Category Archives: Social services

The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 6 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is.

He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in getting Bishop E.W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain selected. They underline the social conservatism that turns millions off and makes Virginia the butt of jokes on late night talk shows.

The Bishop is an even bigger gay basher than Cuccinelli and says that Planned Parenthood is responsible for more fatalities among African-Americans than the Ku Klux Klan. This may be new to a Harvard Law graduate, but women of any color have a legal right to an abortion within limits. The U.S. Supreme Court said so. Look under Roe vs. Wade.

Then there is the attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain of the legacy Republican family. He proposed and withdrew legislation to require any woman in Virginia who miscarries a pregnancy to report it to the police. The idea is so repulsive it is beyond words. A woman may have miscarried to her great sorrow due to medical reasons and then would have to go through the added horror of having to report to the police? Yes, this comes from a cabal that otherwise wants to keep the government out of your lives. Even Josef Stalin wouldn’t think of this.

What does the dream team have to say on the many policy issues facing a troubled state? We have a bunch of lame and poorly thought out tax cuts and Cooch playing hardware store populist. Cuccinelli was against McDonnnell’s mammoth road building tax plan and has since backed away from his opposition.

Is this good news for Terry McAuliffe, who has plenty of issues of his own? Yes, I would think. Cuccinelli doesn’t need the fringe hard right voters. He’s already got them in his pocket. He needs the center and Mark and the Bishop aren’t going to be much help there.

It boggles the mind how Virginia is so schizo. It is attracting hundreds of thousands of newcomers who are running the state’s economy and are dragging it into the 21st century world. Yet the Republicans put up people like this who aren’t dragging us to Virginia’s recent dark past but to medieval times.

Global investors might think twice or three times before investing in this freak show.

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Posted in Abortion, Blogs and blog administration, Budget, Children and families, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Disaster planning, Economic development, Economy, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Federal, Finance, Governance reform, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Regulation, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, The Economy, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

Data Shows Hospital Billing Outrages

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 4 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

It’s long been fascinating how Big Hospitals, linked with Medicare, Big Pharma and Big Managed Care, have come up with an extraordinarily convoluted system of setting prices for various hospital procedures.

There is plenty of nonsense about including on this blog about bringing “free market efficiencies” to health care, as if human health is something like a widget or a jet engine fan blade that can be made cheaper and faster if you only got the right consulting firm to hit the right formula and the right software and the right system and the right package and kept the evil government out of it, everything would come up roses.

So to see how stupid and impractical the idea is, I was amused to see the big data base release on hospital cost charges for various procedures by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It covers what was billed and what was paid by hundreds of hospitals for 100 procedures.

Big Health Care did not want the data released because they prefer working in an office with the shutters drawn as they try to game the Medicare system by overbilling and then cutting secretive deals with Big Managed Care over what they’ll really charge for group policy holders and screw the rest.

President Obama had the CMMS release the data to show what a sham setting hospital prices is, although it is doubtful that ObamaCare that goes into full effect next year will change things much. I believe more and more that socialized medicine is the only way to go.

Anyway, here is a short piece I did for Style Weekly that looks at what Richmond area hospitals actually charge for Medicare and what they get:

If you’re a Medicare patient and need a major joint replaced — perhaps a hip — consider the initial cost.

In 2011, HCA Healthcare’s CJW Medical Center billed Medicare $117,477 and got about $12,926 from the government. Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center billed $55,327 and got $20,308. Bon Secours Memorial Hospital charged $53,195, and got $12,458.

Sound screwy? It is. For all the talk about a free-market system, setting health care prices is anything but.

Instead of open bidding, think of hospital officials meeting behind closed doors, strategizing how much to charge to get reimbursed. Medicare, which usually represents about half of a hospital’s revenues, sets a fixed rate for various procedures. But hospitals can’t by law offer a specific set of prices for just Medicare.

So they factor in other price variables such as what insurance companies might pay on a percentage basis. A big insurer may pay only 20 percent of charges or what they negotiate privately. That automatically jacks up the asking price. Another variable is getting financial aid to help pick up the bill for indigents.

Moreover, higher prices don’t necessarily mean better quality, says Michael Spine, senior vice president for business development at Bon Secours Health System.

