Bacon's Rebellion

Let’s hope there’s money in the transportation compromise crafted by the General Assembly (to be announced at 4 p.m.) for one of the cooler initiatives in the Kaine administration’s proposed transportation package. Bacon’s Rebellion reporter Peter Galuszka sat down earlier this week with transportation secretary Pierce Homer and technology secretary Aneesh Chopra to get the skinny on their proposal to create a $20 million fund for Intelligent Transportation Systems. (Read the article, “ITS Wits.”)

The Kaine administration would use the money to spark ideas and public-private partnerships for applying information technology to congestion-mitigation projects in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. The top priority would be to put more real-time traffic information into the hands of commuters and businesses so they can alter their routes or travel schedules to side-step gridlocked roads. As I have stressed repeatedly, Virginia cannot build its way out of traffic congestion: We must address the demand side of the equation as well. Intelligent Transporation Systems are one potentially cost-effective way to do that.

The Virginian-Pilot is reporting that the leadership of the state Senate and House of Delegates have agreed to a compromise transportation plan that will include a combination of tolls and fee increases. The $2 billion package calls for issuing bonds and redirecting revenue from the General Fund. Additionally, the package calls for regional plans for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. The Hampton Roads plan would include $200 million a year for local projects, funded by an increase in the real estate for most businesses.

Details of the announcement will be forthcoming around 4 p.m. today.

I’ll never forget trying to help an old man and his wife try to find his way out of Richmond. He was heading north but had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a residential neighborhood. I explained how to get back on the Interstate, but I could tell he wasn’t absorbing my instructions. I was heading in the general direction of where he needed to go, so I offered to show him. Hopping in my car, I guided the old man onto the Powhite Parkway and then, when Interstate 95 North veered off to the right, pointed vigorously to the exit as I continued on my way.

Oooh. Tough luck. He got confused and took the I-95 South exit instead. As he sank into the distance in my rear-view mirror, I wonderered how long it took for the old guy — Petersburg, maybe? — to figure out he was heading in the wrong direction.

The moral of the story is that road markings — even roads as big as Interstates — can be confusing to people who aren’t intimately familiar with them. People take wrong turns, get disoriented and sometimes end up having accidents. Wrecks are bad in and of themselves — people get injured, even killed. Wrecks also tie up traffic, often causing back-ups and aggravating congestion. Anything we can do to reduce the incidence of automobile accidents is a good thing.

According to Tom Holden at the Virginian-Pilot, the Virginia Department of Transportation is using more reflective sign materials, putting bigger typefaces on signs and painting bolder highway markings to help make driving a little easier. Along some sections of interstates, VDOT is painting interstate shields directly onto the pavement so that drivers are clear about what road they’re on.

The changes should be helpful to motorists with poor eyesight and slow reaction times, a number that grows as the population ages. Better interstate signs certainly would have helped the old guy I tried to assist. The measure may be modest but it’s also relatively inexpensive. VDOT should be commended for a small but welcome change.

(Better signs and markings, incidentally, were on the list of reforms recommended last year by former VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet shortly after leaving the post. They join the list of ideas on that list — outsourcing maintenance, soliciting design-build contracts, and creating access-management plans for road corridors — that have been implemented to a greater or lesser degree since then.)

If Del. Don McEachin, R-Richmond, hoped to initiate a “healing process” with his resolution apologizing for slavery, he didn’t get off to a very good start yesterday. Del. Frank Hargrove, R-Hanover, took exception to his resolution and made some remarks that some perceived as outrageous. Tempers flared and accusations were hurled.

The exchange was magnified by the media, of course, which loves nothing better than a good cat fight. “Hargrave offends blacks, Jews,” stated the front-page headline in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

When it comes to symbolic issues like this, there’s a lot more raw emotion than common sense. Hargrave did use indelicate language to express himself. But the fact is, his words reflected the views of many Virginians. And if there is to be any “reconciliation,” as opposed to “capitulation,” the people who hold such views must be allowed to express themselves rather than being shouted down with cries of fiery indignation. Of course, as I wrote in my previous post, “How About a Resolution Atoning for the Welfare State?”, McEachin’s resolution isn’t really about “reconciliation” at all — it’s about imposing a politically correct interpretation of recent history that absolves a failed liberalism of any culpability for the plight of African-Americans in our society today.

