Bacon's Rebellion

Sen. John H. Chichester, R-Northumberland, is floating the idea of imposing a 5 percent tax on gasoline as an alternative to the grab-bag of taxes proposed in the GOP Senate-House compromise plan. If Chichester’s gambit gets traction — and it has some support in the Senate, especially among Hampton Roads Democrats — it could unravel the compromise, report Michael Shear at the Washington Post and Christina Nuckols and Warren Fiske at the Virginian Pilot.

Chichester’s gas-tax idea does have its virtues. First, it is simple and transparent; taxpayers would see the tax — an extra $1.25 per $25 fill-up — at the pump. Second, because it is transparent, the added expense will induce motorists to drive less. In that regard, the gas tax contrasts favorably to the “dog’s breakfast” (as Bart Hinkle describes it in his column today) called for by the GOP compromise. The GOP taxes are spread over so many sources of income, including General Fund surpluses, they are entirely opaque to the motorist. The end result: They would subsidize driving, not discourage it.

On the other hand, Chichester’s idea would represent an entirely new tax, raising about $600 million a year. That’s significantly more than the new revenue raised through the GOP compromise, which makes it a deal killer in the House. I have to agree with the House GOP sentiment on this: There is no justification to raise taxes while the state is running chronic budget surpluses.

Ultimately, the only viable long-term solution is to move to a transportation-funding system based upon a mileage fee to pay for maintenance and congestion tolls to raise funds for highway improvements. Nobody likes paying fees, but the idea can be sold politically because (a) the concept is simple and transparent and (b) people get something (access to roadways) in exchange for what they pay. There would be minimal disintermediation by the state political class.

Bill Turque tackles the tough stories for The Washington Post, including this one about Herndon’s blatantly discriminatory zoning regulations.

As you’d discover if you read deeply enough into the story, Bacon (pictured at left), hails originally from the Richmond area.

Be forewarned, town officials of Herndon. We’re paying close attention to this one.

Buried deep in the comments on Jim Bacon’s 25 January 2007 posting on Housing in Charlottesville-Albemarle is a 27 January posting by Anon 7:58. He / She makes a good point concerning the uses some owners of small parcels (10 to 50 acres) make of their land in the Countryside.

He / she does not state the case but also makes a strong argument for the fair and equitable allocation of all location-variable costs. Consider:

If a retired couple raises horses, rare livestock, dogs, heritage fruit and vegetables (Anon’s list – or if they raise, mushrooms, emus, wine grapes or anything else) for a living that is one circumstance.

If the wife is the spokes person for a phone company in Tysons Corner, the husband supervisors janitors in a highschool in Winchester and the kids log 20 person miles a day on a school bus and 30 hours a week in day care, and the couple raises (whatever) as a hobby, that is a different case.

Or is it?

If both couples pay the full cost of their location decisions it does not matter what the circumstances are.

The problem is that now the urban household that is also a hobby farmer is highly subsidized. Subsides come via government action at all levels, by utility suppliers who apply flat fees and by goods and service users who pay a higher cost for the necessities of a contemporary life because of the cost of serving scattered urban land uses. What else happens on the land does not lower the cost of the location-dependent goods and services necessary to support an urban lifestyle.

Citizens in a democracy with a market economy cannot afford a “Welfare State” that supports “Cadillac Welfare Queens.”

Those same citizens cannot afford to support the costs of dysfunctional human settlement patterns. A typical bundle of urban lifestyle-supporting goods and services cost 10 times as much as the same services cost in a functional settlement pattern. (The Cost of Services Curve and the 10 X Rule.)

In addition, while some enjoy the spacial disaggregation (and really enjoy the subsidy), the market documents that the vast majority prefer the same house in a functional location. (The 10 Person Rule.)

Some who want to keep the reality of human settlement pattern relationships confusing suggest that settlement patterns relationships developed by S/PI are too generalized. As we note in “The Shape of the Future,” the same could be said for accounting for the actions of gas molecules via Boyles Law and other relationships found in natural systems.

The Anon poster was concerned about regulations preventing the non-urban land uses from being carried out and prohibitions against land subdivision of land to create small parcels. He / She would be happy to see to availability of land for such uses increase (and the cost go down) when the use of land for scattered urban land uses are no longer subsidized.

Those who now, or hope in the future to profit, from the current subsidies and the settlement patterns that the subsidies engender wail about property “rights” without taking into account the community “responsibilities” that come with 21st Century urban life.

EMR

There is a debate raging in the United Kingdom about the nation’s transportation future. As in the United States, traffic congestion is getting worse, it’s taking a major toll on the economy and people are moved to do something about it. Controversy has come to a head with the release of “The Eddington Transport Study,” a voluminous report that outlines a series of recommendations for action by Parliament.

I will confess: I have not read the entire document, but I have hit the highlights. A number of key findings are worth considering here in Virginia. Some excerpts:

• Travel demand is growing rapidly due to continued economic success and is densely concentrated on certain parts of the networks at certain times of day. As a result, parts of the system are under serious strain. If left unchecked, the rising cost of congestion will waste an extra 22 billion [pounds sterling] worth of time in England alone by 2025. Then 13 percent of traffic will be subject to stop-start travel conditions.