What results is an incredibly skewed set of prices for essentially the same procedures. That’s the takeaway from a survey by the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which shows what hospitals billed Medicare — and what Medicare paid — for procedures in 100 categories in 2011. The Obama administration released the survey to drum up support for the Affordable Health Care Act, which takes full effect next year.

A glance at the survey shows that CJW Medical Center was by far the priciest on some procedures, but also reimbursed the least.

Take kidney-tract infections, for example. CJW filed $30,552 while MCV asked for $19,819. Yet MCV got more. For some heart-failure cases, HCA billed $40,274 while St. Mary’s Hospital, owned by nonprofit Bon Secours, billed $18,460. And St. Mary’s was reimbursed more. Go figure.

Because insurance companies base policies around what Medicare is billed and will pay for, just about everyone’s affected. Those without insurance could be stuck with the entire bill, although they can receive treatment free or through discounts.

“Hospital charges vary because they reflect the individual hospital’s mission, the patient population it serves and the subsidies necessary to provide essential public services,” says Anne Buckley, a spokeswoman for VCU Medical Center.

Mark Foust, a spokesman for HCA, says a “patient’s medical coverage — rather than charges — is what primarily drives what he or she pays a hospital.”

HCA and VCU help poor patients with their bills through discount or charity programs. So does Bon Secours, says Spine, who adds that releasing the results of such surveys is an important step in moving from “legacy” pricing to something more transparent.

Next on Obama’s list: releasing surveys of physicians’ fees.

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Posted in Children and families, Consumer protection, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Economy, Federal, Health care, Insurance, Politics, Science & Technology, Social services

Tagged goozeviews

McAuliffe: Can a Schmoozer Transform?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 3 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

On Easter Sunday, I was driving in a cold rain to Charlottesville for a family event. My cell phone started beeping with messages from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe.

He said he was on his way to his own family brunch but wanted to tap me for $5. I got similar messages from two other staffers.

Why bother me at Easter? Political analyst Larry Sabato wondered the same thing. In a tweet that day he complained about finding “11 obnoxious messages for $$$. Now I know the answer to the age old Q; Is nothing sacred?”

And that may be McAuliffe’s biggest problem as he faces arch-conservative Ken Cuccinelli in the off-year governor’s race. In my profile of him in Style Weekly, I note that McAuliffe is trying to rein in an expansive personality that has made him a top political schmoozer and fundraiser for Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

A decades’ long political operative who has never been in elected office, he can be bombastic and smooth, as his recent dealings with GreenTech Automotive shows. He flirted with Virginia for a hybrid car plant before going to Mississippi. He has been accused of somehow using the car plant to win special visas for foreign workers and maybe misleading the Virginia Economic Development Partnership about his intentions in the Old Dominion.

Meanwhile, he must overcome some of his misunderstandings of traditional Virginia thinking. However, it’s probably a good thing that he’s going to skip the Shad Planking in Wakefield tonight with its Confederate flags where Cuccinelli will be keynote speaker.

While polls are about 50-50 in the race, McAuliffe’s fundraising prowess has shown brightly. In the first quarter, he raised more than $5 million — more than double the take of Cuccinelli, who has hamstrung by not being allowed raise money during the General Assembly session because of his position as Attorney General. Read on…

(Also, here as a Q&A with McAuliffe)

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Federal, Finance, Gay rights, Governance reform, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Regulation, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, The Economy, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

Re-engineering Criminal Justice in Richmond

Posted on April 10, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 1 Comment

Richmond City Jail. Photo credit: Scott Elmquist, Style Magazine

by James A. Bacon

The average cost for housing an inmate in Virginia’s jails and prisons runs roughly $25,000 a year. Add to that the fact that some jails are antiquated, overcrowded and need replacing. The Richmond City Jail, for instance, designed in the 1960s to hold 856 inmates, is routinely crammed with a number that fluctuates around 1,400. To address the severe overcrowding, the City of Richmond plans to open a new, state-of-the-art facility in 2014 at a cost of $134 million.

But the new hoosegow will be designed for only 1,030, not 1,400. What gives? Won’t it be almost as overcrowded the day it opens? Doesn’t it make sense to build a bigger jail?

Not necessarily. Building a bigger jail would be the easy, brain-dead thing to do. But it wouldn’t necessarily be the right thing — either for the inmates or for Richmond taxpayers.

