Bacon's Rebellion

My buddies at the Virginia Institute for Public Policy are hosting “A Vision for Victory in Virginia,” a two-day conference in Williamsburg Sept. 21-23. Confirmed speakers include Sandra Froman, the president of the National Rifle Association; former Congressman Dick Armey; and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas and Thomas Jefferson.

Topics include: the advantages of an articulated vision such as the “Contract with America,” the Freedom & Prosperity Agenda, educational reform, property rights, fiscal policy and, of course, golf, tennis and a tour of colonial Williamsburg.

If you’ve never attended a Virginia Institute event, I highly recommend it. The Institute raised the level of intellectual discourse in Virginia by 20 IQ points when it convened its monthly breakfast conclave in Richmond.

For details, check the Institute website.

The highlight of Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s most recent round of board appointments was the reappointment of former Bacon’s Rebellion columnist/blogger Barnie Day to the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission. A worthy selection.

But still no word on critical transportation appointments expected to be announced after Labor Day….

Classified ads have traditionally accounted for some 40 percent of newspaper profits. Despite the effort of newspapers to establish an online presence, the fastest-growing online destinations for online advertising are free-standing websites like Craigslist.org and Trader Publishing. That’s great news for Trader, which is based in Norfolk, but bad news for businesses that build their audiences by gathering news.

According to comScore Media Metrix, online advertising traffic increased 47 percent in the past year to 37.4 million Internet users. Craigslist dominated with with 13.4 million users. But Trader Publishing came in second with 6.9 million. Autotrader.com, cars.com and other non-newspapers rounded out the Top 10 list.

Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, is still slamming the Kaine administration for the $137 million error in the state education budget. Michael Sluss with the Roanoke Times reports him as saying, “It’s outrageous that we in Virginia have to accept that kind of governing from our Democratic governor.”

Griffith said Kaine should take action against officials who knew about the error, and left the governor and lawmakers in the dark.

Griffith singled out Richard Brown, the director of the Department of Planning and Budget under Warner and Kaine. Griffith stopped short of calling for Brown’s dismissal. But, in an interview, Griffith said, “I’d like to hear something other than, ‘I have full confidence in the people who were responsible for the error.’ “

House Republicans are absolutely right in wanting to get to the bottom of the mistake. How did it happen? Who made it? Should an individual or individuals be held responsible? Or is there a structural flaw in the budgeting process that needs to be fixed?

From a P.R. standpoint, though, Republicans need to dial down the rhetoric. If they want broad-based public support for digging into the fiscal fiasco, they need to sound non-partisan. They need to sound more interested in preventing future errors than in shooting Democrats.

House leaders are right to inquire into root causes of the error to ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated. They are wrong to politicize the episode.

Here is some interesting reading, courtesy of Ray Hyde (the quote selections and accompanying commentary are mine, not his):

You Can Build Your Way out of Congestion! Tory Gattis, author of the Houston Strategies blog, summarizes a new Reason Foundation study that the construction of 104,000 lane miles at the cost of $533 billion dollars (2005) over the next 25 years would eliminate “all serious congestion” in America’s cities.

Concludes Gattis: “I suspect that the reason Houston is in so much better shape than most other metros is we never abandoned or slashed highway capacity expansion plans as many have, and they’ve fallen into a much deeper hole as a result. We’ve also stayed more realistic about what transit can and can’t do, and invested in more cost-effective transit solutions (like HOV express buses, vanpools, and carpools instead of commuter rail).”

However, Gattis does not discuss the concept of “induced demand,” in which the construction of new roadway capacity, by temporarily reducing travel times, induces people to move to more distant locations in the search of less expensive housing, thus generating more Vehicle Miles Traveled over time and more congestion. The 25-year period envisioned by the Reason study is more than enough time to change human settlement patterns, and congestion, for the worse.

The False Promise of Metro. Washingtonian Sam Smith, documents in his City Desk blog how the Washington Metro has contributed to congestion in the region: (a) falling far short of the ridership projections used to justify construction, and (b) driving out of business the local, privately owned bus companies that had served many of the same routes. “DC’s power-brokers — led then as now by real estate developers — weren’t really interested in transportation. They were more concerned with land speculation, with exploiting outer suburbia.”

Shades of Rail-to-Dulles. Who will pay for the extension of Metro to Dulles airport? The public. Who will make windfall profits? The landowners. Mechanisms exist for tapping some of that windfall to help finance the $4 billion project, as illuminated on this blog. Failure to do so amounts to legalized theft.

