Bacon's Rebellion

Senate Finance Chair John Chichester says the General Assembly should cut its 46-day schedule in 2007 to 30 days. Chichester made the suggestion out of sympathy for legislative staffers, who have been forced to work overtime for two of the past three years, reports Christina Nuckols with the Virginian-Pilot.

But Chichester added that idea won’t work unless legislators exercise self-restraint and reduce the number of bills they introduce. This year, writes Nuckols, legislators filed 3,287 bills and resolutions during the regular session and added 391 after Gov. Timothy M. Kaine called a special session.

I quite agree that legislators file too many silly bills that clog the legislative process. But I don’t agree that the General Assembly should cut the length of the session. If anything, lawmakers need to stick around longer to work through the really complex challenges of restructuring government. Next year, that means grappling with the House legislative package to reform transportation and land use that got bumped from September’s special transportation session. Thirty days just won’t cut it.

Virginia is saddled with a government structure designed for the early 20th century — some 75 years out of date. If we want the Commonwealth to remain competitive in a global economy, lawmakers must give unremitting attention to reinventing, restructuring and streamlining government. The House seems up to the task. “It’s a lot to cram into 30 days. I think we should have a 60-day session every year,” House Appropriations Chairman Vincent Callahan, R-Fairfax, told Nuckols.

It’s an old joke that no man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the General Assembly is in session. Sometimes, that seems all too true. But witticisms shouldn’t drive policy. There’s real work ahead. The General Assembly needs to set aside the time to do it.

Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of the Washington Post, has distributed a memo to the newspaper’s editorial staff, which has been picked and up published by Editor & Publisher.

“Readership and economic challenges remain daunting,” Downey wrote. “We must produce high quality, compelling journalism and carry out our public service mission while adjusting our cost structure to shifting advertising revenues.”

Adjusting our cost structure. I like that. I should have used that line when I had to cut costs and lay off employees at Virginia Business magazine.

But it’s not just about cutting costs, Downie insisted. It’s all about making the newspaper better. On the cost-cutting side, the WaPo will shrink newsroom staff through attrition as low priority positions become vacant. He did not provide a specific number of positions to be attrited. On the making-the-newspaper-better side, staffers will be reassigned from general assignment positions to specific assignments and beats.

In form, our priorities include original reporting, scoops, analysis, investigations and criticism.

As opposed to what other priorities? Rewriting press releases? Fabricating news? Masquerading personal opinion as news coverage?

In content, they include politics, government accountability, economic policy and what our readers need to know about the world – plus local government, schools, transportation, public safety, development, immigrant communities, health care, sports, arts and entertainment.

Personally, I think the WaPo reporters covering Virginia state/local government are doing a reasonably good job. If I were in Downie’s office, I’d start by whacking the guys who write the editorials.

Sorry, I’m so slow. I was occupied with the election. That’s my story. Nevertheless, three weeks ago the York School Board changed their policy on Religion.

The School Superintendent offered a much longer, and seriously flawed, change to the Religion policy. (See http://www.ycchh.org.)

Parents asked that the Religion policy not change, but simply add a policy statement about holidays that York would follow the guidelines of the State Department of Education.

The elected School Board voted to do both. You have to love representative democracy at work. The Golden Age of Greece ain’t got nothing on York County.

The next step is for the Superintendent to provide implementing regulations. Those will be interesting to see.

The step after that is for the citizens of York to consider if they need to elect any new School Board members.

Meanwhile, it looks like Christmas, the official U.S. and Virginia, holiday will be noted in all York Co public schools this year. Good work, Citizens.

Loudoun County has engaged The Telework Consortium Inc., of Herndon, to upgrade its telwork program. Loudounm, which has 92 government offices dispersed over 500 square miles, worked with the consortium in early 2005 to pilot a video and collaboration tool. The pilot has since been expanded, as has the role of telework, in helping the county address continuity of operations, the lack of space for an increasing workforce, and growing traffic problems.