“The opening of the new jail serves as a catalyst to do things we’ve been thinking about doing for a long time,” Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring told me for an article I just published in Style Weekly. “It more or less forces our hands.”

A task force headed by David Hicks, senior policy advisor to Mayor Dwight Jones, is working on a plan to reduce the city’s inmate population. Although key details still need to be hammered out, the broad outlines are clear enough:

Mentally ill. Stop throwing the mentally ill into jail because there’s no other place to put them. It would cost taxpayers half as much money to treat them effectively in the community.
Non-violent offenders. Petty thieves, vandals, deadbeat dads and even small-time drug dealers don’t need to spend time in jail. They should be diverted to a “day reporting center” during the day at half the cost.
Pre-trial inmates. Re-think the city’s bond policy. Inmates awaiting trial are required to post bond and come up with 10% of the cash themselves. Most don’t have the money, and they spend a week on average taking up jail space while scraping up the money from friends and relatives. Studies show that requiring people to post bond does not make them any more likely to show up in court.

Sheriff C.T. Woody says it should be possible to reduce the jail population by half, saving millions of dollars and posing little additional safety risk to Richmonders. There are questions whether the city can achieve its ambitious goals before the new jail opens. But Herring says, “Whether we hit the target on day one is less important than the reforms we’re putting into place.”

For details, read the full article in Style.

Bacon’s bottom line: The Virginia Department of Corrections spends roughly $1 billion a year incarcerating prisoners — and that doesn’t include what local governments spend on jails. There is a lot of money to be saved from re-thinking our traditional “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” approach to criminal justice. The City of Richmond is engaged in fundamentally re-thinking how it provides essential government services — exactly what Virginians need to be doing across the board for everything from transportation and land use to education and health care.

Kudos to Hicks, Herring, Woody and everyone else involved in this effort to make government both more humane and more efficient.

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Posted in 2013, Budget, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Social services

Tagged James A. Bacon

The Dish on Mission Investing

Posted on March 29, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 1 Comment

by James A. Bacon

For many years, Richmond’s Cabell Foundation conducted business much as it had since its formation in 1957. Investing the endowment for income, the board took out 5% per year to distribute in grants to worthy causes. In 2011, that amounted to roughly $4.3 million directly for some two to three dozen non-profits around Richmond and Virginia.

More recently, the board began thinking about how to get more bang for the buck, Charles L. Cabell, immediate past president of the foundation, told a gathering of mostly Virginia foundations and non-profits at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The board tried giving matching grants and last-dollar grants, and it organized a Richmond funders’ group to keep major philanthropists appraised of each others’ activities.

A few years ago, the board also became acquainted with the concept of “mission” investments, also referred to as “social” investments or “impact” investments. As an alternative to putting the entire portfolio in stocks, bonds and other typical instruments, the idea was to invest in non-profit enterprises in order to leverage the impact of the funds.

“In typical Richmond fashion,” said Cabell, a Richmond attorney, “we chewed on it for two or three years.” Finally, he says, the Cabell Foundation found the right partner — Virginia Community Capital (VCC), a non-profit, community development financial institution and bank. By purchasing $1 million of preferred stock in VCC’s banking business, the foundation generated a modest yet respectable 4% annual payout. But the bank was able to leverage that million dollars into $8 million in capital that could be lent to create affordable housing, finance small businesses or underwrite Main Street renovations in communities around the state.

“We believe this is something that other foundations might look at,” Cabell told the assembled foundation executive and non-profit managers Wednesday. “It’s exciting for us. If it works for us, I think it will work for you.”

Mission investing has taken off in the United States since the 2007-2008 recession, as foundations have sought ways to offset the impact of their shrinking portfolios and diminished giving capabilities. While foundations made an estimated $46 billion in grants in 2010, they held assets totaling more than $600 billion that could be doing more. Of the U.S. foundations participating in mission investments, one of four have committed more than 50% of their assets to mission-related investments. But half have barely dipped their toes, risking less than five percent.

Many non-profits are not set up to benefit from mission investing, but VCC is. The organization was set up in the early 2000s when Governor Mark Warner consolidated and privatized two state loan funds with $15 million in assets. Today, by applying for federal grants, accepting foundation investors and reinvesting income, VCC has grown its asset base to $85 million, said President Jane Henderson.