Let’s examine Hargrove’s transgressions.

First, Hargrove made the following statement to the Charlottesville Daily Progress:

How far do these calls for apologies go, wondered Hargrove, a member of the House Rules Committee that could take up McEachin’s resolution as early as Wednesday.
“Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?”

Hargrove wondered. “Nobody living today had anything to do with it. It would be far more appropriate in my view to apologize to the Upper Mattaponi and the Pamunkey” Indians for the loss of their lands in eastern Virginia, he said.

Del. David Englin, D-Alexandria, took umbrage. One of three Jewish delegates in the House, Englin recalled how he was picked on when he was a child because of the misperception that Jews killed Jesus. “I want you all to understand,” he told the legislature, “what it means when people the respect and stature of a member of this body perpetuate the notion that Jews killed Christ.”

Excuse me. We can argue until the cows come home — and historians do — the extent to which the high priests of the Jerusalem temple did or did not force Pontius Pilate’s hand to crucify Jesus. But it is a historical fact that for the better part of 2,000 years, Christians did accuse “the Jews” of killing Jesus. It was not Hargrave’s intent to reanimate the view of Jews as Jesus killers. It was quite the opposite: He was saying that most Christians, who once embraced that view, got over it — and rightly so.

Hargrave also said the following, according to the Daily Progress:

“I personally think that our black citizens should get over it. … By golly, we’re living in 2007. Nobody can justify slavery today, but it’s counterproductive to dwell on that. … Political correctness has kind of gotten us into this area.”

Del. Dwight Jones, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, responded as follows: “When somebody tells me that I should just get over slavery, I can only express my emotion by suggesting that I am appalled.”

The point that Hargrave was raising, albeit in a clumsy way, was that nursing a cult of victimization does nothing to improve the lives of African-Americans or to better prepare them to prosper in a globally competitive economy. It’s a legitimate argument; indeed an increasing number of blacks are making it. But aggrieved and offended Democrats don’t want to engage that argument. Calling upon the unassailable moral force of the 19th- and 20th-century struggles to abolish slavery and enact Civil Rights, they want to delegitimize dissenting strategies for achieving black prosperity in the 21st century. They want to drive those views from the public sphere — and call it “healing.”

In Frank Hargrave’s case, I think they succeeded. It’ll be a long time, I wager, before he unfolds himself from his foetal position to speak on the topic again. But that doesn’t mean he’ll change his thinking.

One thing I’ve learned from my marriage: Sometimes the best way to get over an argument is just to stop talking about it. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree, and move on with life. Resolutions like McEachin’s don’t reconcile anyone, they don’t heal anyone. If not time to “get over it,” it is indeed time to “move on.”

Del. Chris Peace, R-Mechanicsville, is forming a state task force to study textbook reform in Virginia.

The goal, as discussed in “A ‘Textbook’ Study of Knowledge-Wave Education Policy,” is to devise an end-run around monopolistic textbook manufacturers, who publish school books geared to the curricula of bigger states like California and Texas. Through use of shared texts and print-on-demand printing technology, Peace thinks he can save taxpayers millions of dollars each year and better align the content of textbooks with the Virginia Standards of Learning.

Peace is assembling a list of people who would like to participate in the study. If you have something to contribute, let him know your interests and your qualifications at [email protected].

The big cultural wedge issue in this year’s General Assembly session comes not from the right but from the left. Del. Don McEachin, D-Richmond, has submitted a bill that calls for “atoning for involuntary servitude of Africans and calling for the reconciliation of all Virginians.” It pays to read this bill carefully and to note what it says and does not say.

The bill commences by reciting the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and the practice of slavery in the United States and Virginia, and then recounts the injustices of the Jim Crow era. If the bill stopped there, I wouldn’t find it terribly objectionable. (I say that with certain reservations. As Jim Bowden points out in his recent column, “Our Humblest Apologies,” the McEachin apology provides a lopsided, context-deficient account of history.)

But McEachin doesn’t stop there. He links the evils of slavery to the present time.

