Bacon's Rebellion

  • CONNECTING THE DOTS

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    James A. Bacon

    No “Shape of the Future” column this week but here is an exercise in connecting-the-dots on the path to understanding the shape of the future.

    Yesterday and today WaPo devoted much of the front page to a two part series of great significance.

    “Coming of Age: Graying of ‘Suburbs’.”

    The stories, maps, graphs, pictures and captions (“Frank Brown, 66, has worked at Hollin Hall Automotive Service Station since 1992. Every morning, he helps Ruth Ann Harvey, 84, up the hill to work. Harvey, whose family has owned the shop since 1960, is behind the register six days a week. The full-service station is a favorite among elderly drivers, who don’t have to get out of their cars to pump gas.” “Rita Turner of Falls Church, seated, whose neighbors call her the Queen Mum, sold her car because she thought she was too old to drive. Now she must depend on others, such as driver Shobha Sahgal, to get her errands done.”) tell a compelling story.

    Also see “Shape of the Future” column of 30 July “The End of Family as We Knew It” concerning the demographics of Dooryards and use of the word Household.

    (Warning: For anyone who is aware of the importance of understanding of scale of components of human settlement patterns, the use of “community,” “village” and “neighborhood” in these WaPo stories is confusing in the extreme.)

    In today’s WaPo Business Section (that is the “how to make and manage money” section) devoted most of the front page to two stories:

    “Rejuvenating Loudoun: To Attract Young Workers, County Looks for Ways To Shed the Perception That It’s a Bit Middle Aged” and “Perks Give Area Firms a Silicon Valley Feel: Whether Posh of Quirky, Extras Help Lure Talent To the High-Tech Sector.”

    Those who understand what they read at Bacons Rebellion should have no problem connecting the dots to grasp the necessity of Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions (aka, functional human settlement patterns.)

    PS:

    A regular reader e-mailed us last week and asked that we outline a simple way those who claim “I do not understand” to grasp the metrics of functional vs dysfunctional human settlement patterns. If this is a case where “you get WaPo but you don’t get it” then Civilization as we know it may be lost because these stories provide a wonderful primer. Here are some thoughts that will be expanded upon in TRILO-G:

    Mobility and Access Crisis:

    The level of Mobility and Access for those too young, too old or otherwise unable to use an Autonomobile.

    (NB: “otherwise unable” includes economic as well as physical limitations. This is important since the percentage of Households that can afford and safely use one – much less more – Large, Private vehicles will decline dramatically as energy costs and vehicle complexity continue to escalate.

    Just as alarming is the complexity and cost of the Large, Private vehicle support system as it grows to meet Business-As-Usual demands.)

    Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis:

    Percentage who can live in the Community where they are employed. (NB: “Community” as defined in GLOSSARY.)

    Helter Skelter Crisis:

    Absence of unreasonable subsidies to achieve Balanced Communities. (NB: “unreasonable subsidies” can be defined by democratic processes once all of the location variable costs are fairly allocated.

    In addition to the Loudoun stories noted above, See Jim Bacon’s “Bug in the Ointment” posted earlier today.)

    EMR

  • Economy 4.0: Measuring Prosperity

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    James A. Bacon

    Stop any 10 people on the street in Virginia and ask them, “Who has a higher standard of living — the inhabitants of Roanoke County or Loudoun County?” I would wage that all 10 of them (assuming you could find 10 who had actually heard of both counties) would say Loudoun County. Oh, sure, Roanoke is surrounded by beautiful mountains and all that, but the economy of the Roanoke Valley isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. By contrast, Northern Virginia is where the job creation is, the entrepreneurial success is, the material prosperity is. And Loudoun is at the epicenter of growth in Northern Virginia.

    But let’s take a look at the numbers. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

    2005 Per Capita Income
    Roanoke/Salem………….. $35,140
    Loudoun/Leesburg………..$41,193

    First impression confirmed. Loudoun County’s per capita income is 17 percent higher.

    Now, do this: Go to the CNN cost of living calculator, and see what you have to earn in Loudoun County to get the same standard of living as Roanoke County. It’s $45, 695. In other words, adjusted for the cost of living, Roanokers are 10.9 percent better off than Loudounites! (The gap looks even worse if you take into account the highly progressive nature of the federal tax code that punishes regions, like Northern Virginia, with high nominal salaries and wages.)

