Bacon's Rebellion

  • Rule of Law Prevails: Transportation Authorities Declared Unconstitutional

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    James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional the creation last year of a Northern Virginia transportation authority with taxing powers, and by implication its counterpart in Hampton Roads, on the grounds that “taxes must be imposed only by a majority of the elected representatives of a legislative body.”

    This ruling eviscerates the laboriously constructed HB 3202 transportation-financing plan that passed into law last year. Not only was the financing scheme of that bill atrocious public policy, shredding the nexus between those who used roads and those who paid for them, it was bad law. Lawmakers will have no choice but to revisit the issue of transportation financing for, between the imminent repeal of Abuser Fees and the unconstitutionality of regional authorities, precious few of the revenue-raising mechanisms enacted last year will remain in place.

    The General Assembly set up the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority and Hampton Roads Transportation Authority as regional entities represented by officials from the localities comprising each region. Although those officials had been elected to their local jurisdictions, they were not elected to the regional authorities. In a unanimous ruling, the justices declared:

    The constraints that the citizens of Virginia have placed upon the General Assembly regarding the imposition of taxes would be rendered meaningless if the General Assembly were permitted to avoid compliance with these constraints by
    delegating to NVTA the decisional authority whether to impose taxes.

    You can read the Supreme Court ruling here. I’ll update this post with reactions as they come in.

    L. Steven Emmert, author of the Virginia Appellate News & Analysis blog, weighs in with a legal perspective here.

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine: “I am disappointed by the Supreme Court’s finding. … Over the next few days, my legal staff and I will work closely with the Attorney General’s Office and members of the General Assembly to determine what alternatives are available to provide adequate transportation funding.” (See press release.)

    Attorney General Bob McDonnell: “The Virginia Supreme Court has spoken, we respect their decision, and we will advise our clients appropriately based on today’s ruling. It remains critical for Virginia’s future prosperity that we improve our transportation system.”

    House Speaker William J. Howell: “We will be reviewing this decision carefully and remain committed to sorting out the long-term prospects for the regional plans in a timely manner. Fortunately, the statewide components of the Act – which by themselves incorporate the largest single investment in transportation in a generation – are working right now to improve our roads, railways, and public transit.”

    Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling: I agree with the Supreme Court’s finding. “The authority to tax is one of the most significant responsibilities of government and that responsibility cannot and should not be delegated to a body that is not directly responsible to the voters. … The General Assembly will have to revisit the issue of providing adequate transportation funding to meet the needs of these important regions.”

  • What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

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    James A. Bacon

    Fifteen-year-old students in Finland rank among the brainiest kids in the world, according to standardized test scores — outperforming their American peers by wide margins. In an article today, the Wall Street Journal asks, what makes Finnish kids so smart? A couple of key findings come through: It isn’t the amount of money spent on education. It’s the culture, stupid.

    Finland, which has living standards comparable to the United States spends about $7,500 per student compared to $8,700 in the U.S. Finnish teachers get paid about the same. But Finland, population five million, is one of the world’s most homogenous societies. The article doesn’t say this, but I suspect it to be the case: There is much greater pressure for social comformity. When social conformity places a high value on education, that turns out to be a good thing.

    Hannele Frantsi, a school principal, sets the tone: “We don’t have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have.” As a people, the Finns love to read. According to WSJ writer Ellen Gamerman, parents of newborns receive a government-paid gift pack that includes a picture book. Libraries are attached to shopping malls. Book buses road neighborhood streets like the Good Humor truck. Finland also has a drop-out rate much lower than the U.S. — about 4 percent compared to 25 percent.

    The Finnish cultural emphasis on education is reflected also in the popularity of the teaching profession. Teaching jobs are highly competitive: More than 40 applicants for a job is not unheard of. While salaries are comparable to the U.S., Finnish teachers generally have more freedom.

    Finnish teachers pick books and customize lessons as they shape students to national standards. “In most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland, the teachers are the entrepreneurs,” says [Andreas] Schleicher, of the Paris-based OECD.

