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Only
the Hardiest of Pundits
Defy
the August Doldrums
Finding
provocative punditry this August is as difficult as
finding a day dry enough to mow the lawn.
There’s
an occasional flash of passion: Brian
Gottstein of the Roanoke
Times has been battling the Department of Motor
Vehicles over its interpretation of legal presence laws.
Gottstein, fashioning himself a champion of the
elderly, claimed the DMV’s policy harms Virginians
born before birth certificates were widely issued.
He called the DMV response to his charges
“vague and unspecific.”
The
2004 General Assembly finally, once and for all, gaveled
to a close last week. Republican
delegate and Roanoke Times columnist Preston
Bryant immediately began looking ahead to the 2005
session. He
suggested that higher education would fare well and
enthusiastically embraced the “charter university”
proposal favored by the University of Virginia, Virginia
Tech, and the College
of William
and
Mary. Bryant
believes the legislation will receive bi-partisan
support.
Even
in the dog days of August, tax issues take no holiday.
Susie
Dorsey, writing in the Daily
Press, offered a challenge to those decrying
increased local assessments:
If
you want your local government to send you a smaller tax
bill, tell your elected officials to lower the rate.
But that's not enough. Tell them how you want them to
reduce spending. And don't fall back on that old crutch
of "cut the fat."
Chances are, if they perceived there was "fat"
in the budget, they would cut it themselves.
No, tell them what programs you want downsized or
eliminated, and how you want them to deal with the
results of those actions.
Dorsey’s
challenge is a good one, but note her dismissal of
“cut the fat” nostrums and apparent faith that local
officials “cut fat” on her own.
That most local officials actively ferret out
non-critical expenditures is a dubious proposition at
best. One wonders
if she would embrace such fat-cutting measures as
reducing conferences and travel, or if she would dismiss
them as trivial.
Those
Public-Spirited Lobbyists
A.
Barton Hinkle of the Richmond
Times-Dispatch, complete with a new mug shot, took a
jaundiced look at the transportation and education
lobbyist “good guys” seeking new taxes:
Far
be it from any of us rubes down here in the sticks to
suggest there might be a certain conflation of
public-spiritedness and private aspiration, or even
avidity, among businessmen who depend on new roads to
build new developments, and college presidents who
depend on state funding to advance their institutions.
Far be it from us - but not from others. According to
Nancy Reed, director of the Fairfax
County
Chamber of Commerce's political action committee,
"This is about the business community supporting
our interests."
Hinkle
wonders if lobbyists donating money to pro-growth
candidates or those favoring caps on malpractice awards
will be perceived as public-spirited “good guys.”
MLB
Very Bad for Me
The
bid by a Norfolk
group to bring Major League Baseball to the city has
always seemed quixotic at best. Dave
Addis of the Virginian-Pilot
told the story of Dave Rosenfield, General Manager of
the successful Triple-A Norfolk Tides.
Rosenfield, in what he thought was an
off-the-record conversation in Las
Vegas,
said words to the effect of “the region is just too
small and too low-budget to support a major-league
team.” He
apologized to avoid offending local sensibilities, but
Addis wrote, “He didn’t say anything that I
haven’t said in this space, and I’m a long way from
apologizing for it.”
He
Was On to Something
Scant
hours before New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey announced
his resignation, Preston Bryant’s Roanoke
Times column
unfavorably compared a New Jersey
one-time borrowing budget fix with the approach taken by
Governor Mark Warner and the Virginia General Assembly. McGreevey went to the New Jersey Supreme Court to
gain approval of borrowing almost $2 billion to cover
state operating expenses.
Bryant wrote,
New
Jersey’s McGreevey may have won a court battle, but
it’ll end up costing him — and his state’s
taxpayers — millions in higher borrowing costs.
It’ll also take years, if not decades, for the bond
rating agencies to regain lost confidence in the state
government’s ability to wisely manage its fiscal
affairs.
Budget
and other shenanigans ended up costing McGreevey his
job.
--
August 23, 2004
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