That’s my reaction to the news that Pat Robertson, chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, is a potential bidder for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper, which the Batten family has put up for sale. According to an Associated Press story:
“Although the price for The Weather Channel is a little rich for my blood, I am considering a potential bid for The Pilot and have asked my attorneys to look into it,” Robertson said in an e-mail statement provided Friday by his assistant, G.G. Conklin.
Outside of the Rail-to-Tysons heavy rail debate, the most fascinating development battle taking place in Virginia at the moment is in the Fredericksburg region. The City of Fredericksburg, which is experiencing major fiscal stress at the moment, is pushing development of the Celebrate Virginia project just off Interstate 95 as a way to expand the tax base.
The developer, the Silver Companies, is touting the project as a net plus to the region because attractions like the National Slavery Museum and the Kalahari waterpark would bring in thousands upon thousands of visitors, who will fill city coffers with sales and lodging taxes. Critics contend that the project will incur millions of dollars in tax breaks, public subsidies and other costs — many of them hidden — and could never stand on its own.
Today in the Free Lance-Star, reporter Emily Battle underlines City Council’s motivation for backing the project. Revenue from the sales tax, the city’s second largest source of taxes, is down. In November sales tax revenue fell short of $900,000 — the first time November revenues had dipped below $1 million since 2003 before Central Park, a massive retail project at the intersection of I-95 and Rt. 3, opened. That project, ironically, also was developed by the Silver Companies amidst considerable controversy and billed as the city’s financial savior.
Noting that the City has spent $30.2 million so far this year but has brought in only $25.5 million so far, the Fredericksburg City Manager is implementing a hiring freeze. Under the circumstances, some councilmen argue that the City needs the Kalahari waterpark all the more.
Before betting the farm on Kalahari, however, City Council might be well advised to revisit the deal they cut with the Silver Companies to develop Central Park. Back when the deal was being inked, what sales tax revenues did the City expect Central Park to yield in fiscal 2008? How do those forecasts compare to reality? If Central Park tax revenues are falling short of expectations, what assurance is there that Celebrate Virginia projections can be relied upon?
Just asking.
As the General Assembly works on its budget, the “rebenchmarking” of the educational Standards of Quality looms large. This Constitutionally mandated process recalculates how much Virginia school districts receive in some $6.2 billion in Direct Aid to Public Education dollars distributed by the state.
As I’ve often observed before, this rebenchmarking process represents one of the greatest inter-regional transfers of wealth in the state. By a complicated process, it punishes municipalities that choose to spend more local tax dollars on tax education. Each time the SOLs are rebenchmarked, the more dramatic the redistribution gets. Accordingly, it is instructive to see what happened when the SOLs were last rebenchmarked, in 2006. Many Virginia cities and counties enjoyed such a windfall of state revenue that they could cut their contributions of local tax dollars.
Chris Braunlich, a Fairfax resident and regular contributor to Bacon’s Rebellion, has documented this perverse effect. You can view the full document here. Here are some highlights:
In 2006, the City of Lexington received $1,139 in additional state funds per pupil — and cut their own contribution by $446 per pupil.
The City of Covington received $796 per pupil more from the state, and cut its local contribution by $644.
My home county, Henrico, an affluent suburban jurisdiction, received $423 more per pupil and cut its local contribution by $53.
Chesterfield County, the fourth most populous jurisdiction in Virginia, received $415 more per pupil and cut its own contribution by $239.
If Northern Virginia taxpayers want to know how they’re getting shafted in Richmond, this is where they ought to be looking. As a Henrico resident, I’m a beneficiary of the funding formula. But that doesn’t make it right. This formula is broken. Lil Tuttle with the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute has suggested a formula that makes far more sense. If lawmakers sincerely want to fix public education — as opposed to perpetuate the current boondoggle — they could start here.
(Hat tip: The blogger known as Too Many Taxes.)
Here’s an idea I never would have expected to see coming from a Republican lawmaker: Lt. Governor Bill Bolling is backing legislation that would make it easier for citizens to appeal land use decisions they don’t like. In a recent e-mail, he writes:
Under current Virginia law, citizens can appeal an adverse land use decision by a local governing body to the Board of Zoning Appeals, and ultimately to the Circuit Court. However, if the citizen prevails in such appeals there is no mechanism for them to recover the costs they incur as a result of the appeal. Because these appeals can be very expensive, the lack of a cost recovery process serves as a deterrent to citizens in appealing adverse zoning decisions, even if those decisions adversely impact their private property rights.
