system, and
beyond.”
Levin
identified a good part of the problem as the age
of these institutions:
a health-care financing system built for a
post World War II economy, a 40-year-old
immigration system, a military designed to fight a
Cold War, and a large number of agencies –
ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Federal
Aviation Agency to the Food and Drug
Administration – that were created in the last
century and are now unable to successfully tackle
the challenges of the Internet Age.
The
failure of any one or two of these institutions is
a challenge, but their combined decay and failure,
all coming at the same moment in time, constitutes
a “perfect storm” for public officials and
voter confidence.
To
put it in blunter terms, voters are just fed up
with the fact that things don’t seem to be
working. Levin
offers a series of proposals for making them work.
Are
there lessons here for Virginia
and next year’s crop of candidates?
There are more than a few areas where we
could benefit from systemic reforms.
Consider…
Transportation
congestion is choking
Northern Virginia
and Hampton Roads, created largely by a 75-year
old system that leaves land use policies in the
hands of local governments but responsibility for
building and maintaining roads with the state (one
of only four states making the state capitol
responsible for neighborhood roads.)
It’s a system designed for the day when Fairfax
County
was the largest dairy-producing county in the
state, and is long outdated for major population
centers. A
winning candidate will work to reform it.
Skyrocketing
K-12 education costs are frustrating taxpayers,
parents, teachers, legislators, and local elected
officials. Yet
the funding gap between the richest and poorest
school divisions has widened since 1999.
Virginia’s K-12 education funding – based on Byzantine
staffing ratios and formulas – is an
indecipherable, opaque revenue stream that no one
understands, least of all those who actually vote
on it. A
system of “weighted student funding” would
work better (and instill confidence in taxpayers
who would actually understand it). But that would
require a focused and comprehensive proposal for
overhaul, rather than just throwing down budget
cuts or tax increases during the General Assembly
session.
Local
property tax payers struggle because of rising
assessments that don’t necessarily reflect their
ability to pay – a struggle likely to increase
as those taxpayers age and move from dynamic
incomes to living off retirement funds and
savings. Putting
even more pressure on property owners, Virginia
calculates a school district’s “ability to
pay” partly on income levels – the higher the
income in a county, the lower the level of state
aid – resulting in even higher local property
taxes because income can’t be taxed.
Devising a means to “spread out” the
burden, without raising net taxes on local
taxpayers, would wisely anticipate the demographic
changes coming down the road.
Parents
keeping one eye on state college tuition can’t
help but notice 10-percent tuition increases this
year. The
other eye is no doubt watching Virginia
high schoolers’ rising difficulty in being
admitted. Part
of these problems stems from decreased state
general fund appropriations and an increasing
reliance on tuition which, in turn, creates a bias
for out-of-state students who pay much more than
in-state students.
But what if, instead of giving state money
directly to the universities, those funds went
directly to students?
Not only would such a transfer put the
focus back on students rather than institutions,
it would also help level the playing field for
lower and middle-income Virginians finding it
harder to meet the tuition bill.
There
are dozens more possibilities – from lowering
mandates on health insurance (Virginia
has the third highest number of mandates which in
turn increase insurance costs), to creating more
robust public-private partnerships in school and
road construction.
Of
course, one challenge for political leaders is the
tendency toward “bumpersticker slogans”.
The center-left never met a problem that
couldn’t be solved by raising taxes, and the
center-right’s solution is always to cut those
taxes.
But
judging from national politics – Barack Obama
has prospered by offering a new tone and
leadership style and John McCain has advanced by
emphasizing solutions that go beyond customary
left/right orthodoxy – Virginians may just be
ready for practical solutions rather than campaign
rhetoric.
In
fact, if we’re lucky, they’ll demand it.
--
June 2, 2008
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