Why Charlotte Will Have Light Rail and Raleigh Won’t. According to North Carolina’s Innovation Online blog, Charlotte leaders planned their land use with light rail in mind, encouraging mixed uses and higher densities along the anticipated light rail routes. The resulting development was better able to support light rail. As a result, Charlotte will start up a 10-mile, $427 million light rail line in November 2007, while Raleigh has given up on its ambitions to run a commuter train through the Research Triangle and Durham.

Judging by a column in Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, Del. Frank Hall, D-Richmond, has learned nothing from the transportation debate over the last eight month. The House Minority Leader is content to repeat the same worn-out message — “something must be done; the cost of doing nothing is simply too high” — that got nowhere in the regular session of the General Assembly and that his party leader, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, has abandoned (out of expediency, admittedly) as he anticipates negotiating with Republicans in the House of Delegates later this month.

I hate dissing Hall because he’s a nice gentleman whom I bump into occasionally at the local neighborhood Starbucks, and I believe that he is sincere and well meaning. But the entire thrust of his column suggests that there is only one choice confronting Virginians: Raising taxes for transportation or “doing nothing.” (He does tack onto his column a brief mention of continuing “VDOT reform,” but provides few details as what that reform might look like.) For all intents and purposes, Hall appears perfectly content with continuing Business As Usual. All Virginia needs is more money and a couple of tweaks to the Virginia Department of Transportation.

By contrast, House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, clearly understands that dumping money into a broken system will not bring any lasting improvement. In an accompanying column, he stated: “Higher taxes are not the equivalent of safer roads and shorter commutes. As evidenced by the results of the sales tax increase of 1986, higher taxes will not reduce the time Virginians spend in their vehicles.”

Griffith and other House Republicans do want to pump more money into the transportation system — not a good idea, in my humble opinion, as long as the system remains dysfunctional. But at least he addresses root causes. Whether he can translate his abstract ideas into effective legislation is a separate issue, but at least he gets the basics right.

While [VDOT] frequently notes that it is “on time and on budget,” that is not a way to measure improvements for commuters. Instead, projects need to be mesaured by how much they reduce the time Virginians spend in their vehicles. (My italics.)

Yes! Ranking transportation projects on the basis of Congestion Mitigated per Dollar Spent is the most important reform that the General Assembly can take. This basic principle, I might add, applies not only to roads, but to mass transit, Intelligent Transportation Systems, demand-management projects, congestion pricing, telework and to the entire smorgasbord of transportation options.

Secondly, Griffith notes, “Growth affects transportation, and how the state and its localities respond to and manage that growth can be improved.” This principle also is fundamental. Griffith, like Gov. Kaine, grasps it. Yet Hall does not even give it lip service in his column, even though the Democratic Governor makes it one of the centerpieces of his transportation strategy.

Finally, Griffith alludes to one more critical principle: “Private-sector solutions to transportation challenges are widely employed in many states, yet Virginia falls behind in this area.” I am presently reading a book about private-sector transportation solutions, and I will have more to post on this subject in the future. I don’t know what specifics Griffith has in mind, but in the abstract, he is absolutely right. The reason private-sector solutions are preferable is that they operate on a “user pays” principle and avoid the rent-seeking behavior of lobbyists and legislators.

I’m looking forward with great anticipation to the legislative package that the House Republicans will be rolling out later this month. I’m hoping that the proposals match the rhetoric, and I’m hoping that the Governor will be able to bring along enough of his fellow Democrats in the legislature to bring about meaningful change.

There are two standards in the governance/accounting world today: one for the public sector, one for the private sector. Under the rules of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, chief financial officers of publicly traded companies must certify that the financial results they report are accurate. If mistakes are made and financial statements must be recalculated, the company’s stock price usually takes a beating — and the CFO takes a whipping.

Then you have the public sector.

John Bennett, who functioned as “CFO” for the state of Virginia during the Warner administration, knew of a $137 million miscalculation in the state budget back in December but neglected to tell his boss, Mark Warner, or the incoming governor, Tim Kaine. The reaction? Not surprisingly, Republican legislators issued “howls of outrage” (to use a phrase in the Washington Post). Even Warner-loving editorial pundits conceded that Bennett’s action was a no-no. But now that Kaine has identified the problem and proposed how to fix it, the chattering classes seem quite content to move on. Yeah, yeah, it was a mistake, but there are bigger problems, so let’s get over it.

But Del. Tim Hugo, R-Fairfax, among others, isn’t ready to “get over it.” As he rightly observed: “If you were in the private sector and did this, these people would be facing serious consequences.”

Now, I don’t know whether or not people in the Warner administration intentionally covered up the transgression, as some have suggested. But I share Hugo’s view that the incident needs to be investigated — with the proviso that it not be turned into a partisan excuse to bash Bennett or the Warner administration. The problem, I suspect, transcends partisan affiliations.