VCC has more than 122 loans outstanding, totaling $60.5 million, that underwrite projects relating to affordable housing, health care, food insecurity and small business that typically would have difficulty getting financing from conventional sources. VCC also provides technical assistance to communities and non-profits seeking to secure government grants and private capital.

VCC finds solutions by blending government money, foundation money and private capital. “We don’t make grants,” said Henderson. “We’re lenders. We’re advisors.”

The Jessie Ball duPont Fund, which concentrates its lending in Delaware, Virginia and Florida, invested $1.5 million with VCC, said executive Mark Constantine. Before diving in to mission investing, the foundation had to address a number of legal, investing and accounting issues. It also had to give some thought about how to its investments with its grant-making mission and how to monitor the investment’s economic and social impact.

The decision to move into mission investing is not one to make lightly, said Tracy Kartye, who runs the $100 million social investing program for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “The investments are complex, they have legal fees and transaction costs, and they require skill sets that foundations do not have.” But the foundation’s track record has been “quite good.”

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Posted in 2013, Housing, Poverty & income gap, Social services

Tagged James A. Bacon

McAuliffe Pitches Jobs vs. Ideology

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 17 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

“Fantastic,” says Terry McAuliffe as he listens to officials at the Culpeper, Va., campus of Germanna Community College talk about projects ranging from designing machine controls to a weight-loss competition. The tall, curly-haired McLean businessman — a Democrat who wants to be Virginia’s next governor — walks through a campus building while tossing out a barrage of questions and furiously taking notes. “I’m going to help with you with that, Ben,” he says to one teacher. “These community colleges are just jewels,” he remarks to another.

The visit to the Germanna campus, on which I tagged along in February, is part of McAuliffe’s effort to cast himself as a moderate jobs creator in a head-to-head campaign against firebrand Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II. The off-year race is already attracting national attention as Republicans seek to turn the page from their drubbing in the 2012 elections. The media are watching closely to see how Cuccinelli will play his hand — how much will he tone down the rhetoric that’s made him a star on the right? — and a flood of out-of-state money is expected to flow to both candidates.

“My focus is all on economic development,” McAuliffe says flatly. “It’s job-creation, and that’s why I am touring every community college in Virginia. That is my focus — to bring mainstream, pro-business ideas. My opponent’s more into a social, ideological agenda.”

This bread-and-butter strategy is as obvious as it is essential. Early polls show the two candidates running neck and neck, but Cuccinelli has assets that could give him an edge: experience in state government and a better-known name. News this week that Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling doesn’t have the cash to mount an independent bid only puts more pressure on McAuliffe to reach beyond the safely anti-Cuccinelli, Democratic base. University of Virginia analyst Larry Sabato and his colleagues noted that Bolling’s decision leaves the state with “two deeply flawed candidates” who “have limited positive appeal.”

McAuliffe indeed has baggage to overcome. In decisively losing the Democratic primary for governor in 2009 to underwhelming state Sen. Creigh Deeds, he was unable to shake off an image as a hard-charging Democratic Party operative and former fundraiser for Bill Clinton. More recently, the Connecticut-born banker-turned-entrepreneur has been criticized for locating a hybrid-car factory in Mississippi instead of Virginia — a story line that offers an obvious counterattack to his Virginia-jobs-first appeal.

McAuliffe clearly will have to contend again with accusations that he is a carpetbagger out of touch with Virginia’s problems. The Cuccinelli campaign played that card this month when it ridiculed McAuliffe for urging in a tweet from Florida that Virginia residents take care as snow approached. McAuliffe’s answer is to stress his Old Dominion ties: “My wife and I have lived in the same home in Northern Virginia for 21 years,” he says. “We have five children. I want our children to stay here and have jobs.”

This outsider problem may actually be less than meets the eye. Plenty of successful Virginia politicians did not grow up in the Old Dominion. One is none other than hugely popular Democrat Mark Warner, an Indiana-born entrepreneur who ran Douglas Wilder’s 1989 campaign for governor before becoming a successful governor himself and then a U.S. senator.