    That simple comparison leads me to the key insight of the second installation of “Economy 4.0: Measuring Prosperity“:

    Thanks to the federal tax code, affluent Virginians are subject to high taxes on every extra dollar they earn. Strategies geared to increasing incomes are worthwhile, but they are pushing the rock up-hill. A more effective way to raise comparative living standards in Virginia may be to hold down living costs.

    In “Measuring Prosperity,” I also discuss the implications of the “time famine” on living standards, the vulnerability of living standards to rising energy costs, and the impact of environmental degredation on the stock of Natural Capital.

    Bottom line: Public policies that increase incomes are good. But public policies that increase incomes while simultaneously driving up living costs, consuming more energy and degrading the environment by perpetuating dysfunctional human settlement patterns are misguided and counter productive.

    Can anyone say, “Fundamental Change?”

  • Economy 4.0: A Bug in the Ointment

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    James A. Bacon

    About 10 days ago, I posted a brief piece, “Questions about the Volkwagen USA Deal,” that questioned the wisdom of using $6 million in state subsidies to bring 400 high-paying Volkswagen USA headquarters jobs to Fairfax County. That question was the perfect segue into the second installment of my “Economy 4.0” series, which asks the core question, what exactly are we trying to achieve with economic development — job creation for the sake of job creation, or better places to live? As I expanded my arguments, what started as an introduction to an essay about the metrics of prosperity became a detailed case study. So I hived it off into a story of its own.

    Here’s my argument in a nutshell: In a regional economy like Northern Virginia characterized by chronic labor shortages, the only way that VW can fill 400 new jobs is to bring 400 wage/salary earners into the region. While corporate VW will pay taxes and its employees will pay taxes, they also will require public services and infrastructure. Northern Virginia’s infrastructure, especially schools and roads, is already overloaded. Someone will have to pay a lot of money in up-front capital costs to accommodate the newcomers. Therefore, the creation of those 400 jobs is a mixed blessing.

    Some might argue, well, those are very high-paying jobs. Surely those people will pay their own way. There’s no denying that the VW jobs are the kind of jobs that economic developers salivate over. At $125,000 per year on average, VW headquarters employees will earn twice the regional average and three times the state average. But we must consider two things. First, through the multiplier effect, those jobs generate another 100, 200 or maybe more retail- and service-sector jobs in the economy. That means even more people will move into the region — teachers, policemen, hair dressers, Seven 11 clerks, etc., who certainly will not be earning $125,000 a year.

    Secondly, it is theoretically possible that governance structures and human settlement patterns in Northern Virginia are so dysfunctional that even jobs paying $125,000 on average do not pay for themselves! According to Virginia Employment Commission data, Fairfax County is projected to increase the number of jobs by roughly 250,000, or 21.9 percent, between 2004 and 2014, but population growth in the county has slowed to the 6.0 to 6.5 percent range. In other words, three out of every four new employees will work in Fairfax County but live somewhere else.

    That’s the jobs/housing imbalance that Ed Risse is always warning us about. The result is more people crowding onto more increasingly overloaded roads and driving ever longer distances. How much will it cost to upgrade the transportation network to handle those additional employees, and how long will it take to recoup that cost in tax revenues? The fact is, we don’t know. No one is asking the question, so we clearly don’t have the answers. Absent hard data to the contrary, we have to consider the possibility that the Commonwealth of Virginia spent $6 million to subsidize Northern Virginia in an entirely self-destructive enterprise of digging itself into a deeper hole.

  • Aux Armes! La Jacquerie du Lard Est Ici!

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    James A. Bacon

    So much for trying to improve my search engine rankings in Google-France… To a native French speaker, the headline might be understood as “To Arms, the Peasant Rebellion of the Bacon Is Here.” Bacon, as in the salted pork variety. (Let’s see what sense Google’s logic algorithm makes of that!) I suppose I could have written, “La Jacquerie du Bacon,” using Bacon as a proper name, but that didn’t look right to my Anglo eyes either.

    What I like about the word “jacquerie” as opposed to French word “rébellion” is that it implies a peasant uprising — a rebellion of the dispossessed, as opposed to a dissension among the elites.

    Anyway, yes, the Sept. 17, 2007, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online. You can read it in its fullness and plentitude here. Unless you check your B.R. blog every day, you might miss the next issue. You don’t want that, so subscribe for free here.