An apology for centuries of brutal dehumanization and injustices cannot erase the past, but confession of the wrongs can speed racial healing and reconciliation and help African American and white citizens confront the ghosts of their collective pasts together. … Racial reconciliation is impossible without some acknowledgment of the moral and legal injustices perpetrated upon African Americans. …

Throughout their existence in America and even in the decades after the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans have found the struggle to overcome the bitter legacy of slavery long and arduous, and for many African Americans the scars left behind are unbearable, haunting their psyches and clouding their vision of the future and of America’s many attributes. …

In the Commonwealth, home to the first African slaves, the vestiges of slavery are ever before African American citizens, from the overt racism of hate groups to the subtle racism encountered when requesting health care, transacting business, buying a home, seeking quality public education and college admission, and enduring pretextual traffic stops and other indignities.

This document does not merely ask Virginians merely to apologize for slavery — it asks that Virginianscollectively accept moral responsibility for the condition of African-Americans today. Further, it asks us to accept facts that are demonstrably untrue (that African-Americans are the victims of racism in college admissions) and facts that are arguably untrue (that African-Americans are discriminated against by mortgage lenders and providers of health care). And it does so without ever mentioning the devastation wreaked upon the African-American community by the modern welfare state. So, while Virginians apologize for the sins of long-dead ancestors, McEachin does not request anyone to apologize for the facts that:

• Great Society urban-clearing programs devastated African-American neighborhoods and disrupted the social cohesion of African-American communities in cities across the country.
• The problem of endemic African-American unemployment did not exist until after the introduction of Great Society welfare policies.
• Violent crime rates among African-Americans skyrocketed after the introduction of the welfare state and liberal attitudes towards law enforcement.
• The break-up of the nuclear African-American family and the surge in out-of-wedlock births occurred after the introduction of the welfare state.

Of course, acknowledging that the welfare state, not slavery or Jim Crow, is what created the African-American underclass, hence is responsible for most of the suffering of living African-Americans, would require McEachin to apologize policies that he endorsed and defended.

My sense is that McEachin really isn’t interested in apologizing himself. He’s looking for others to do the apologizing. McEachin isn’t interested in “racial reconciliation” — he’s just another liberal playing the racial blame game.

State government is plodding in its embrace of technology to deliver services to the public, but the fact that it is plodding suggests that it is moving forward. A case in point: As part of its outreach program, the Department of Business Assistance is holding a webinar tomorrow about the state’s eVa procurment system. States Director Louisa Strayhorn:

Think about it: no traveling, no traffic, no unfamiliar conference room seating. Just you, us, and an opportunity to help your business without leaving your business. Not only is it more convenient for you, our customer, but it will allow VDBA to reach more customers at less cost. As a taxpayer, you’ve got to love that!

Yes, as a taxpayer, I do.

Let us now praise the Daily Press, normally one of the more truculent voices for Business As Usual thinking in the Mainstream Media. Today’s editorial makes a key point that all too often goes missing from MSM reporting and punditry: that it matters not only how much money we raise for transportation maintenance and improvements, it matters who pays, and how.

The main thrust of the op-ed piece is to ask what ever happened to all the talk about privatization as an option for raising capital to invest in transportation improvements. That’s a worthwhile question. But more significant was a digression, towards the bottom of the piece, about the virtues of the gas tax (my italics):

It’s a simple concept: Them that use, pay. And they should pay according to demand, too. In Hampton Roads, you may have noticed, it’s pretty easy to get around the region from midnight to six in the morning. Logic suggests a system that discourages driving in peak demand periods.

“The growing stranglehold that congestion is placing on America’s transportation network calls for new ways of financing and maintaining our critical transportation infrastructure,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said recently.

The DP deserves credit for moving beyond the simplistic mantra, heard so often elsewhere, that limits the debate to how much money is needed and where to get it. In other words, if you’ll permit me to elaborate, there are two sides to the equation: supply and demand. The debate in Virginia focuses almost exclusively on the supply side (how to increase the capacity of the transportation system) and has overlooked demand (how to reduce usage of the system) through congestion pricing, zoning reforms and the overhaul of governance structures.

Let us hope that the DP follows this new line of logic. The editorialistas there will find that it opens up new realms of inquiry.

I am probably the last blogger in Virginia to mention it, but there may be a few readers who haven’t seen Waldo Jaquith’s new “Richmond Sunlight” website yet. Waldo’s creation provides an interface to General Assembly information that’s far more user friendly than the G.A.’s own website. Plus, it has cool features such as lists of newest bills, most viewed bills and most discussed bills, along with easy access to legislator information.