As a part of the turnkey agreement, Telework Consortium provides county officials with a desktop collaborative (video, audio, and data software) Internet Protocol-based environment, dedicated server hosting, application training on the collaborative software, and a customer support desk.

Find details in the Telework Consortium press release.

State lawmakers will have an extra $600 million to play with when it reconvenes in January and next, but Del. Vincent F. Callahan Jr., R-Fairfax, chairman of the House Appropriations committee, is urging fiscal caution. Revenue growth is slowing from the double-digit rate of the past few years to a single-digit rate.

Says Callahan: “We can ill afford to repeat mistakes of the past, where, in times of what appears to be plenty, we created costly new programs before fulfilling previously made commitments.” He recommended spending the money on one-time expenditures such as construction projects rather than ramping up new programs. (The Richmond Times-Dispatch has the story. So does the Washington Post. And the Virginian-Pilot.)

The Washington Metro is planning to purchase 100 rail cars at $2 million a pop to run trains along the silver line, the 24-mile Rail-to-Dulles extension of the metro system, reports Examiner.com. That’s despite the fact that no one is certain how much the project will cost or how any amount over the current $2.1 billion estimate for Phase One will be funded.

Admittedly, Metro is in a tough position. There’s a long lead time in ordering rail cars. And Metro would look pretty stupid if the rail line and stations were built and there weren’t any cars for anyone to ride.

More than a year ago, I predicted on this blog that the impending end of the real estate bubble would portend fiscal problems for local governments, especially those in Northern Virginia, which have relied upon soaring property assessments to fund their massive spending increases. Not to toot my own horn, but I was right about the real estate bubble, and now, it appears, I was right about the fiscal distress.

The headline on Annie Gowan’s story in the Washington Post this morning: “Cuts in Spending, Increase in Taxes Considered to Offset Revenue Drop-Offs.” According to Gowan, Arlington County faces a $20 million shortfall next year, while Alexandria will take a $18 million hit. Loudoun County, which saw a 28 percent growth in property assessments last year, is anticipating an outright decline in 2008. Fairfax County is already trimming personnel expenses this year in expectation of a modest three percent revenue increase next year.

In my real estate jeremiads, I predicted one additional effect from the bursting of the market bubble: A surge in anti-tax sentiment. The budget cuts and tax hikes are only anticipated right now — they haven’t taken place yet. The screaming won’t begin until next spring when localities begin working on their fiscal 2008 budgets. That’s when the public will focus on just how much local government spending has surged since the recession – far outpacing inflation and population growth. The agitation will only increase when the tax hikes actually go into effect that summer.

That’s right about the time that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine thinks voters will be itching to chastise the low-tax partisans in the House of Delegates for failing to embrace his $1 billion-a-year taxes-for-transportation proposal. Somehow, I just don’t think it’s going to happen. Indeed, depending on how much taxes increase in NoVa, low-tax advocates could gain ground in the 2007 elections.

Drachten, a Dutch town of 50,000, has removed nearly all of its traffic lights, converting major intersections to roundabouts and counting on residents to employ simple courtesy at other intersections. Amazingly, anarchy works. Treehugger.com reports that the new system has “eliminated dangerous crashes and road fatalities and created a surge in bicycle and pedestrian traffic.” (Hat tip to Jim Duncan for pointing me to this story.)

Fascinating. This anecdote invites an examination of the role of culture in creating/mitigating traffic congestion. Could the Drachten experience be replicated elsewhere, or is it something unique to an orderly and courteous people such as the Dutch?

As a thought experiment, try transplanting the experiment to the United States. My suspicion is that it would not work as well — although the degree to which it would flop would vary from region to region. Residents of different regions country show more politesse than do others. I have found that drivers are far more courteous here in Richmond, for instance, than in Northern Virginia, and I would argue that our roads are marginally less congested as a result.