    Now, giving a voice to the oppressed, we offer the following for your blog reading pleasure:

    A Bug in the Ointment
    The relocation of Volkswagen USA to Fairfax County is a P.R. bonanza for Virginia. But is the region, already buckling under growth, prepared to handle the influx of 400 more jobs?
    by James A. Bacon

    Measuring Prosperity
    There are two ways to increase the standard of living: Increase income and reduce the cost of living. Virginia policy makers focus on the one and not the other.
    by James A. Bacon

    Chambers of Secrets
    A first-hand look at the old and new in London and in Richmond illustrates why legislative bodies remain living things.
    by Doug Koelemay

    Loosening the Beltway
    Congestion on the Washington Beltway will ease at last when a private consortium builds new lanes, upgrades the roadway and uses variable-pricing tolls to establish free-flowing traffic.
    by Leonard Gilroy

    Virginia Values
    State Republicans don’t have to apologize for “Virginia values” like liberty, limited government and the primacy of civil society. They just have to articulate them in a way that resonates with voters.
    by Norman Leahy

    The Highwaymen
    The politicians have turned traffic cops into a scourge. They plague Virginia’s roads, arresting citizens for arbitrary laws and plundering their wealth under the guise of “abuser fees.”
    by Mike Smith

    (Image credit: Wikipedia.)

  • Transmission Lines and Electricity Imports

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    James A. Bacon

    In a recent post, “Virginia’s Growing Energy Gap,” I argued it doesn’t matter where Virginia gets its energy from, as long as it’s from a secure region of the world like North America. (The recent bombing of a Mexican pipeline by a group linked to Venezuela’s socialist despot Hugo Chavez may force me to rethink which parts of the world qualify as secure.) But I do find it strange — and somewhat troubling — that Virginia imports one third of its electricity from other states.

    According to the Virginia Energy Plan, Virginia’s electricity imports have climbed significantly since 2000. Some imports come from Dominion’s Mount Storm power generating complex and some from out-of-state generating sources in the AEP and Allegheny power systems. But most of the increase, I believe, appears to coincide with Dominion’s strategy of buying electricity from the Midwest and wheeling it into Virginia through the PJM transmission pool — a practice that gained momentum during the power company’s flirtation with deregulation.
    Dominion is a proponent of what I call the Big Grid energy strategy, of building a dense network of electric transmission lines in order to shift electricity long distances to those regions where it is most needed. But the approach has major drawbacks. First, as demonstrated by massive blackouts in the Midwest and Northeast earlier in the decade, the system is subject to catastrophic failure. Second, it requires building high-voltage transmission lines — such as the line that Dominion proposes for Virginia’s northern piedmont — which people don’t like running through their back yard.
    I wouldn’t have a problem with the transmission lines if Dominion negotiated the rights of way with the individual property owners whose land it crossed. But Dominion doesn’t want to do that — it wants to utilize the power of eminent domain to compel landowners to sell their right of way. What’s more, as I understand it, landowners would be compensated only for the land in the right of way itself. They would receive no compensation for the loss of property value caused by visual blight on land surrounding the transmission line. That may seem like an arcane point to some, but consider: How would you feel if you paid $5 million for a farm, valued largely on the beauty of the surroundings, and Dominion ran a transmission line through it? Dominion might pay you $100,000 for the right of way, but the value of your farm might decline $1 million or $2 million in value.
    The alternative to Big Grid is a distributed grid that integrates a legion of small and independent power contributors into the mix: wind mills, solar, biomass conversion, cogeneration and so on. By keeping the power source closer to the consumer, distributed generation does not experience the electricity leakage that occurs with long-distance transmission, nor it is as vulnerable to a catastrophic, system-wide failure.
    If electric utilities are willing to pay the full cost of building electric transmission lines, then, I say, “Let ‘er rip!” However, I have no sympathy with those who would say, “But that would be too expensive.” Expensive to whom? To Dominion and its Northern Virginia customers? How about the people who own piedmont real estate?
    If Northern Virginians want more electricity to build more energy-hogging server farms that yield big tax revenues for municipalities, why don’t they build power plants locally? Could the reason be that nobody in Northern Virginia likes power plants? Could it be that Northern Virginians prefer, for aesthetic reasons, to import their electric power?
    Here’s the stand off: Northern Virginians don’t want power plants in their midst, and piedmont inhabitants don’t want transmission lines running through their land. Here’s the trick: The onus is on the Northern Virginians to find a solution because they’re the ones who want the electric power. They can build big Dominion-style power plants in their own back yards, or they can evolve to a system of distributed energy, or they can pay the piedmontese the full cost of running a transmission line through their region. They have no right, through the agency of Dominion, to simply take what they want.