    Bottom line: Finnish teachers feel more invested in their work, and they are given more free rein for creativity. Compare that to the bureaucracy-laden, top-heavy approach to education in the U.S., where teachers function more like cogs in a machine.

    When people say spending more money is the answer, look to Finland. When people say paying teachers more money is the answer, look to Finland. The multicultural U.S. may never be able to replicate Finland’s performance in standardized tests — especially when eight percent of U.S. students are learning English as a second language — but it is within our power to slash bureaucracy, put our cash in the classroom, give teachers more freedom and make their jobs more rewarding.

  • The Watkins Bill Is Dead for Now, But It Raised Issues that Cannot be Ignored

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    James A. Bacon

    A House of Delegates committee has spiked a bill that would overhaul Virginia’s patchwork system of proffers and impact fees, but not because lawmakers are enamored with the current system. They hope to come back next year with legislation that reflects more input from local governments, reports Sandhya Somashekhar with the Washington Post.

    Remarkably, the Republican-dominated House was in agreement with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a Democrat, on the issue. Stated Kaine yesterday: “I can see some significant problems with the proffer system.” The governor said he would be open to a more “uniform, rational” system that helps lower housing costs.

    The problem with the legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, and backed by the home building lobby, is that it set the impact fees at a ludicrously low level: $12,500 in Northern Virginia and $7,500 in the Rest of Virginia. Local governments estimate the fiscal impact associated with the construction of a new home — providing schools, roads, public safety buildings — at $40,000 or more in fast-growth jurisdictions like Loudoun and Prince William.

    However, the bill offered one very powerful insight that makes it worth revisiting next year: It would have imposed impact fees on “by right” development, as opposed to collecting proffers only from developers who rezone their land. Currently, local governments get no recompense for by-right development. The downfall of the bill is that the fees it specified are so low, it is feared, that even expanding the tax base would not make up the difference.

    The problem of by-right development is much bigger than most people realize. Because it gets a free ride fiscally speaking, by-right development enjoys a tremendous competitive advantage in the marketplace. That’s unfortunate because by-right development consists largely of small-scale, pod-style development — not the larger, planned communities with mixed uses and walkability that many home buyers prefer. Thus, the current proffer/fee system subsidizes the scattered, low-density human settlement patterns that consume so much energy, generate so much pollution and make public services so more expensive to provide.

    In an ideal world, local governments would dispense with negotiated proffers and apply impact fees on all development, thus broadening the tax base and creating a level playing field between rezoned and by-right projects. But the impact fees would be set high enough to recompense local governments for the expense of widening roads, extending water and sewer, building new schools, erecting public safety buildings, buying new fire trucks, etc.

    The challenge is to devise an agreed-upon methodology for calculating thoses costs and setting a reasonable fee to cover them. Different municipalities make their own calculations. Which costs do they include? Which costs should they include?

    That raises another critical issue: Should impact fees be uniform? I would argue that not all human settlement patterns are created equal. Some projects are configured in such a way as to pose less financial burden on the community — fewer Vehicle Miles Driven per resident, few lane-miles of road to maintain, fewer miles of water and sewer pipeline to run, shorter distances for school buses to drive, shorter response times for police, fire and rescue crews. Would it not make sense to create a fee schedule that varied depending upon the impact of the development project in question?

    Embedded in the empirical question of what expenses the fees cover is the philosophical question of what they should cover. Should new development bear the full fiscal cost of providing public infrastructure, or should existing residents bear a share of the burden as well? Does loading up the full fiscal burden onto new development make housing unaffordable, creating a whole new set of issues and problems?

    However one answers these questions, it is clear that the Watkins bill does not address them. The task of devising a fair and reasonable methodology for calculating and setting impact fees, I would submit, should be the top issue on the agenda for whomever studies the issue later this year.

  • Broken Borders and Militant Jihad

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    James A. Bacon

    Like other bloggers, Jeff Baird is a working stiff who plugs away at his job by day and pursues his blogging passion at night. But with virtually no cash — just some help from some of his computer-geek friends — he has produced a news-aggregation website of startling technical sophistication within just a few months. I take a special interest in Rightside News because I gave Baird, who lives in Richmond and reads Bacon’s Rebellion, some advice early in his venture on how to hone his editorial focus. What he has accomplished on a shoestring is nothing short of remarkable.