Warner’s brand of tech-savvy centrism clearly has not been lost on McAuliffe. As he steps through classrooms at Germanna, he regularly brings up Warner’s name. He also praises fellow Democrat Tim Kaine, another former governor who became a U.S. senator, and even Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, as pro-business leaders. In contrast with Cuccinelli, McAuliffe backs McDonnell’s breakthrough with the General Assembly that produced the first real money for roads since 1986. “I’ve got to give Gov. McDonnell credit for keeping the discussion going,” he says.

The big question is whether identifying with practical politicians such as McDonnell will be enough to distance independents and moderate Republican voters — who might be turned off by McAuliffe’s deep history with the Democratic Party — from Cuccinelli and the tea party movement that stands with him.

Cuccinelli may be wondering the same thing. Lately, he seems to be avoiding inflammatory rhetoric (there was hardly a reference to gays, abortion or any other social flashpoint to be found in his recent book about constitutional federalism). He might be wise to stick to that approach. McAuliffe is clearly planning to pounce if Cuccinelli goes rogue.

“I always say the most important family value you can have is a job,” McAuliffe says at the end of his community college tour. “There’s a real difference between us, and we can’t be sending out signals with a social-ideological agenda that says that people aren’t wanted. We can’t divide people. We’ve got to unite them.”

(Note: This is article appears in the Local Opinions section of The Washington Post)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-frame-mcauliffe-wants-jobs-vs-ideology/2013/03/15/caf57a3e-8c11-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html

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Posted in Demographics, Economic development, Economy, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Federal, Finance, Governance reform, Government workers and pensions, Health care, Labor & workforce, Money in politics, Politics, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, The Economy, Transportation

Tagged goozeviews

A Partial Explanation for Spreading Food Insecurity

Posted on March 9, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 11 Comments

by James A. Bacon

Food insecurity is increasing in Virginia. Don’t take my word for it — that’s what the people at Feedmore, which runs Central Virginia’s food bank, tell me. The food bank operation, founded in 1980 to provide emergency food relief to poor Virginians, now addresses a chronic need. The organization has evolved into an industrial-scale food preparation and distribution enterprise that collaborates with some 350 churches, schools, soup kitchens, community gardens and other partners to address food insecurity throughout the Richmond region and Central Virginia.

In a sit-down session with several senior Feedmore officials a couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question. Food consumes a smaller share of the family budget than ever in American history and the federal government is spending more money than ever on food stamps — not only for more people but more money per recipient. Why is food insecurity increasing?

No one had a definitive answer, but there were some plausible theories. Clearly, food insecurity worsened during the recession, in which millions of Americans lost their jobs. Further, while it is true that food consumes a smaller percentage of the average family budget, it may consume a larger slice for poor households. Remember, income gains have lopsidedly favored the top income quintile over the past three decades. Inflation-adjusted wages for the bottom quintile has remained stagnate over the same period. Thus, it was possible, I was told, that the poorest Americans were actually spending a higher percentage of their budgets on food. If food is consuming a larger share of poor peoples’ budgets, no wonder food insecurity is spreading.

The explanation seemed plausible enough, and there we left it. But today I stumbled across a post by Derek Thompson in the Atlantic Cities blog. Thompson’s jumping-off point is this chart just published in Bloomberg Businessweek:

Click for larger more legible image.

True, viewed as a whole, Americans are spending a smaller share of their family budgets on food than in the past. But the national average obscures what’s happening to sub-groups. Thompson also presents this chart:

Bottom line: The poor are spending the same share of their limited dollars on food today that they were in 1984. That explains why food insecurity has not eased among the poor.

But food insecurity is increasing. It is more prevalent — not the same — than it was nearly 30 years ago. If we want to explain the phenomenon of growing food insecurity, we need to keep looking. Stagnant incomes and joblessness clearly provide part of the explanation for food insecurity. But something else appears to be going on. What that is, I cannot say. But I will continue digging for answers.

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Posted in 2013, Children and families, Poverty & income gap, Social services

Tagged James A. Bacon

McDonnell Lays Out Principles for Medicaid Reform

Posted on March 6, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 5 Comments

by James A. Bacon

Predictably, Governor Bob McDonnell is taking flak for refusing to agree to an expansion of Virginia’s Medicaid program without significant assurances and concessions from the Obama administration. What I haven’t seen yet is a critique of his reasons for doing so. Name calling and disparaging motives doesn’t count. In a letter sent yesterday to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, he made a persuasive case. If critics want to bash McDonnell, let them address the substantive issues.