  • The Catastrophic Consequences of a Concave Coastline

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    James A. Bacon

    One of the issues the Virginia Energy Plan grapples with is development of Virginia’s offshore natural gas reserves. That’s an interesting issue, but not half as interesting as the questions arising from the map displayed above. Look at the wedge of continental shelf allocated to Virginia. How come it’s so small? Why does our share get narrower as it extends further into the ocean?

    As the old real estate saying goes, they’re not making any more land. But the federal bureaucrats in the Minerals Management Service are handing out more land — it just happens to be underwater. This is no esoteric matter. These administrative boundaries govern which state has authority over offshore natural resources. In Virginia’s case, our slice contains an estimated 56 million barrels of oil and 327 million cubic feet of natural gas. If the boundaries were drawn differently, it could be a whole lot more.

    How did Virginia wind up with the short end of the pie wedge? Here’s what the energy plan says: The Minerals Management Service established the boundaries using “an equidistance methodology for the purpose of managing offshore resources.”

    The equidistance methodology expands the area attributable to states with convex coastlines and decreases the areas attributable to states, such as Virginia, with concave-shaped coastlines. Use of equidistant boundaries reduces the Commonwealth’s ability to influence decisions about offshore resource development.

    Those offshore resources include not only oil and gas but sand, other minerals and renewable energy sources such as wind and tidal power, which in the long run could far exceed oil and gas in importance to the Virginia economy.

    Virginia got the short end of the stick on this one. Administrative boundaries that extend due east would have yielded Virginia a much larger share of the continental shelf. Where were our congressmen when these decisions were being made? Is there some way to appeal the inequitable distribution of offshore territory and resources?

  • How Much Energy Conservation Is the Right Amount?

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    James A. Bacon

    The Virginia Energy Plan has set the goal of reducing the rate of energy consumption per capita in Virginia by 40 percent from current projections, in effect stabilizing per capita consumption, not reducing it. Total energy use would continue to grow along with the population.

    While praising many aspects of the plan, the Southern Environmental Law Center criticized the report for its modest conservation goal. Write Trip Pollard and Cale Jaffe in a prepared statement:

    The plan also deserves praise for recognizing the importance of energy efficiency as the “least costly and most readily deployable energy resource.” However, it recommends a target of reducing electricity use in Virginia by only 3900 MW by 2022. A recent analysis shows Virginia ranks dead last in the U.S. on per capita investments on energy efficiency, meaning far greater energy savings should be achieved.

    How much conservation is it reasonable to expect Virginia to achieve? Virginia has one of the more electricity-intensive economies in the 50 states, and there are abundant opportunities for conservation and energy efficiency. But we cannot write a blank check. With many competing uses for our resources, we cannot afford to squander funds on any old program with a political constituency.
    Earlier this year the General Assembly set a goal of reducing retail electric consumption by the year 2022 by 10 percent of 2006 levels through conservation and energy efficiency. That would defer or postpone the need for about 3,900 megawatts of electric genration capacity, equivalent to four or five large power-generating stations.
    That does not strike me as especially ambitious, but I don’t have the data to say one way or another. Here’s the question I always come back to: What’s the Return on Investment? The Energy Plan does not say explicitly, but it does provide some numbers to work with. The report assumes that electric companies and consumers would invest about $300 million a year over the fifteen-year life of the program. Annual savings would amount to between $15 million to $50 million per year, depending on the assumptions made.
    Let’s see, if we invest $300 million and generate $15 million a year in savings, that’s a 5.0 percent Return on Investment, equivalent to investing in a money market fund. Not terribly attractive. Saving $50 million a year would yield 17 percent, which is very competitive, the kind of return that the private sector looks for.
    Presumably, those numbers mask a wide range of returns on individual projects. Rather than commit to a specific statewide number, I would suggest, consumers and power companies should be allowed to make investments in line with their personal expectations. And instead of setting artificial statewide goals, the state should focus on (a) creating the legal and regulatory conditions where the marketplace rewards investments in conservation and energy efficiency, and (b) fixing energy-inefficient human settlement patterns that result in unnecessary expenditure of energy for driving and home heating/cooling. Then the state should step aside and let individual households and businesses figure out how to maximize their own good through conservation and energy efficiency.
    As a practical matter, what does that mean? I hope to elaborate in future posts.