The website has fun, dynamically updated charts that show, among other things, the Top 10 bill filers (Del. Bob Marshall is the most prolific). And the comments capability could prove interesting. As of today, the bill that has sponsored the most commentary is HB 1774, which would make it “unlawful for any person to keep, maintain or operate or to visit a disorderly house.”

Great job, Waldo! I’m book-marking this baby, and I’m going to use it.

An Associated Press article about childhood obesity this morning kicks off this way:

RICHMOND–At Chimborazo Elementary, apples aren’t just for teachers. The glossy fruit lined lunch trays on a recent Wednesday, alongside wheat rolls, low-fat sorbet and gobs of greens–healthy choices all happily scarfed by fourth graders.

“There’s a direct correlation between a healthy child and achievement,” said Richmond schools spokeswoman Felicia Cosby, smiling as students tore into string beans and low-fat milk.

State lawmakers hope this is the lunchroom of the future.

Tackling childhood obesity is one of those mom-and-apple pie issues. Absolutely no one is for childhood obesity. How, then, can anyone oppose a measure like the one submitted by Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, that would require state educational and health officials to cooperate in targeting childhood obesity and other juvenile health problems?

Actually, I wouldn’t say that I oppose Edwards’ bill. It might do a small measure of good. What disturbs me is a quote the legislator used to justify the bill: “It’s a state responsibility.”

It’s everyone’s responsibility. Childhood obesity results from behaviors and forces deeply embedded in American popular culture. The state, by ensuring that the healthy foods are served in schools, is a necessary partner in combating obesity. But the problem extends so much farther than the school cafeteria.

Some people blame the giant food companies that peddle sugar cereals, snacks, deserts and junk foods. Yeah… I suppose so. But I remember seeing those commercials, and wanting those cereals (“Trix are for kids!”), when I was a kid more than 40 years ago — and childhood obesity was trivial a problem back then. I think the roots go deeper. For the sake of brevity, I will mention only two factors.

One is the time famine. Parents today, especially those in two-income families, are Running As Hard as They Can (to borrow Ed Risse’s phrase) and, though they know better, often take the easy way out when it comes to preparing food. It’s easier just for an exhausted mom to shove a pizza in the oven than to cook a proper meal. It’s easier to give in to the child who steadfastly refuses to eat his greens.

The other is our cultural proclivity for keeping kids cooped up inside. Four years ago, our family moved from Richmond to Henrico County so my little boy could have room to run and play outside. Does he, in fact, run in play outside? No. Do any of the other kids in the neighborhood run and play outside? Almost never. There are quiet streets for bicycling, and creeks to explore, and cul de sacs to play kickball in, but… you don’t see kids outdoors. They’re all inside.

Why? I think it’s because Americans live in a culture of fear. Mothers are terrified that a molester will snatch their child off the street. They’re terrified that their child will be run over by a car. Mothers don’t want to let children out of their sights (until they turn 16 and, equipped with cars and cell phones, they can go anywhere, do anything, they want). Little boys stay inside, watch TV and play video games. What physical activity they engage in — baseball, soccer, basketball, tae kwon do and other organized sports — is all structured and overseen by adults. Children don’t explore their neighborhoods like they used to. They don’t play spontaneous games of SPUD (anyone remember that game?) or hide-and-seek like they used to. Consequently, they don’t get nearly as much exercise as kids did when I was growing up.

Figure out how to change the time famine, teach kids good eating habits, quell the climate of fear and ensure that kids get more exercise, and we won’t have an obesity epidemic anymore.

Arthur Purves, president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, has pinpointed a key player in the transportation debate — the teachers union — that I, for one, have not appreciated, relying as I do upon Mainstream Media reporting for insight into the political dynamics of the General Assembly.

Why, Purves asks, does the state Senate (and, it could be added, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine) insist that transportation improvements not be paid for with General Fund revenues? Why the insistence that transportation not compete with other needs like education and health care? Because of the Virginia Education Association. Writes Purves in testimony before the Fairfax County Delegation to the Virginia General Assembly, January 6, 2007:

Most General Fund revenue comes from income and most of the sales tax as well as lottery and ABC profits. Traditionally fifty percent of General Fund revenues goes to education. … Historically, General Fund revenues, which increase with income, have increased much faster than transportation revenues, which are largely based on gasoline taxes that do not increase with gasoline prices.