The current Medicaid plan consumes 21% of Virginia’s General Fund budget, up from 5% three decades ago, the governor wrote. “This explosive 1600% growth in Medicaid spending in the past 3 decades, combined with the federal government’s unsustainable nearly $17 trillion national debt, makes Medicaid expansion cost prohibitive.”

It is unwise to expand Medicaid without “dramatic verifiable cost saving reforms of the program at the state and federal level,” McDonnell said. Virginia cannot proceed without statutory and regulatory flexibility and waivers, private-sector cost containment reforms and other tools to address Medicaid spending growth. In an attachment to the letter, the governor advanced five “tenets” of Medicaid reform.

Deliver all Medicaid services through an efficient, market-based delivery system. That means implementing a commercial-like benefit package for adult Medicaid beneficiaries, enrolling more people in managed care programs, and tightening enrollment standards and provider qualifications.
Establish provisions to reduce financial burdens to Virginia. This language is totally justified, although it might be a tad difficult for the Obama administration to swallow: “Obtain reasonable assurance from the federal government that a Virginia Medicaid expansion will not contribute to a future increase in the national debt. Virginia cannot participate in an expansion that will increase the financial burden on future generations of Americans.” McDonnell also wants “reasonable assurance” that the federal government will “implement a long-term path to financial solvency that can cover the ongoing cost of an expansion.”
Maximize tools currently available to the commonwealth … to achieve administrative efficiency. The key words here are “streamline, “reform” and “consolidate administrative authority.”
Achieve greater flexibility by pressing Congress to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Virginia wants to drive behavior through value-based purchasing and by restructuring benefit and service-delivery design.
Implement broad-based, long-term, statewide reform. McDonnell wants to reform Virginia’s health-care system to reduce the cost of all medical care and long-term care services, reducing Virginia’s Medicaid expenditures while strengthening Virginia’s entire healthcare market.

Bacon’s bottom line: The devil is in the details, of course, but McDonnell is absolutely on the right track. This letter almost persuades me to forgive him for pushing his transportation-funding bill, which doesn’t reform anything (except how we raise money) about the way we approach transportation and land use. If he would put as much political capital behind health care reform as he did behind his transportation bill, he just might redeem himself among conservatives.

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Posted in 2013, Entitlements, Federal, Health care, Social services

Tagged James A. Bacon

Fostering Regional Collaboration Case by Case

Posted on March 5, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 4 Comments

by James A. Bacon

For reasons rooted in local identity and entrenched political interest, Virginians are unlikely to consolidate their local governments into units aligned with the metropolitan regions they serve. But it is not impossible to imagine governments partnering regionally on specific projects.

A new study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “Encouraging Local Collaboration through State Incentives,” describes areas where collaboration might make sense and how the state can encourage it.

K-12 education, which accounted for $13.2 billion in state and local spending in FY 2011, is one area rife with opportunity. For instance, special education programs can be administered more efficiently on a regional basis — reducing the cost per student by $6,500 to $13,500.

Public safety, which accounts for $4 billion in state and local spending, offers more low-hanging fruit. Regional radio networks would facilitate the cost-efficient collaboration between local fire, police and rescue. A step toward even greater integration, which could save localities up to $8 million, would be to create of joint emergency dispatch centers. Building joint courthouses can reduce construction costs by 16% 6o 44%. The cost of managing jail populations could be cut by $65 per person per day by allowing individuals awaiting trial to be transferred from jail detention to less expensive community release.

Other functions include regional administration of foster care, regional operation of public utilities and regional procurement.

The state can encourage regional collaboration by identifying savings to the state — the state contributes heavily toward foster care, special education and local jails, for example — and sharing some of the projected gain with the local governments.

There is nothing sexy about these nuts-and-bolts proposals for efficiency in government. In fact, the details can be pretty boring. You won’t find citizens holding demonstrations at the state Capitol grounds to demand more regional collaboration. (Regional foster care now! Regional foster care now!) But taxpayer advocates and good-government types should find common cause in making government work more effectively.

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Posted in 2013, Governance reform, Infrastructure, Public safety & health, Social services, Water-waste water

Tagged James A. Bacon

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