  • Virginia’s Growing Energy Gap

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    James A. Bacon

    According to the recently released Virginia Energy Plan, Virginia suffers from a major energy gap: We consume far more BTUs of energy than we produce. As the report notes, “Virginia’s energy production is expected to decrease over time as the amount of coal mined in Virginia decreases. This will result in a growing gap between what Virginians use and what the state produces and will increase the drain on Virginia’s economy through increased payments for imported energy.”

    The Energy Plan does not provide a dollar value for that gap, but we can infer (assuming energy expenditures account for roughly 10 percent of Virginia’s $319 billion 2006 gross domestic product) that we could be talking about a $15 billion economic impact.

    Narrowing that gap is a goal of the energy plan, which calls for a combination of conservation, energy-efficiency and energy-production initiatives. The plan publishes the following goals to achieve by 2017:

    • Reduce the rate of growth of energy consumption by 40 percent of the currently anticipated increase in per capita energy use, effectively keep per capita energy use stable.
    • Increase in-state production of energy by 20 percent over what is currently projected, including investment in electric generating capacity, bio-fuels, coal and natural gas distribution capacity.

    In future posts, I will delve into the details of how the energy plan proposes to meet those goals. Here is my question at the outset: Does it matter if Virginia has an “energy” gap any more than it matters that we might have a gap in bulldozers, cashews, hedge funds or any other product/service? As long as Virginians produce things that others don’t — microchips, cigarettes, automated controls, IT services — and as long as we can trade those things for energy, why does the gap matter? One could argue that investing public dollars in closing the gap would skew resources towards less efficient economic uses, thus creating a net loss to the economy. Is the Virginia Energy Plan nothing more than a state-level industrial plan in which politicians and bureaucrats pick winners and losers?

    I would argue that energy is different from tobacco, microchips and wireless technology companies in three important ways. First, dependence upon foreign sources of oil makes us uniquely vulnerable to hostile countries that would use oil as a political weapon against us, and vulnerable to supply disruptions in unstable parts of the world. Second, the production of energy in whatever form has adverse consequences on the environment (although, clearly, some sources of energy are more benign than others). Third, the state already regulates the electric power industry; it only makes sense to articulate what goals we hope to achieve through that regulation.

    Bottom line: The Virginia Energy Plan is a legitimate endeavor, not another exercise in the state meddling where it doesn’t belong. Coming up… Conservation and energy efficiency.

  • Is Debt An Option to Cover the Budget Shortfall?

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    James A. Bacon

    Uh, oh, I’m on public-policy overload right now! We’ve got the Governor’s energy plan, a GOP health care initiative, and an ongoing war of words over the budget. Let’s start with the budget…

    When last I reported, senior GOP legislators in the General Assembly had urged Gov. Timothy M. Kaine not to dip into the General Fund to address this year’s revenue shortfall. (See “Don’t Touch the Rainy Day Fund.”)

    The Governor responded assertively. First, the revenue shortfall meets the constitutional trigger to use the Rainy Day Fund. Second, he has requested state agencies to tighten spending, and he plans to announce mid-year cuts. Third, he is exploring some options, including “changing the timing or manner of capital spending.” And fourth, he is holding onto the option of using reserve fund revenues if he absolutely needs to.

    Now Sens. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, and William Wampler, R-Bristol, have shot back: What’s this about changing the “manner” of capital spending? “As we all know, there are only two means of financing capital projects — cash or debt. Given that we are currently using cash, we read your response as indicated that debt is now an option.”

    I am interested to see the Governor’s retort to that piece of deduction. You can read the complete letters here:

    Sept, 10, 2007, letter from Del. Vincent F. Callahan, R-McLean, Del. Lacy Putney, I-Beford, Sen. William C. Wampler, and Sen. Walter A. Stosch.