To correct this, I will support legislation to enable citizens to recover the costs associated with such appeals from the local government if their decision is reversed by either the Board of Zoning Appeals or the court.
As a rebel by temperament, I tend to be highly critical of the way we Virginians conduct our business. But it’s OK to remind ourselves occasionally that we do a few things right. In his State of the Commonwealth speech yesterday, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine listed a number of accomplishments that Virginia can be proud of.
As our Department of Health prepares to celebrate its 100th year of service, they have helped Virginia capture one of the highest rankings in the nation for preparedness for public health emergencies.
Virginia was named the best state for business in the nation this year by Forbes.com, CNBC, and other business publications. We have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, our average wages are among the highest, and with your support for the Governor’s Opportunity Fund, we announced the creation of over 15,500 new jobs in 2007. Just yesterday, we started 2008 off with a great economic development victory—RTI will invest $100 million and bring 150 high-paying
titanium processing jobs to the Martinsville/Henry County region.Virginia’s per capita state and local tax burden as a percent of income ranks 43rd – one of the lowest in the nation – and our per capita income is the 9th highest in America. Our fiscal stewardship has been rewarded with rare Triple A ratings by all three major bonding agencies.
According to Education Week, children born in Virginia have the best chance of life success of any children in the nation. Ten Virginia high schools made Newsweek’s top 100 high schools list, and three of Virginia’s public universities are ranked in US News and World Report’s top 100.
For more information about that $100 million investment in Martinsville, which will create 150 jobs, click here.
The Urban Richmond blog provides a great visual on how much space cars take up compared to buses and bicycles. Truly a case where a picture (or, in this case, three pictures) are worth a thousand words.
When last we visited the Kalahari water park project in Fredericksburg (see “Kalahari and the Politics of Interstate Interchanges“), the all-consuming issue was who would pay to build an interchange at Interstate 95 to serve the water park and the rest of the massive Celebrate Virginia project.
Fredericksburg would give back nearly half of the local taxes paid by Kalahari Resorts as part of a 20-year, $61 million incentives package that helped convince the Wisconsin-based company to build a water park hotel and convention center in the Celebrate Virginia tourism complex.
The agreement calls for the city to waive $3.35 million in up-front development fees for the project. The bulk of that is a waiver of the roughly $3.2 million in water and sewer availability fees Kalahari would have to pay to connect to the city’s utility system. In addition to fee waivers, the deal calls for the city to return 47.5 percent of the local tax revenues that Kalahari generates to the resort on a quarterly basis for 20 years.
Rick Sincere has an excellent post (compete with video!) of the press conference yesterday at which a proposal to create greater budget transparency was introduced.
It’s a good step forward — Virginians deserve to know where their money is being spent and, perhaps, legislators and others will feel a greater degree of responsibility for ensuring that those funds are spend wisely.
Well I can dream, can’t I?
Politically, the measure has an interesting number of supporters. Sens. Cuccinelli and Petersen were on hand to give their backing for it, and they were joined, either in person or by proxy, LTG Bill Bolling, AG Bob McDonnell and a number of Delegates. Where is the Governor in all this? Discussions have taken place with his policy people, so he’s at least being kept in the loop, if not yet on board.
I suggest he does. While transparency alone is no guarantee that the worthies will become better stewards of our money, it does create a means through which (some) taxpayers will be able to track spending, question priorities and perhaps even offer constructive feedback. (I can still dream, right?)
Rick pulled this editorial from the Free Lance-Star, which I think frames the matter extremely well:
A couple of existent programs nibble around the edges of what the senator and his co-patrons hope to accomplish. Virginia Performs, an administration creation, rates the progress of state agencies in pursuing quality-of-life goals. The state Auditor of Public Accounts’ Commonwealth Data Point, a Web site, paints a broad-brush portrait of how state government operates, including in the budgetary realm. But both programs are deficient in the all-important “fine print” category.