    As one might expect from the name of his publication, Rightside News takes a right-wing slant on the issues — certainly more conservative than my own. Baird has a wide range of interests, which shows in his selection of articles, but his common theme is the threat to the American way of life from uncontrolled borders. Two of his three news channels are entitled, “Border & Sovereignty” and “Jihad USA.” Drawing upon a wide range of Internet reporting and commentary, one channel highlights the phenomenon of illegal immigration and broken borders, while the second focuses on the spread of militant jihadism inside the United States. In both instances, Baird rounds up perspectives that you will rarely see displayed on the front page of your newspaper, much less on television (unless you watch Lou Dobbs).

    Although Baird’s interests are global (his third news channel is “Global Jidad”), he cannot help but be interested in how the issues play out in his own back yard, Virginia. If you’d been reading Rightside News, for instance, you could known that Esam Omeish, the militant leader of the Muslim American Society whose appointment to the Virginia Commission on Immigration sparked so much controversy, spoke at an organizing conference a week ago at the University of Toledo.

    While Oneish does not preach violent jihad, there are others in Virginia who do. (See “Jihadists in our Midst.”) Then there is the Jamaat ul-Fuqra (“Community of the Empoverished”), which maintains a secretive compound the back woods of Charlotte County. The Gates of Vienna blog provides one blogger’s inquiries into this community that, he alleges, “refused to let its girl children go to school, and had top members arrested and convicted by the FBI for firearms violations. “

    Jihad inside the United States is a realm where the Mainstream Media has proven over more than six years since 9/11 that it has little interest in pursuing. Clearly, we don’t want to cast apersions on innocent Muslims living peacefully and lawfully in this country by launching witch hunts for jihadists. But on the other hand, we can’t let politically correct thinking blind us to the reality that home-grown terrorist movements have taken root.

    It is beyond the scope of Bacon’s Rebellion to track militant jihadists. Our mission is building more prosperous, livable and sustainable regions. But Jihad inside the U.S. is read meat for Baird. If readers share Baird’s concerns, I recommend Rightside News to them. Baird wants to create original content for his website, so he is looking for contributors. Anyone willing to write and do research on the topic should feel free to contact him at
    [email protected].

  • Tim Hugo: Telework Champion

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    James A. Bacon

    Let me be clear up front: Telework is not a panacea for anything. While the practice does show potential for reducing the number of commuting trips — thus relieving traffic congestion, burning less gasoline and emitting fewer pollutants — there are limits to how much large organizations are willing to let their employees work at home.

    Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal reports today, several high-profile companies that promoted telework and telecommuting are rethinking the merits of telework and have called some of their home-based workers back to the office. Working solo at home is not conducive, it appears, to collaboration and team building. Meanwhile, one of the nation’s biggest telework promoters, the federal government, posted a 7.3 percent drop in teleworkers between 2005 and 2006, due in part to a recall by the Interior Department.

    Despite that significant caveat, I believe we will see an inexorable increase in the number of teleworkers, even if follows a path of two steps forward, one step backward. Here are some reasons why:

    • New technologies, such as inexpensive, quality videoconferencing, will improve communication between teleworkers and their office-bound mates, providing the facial cues and body language absent in e-mail and telephone conversations.

    • The “green” movement is gaining momentum. Telework is as green as Saint Patrick: It conserves energy by reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled and enabling organizations to shrink the size of their offices, thus cutting HVAC and lighting costs.

    • The knowledge economy continues to evolve to more flexible labor markets, in which large organizations rely increasingly upon contract workers who do some, if not most, of their work from home.

    • As baby boomers retire, creating a chronic labor shortage, employers will compete for employees by providing them more work-life balance. Typically, that balance means more flexible hours and work locations, including telework.

    We will see more telework in the future. And, while we must be careful not to expect too much, too fast, from this practice, Virgina lawmakers need to take reasonable measures to encourage it.

    Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, has struck the right balance with recent legislation that he sponsored. In these three bills, which have sailed through the General Assembly and now await the governor’s signature, Hugo doesn’t fall prey to the legislator’s usual temptation of, “If we want something, let’s subsidize it.” One bill, HB 1017, would create an office of Telework Promotion and Broadband Assistance under the Secretary of Technology. States the bill summary:

    The goals of the Office are to encourage telework as a family-friendly, business-friendly public policy that promotes workplace efficiency and reduces strain on transportation infrastructure. In conjunction with efforts to promote telework, the Office shall work with public and private entities to develop widespread access to broadband services.

    A second bill, HB 1018, provides a definition of telework, while a third, HB 2021, Establishes a goal for state agencies, except for the Department of State Police, to have 20 percent of their eligible workforce telecommuting by January 1, 2010.

    Bacon’s bottom line: These measures are entirely appropriate. No subsidies here, no tax credits. The Commonwealth will step up its backing for broadband deployment, indispensable of telework, across the state. And the state will swallow its own medicine, promoting telework within its own workforce. As long as that 20 percent goal is a target, not a hard requirement plucked from thin air, the law is entirely appropriate.

  • WaPo ADS

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    James A. Bacon

    One of the responses we received from readers of THE ESTATES MATRIX was that we were a bit hard on the role of advertising in MainStream.

    Please tell us why it is not a conflict of interest to publish on page A-1 of the 24 February WaPo a He Said / She Said story on the Dominion Power transmission line along the Rappahannock River and then run a full page color image ad for Dominion Power on page A 20 with the opening text: Every Day Dominion Biologist George Birdsong helps Hundreds of fly fishermen enjoy Virginia’s Catch.”

    Back on 8 February Jim Bacon noted the arrival of a new Publisher / Media Chief at the Washington Post Co. Jim’s post “Who Will Report the News? WaPo Gets New Publisher” raised the right issues but received no comments.

    The new publisher, Katharine Weymouth, was – before her promotion – the Vice President of Advertising.

    A strange place from which to select a new “publisher?

    Today’s WaPo Section A is 18 pages and four of those pages are full color image ads for energy Enterprises and energy Enterprise supported Institutions. Each one includes material or suggests interpretations that those concerned with shrinking human’s ecological footprint would question.

    MainStream Media is now the mouthpiece of Second Estate Enterprises. They no longer have a way to play an honest role in the Fourth Estate.

    EMR

  • Home On the Range

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    James A. Bacon

    As Jim noted below, the vote to scrap the homestead exemption was the right move for the wrong reason. But more insight on the reasons why Senate Republicans decided to vote against the measure come from Sen. Cuccinelli’s newsletter this morning. The story is the bill was poorly worded and, due to a habit I regularly chastise in my Son, the worthies simply weren’t paying attention when they passed in last session. See if you can follow this:

    Note that the language “exempt or partially exempt” does NOT require that the tax exemption be provided to every homeowner or farm. Rather, the 20% is calculated on the TOTAL VALUE of all residential real estate in a locality.

    The language “upon such conditions as may be prescribed by the governing body” allows local governments to selectively grant the exemption.

    So, let’s look at this in a hypothetical: Say there’s a locality where all of the residential real estate is the same value, with 500 homes each worth $100,000, for a total assessed value of $50,000,000. Our intention is that only $80,000 of the value of each home be taxed; however, the language of the proposed amendment allows a local government to give 100 homes a 100% tax exemption! Yikes. This was not caught last year (more on that below).

    This isn’t a tax cut, it’s a welfare program that will get doled out to the politically favored neighborhoods in each locality, which explains why Sen. Whipple and the Dems like it so much. They get to say that they’re tax cutters when what they’re really doing is giving their local government allies the ability to dole out money to favored constituents. How do we know this will happen? Because it already does. For example, in Lynchburg, Ward 2 residents pay less for their trash service, while everyone else pays extra. Who do you suppose folks in Ward 2 vote for, incumbents or challengers?

    The language proposed would allow the legalization of political pork through real estate tax exemptions.