    Sept. 11, 2007, letter from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine

    Sept. 12, 2007, letter from Sens. William C. Wampler and Walter A Stosch

  • Policy Wonk Alert: The Virginia Energy Plan Is Now Online

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    James A. Bacon

    Well, here it is, the long-awaited Virginia Energy Plan. There’s so much material that it will take a while for me to absorb. I hope to blog several posts over the next few days. Meanwhile, just to whet your appetite, I’m displaying one of the many interesting graphs in the report. Please note how “transportation” has outpaced all other categories as a driver of energy growth in the state.
    Update: I’ve been plowing through the plan. Wowie, zowie! It is such a rich source of data and ideas that I can assure you that any newspaper summary you read will be totally inadequate. It humbles me to say this, but not even Bacon’s Rebellion is prepared to do the plan justice. My complements to the authors. Although I may disagree with some of their priorities and proposals, they are to be commended for the comprehensive scope of coverage and the immense amount of research they conducted.

  • FUNDMENTAL CHANGE

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    James A. Bacon

    Europe is an “old” place.

    As we see in Richard Thornton’s current Column “Berkeley the Butcher” and in Jim Bacon’s “Nathaniel Bacon Vindicated, Gov. Berkeley Shamed” post and comments of 4 September, “old” Europe fundamentally reshaped Africa, Asia, North and South Ameria and shaped the future of Virginia.

    Now it is reshaping itself. It is not just the European Union and the Fundamental Change in the governace structure below in nation-state level in “western” Europe, that is changing, it is all of Europe.

    Thirty-seven percent (3 of the 8) of the national teams in the Quarter Final of EuroBasket 2007 represent places that were not on any map of nation-states in 1980.

    If we are going to talk about “change” it needs to be Fundamental Change.

    EMR

  • Anybody Seen My Old Friend John?

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    James A. Bacon

    Yesterday’s Tuesday Morning Group meeting in downtown Richmond featured Paul Goldman, who discussed the legal issues, and much more, surrounding the 2007 transportation bill. Paul did a fine job and provided a refreshing look inside the sausage factory that produced the final bill. Interesting highlight: It seems the idea that it would be too hard or too expensive to collect abusive driver fees from out of state residents doesn’t mesh with existing practice among the several states to collect traffic fines. In other words, when Bacon gets a speeding ticket in North Carolina, and decides not to pay it, the next time he tries to renew his Virginia license, that out of state fine will be on his record — and he won’t be able to renew his license until that ticket is cleared. Presumably, the same system would flag any out of state driver who earns a Virginia abuser fee, but decides to ignore it.

    Also scheduled to speak was RPV chairman John Hager on the topic of “what he hopes to accomplish as chair – both before and after this November’s election.”

    Unfortunately, Hager withdrew from the schedule. After some discussion as to the reason why, it seem that the Speaker’s office was upset that Hager intended to appear before a group that includes members who vehemently disagree with the GOP leadership on the structure, and in some cases the constitutionality, of the transportation bill.

    Interestingly, Hager will be appearing, supposedly with the Speaker’s prior approval, before the Sorensen Institutes’s reunion gala in October, where Hager will share the dais with DPVA chairman Dickie Cranwell. It is safe to assume Mr. Cranwell does not exactly believe in the wisdom of the GOP leadership’s policy proposals on transportation, the budget, education, or much else.

    John Hager is a good man and an indefatigable supporter of the GOP. He’s taken over a party that is in the midst of a tough election season, made more difficult by the hub-bub over the transportation bill. That he was willing to enter a potential lion’s den at TMG shows that he’s confident in his ability to make a strong case for the party and his vision for it. That the Speaker does not share Hager’s confidence says a lot. And while I can understand the Speaker’s unwillingness to provide even a modicum of support to those who are so vocally opposing his signature initiative, I cannot understand why he is allowed to dictate the party chairman’s schedule.

    But I do know that this high-handedness has already paid some rather nasty dividends for the party. And more may be on the way.