• The economic case for targeted new infrastructure is strong and offers very high returns — the best schemes offer returns in the region of 50-10 pounds for each pound invested. … Smaller projects which unblock pinch-points, variable infrastructure schemes to support public transport in urban areas, and international gateway surface projects are likely to offer the very highest returns, sometimes higher than 10 pounds for every pound spent.
• “Build it and they will come” is a dangerous approach to transport projects which attempt to regenerate areas and regions. Often the result is a two-way process in which local businesses actually lose out as more productive and competitive firms from other regions can access the area and compete for previously protected markets.
• Provided it is well targeted, a national road pricing scheme … could reduce congestion some 50 percent below what it otherwise would be in 2025 and reduce the economic case for additional strategic road infrastructure by some 80 percent. … Given the pace of economic change, pricing also offers considerable flexibility once in place. With pricing it becomes possible to respond to unanticipated change through changing prices much sooner — and at much lower cost — than bringing forward new infrastructure.

I’ve blasted the Richmond Times-Dispatch for ignoring the land-use dimension of the transportation debate, so it’s only fair that I acknowledge when it does touch upon the issue. Olympia Meolo and Julian Walker tackle the subject in today’s newspaper.

As always, I take issue with the coverage. The editors buried the two articles on page B-3, and the reporters focused on Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s approach to the problem while totally ignoring the proposals in the GOP compromise package. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

The Kaine administration wants to put the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in charge of running the $4 billion Metrorail-to-Dulles heavy rail project — one of the largest public works projects in Virginia history — but the authority asserts that it is completely exempt from federal and state information disclosure laws.

The MWAA claims that its status as an “interstate compact” puts it outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, reports Examiner.com.

Let’s add it all up.

(1) The MWAA has institutional interests distinct from those of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
(2) The MWAA is governed by a board, the majority of whose representatives come from Maryland and Washington, D.C.
(3) Under the Kaine plan, the MWAA will set the toll rates along the Dulles Toll Road, affecting tens of thousands of Virginia commuters.
(4) Under the Kaine plan, the MWAA will control who gets the design and build contracts for the heavy rail line.
(5) And now we find that the MWAA deems itself exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Stewart Schwartz sums up the situation nicely: “It simply reinforces our contention that the Airports Authority is too unaccountable to be given responsibility over the toll road, its revenues and the Dulles rail project.”

The GOP transportation plan has run into a potential roadblock: It’s called the state constitution. Report Christina Nuckols and Warren Fiske with the Virginian-Pilot:

A transportation plan for Hampton Roads will collapse if individual cities and counties can opt out of regional taxes, several lawmakers said Thursday. But some voiced doubts that they can constitutionally force local governments to collect taxes against their will.

The issue is a major disagreement hanging over a long-sought plan that would generate about $210 million annually for Hampton Roads’ top-priority road projects. The Hampton Roads plan is part of a larger roads package that includes statewide money for road construction and maintenance and regional aid for Northern Virginia.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said he thinks the Hampton Roads plan is unconstitutional without an escape hatch for cities that don’t want to participate in the regional taxes. “I think there is a constitutional problem in forcing someone to opt in,” he said. The constitution says the legislature “can’t raise local taxes,” he said.

Affordable and accessible housing is the Achilles heel of the smart growth movement. The latest demonstration of that fact is a report from the Thomas Jefferson Planning District, authored by researchers at Virginia Tech’s Center for Housing Research. As summarized by the Daily Progress: “The Charlottesville area has a ‘severe’ dearth of affordable housing – and the problem is likely to grow worse.”

According to the report, the region has a shortage of at least 4,200 apartments that are affordable for families earning less than 50 percent of the area’s median income, or about $28,500.

The top five jobs in the Charlottesville region – including cashiers, restaurant workers and retail employees – all have an annual average salary of less than $25,000, according to the report.

In a now-familiar pattern, workers find less expensive housing in outlying areas and drive long distances to work, adding to traffic congestion on the arterials serving the region. Charlottesville’s solution is to add another layer of regulation over the layer of regulation that caused the housing shortage in the first place. The city, reports the newspaper, is seeking authority to ask developers to contribute cash proffers for affordable housing funds.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. The solution isn’t forcing developers to subsidize “affordable” housing for a handful of lucky low-wage earners, it’s to allow developers more latitude to build housing of whatever type is in demand. That will require allowing more density, more townhouses, more apartment buildings and more condos to the extent supported by market demand. Ideally, these places would be located where roads, utilities and other infrastructure already exist.

Of course, the conversation will come down to schools. More families mean more school children, and lower-wage earners will mean insufficient tax revenues to cover their costs… as if public schools were a profit center, not a public service.