An example: When I drive downtown during morning rush hour, I go through an intersection where Huguenot Road and River Road join to become Cary Street. Two lanes merge into one, creating a predictable traffic back-up. What makes the situation tolerable is the courtesy that drivers display to one another. It is very rare that you see aggressive drivers muscling ahead of other cars to move ahead one extra slot. There is an unspoken rule that drivers in both lanes alternate entry into the single lane on Cary Street. The effect is like a zipper closing — very smooth, not stressful. That experience is typical of the motorist “culture” in the region.

Contrast that with the Washington area. There I find much more of an every-man-for-himself approach to driving. Displays of courtesy are mistaken for timidity. Hesitation will get you run off the road. I find the much of the motorist behavior to be aggressive, rude, even belligerent. NoVa drivers probably take me for a wimp.

Another example: What happens in your community when a storm knocks out the electric lights? Normal traffic rules regarding rights of way do not apply — people fall back upon their natural instincts. Traffic usually continues unimpeded along one road until a break, then it continues unimpeded on the intersecting road. But with some frequency, treating the intersection like a four-way stop sign, drivers will stop to allow others take their turning moving through the intersection. As a rule, I’ve found, common sense and courtesy prevails.

I have no hard evidence for my proposition, but I would hypothesize that the Richmond way works better than the NoVa way. Aggressive, eradic driving is more likely to disrupt traffic flow than calm, courteous driving. Could Richmonders live up to Drachten standards? Probably not. Aside from the expense of retrofitting our major intersections with roundabouts, there are just too many Yankee transplants down here. (That’s a deliberate attempt to get a rise out of readers.) We may be courteous, but we’re not courteous enough. Additionally, our urban design and land use patterns do not lend themselves to bicycling and walking. Still, the experiment is worth thinking about.

Peter Baque with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, who attended the Virginia Light Rail Symposium Friday, provides a quick environmental scan of light rail projects across Virginia. Everybody loves light rail, it appears — they just don’t like paying for it.

There’s a reason we don’t see a lot of light rail projects:. They’re expensive. They require a lot of money up-front to build, and then they require subsidies to continue operating. As the number of transit projects increases, operating subsidies crowd out funds to build new ones. Thus, in a $150 million budget for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation for public transit systems, $105 million is tagged for operating expenses and only $39 million for capital projects.

If a transportation mode requires massive investment up front as well as ongoing operating subsidies, that should be a clue that it is not economically viable — not with Virginia’s low-density human settlement patterns at any rate. The only strategy that I can think of that would change the economics is (a) to permit greater densities along transportation corridors, which would boost ridership, and (b) use Community Development Authorities along the corridors to issue bonds to pay the up-front costs. Landowners, whose property would gain in value from the improvements, would pay off the bonds through a special tax assessment.

If there is a public benefit to mass transit — primarily less pollution — then a modest public investment could be justified. But there needs to be a methodology for calculating the pollution-reduction benefits, and the subsidies should be proportional.

There has been considerable discussion on this blog on the viability of the $4 billion estimate for building the Rail to Dulles project. The issue became all the more urgent, to my mind, when private-sector proposals to build a new U.S. 460 between Suffolk and Petersburg came in hundreds of millions of dollars higher than anticipated. Given rampant inflation in the construction sector, could a similar fate be in store for Rail to Dulles, a lynchpin of Kaine administration plans to save Northern Virginia from traffic congestion hell?

We’ll find out more late this winter or early spring when the Bechtel/WGI consortium delivers its final, definitive estimate for Phase One before entering into contract negotiations to build the project. Don’t be surprised if the estimate, which stood at $1.8 billion in 2005 and now officially stands at $2.1 billion, bumps up another notch — a notch that conceivably could amount to another $200 million.

And that’s just Phase One. How much will Phase Two cost a decade or so out? Such an estimate, which must factor in the geopolitical impact of China’s economic transformation on steel prices and of jihadism on Middle Eastern oil supplies, is unknowable.