  • More Sound Thinking about Transportation Financing — in Washington, Alas, Not Richmond

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    James A. Bacon

    The National Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission is leading the way in re-thinking federal highway funding strategies. There is a consensus among the commissioners that the status quo is not sustainable, reports Ken Orski, publisher of Innovation Briefs, a transportation policy newsletter. The federal gasoline tax served well to fund construction of Interstate highways, but now that the highway system is complete, the United States needs a financing model responsive to new priorities. Writes Orski:

    Specifically, the new financial model must allow the nation to compensate for years of underinvestment and deferred maintenance, modernize existing highway facilities, improve system performance, relieve highway congestion and expand road capacity in high growth areas and critical commerce corridors. …

    The Commissioners appear prepared to recommend reducing future reliance on petroleum-based fuel taxes in favor of a more diversified revenue model involving road user fees, tolls, private capital, congestion pricing, public-private partnerships and the use of new revenue collection technology. There is also a sentiment among the Commissioners that fees paid by road users should reflect more closely the costs they impose.

    With Congress addicted to pork barrel politics and transportation earmarks, there’s no assurance that NTIFC ideas will ever be implemented at the national level. But the Commission’s logic applies equally well to the financing of state road programs. The user-pays financing principles articulated by the NTIFC would have been vastly preferable to Virginia’s recently enacted hodge-podge of taxes, levies, fees and General Fund surpluses by drivers are subsidized by non-drivers.

  • The Anti-Illegal Brush Fire Spreads

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    James A. Bacon

    I missed this story when it first took place, but it appears that the Culpeper County board of supervisors has extended an invitation to nine Virginia counties, three towns and two cities to join a “coalition” of jurisdictions dedicated to confronting illegal immigration. The municipalities will brainstorm and then submit recommendations for legislation to the General Assembly, reports Dan Telvock in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star.

    The news update is that Spotsylvania County is the first jurisdiction accepting the invitation to join, which it did along with passing a resolution to recognize English as the county’s official language. (The measure is purely symbolic because English is already the official state language.)

    The town of Culpeper has declined to join the coalition, reports the Culpeper Star Exponent, but council did consider a measure that would restrict illegal immigrants from trespssing on the parking lot of a local mall. Meanwhile, the town of Leesburg has deferred action, adopting a wait-and-see attitude, according to the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

    In related matters, the Winchester City Council yesterday adopted a policy statement regarding illegal immigrants, asking federal officials to “step up” and address the problem. According to the Winchester Star, the statement includes phrases such as “the ever-growing segment of illegal Hispanic immigrants is at the heart of many of the city’s biggest problems” and “many illegal aliens engage in criminal activity.”

    The cost of instructing non-English-speaking students emerged as a major issue. “I think we’re prepared to handle that burden,” said council President Charles T. Gaynor, “but the aspect we find most detestable is that we’re required to educate them to standards, and at the same success rate, as English-speaking students, and if we do not, we’re criticized by the same people.”

    In other developments, Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County board of supervisors, testified before a Congressional subcommittee yesterday on illegal immigration. According to the Manassas Journal Messenger, he said he wants wants to be able to arrest people on immigration charges if police determine they’re here illegally during traffic stops which don’t necessarily call for an arrest. “This isn’t about going out and hunting illegal immigrants,” Stewart said.

    Stewart also asked Congress to pass laws that would allow local authorities to fine landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and to fine employers who hire illegal immigrants.

    The anti-illegal backlash appears to be strongest along the fringe of the Washington New Urban Region. Rightly or wrongly, concern about illegal immigration runs deep in these mostly Republican-leaning communities. When GOP legislators introduced a raft of legislation aimed at illegal immigrants, they were not trying to “distract” the public from the poorly conceived Abuser Fees they sponsored effect this year, as some commenters on this blog have argued, they were responding to a grass roots movement.

    The wave of legal and illegal immigration, the changing demographic make-up of Virginia, the strain placed on public services, the political backlash among whites and the increased assertiveness of Hispanic groups is arguably the most significant story of 2007 in Virginia — well, the second most important, after my bread and butter, transportation and land use. The Mainstream Media has been reporting on the anti-illegal backlash on an episodic basis, but all we have gotten so far is fragmented images and sound bites. These issues are too important to be resolved in an atmosphere of ignorance and emotion.

  • Go Gators!

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    James A. Bacon

    Alligators have been spotted in the waters of Virginia Beach. Is this a sign of global warming – or are pet gators slipping the proverbial leash?

    I like to think that wild gators are making a comeback in the Old Dominion. Think of how much livelier the local news will be when dogs and small children start mysteriously disappearing!

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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