    I do not doubt that such chicanery would occur. However, I think that rather than going back to the drawing board on this matter, legislators would be far better advised to step away from the this approach entirely. An exemption, while it seems nice and certainly, it would make folks feel a bit richer come tax day, does not address the real problem:

    Local governments, like their counterpart the state, are spending addicts. Granted, they all face rising costs, and some of those are beyond their immediate control. But consider this…

    Along with my water bill from Henrico County came a glossy, full color insert urging residents to vote for a change in their postal designation from “Richmond” to “Henrico.” The reason? Confused locals are sending tax monies that should go to the County to the city, depriving Henrico of an estimated $5 million per year.

    Okay, I can see that point. But how is this concept sold to residents? With an extra $5 million, the County can hire more police, more teachers, build this, construct that, and on and on. No where is the possibility mentioned that the monies could be used to offset — even a tiny bit — the existing tax burden.

    The County has it’s eyes on more money…which it intends to spend right away, thus creating additional costs that will only compound in the future. So again, it’s not just taxes that are a problem…it’s spending and the mindset that sees government growth as an unalloyed good.

    The idea of a homestead exemption has an almost reflexive appeal to my friends on the anti-tax side of life. And I’m all for tax cuts — so long as we also cut spending. We need look no further than the car tax cut to see why this is so important. Yes, it was something of a shell game. But did this “cut” reduce the overall tax burden? Or more importantly, did it shrink the size of government at all?

    I don’t think so. Just as I don’t think the homestead exemption — however written –would have saved anyone much money in the long run.

  • Sub-Zero Sympathy for Sub-Prime Speculators

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    James A. Bacon

    Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is expected to announce today a plan to regulate high-risk mortgage lenders and staunch the rise in home foreclosures — which the Center for Responsible Lending estimates will number more than 62,000 in Virginia before the mortgage crisis ends. According to the Washington Post:

    Lenders who engage in high-risk lending schemes would be required to give borrowers 10 days’ notice of a change in the terms of their loan. The lender also would have to provide contact information for three mortgage counseling agencies. In addition, the lender would be required to grant borrowers who request it a 30-day grace period before starting the foreclosure process.

    And what constitutes a “high-risk lending scheme”? According to the Times-Dispatch:

    A high-risk mortgage loan covered by the bill would be one whose interest rate exceeds that of U.S. Treasury securities with a similar maturity by 5 percentage points or more or whose upfront points and fees were greater than 7 percent of the total loan amount.

    It’s always a sad story when some poor family loses a house and gets dumped on the street. I’m sure that some of those 62,000 foreclosures will be honest, hard-working people who worried that they’d get priced out of the market by ever-escalating home prices if they didn’t jump on board quickly, borrowed more than they really could afford, and ended up losing their shirts. Some few, no doubt, were pressured into taking loans by fast-buck artists who minimized the risks. I feel a measure of compassion for those people. Trouble is, I suspect they account for a relatively small portion of foreclosures here in Virginia.

    What do-gooder legislation like Gov. Kaine’s ignores is that many home buyers, whether they planned to live in the house themselves or were simply speculators looking to flip the house for a profit, were motivated by a hope for easy gain from home prices that promised to escalate forever. Many foreclosures result from people walking away from bad bets — from an unwillingness to pay, not an inability to pay.

    The legislation also ignores this complexity: Some borrowers wind up losing their houses because they re-financed homes they’d owned for years in order to take out equity, either to spend, pay off other debts, or use otherwise. By taking out equity when houses were appreciating in value, they destroyed the equity cushion that could have tided them over when times turned tough. Just another form of speculation.

    A recent study by the Federal Reserve Board of Boston, “Subprime Outcomes: Risky Mortgages, Homeownership Experiences, and Foreclosures,” concludes that, while sub-prime borrowers in Masschusetts are significantly more likely to default on their loans than prime credit borrowers, falling housing prices have played a much a greater role in foreclosures than generally acknowledged.

    We present two main findings. First, homeownerships that begin with a subprime purchase mortgage end up in foreclosure almost 20 percent of the time, or more than 6 times as often as experiences that begin with prime purchase mortgages. Second, house price appreciation plays a dominant role in generating foreclosures. In fact, we attribute most of the dramatic rise in Massachusetts foreclosures during 2006 and 2007 to the decline in house prices that began in the summer of 2005.