One of the most encouraging development projects in the Richmond region is the recently announced plan to redevelop the dilapidated Cloverleaf Mall in Chesterfield County. Crosland LLC, based in Charlotte, N.C., has purchased the mall from Chesterfield County for $9.2 million. Crosland proposes to raze the old mall by 2008, build 200,000 square feet of commercial space and erect more than 500 residences by 2011. (See the article by the Times Dispatch.)

Cloverleaf, built in 1972, was one of the region’s first malls but it fell into decline as Chesterfield’s growth frontier pushed south. As with so many malls built in the 1970s, the retail complex had nothing to offer but its newness. It was architecturally undistinguished, and it was surrounded by strip shopping-center dreck, which has outlived its planned obsolescence as well. Rather than integrating with the surrounding community, the mall stood apart from it, separated by vast parking lots, unwalkable roads and physical barriers. Meanwhile, the old, 60s- and 70s-era housing in the region, paragons of early “suburban sprawl,” had failed to create the sense of place, or character, that inspires homeowners to reinvest and upgrade. Instead, the middle class abandoned the area for bigger houses on the development frontier, and they were followed by lower-income residents who couldn’t keep them up.

Despite its prime location at the intersection of Midlothian Turnpike and the Chippenham Parkway, Cloverleaf has been plagued by the loss of tenants and business traffic. Just since 2000, retail sales have declined from $45.3 million to $11.7 million. Seeing potential for a major re-development project, Chesterfield County acquired the property in 2004 with the aim of stimulating private-sector interest.

The beauty of this new Chippenham Place project is that it will move 500 people closer to the Richmond New Urban Region’s core. They will be served by existing infrastructure — water, sewer and superb road access. There is no need (I think, but have not confirmed) to build new schools, police stations and fire stations. Although Chesterfield County is preparing an unspecified “economic development package” for Crosfield, anything the County spends is likely to be a fraction of what it would cost to provide infrastructure and services to the huge new projects sprouting along Rt. 288 on the region’s southern growth frontier.

If Chippenham Place accommodates the population growth of the Richmond region by 500 households, that’s 500 households that the Commonwealth of Virginia doesn’t have to provide new transportation infrastructure for. Question: What does the state transportation plan do to encourage more re-development projects like Chippenham Place? Instead of dumping money on new roads in fast-growth counties in a hamster-in-a-treadmill effort to keep up with new growth, why isn’t the state doing everything it can to bolster revitalization projects all around the state?

It looks like Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s growth-control legislation is going nowhere. One day after a Senate committee rejected the Kaine plan, which would give localities power to reject rezoning requests in the absence of adequate transportation infrastructure, a House panel tabled it as well. Republicans seem to determined to press forward with their own package of reforms. As Tim Craig and Amy Gardner report for the Washington Post:

“Kaine had his opportunity last year, and he didn’t do anything to push it, and the Republicans now have a package,” said Michele B. McQuigg (R-Prince William), chair of a subcommittee of the House Counties, Cities and Towns Committee, which voted not to act on Kaine’s bill. GOP lawmakers still could use Kaine’s bill as a bargaining tool.

With the GOP-dominated House and Senate working together for the first time in years, an interesting new dynamic appears to be at work in the General Assembly. For years, Democrats have been criticizing Republicans for their failure to devise a comprehensive approach to transportation policy — in effect, a failure to govern. It seemed such a sure-fire recipe for electoral victory that Kaine threw down the gauntlet, setting up the 2007 legislative session as a major issue in the fall House and Senate elections.

As public policy the GOP package — especially the funding piece — is an abomination, the hideous offspring of the legislative process. But as politics, it just may work.

First of all, this may be the test that hardens House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, into a powerful political force. During his first years as House Speaker, Howell was seen as likeable but weak, unable to enforce discipline in his ranks. He was outmaneuvered by Gov. Mark R. Warner in the 2004 tax debate, and he played defense during the transportation debate last year.

It is evident to me that Howell has grown in confidence and stature. He was the critical player in forging the GOP compromise, bridging the gaps that had divided House and Senate, and he is pulling out all the stops to push it through the legislature. His Senate counterpart, Senate Finance Chair John H. Chichester, R-Northumberland, who was so visible in last year’s confrontation, has been exceedingly quiet — marginalized, dare I say? — this year as other Senators take the lead in making the compromise work.

The other dynamic is that, for once, its not the Republicans cast in the role of naysayer. House Minority Leader Franklin D. Hall, D-Richmond, is counseling caution. “This plan has sweeping public policy changes in the area of taxation, in the area of land use, in the areas of state-local relationships,” the Post quotes him as saying. “Let’s immediately take this out to the people in an attempt to let the public know what’s in this bill so that they can have a say.” Translation: Whoah, let’s put on the breaks.

For the moment, the Dems appear to be in a box. If they acquiesce to the GOP package, they lose the big campaign issue they’ve been hoping for this fall. They’ll have nothing. If they oppose it, they deprive the GOP of a legislative victory — but they stand to be accused of sabotaging the best chance in a generation to “solve” the transportation crisis. High stakes indeed.