Somewhere along the line, Bennett failed to communicate a highly significant piece of information. In my experience in the business world, communications breakdowns are rarely due to deviousness or ill will. In this case, the breakdown appeared to have been connected to the transition from one management team (Warner’s) to another management team (Kaine’s). It’s conceivable that laziness or negligence was a factor — perhaps Bennett was itching to wind up and move to his next job — but the purpose of any hearing should be to correct the structural flaws in the budgetary process. The goal should be ensuring that the error is never repeated, not to hang Bennett.

However, because there seems to be a complacent attitude in the press — $137 million accounting errors in a $60 billion state budget really aren’t that big a deal, unless, of course, it had been committed by the Gilmore administration, in which case the scandal would be flogged for months — the momentum may never build to hold those hearings. We’ll have to wait for a Republican administration to make the same mistake — I’m under no illusions that Republicans are somehow exempt from committing such blunders — for the press to work itself into a lather.

William H. Abeloff, the visionary who transformed the urban landscape of the city of Richmond, died at home yesterday. He was 71.

In 1981, when everyone else had written off downtown Richmond as a place to live, Abeloff bought his first parcel in Tobacco Row, a string of abandoned tobacco warehouses overlooking the James River. By 1991, he had renovated the first warehouse into a 260-unit apartment building. Today, a much-expanded Tobacco Row anchors the thriving, mixed-use Shockoe Bottom district, a vibrant center of the advertising-marketing-communications industry and the most popular entertainment district in Central Virginia.

After selling his interest in Tobacco Row, Abeloff then laid the legal groundwork for Rocketts Landing, another urban revitalization project, just downstream from Tobacco Row. His crucial contribution was persuading Henrico County to re-write its zoning code to allow urban, mixed-use development. This unsung achievement has inspired a half dozen or more major mixed-use development projects in Henrico. Like Rocketts Landing itself, none of these projects has yet been built, but they are in the development pipeline, and they represent a marked reversal from the traditional pattern of scattered, disconnected, low-density sprawl.

Abeloff was an old-school Southern gentleman, charming, courteous, gracious. His death is a great loss. But he couldn’t ask for a more enduring legacy: a vital, transformed Richmond riverfront.

(Credit for Tobacco Row photo: Forest City Washington.)

In a blog conference held this afternoon, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine laid out his expectations for the upcoming transportation session of the General Assembly. Abandoning the proposal he pushed earlier this year to raise taxes by $1 billion a year, he will focus on areas of common agreement with the Senate and the tax-averse House of Delegates.

The Governor said he hopes to make progress in three broad areas: (1) reform and privatization of the Virginia Department of Transportation; (2) making the connection between transportation and land use planning; and (3) bolstering stable, ongoing transportation funding through the dedication of more modest revenue streams than he’d proposed earlier this year.

VDOT reform. VDOT has made significant improvements in delivering construction projects on time and on budget, but that’s just a start. Kaine said he expects to see more construction performed under public-private partnerships, and to see an increase in the percentage of road maintenance conducted by private contractors. He anticipates additional VDOT reform bills to surface in the special session.

In a related matter, he said, “you’ll see some announcements on personnel that will take the reform issues further.” (The Governor is expected to announce his selection for the permanent VDOT commissioner after Labor Day.)

Land use. The Commonwealth has “turned a corner” in making the connection between land use and transportation, Kaine said. He has appointed a “community development” sub-cabinet — encompassing the secretariats of Administration, Commerce & Trade, Transportation and Natural Resources — to look for ways “to do planning in different ways than we did in the past.”

Kaine refused to divulge details of any new land use-related legislative initiatives, but he did mention one previously announced issue that he wants to solve: What are the circumstances under which the state accepts subdivision roads into the state road system?

When local governments approve zoning changes or amend their comprehensive plans, they can create new road-maintenance obligations for the state. “A private developer builds the road, then the roads come into the state system to be maintained in perpetuity,” Kaine explained. About 200 miles of road are added to the state highway system each year that way. As maintenance expenses soar, cutting into funds available for new construction, the state has little say about the new obligations it’s forced to take on.

In a related issue, Kaine said that the issue of VDOT subdivision road standards also is “actively under contemplation.” It’s a rare topic upon which builders and environmentalists agree: VDOT standards for road widths are too wide. Builders complain that the roads are expensive to build, while environmentalists contend that wide roads and cross-walks make it difficult to create pedestrian-friendly communities. “Are we being rigid without a real purpose?” asked Kaine rhetorically. “It’s fair game for analysis.”