    My mother was smart enough to see the real estate bubble coming in south Florida and sold out her condominium near the top of the market. A young, professional woman purchased the unit from her. Not to live in, but to speculate with. She’d pocketed handsome sums from previous speculations and was expanding her holdings. The market soon turned south, and I wouldn’t be surprised if her properties were foreclosed upon. I don’t bear the woman any personal animus, but I have absolutely zero sympathy for any misfortune she might have suffered — indeed, I might describe my sentiment as sub-zero sympathy, as in, she got was was coming to her if she was forced to foreclose.

    Americans are a compassionate people, and we feel the pain of people who have fallen upon hard times. But when government steps in to ease their plight, people learn the wrong lesson: Instead of gaining a healthy respect for taking risk, they expect government to come to their aid. We have become a nation that privatizes profit but socializes loss. That can lead only to riskier and self-destructive behavior. We Virginians should not encourage excessive speculation in any way.

  • Look for the Superbus

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    James A. Bacon

    Not long ago, I penned a column lamenting the innovation gap between the automobile industry and the mass transit industry. (See “The Innovation Gap.”) If I were a wagering man, I’d still bet that the auto industry will outstrip mass transit in the pace at which it integrates new technology into its vehicles. But the mass transit sector may not be as slow and stodgy as I’d thought.

    Writing in Governing magazine, Ellen Perlman describes “The Year of the Superbus.” Commuter buses are getting decked out with closed-circuit television, Wi-Fi access, reclining seats, cupholders, and ruggage racks for laptops and briefcases. With GPS sensors embedded on buses, transit companies know exactly where their vehicles are, and they can notify passengers if a particular bus is running on time or late.

    There are some innovations in Bus Rapid Transit as well. Traffic lights can be manipulated so that buses can run faster between stations, and the buses themselves are being redesigned to facilitate people boarding and getting off more quickly, like they do on the subway.

    There seems to be no lack of ideas. There are loads of experiments across the United States. The problem, which isn’t addressed in the article, is the speed at which government and quasi-government monopolies implement change. Automobiles, I predict, will be outfitted with the latest gee-whiz technology long before buses will.

  • The Right Vote for the Wrong Reasons

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    James A. Bacon

    Republicans in the state Senate have spiked the so-called homestead exemption, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have enabled local governments to shift the property tax burden from homeowners to commercial property owners.

    There are good reasons to oppose the legislation, as I’ve blogged in the past: It would hurt renters, who are disproportionately poor and working class, and it would provide the middle class only a temporary reprieve from steadily upward marching tax rates. If lawmakers really want to help taxpayers, quit with the gimmicks and address the rising cost of government.

    Unfortunately, according to the Washington Post, the Republicans didn’t cite those legitimate reasons for killing the bill. Aside from worrying about the higher tax on business, they told the Post, “It was a flawed bill that needed more scrutiny. In particular, they said, the language could be construed to let only certain neighborhoods receive the exemption.”

    They’re objecting to the legislation on the basis of a technicality? If the language of the bill were corrected so that exemption applied to an entire locality and not just “certain neighborhoods,” they might consider supporting the homestead exemption? C’mon.

    The problem with the legislation is that it is structured as a win-lose proposition: For every person who benefits from tax relief, the tax burden gets shifted to someone else. It’s inherently divisive. The only long-term solutions to the problem of overtaxation are productivity and efficiency. That means streamlining government administration. Encouraging the development of human settlement patterns that are less expensive to serve with roads, utilities and services. Squeezing the bureaucratic bloat out of K-12 education. Reforming a dysfunctional health care system that drives up Medicaid costs. Develop programs that rehabilitate prisoners and ease their re-entry into society. Anything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

  • Profiles in Courage

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    James A. Bacon

    From a Washington Post article this morning recounting the defeat in the state Senate of a Democratic-backed proposal to increase the state gasoline tax:

    [Del. Brian Moran, D-Alexandria,] a likely Democratic candidate for governor next year, said he voted against the increase because it failed to garner support from Republicans. “Any effort to raise taxes has to be bipartisan,” Moran said. “This was an opportunity for rural legislators to take the lead, and they chose not to.”