Peter Galuszka discusses the imponderables in his latest Road to Ruin piece, “A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma.” He raises several points that, in my humble opinion, are insufficiently appreciated in the Rail to Dulles debate:

1. What happens if inflation pushes up the price of Phase One much beyond $2.1 billion? Where does the money come from? Even now, the state funding formula is about $125 million short. If inflation adds another $250 million to the price tag, the state then needs to find $375 million. That’s real money. Where does it come from?
2. What will the Federal Transit Authority reaction be to a higher price tag? The current funding formula for Phase One anticipates receiving $900 million from the feds. Without it, the project is dead. But the FTA cost-benefit analysis apparently considers the project so marginal that adding $200 million to tunnel underneath Tysons Corner rather than run the rail line above-ground could have scuttled the funding. What if inflation adds $200 million to the cost of the project?
3. Who will absorb the risk if things go wrong? Bechtel-WGI can agree to build the project at almost any price you name — if someone else absorbs the risk of cost overruns. If the Kaine administration is desperate to close a deal for political reasons — and I’m not singling out the Kaine adminstration, what I’m saying applies to any administration — they can bury the risks in the fine print and pray that nothing comes back to bite them.

It strikes me that there’s a very good chance that the Rail to Dulles project could disintegrate. Let us hope that the Kaine administration is considering alternatives for improving mobility in the Rail-to-Dulles corridor. If the option is to build Rail-to-Dulles at any cost or… nothing at all… Virginians may wish they had another choice.

Here’s one possibility: Use time-of-day congestion pricing on the Dulles Toll Road to maximize throughput and use surplus funds to fund Bus Rapid Transit. It would help to have the numbers in hand in the event that Rail to Dulles falls apart.

Here’s a cost that doesn’t get cranked into the usual calculations of traffic congestion: First responders are increasingly using helicopters to get patients to the hospital quickly. Reports Ari Cetron with The Connection Newspapers:

The number of helicopter trips made by Aircare Medevac has more than doubled in just one year. In 2005, the company’s four helicopters in Northern Virginia (based in Manassas, Leesburg, Fredericksburg and Winchester) made 606 trips to Inova Fairfax Hospital. So far in 2006, the same four helicopters have made 1,250 trips.

City officials in Virginia Beach, where scattered, disconnected development has long epitomized everything wrong with suburban sprawl, shows signs that they really get it. On Monday, reports the Virginian-Pilot, the city Planning Commission will hear a proposal for more mixed-use, higher-density housing along Virginia Beach Boulevard.

A voluntary program would allow developers to build “workforce” housing for less affluent families in exchange for density bonuses. Planners anticipate more development like the successful, mixed-use, high density development at Town Center. (See “Extreme Makeover” for a description of the development there.)

After a contentious debate, Hanover County has approved a mixed-use (MX) district that will permit buildings to contain multiple uses. Such structures are normally found only in intensely developed urban areas, which struck a number of Hanover County citizens the wrong way. Many want to preserve the county’s low-density ambience.

The MX district will be limited to “surburban services areas” that allow nodes of greater density. The article in the Herald-Progress does not describe what types of multiple uses are expected. The most likely scenario for Hanover, I’m surmising, is an apartments-over-shops arrangement — and who could argue with that? If people want to live where they work, let them! It’s one more way to take cars off the roads. That’s a goal everyone in Hanover could get behind.

Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, one of the grandees of the state Senate, explained his thinking about transportation issues at a monthly meeting of the Goochland Republican committee. As reported by S.E. Warwick with The Goochland Courier, he noted quite correctly that the gas tax can’t keep up with the cost of maintaining state roads.

Maintenance costs are increasing by about 10 to 12 percent annually because each year many miles of new subdivision roads are added to the state system. Maintenance involves things like asphalt, derived from oil and concrete, whose prices are rising well ahead of inflation, said the senator.