The result is a structural imbalance in which public schools dominate the fast-growing income and sales tax revenues while transportation is stuck with stagnant gasoline tax revenues. So while funding for new transportation construction is drying up, inflation-adjusted public-school spending in Virginia has been increasing ten times faster than enrollment.

The General Assembly’s debates on transportation are a turf war in which the Virginia Education Association and its allies in the Senate try to keep transportation out of the General Fund. They do not want funding for state-mandated elementary school guidance counselors to have to compete with widening and repairing interstate highways.

This analysis makes sense to me, although I would offer one note of caution: Purves offers no hard evidence in his letter — perhaps taking the truth of it for granted — that the VEA has lobbied actively to protect the General Fund from transportation funding. I can’t tell if he’s arguing from a logical deduction or from concrete knowledge.

School funding should have to compete with transportation funding, Purves argues. “Higher taxes would only reward mismanagement.”

Update: Purves cites the legislative reports on the VEA website as proof of its opposition to the GOP transportation plan. Says the VEA:

In 2004 we gained $700 million a year with the tax restructuring. The public supported the 2004 tax restructuring because they thought the money would go for education. Now we see these funds diverted to transportation when we are not adequately paying our teachers and not funding the SOQ in keeping with the recommendations of the Board of Education.

In my recent column, “The Oregon Solution,” I argued that the gasoline tax is doomed. As consumers shift to hybrid cars, fuel cell-powered cars and electric cars over the next 20 years, gasoline consumption will decline precipitously, and so will the gasoline tax — leaving the state of Virginia (and every other state in the union) looking for other sources of revenue to pay for road maintenance and construction.

The future is closer than I thought. I’d considered fuel-cell cars as the most remote of the alternate power technologies because they would require a parallel hydrogen manufacturing / distribution / retailing infrastructure to be built, posing a Catch 22. Why would anyone want to buy a fuel cell-powered car if hydrogen fuel stations were few and far between? And why would anyone invest in hydrogen fuel stations if there weren’t any fuel cell-powered cars on the road?

Now comes BMW with a vehicle that gets around that problem — a hybrid gasoline/hydrogen car. The”Hydrogen 7″ (displayed to the left) has two separate fuel tanks — one for gasoline and one for hydrogen. According to Business 2.0 magazine, that allows motorists to burn hydrogen when they can access it and gasoline when they can’t. Catch 22 problem solved!

It still will take time for a hydrogen-fuel infrastructure to develop. BMW is manufacturing only 100 Hydrogen 7s this year, and only 25 of those are coming to the United States. But that’s just Year One. Let’s see what Year Two looks like. Meanwhile, General Motors has announced its intention to unveil two fuel-cell vehicles in 2011. Other auto companies will follow.

The auto manufacturers are moving a lot faster than the politicians. The fuel-cell era could be here in a political blink of the eye. And unless Virginia starts thinking about the consequences, our dysfunctional transportation system could start unraveling a lot faster than anyone thinks.

(Thanks to Phil Rodokanakis for pointing me to the Business 2.0 story.)

Virginia state government organizes its economic development efforts around traditional programs — tourism, trade, small-business assistance and recruitment of corporate investment. These are all worthy parts of any comprehensive economic development strategy, but Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Smarter Growth, is thinking of economic development in broader terms.

In an open letter to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and his counterparts in Washington, D.C., and Maryland, Schwartz articulated a “smart growth” vision of sustainable economic development in a world characterized by increasing energy prices, global warming and government facing massive structural deficits in Medicare and Social Security.

Writes Schwartz: “In this environment, we simply cannot afford to continue costly patterns of sprawl development, nor can we afford the increasing decentralization of government agencies to exurban locations. It is our cities and other existing communities, combined with transit-oriented development and other policies, which offer the opportunity to deal with these challenges.”

Sustainable economic development policies would include:

Energy Efficient Transportation: “Those regions of the world that are most energy efficient in their buildings and transportation infrastructure will be the most economically competitive. Cities, with their compact grid of streets, and dynamic, close interaction between thousands of business entities, offer huge energy efficiencies. Overspending on new highways simply enables development patterns that over the longer term are neither affordable nor sustainable. Given what we know, these historic practices no longer make sense and ultimately will prove harmful to the efficiency of our metropolitan areas. Instead, expanded transit (bus, bus rapid transit, streetcar, light rail, Metro), freight rail and passenger rail networks tied to transit-oriented development will reduce public and private costs, including transportation, and will reduce future energy consumption.”