    Moran’s decision could become an issue in next year’s Democratic primary for governor. Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath), who also is running for governor, voted for [the] bill in the Senate.

    Presumably, Morgan supports the idea of the gas tax — he just doesn’t want to take the heat for it. Hmm… Wonder what kind of governor he would be.

  • Curriculum VITA

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    James A. Bacon

    Behind the scenes, a major backlash against the Virginia Information Technologies Agency seems to be underway. One bill favored by the Kaine administration, but since deep-sixed, sought to transfer power over the purchase of computer hardware and peripherals to the Department of General Services, which oversees procurement for everything else in state government. Meanwhile, Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, has pushed a bill that would direct the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) to evaluate the cost, quality and value of services that VITA provides state agencies.

    After I raised a number of issues in a recent post, VITA chief Lemuel Stewart offered to address them. He invited me to the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center, the state’s new IT nerve center south of Richmond, for a tour and interview. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

    Today’s e-zine column, “Curriculum VITA,” summarizes my findings from that visit. Let me make this very clear: This is just one side of the story, VITA’s side. I did not have the time to solicit quotes from agency administrators, most of whom would have been politically constrained in any case from stating their true opinions. Even so, Stewart makes a strong case that VITA has racked up impressive achievements in overhauling an IT infrastructure that had operated inefficiently as some 90 disjointed, feudal-style entities across state government. Accomplishments include:

    • Greater security from a catastrophic failure of the system due to a hurricane, hackers, saboteurs or some other external cause.
    • A statewide IT system built on 2000s-era technology, a big upgrade from the ’80s-era technology that served about 60 percent of the state bureaucracy.
    • Leveraging the state’s size to drive down the price of PCs and applications, saving tens of millions of dollars each year.
    • Electricity savings from energy-efficient PCs, servers and other hardware — the benefit for which shows up in agencies’ electric bills, not their IT budgets.
    • No IT project failures, in contrast to a track record of tens of millions of dollars in pre-VITA projects that crashed and burned.

    Plus, there’s one more benefit that I didn’t get into the story: Construction of a back-up facility in Lebanon, in Southwest Virginia, by VITA partner Northrop Grumman, creating more than 400 quality, knowledge-economy jobs in an economically distressed region of the state.

    Stewart attributes the dissatisfaction to three primary causes: (1) agency loss of authority over IT projects costing more than $100,000; (2) the migration of state government to the new system one agency at a time, delaying the benefits for some; and (3) changes in the formula that allocates IT costs between agencies, resulting in some winners and some losers. When the three-year transition phase winds up by the end of this year, he predicts, much of the unhappiness should dissipate.

    To repeat, this is Stewart’s side of the story. If you have other perspectives, please consider this blog a forum to air them.

  • The Big Lie?

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    James A. Bacon

    Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell got headlines throughout the region Feb. 21 by showing he was tough on both immigration and sex offenders. Boasting that his cooperation with federal and state law enforcement authorities could be a model nationally, McDonnell said that more than 171 immigrant sex offenders had been identified and set up for deportation.

    A closer reading (see my column, “The Big Lie?”) shows that most of the foreign-born people on the sex offenders list weren’t here, had been deported or were about to be deported. That’s hardly a call to arms for ever tougher enforcement.

    It doesn’t matter, though, because headlines boost McDonnell, GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2009, once again unfairly tainting newcomers for craven political purposes. Research can’t decide if immigrants are a bigger sex crime threat than native born Americans. But if right-wing politicians like McDonnell keep repeating a Big Lie, people will believe it.

    (Posted on behalf of Peter Galuszka.)

  • From an Undisclosed Location in Henrico County…

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    James A. Bacon

    The elusive militants behind Bacon’s Rebellion have issued another missive, apparently timing their communication to influence the current session of the General Assembly. Authorities say that the Feb. 25, 2008, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, which can be found online, made an appeal to elements of the population disaffected with Business As Usual. Particularly insidious, officials noted, was the e-zine’s technique of offering free subscriptions as a tactic to recruit more adherents.