Polls have shown that the public doesn’t favor any of the funding options proposed by lawmakers this year: raising the sales tax on cars and trucks, raising the wholesale fuel tax, or diverting funds from the General Assembly. “Those are about the only three options,” said Stosch. “That means that the general public is not prepared for any type of solution in a framework we can work with.”

Those are the only three options? Egads, does the good Senator live on the same planet as the rest of us? Unless S.E. Warwick omitted parts of his speech, Stosch did not talk about congestion pricing. He did not talk about privatization or tolls. He did not talk about proffers, impact fees or Community Development Authority bonds. And that’s just on the revenue side. He didn’t talk either about managing the demand for road improvements through land use reforms, car pooling, vans or Bus Rapid Transit — although he did mention high-speed rail and noted, correctly, its high up-front cost.

Tellingly, Stosch never even mentioned the House of Delegates legislative package that would have, among other things, curtailed the admittance of subdivision roads into the state system — one of the reasons he cites for rising maintenance costs!

There is an wide array of thinking about transportation that Sen. Stosch apparently has never tapped into. Sadly, his tunnel vision seems shared by many, though fortunately not all, of his peers in the Senate.

Gov. Tim Kaine and House Speaker Bill Howell are tussling again over the budget, this time over Kaine’s decision to use $3.7 million in surplus state funds to bail out a Fairfax County day care program. As Washington Post reporter Bill Turque explains the background:

For the past several years, Virginia has used state and federal money to subsidize day care for about 6,000 children of single, working parents who had made it off the welfare rolls. When Congress tightened work requirements this year for those still on welfare, the state decided to use its money to help them find child care.

But the actions still left funding uncertain for day care for about 1,900 children. Kaine asked the General Assembly in the spring to use some of the state’s budget surplus to make up the losses. The GOP-led House of Delegates rejected the request.

Kaine justifies the expenditure by calling the situation an “emergency.”

But Howell offers a different version of the story. In a prepared statement yesterday he said: “Despite advance warnings on the sustainability of the federal pass-through funding … the Kaine Administration [did not bring] this issue to the attention of the General Assembly during the regular session.”

Did the House reject a Kaine request for funds, as Turque writes, or did Kaine never raise the issue, as Howell contends? Until presented information to the contrary — and there may be a perfectly valid explanation for the seeming conflict — I’m inclined to believe the Speaker over the reporter.

But there’s a larger issue at stake. Howell brushes up against it when he asks, if Kaine thinks Virginia’s transportation system is so under-funded, why is he using surplus revenues to help out a Fairfax County day care program — something that Virginia’s wealthiest county could easily handle itself? Why isn’t Kaine using the money instead for transportation?

It’s a valid question, but there’s an obvious answer. To Kaine’s way of thinking, everything is underfunded. There isn’t enough money for education, health care and a host of other non-transportation priorities. Heck, Kaine wants to expand statewide pre-school programs at a cost of $300 million a year. That’s why he doesn’t want to divert money from the General Fund to transportation projects.

Here’s how I reverse-engineer the Governor’s legislative strategy coming into the fall: The Governor concluded that he can make a stronger case for raising taxes if the revenues were applied to a clearly dysfunctional transportation system than if they were dedicated to a new social program. That’s why the $1 billion in taxes-for-transportation gambit came first. Once Kaine secured those funds, he would undercut the rationale for using General Fund revenues to fund transportation projects, as Howell wants to do. Then the General Fund would have significant revenues to redeploy in 2009-2010 biennial budget because it wouldn’t include massive one-time investments for transportation, mental health or Chesapeake Bay clean-up like the 2007-2008 budget does. Thus, the pre-school program would be a relatively easy sell — it could be paid for with existing revenue streams. No General Fund tax hikes required.

Unable to get his transportation tax increase this year, and apparently unwilling to try again until 2008, the Governor will have to re-think his options for finding $300 million for his pre-school program. This $3.7 million dust-up over Fairfax County day care looks like the opening move — a reconnoitre of the political battlefield — of Kaine’s next big initiative.