Tackling Global Warming: Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., will be among the areas most affected by global warming. “Tens of thousands of acres of coastal land and wetlands will be potentially lost and we will face more severe storms and urban flooding.” The worst effects of global warming can be avoided, Schwartz argues, “if we act aggressively within the next 10 years to implement policies to reduce CO2 emissions.” In the Mid-Atlantic, that means investing in transit, locally interconnected streets that maximize pedestrian and bicycle trips, and “leaving behind forever the practice of throwing money at ever larger highways in a vain attempt to cure congestion.”

Conserving Fiscal Resources: The nation is plagued with chronic budget deficits — and that’s at the peak of the business cycle and before massive expenditures on Medicare and Social Security kick in. In the future, government will face ever greater fiscal constraints than today. “The cost simply to maintain and rehabilitate the infrastructure we have already built is a massive liability which grows in scale every year. … We have to be much more efficient and more judicious with our transportation and other infrastructure investments. … Compact, mixed-use, transit-oriented and pedestrian-oriented development combined with the right pricing signals will be essential to reduce the demand on our roadways and to use our land and infrastructure more efficiently.”

I totally agree with Stewart about the need to emphasize energy efficiency as a way to maintain economic competitiveness and sustain quality of life in an era of rising energy prices. I also concur that we not saddle ourselves with horrendously expensive-to-maintain physical infrastructure as government enters an era of increased fiscal constraints.

I’ve evinced skepticism about global warming hysteria on this blog. Temperatures are rising, but I’m not convinced that CO2 emissions are the main culprit. Further, any actions we take locally will have an infinitesimal impact on global trends. Still, it can’t hurt to reduce CO2 emissions as part of move towards energy conservation and self-sufficiency, goals that are justifiable on other grounds.

More importantly, I think Schwartz does a valuable service by expanding the way we think about economic development. It’s not just something we relegate to the Secretariat of Commerce and Trade. A meaningful definition would encompass our approach to education and the building of human capital. And it would encompass the way we design and build our human habitat.

Reader Larry Gross has brought to my attention two very cool — and under-reported — pieces of legislation.

Road reclassification. In HJR 623, Del. Michelle McQuigg, R-Occoquan, would establish a subcommittee to study the current, outmoded (circa 1930s) classification of roads and streets in Virginia with a functional system as outlined by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission in 2001. The current classification, notes the bill, “oftentimes bears little relationship to the significance of a road, its location, its traffic volume, or its function.” JLARC proposed categorizing roads by statewide significance, regional significance and local significance.

This is no academic exercise. Real state dollars are dumped into different administrative buckets, with the result that many less-deserving roads get priority over more deserving roads. Additionally, determining which roads are of “local” significance is a critical step in devolving authority for local roads to local governments.

Expanded Tolling Authority. In SB 782, Sen. Ken Cuccinelli II, R-Fairfax, would grant the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority, currently a shell organization, with the power to impose and collect tolls for use of new and reconstructed facilities “so as to increase their traffic capacity” and to issue bonds supported by those toll collections. The bill also stipulates that every toll facility in Northern Virginia must be capable of fully automated electronic operation.

SB 782 is part of a broader package of legislation designed to address transportation and land use in tandem. Said a Jan. 8 press release from Cuccinelli’s office: “If his transportation legislation passes, Cuccinelli said that localities would finally have the right to reject denser development if it would negatively impact local transportation networks, the transportation trust fund would be constitutionally protected and a HOT lanes network would reduce congestion on our worst roads.”

Cuccinelli isn’t exactly Mr. Popular with the Axis of Taxes running the state Senate, so I wouldn’t expect his proposals to get very far. But you never know. In any case, it’s good to know that at least one member of the upper chamber shows signs of thinking outside the tax-and-spend box.

Last month, Virginian-Pilot reporter Tom Holden created quite a stir when he quoted Del. John Welch III, R-Virginia Beach, as saying he now supports a general tax increase to fund transportation improvements. Wrote Holden:

Del. John Welch III, one of the General Assembly’s most ardent anti-tax champions, said Thursday he supports a 10-cents-a-gallon gas tax increase to help pay for Virginia transportation projects.