Mr. Kaine should support this transparency initiative, not because it would make his life easier operationally–the measure, for example, would expose to the cyberized world the practice of some state agencies to shift funds among program accounts–but because in principle it’s the right and progressive thing to do. The money with which the legislative cardinalate and administration nabobs play government is the people’s money. They should be able to see what becomes of it, quickly and easily, every step of the way.
I think the measure’s backers had an editorial board with the RTD, too. I couldn’t find any mention of it in the online paper today (though Robert Frost manages to get a couple of inches…yeesh).
We can argue in endless circles whether Dominion and other Virginia power companies need to build major new power plants, or whether conservation and renewable energy sources can meet Virginia’s energy needs for the foreseeable future. What is not up for argument is that Virginia can do far more than it currently does to encourage conservation.
All you have to do is look at California. According to today’s Wall Street Journal, California regulators use a carrot-and-stick approach to incentivize power companies to conserve. The regulatory scheme rewards electric utilities cash equal to 12 percent of the costs they avoid if they meet or exceed conservation targets, but punishes them if they fall far short.
Thus incented, PG&E, which serves northern California, has subsidized the sale of 7.6 million compact fluorescent lightbulbs so far, and expects to raise the total to as many as 20 million — enough to fill 10 percent of the light sockets in northern California homes. The CFLs use only a quarter of the electricity of regular bulbs. And the CFL subsidies are just the most visible program. PG&E has some 85 programs in all, employing 462 people, to help customers cut energy use: from helping Safeway Inc. choose more efficient chicken rotisseries to paying computer manufacturers to supply more efficient power-supply units.
PG&E has one big advantage over Dominion in encouraging conservation: It’s electric rates are so much higher that consumers get a much higher payback on their investments in energy efficiency. Dominion can hardly be criticized for keeping its electric rates low. Indeed, I say, thank you very much. But low rates are no excuse for Virginia’s failure so far to put into place regulatory incentives and rate structures that encourage conservation where it makes sense. Give us the option, please. Let us make the decision ourselves.
Update: Dominion has just issued a press release noting that sales of CFL bulbs have reached 558,000 in the first three months of its light bulb initiative. Dominion provides a $1.50 discount on single bulbs and $3 for multi-packs. The company’s goals now are to sell 5 million over three years.
It’s not often that you see someone seriously arguing for mass transit in the Richmond area, but Ford Weber, director of the Virginia Local Initiatives Support Corporation, makes the case on the Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed page today.
The Richmond metropolitan planning organization is conducting a major study evaluating the region’s mass transit needs over the next 25 years. Trouble is, writes Weber, that study is basing its conclusions on Virginia Employment Commission’s projections of future population and employment growth. “The VEC projections … call for unending suburban sprawl over the next 25 years.”
The VEC numbers do not take into account significant shifts in development patterns, especially the increasing popularity of New Urbanism projects in the region, rising fuel prices or demographic changes. “Nor,” Weber writes, “do the VEC’s projections reflect mass transit’s ability to proactively shape growth by channeling high-density development into targeted transit corridors.”
Ironically, it appears that the decision to use VEC numbers will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fact that scattered, disconnected low-density development makes mass transit uneconomical will bias the study to conclude that the region cannot afford the mass transit option. Such a conclusion will undermine political support for funding mass transit. The lack of a politically viable mass transit option will relieve municipalities from the necessity of planning for nodes of denser development capable of supporting light rail and buses. Thus, sprawl will continue and the VEC will be proved right.
What a mess. As readers of this blog know, I don’t believe in dumping money blindly into mass transit projects. Indeed, I think that mass transit should be required to pay its own way, just as roads should. In “Midlothian Leviathan,” I’ve shown conceptually how this can be done by redeveloping land around the train stations and capturing some of the increased property value to pay for the up-front capital costs.
Still, it would be a shame to kill off the mass transit option simply through unintentional biases in the selection of data used in the study. Ruling out a major transportation alternative on the basis of a flawed methodology would be a grievous mistake.
Del. Franklin P. Hall, R-Richmond, takes to the pages of the Richmond Times-Dispatch today to explain why he wants to create a Richmond regional transportation authority. He comes dangerously close to making some insightful observations — then backs off to embrace the wisdom of Business As Usual.