    Here is a summary of the contents:

    Curriculum VITA
    The overhaul of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s antiquated IT system is a textbook study of how government can improve performance and save money — without a dime of taxpayer investment.
    by James A. Bacon

    Walking Ahead of the Times
    Virginia’s stagnation two centuries ago reminds us that true leaders slip the bonds of the present, not just the past.
    by Doug Koelemay

    Learning from the Mouse
    Why do people travel halfway around the world to visit Disney World and Octoberfest? One big reason: Both are places where you don’t need cars to get around.
    by EM Risse

    Fund the Child, Not the Bureaucracy
    Virginia’s formula for distributing state aid to schools is indecipherable. A little common sense would make the system more transparent.
    by Chris Braunlich

    The Big Lie?
    Headlines tie immigrants to sex crimes as politicians like GOP gubernatorial hopeful McDonnell cash in on the xenophobia they stir up.
    by Peter Galuszka

    The Untold Story
    House Republicans warrant much of the criticism they get, but give them credit for this: They share power more fairly with minority Democrats than the Dems ever did with them.
    by Frank Kilgore

    Nice & Curious Questions
    The Physics of Incentives
    Or, Enterprise Zones in the Old Dominion
    by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

  • Richmond-y Goodness

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    For people like me, who’ve been deeply distracted all week and haven’t had much of a chance to blog, there’s no better way to get in touch with what’s shaking in River City than reading Don Harrison. This one’s a beauty, covering the mayoral election, the city’s war on nightlife, the decrepit schools…it’s all good.

    But Don does raise a few issues that need to be addressed. The first is the city’s aptly-titled war of attrition against night clubs it deems unsavory:

    You’d really have to be a “certifiable” apologist for the status quo in order to defend the city’s totally-illogical targeting of the Cotton Club and Club 534, as detailed in this week’s Style Weekly. Still, I’ve heard no staunch defenders of property rights out in the blogosphere or anywhere else standing up to denounce the city’s blatant harassment and targeting of nightclubs they don’t approve of — but can’t legally close down.

    I plead guilty to not following this story, but will admit that it has that special statist odor which usually seeps from the pores of bureaucrats with more time on their hands than common sense in their heads. Or, to be more precise, they seem to have more than one master…in this case, very possibly, VCU, which wants one of the properties in question and tried recently to purchase it, but were unsuccessful. Read the whole Style piece to get a sense of the byzantine maneuvering going on here… and then ask yourself whether the much vaunted changes in Richmond’s political culture are merely cosmetic, or simply illusory.

    The real fun for locals, though, is the upcoming race for Richmond mayor. The current incumbent, Doug Wilder, has systematically burned and then dynamited the ruins of just about every bridge he has during his tenure. That’s not to say some of those bridges didn’t deserve what the treatment they got. They did. However, residents are right to ask whether the Wilder years have really, truly, beneficial. Having left the city nearly four years ago (owing almost entirely to the condition of the city’s schools), it’s hard for me to say whether the day-to-day operations have improved. But even from a distance, it is apparent that Richmond has a long way to go before it is fully clear of the incompetence that characterized its government. Somehow, the great white elephant of a performing arts center is still moving forward. For whatever reason, the school system’s overseers still seem more interested in settling personal scores than improving the lot of their young charges. And the political culture still seems to be as backward and tribal as ever.

    For those reasons and more, folks like Paul Goldman and Jackie Jackson have decided to run for mayor, while Wilder remains publicly uncommitted. Perhaps he will dive in, and I suspect that if he does, he will be the prohibitive favorite. However, Paul Goldman’s mere presence in the race should make any contest between the two worth watching. As for Jackson, who still seems to be shopping for a constituency, I can’t say that her presence will make much of a difference. That could change as the race develops, of course, but for now, Richmond residents may be in for a contest pitting the Wild One against his one-time Richelieu. They could (and maybe should) sell tickets to that one.

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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