Welch, who like all state lawmakers is up for election in November 2007, said he changed his mind after voters repeatedly told him on Election Day that they were fed up with the stalemate in Richmond.

“I worked the polls for 13 hours… and people told me they want something done,” he said. “They don’t like taxes but they want action. I will entertain fees or gas tax increases for the good of Virginia.”

Welch’s about-face was widely touted by the Axis of Taxes as evidence that the once-solid ranks of the low-tax wing of the House of Delegates was cracking. But now comes Leesburg Today with an article exploring the prospects for a compromise on the transportation-funding issue. One of the conservatives who supposedly has “turned the corner” on taxes, writes Dusty Smith, rejects the notion:

“It has seriously been mischaracterized,” said Robert Rummells, chief of staff for Del. John J. Welch III (R-21), referring to news reports that Welch would sponsor a bill to raise the gas tax by 10 cents per gallon and dedicate it to transportation needs. “It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Rummells said Welch was asked his opinion about a proposal to raise the gas tax by 30 cents, which he flat out rejected. He responded by saying he could entertain the idea of raising the tax by 10 cents, but only if the General Assembly and voters approve a constitutional amendment that would prevent the Transportation Trust Fund from being used for any non-transportation item. A constitutional amendment requires approval by two successive legislatures and a statewide referendum, meaning the earliest it could be in place would be November 2008, if it took effect immediately after the referendum.

“The most Welch would even consider is a dime,” Rummells said, adding that without the constitutional amendment, there’s not a chance of Welch voting for that tax hike. “If there’s no lockbox, there’s no dime.”

Several legislators touted Welch’s words in his hometown newspapers as evidence conservative Republicans were swayed when voters in the recent elections chose to send Democrats to several statewide positions who identify transportation as their biggest concern. However, Rummells’ comments suggest otherwise. Welch does plan to sponsor a constitutional amendment to lock up the Transportation Trust Fund, Rummells said.

Whom do we believe? The popular inclination is to trust Holden, a veteran journalist, over some mealy-mouthed spokesman for a politician who wouldn’t even speak for himself. On the other, in my observation, the overall journalistic coverage of the transportation debate (I’m not referring to Holden specifically) has been so shoddy as to border on journalistic malpractice. It is obvious to me, if to no one else, that many journalists covering the transportation debate are captive to blatant prejudices and preconceptions.

Rummell has flat-out contested the accuracy of the Virginian-Pilot story, suggesting that Welch’s comments were taken grotesquely out of context. The core tenets of journalism require that the Pilot follow up, report honestly on the extent to which it quoted Welch fairly or unfairly, and clarify/update his position on taxes. It will be interesting to see if the Pilot does so. Failure to do so will smack of cover-up and create a presumption of guilt.

Crow-Eating Update: I owe Tom Holden and the Virginian-Pilot an apology for insinuating that they even might have done anything wrong on this story. After writing this blog entry, I suggested that J.R. Hoeft over at Bearing Drift follow up on this story, which was in his back yard. He found it of interest, raising essentially the same questions that I did. (See his post.) However, Hampton Roads blogger Vivian Paige noted in the comments of J.R.’s blog that she’d noted the Welch story in her own blog back in December. She’d noted the delegate’s constitutional-amendment qualifier back then, so what was the fuss about?

Worried that I had missed something, I went back to Holden’s original story — and there it was: “Welch backs the increase on the condition that lawmakers also pass a constitutional amendment limiting access to the transportation trust fund.” I had overlooked it. Totally my fault. Let me reiterate: Holden presented Welch’s comments fairly and in context. The Pilot owes no one an apology and has no obligation to follow up.

Unless he was quoted out of context by Leesburg Today, however, Rummell has some explaining to do. Just how, exactly, did the news media mischaracterize Welch’s comments? Was he back-pedaling because Welch had caught some heat for his comments?

Finally, I have some self-examination to do. If I had read Holden’s article more carefully, I would not have needed to ask whether the Pilot or Rummell was the credible party. The answer would have been apparent. All I can say in my defense is that I pursued the truth of the matter and reported it as soon as I discovered it.