Writes Hall:
All you need do is get in your car and drive; and whether you head north, south, east or west, you will enounter signs of growth. … From 1990 to 2000 our region grew by 17 percent — 122,708 people; and we’re projected to see another 164,000 join our ranks by 2010. If these population trends continue, the region will need to add more than 125,000 new housing units by the year 2030.
…Because of land-use patterns that have historically separated residences, retail, and jobs, our region has the highest driving rate of any major metro area in the state. … Given our current driving patterns and our projected population growth, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that while we do not have the traffic gridlock that plagues Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, it can happen here in Central Virginia — and far sooner than we think.
At some level, Hall understands the connection between human settlement patterns and transportation demand. But he ignores the implications of his own logic. His bill to establish a regional transportation authority would do nothing to alter human settlement patterns. Indeed, it would enable local boards of supervisors to perpetuate the status quo while fobbing off the transportation consequences to someone else.
The Richmond region is careening down a dead end road — without any brakes. Frank Hall’s plan would just jam down the accelerator so we reach our collision with reality even faster.
If you thought Virginia’s payday lenders were bad, things could be a lot worse! India, with its growing economy, is experiencing a bank-led consumer lending boom. As in the United States, some borrowers fall behind in their repayments. Even in India, it appears, some people get caught on a treadmill of indebtedness. But in India, banks have a quaint way of collecting their debts: They beat people.
Today’s Wall Street Journal describes the fate that befell Vinod Kumar, a 21-year-old college student who was sitting in a friend’s car listening to the radio. A stranger suddenly pulled him out of the car, beat him with an iron bar and left him with 12 stitches and a 10-day hospital stay. Writes the Journal: “Mr. Kumar’s attacker was a goonda — a thug — working on behalf of one of India’s largest banks.”
India’s lawmakers may well put the goondas out of business. Here in Virginia, we may well give them a new lease on life. If we abolish payday lending in Virginia, where will poor people raise emergency cash? From Rocko and Guido (or their ethnic counterparts here in the Old Dominion) who operate outside the rule of law. Don’t be surprised if Virginia emergency rooms see a sudden rise in patients with broken kneecaps.
(Photo cutline: Poster art from the Hindi movie, “Goonda.” Photo credit: Vendithera Pay Per View.)
Poquoson taxpayers rejoice. And taxpayers in Lexington, York County, Henrico County and Scott County, you can go ahead and rejoice, too.
The two cities were not comparable in terms of Cost-Benefit Value. … Poquoson’s CBV of $77.68 is the best in the state, while Falls Church [after adjusting for higher teacher salaries in Northern Virginia] had a CBV of $136.28, the fifteenth worst in the state.
Falls Church is an affluent area boasting per capita personal income significantly higher than Poquoson, which is just shy of the state average. Yet Poquoson residents were served more cost-efficiently than their wealthier neighbors to the north, who “paid” an adjusted unit price 75 percent higher for similar student achievement results.
In 2005, Virginians paid public schools $10.8 billion in state and local taxes to educate 1.78 million students, for an average per-pupil-cost of $9,202. What did we get for our money? As the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute (CBLPI) asks:
Are school districts putting tax dollars to the best and highest use? Do Virginians get a good return in student achievement from school districts on the tax dollars invested? Do all school districts operate with equal cost-efficiency, or do some districts produce desired educational achievement results at a better “price” to taxpayers than others?
(Photo cutline: The James Monroe Building, headquarters of the Virginia Department of Education. Photo credit: Picasaweb.)
It’s something Del. Tom Rust wants JLARC to take a look at:
Directs the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission to study implications of granting fiscal autonomy to elected school boards in the Commonwealth. In conducting its study, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission shall (i) examine state constitutional and statutory issues regarding school board supervisory authority, (ii) study the respective roles of local school boards and the relevant local governing body in delivering and funding public education, (iii) examine fiscal authority models in other states, and (iv) consider such other issues as it deems appropriate.
The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission must submit an executive summary of its findings and recommendations to the 2009 Session and its final findings and recommendations to the 2010 Session of the General Assembly.
Considering the black hole that is education spending, I’m not sold on the idea of giving local school boards the power to set their own tax rates (can you imagine the great minds on the Richmond School Board attempting to do that?).
However, having attended a school district that could set its own tax rate (subject to voter approval), I can also see, and have benefited from, such a scheme.
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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