Dedicated funding streams. “There are ‘free lunchers’ who think we can have a B+ infrastructure on a D+ revenue stream,” Kaine said. “They’re wrong. You’ve got to have reliable resources to do it.” But he acknowledged that House Republicans aren’t likely to budge on his desire for $1 billion in new taxes. He does think, however, that it is possible to reach consensus on some smaller revenue streams. Dedicating automobile insurance premiums and traffic abuser fees to transportation, and supplementing them with General Fund surplus funds, could inject a meaningful amount of money into the transportation system.

Additionally, the Governor sees promise in proposals to create regional transportation solutions that draw upon a combination of regional taxes, local fees and tolls — with all revenue to stay within the region. Such an approach could make a big difference to Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Regional plans are not sufficient in themselves to address all the state’s problems, especially in places like Southwest Virginia, but they can be part of the solution.

In sum, Kaine said, “Let’s focus on the areas where we agree.” A number of people are pessimistic that the special session will yield anything meaningful for transportation. “I’m not among them. We have an opportunity to make some great things happen. I’m certainly more optimistic than I was 60 days ago.”

Update: Vivian Paige has an good wrap-up of the blog conference, covering topics that I didn’t address in my post.

As a follow-up to our recent articles about Prince William County transporation and land use planning…

Prince William County, much to its credit, surveys its citizens every year to gauge their satisfaction with county amenities and services ranging from public safety to help for the elderly, waste management to voter registration. The 2006 telephone survey of 1,439 randomly selected individuals is overseen by a third party, Dr. Thomas M. Guterbock, a University of Virginia sociology professor. (View the report.)

The overall picture is very positive. States the 2006 report: “Prince William County residents are on the whole very satisfied with their County government and quality of life.” On most items, changes since the baseline survey of 1993 have been positive. Among the critical indicators, satisfaction with the county’s “value for tax dollars” is up 11 percentage points since 1993.

(As an interesting aside, blacks and Hispanics consistently gave higher rankings to the County’s quality of life than did whites. Income was not a significant variable in influencing opinions.)

However, there are two major exceptions to the happy picture: land use and transportation. States the report: “Satisfaction with how the County is doing in planning how land will be used and developed … is down 9 points.” As a generality, the longer residents have lived in Prince William, the more dissatisfied they are with the way growth was outpacing the County’s ability to accommodate it.

Remarkably, only half the residents pronounced themselves dissatisfied with traffic conditions; half actually declared that they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied.” There were pockets of deep discontent, however, in North County, Gaineville/Linton Hall and Brentsville.

The Prince William Conservation Alliance drew these conclusions in a press release commenting on the survey:

This years’ survey reports that only 39.6% of citizens say they are satisfied with in-county travel conditions. This is an 18 point drop since 2002, and a 23 point drop since 2000.

This steady and statistically significant decline in citizen satisfaction with in-county travel is perhaps especially troubling because it coincides with the time period during which Prince William invested substantial amounts of local tax dollars to construct new and improved roads.

Prince William’s 2006 Citizen Satisfaction Survey continues to show declining citizen confidence in land use planning, growth and transportation processes. This information echoes the visible and growing consensus that we cannot build our way out of traffic congestion.

There’s a cool profile in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today about Chuck Frederickson, the river keeper for the 340-mile James River. As a member of the James River Association staff, he plies up and down the tributary in his 23-foot skiff looking for fish kills, algae blooms and other signs of pollution. By publicizing his findings, he lights a fire under regulators to move quickly on the problem.

Every major body of water in Virginia needs a James River Association and a Chuck Frederickson.

(Photo credit: The Virginia Severe Weather Page.)

The Kaine administration’s transportation policy appears to be in disarray. Here it is, more than a year since the resignation of VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet, and the Governor has yet to select a replacement. The search has been narrowed to three or four candidates, and an announcement is expected soon. The Warner administration, by contrast, had this key position filled within a few months.

Meanwhile five of 17 positions on the Commonwealth Transportation Board expired at the end of June, and the Kaine administration has yet to replace any of these hold-overs from previous governors. Unlike most state boards and commissions, the CTB exercises real power: The board approves VDOT administrative policies and allocates construction dollars. If Gov. Kaine wants to align transportation and land use planning, he needs CTB board members who share his philosophy.

Peter Galuszka, one of our Road to Ruin writers, has the story, “Who’s In the Driver’s Seat?”

Gov. Kaine declared 2006 to be the “Year of Transportation.” But look what’s happened — or, rather, not happened. Breaking his campaign promises, he backed a huge tax increase for transportation — only to have the proposal soundly defeated in the General Assembly. If he’s got a plan for anything new planned for the special session of the General Assembly later this month, there’s no sign of it. Meanwhile, key transportation positions remain unfilled.

There are positive developments — as Bacon’s Rebellion has taken pains to chronicle. The Kaine administration is soliciting public-private partnerships to upgrade critical transportation corridors, and it’s developing new Corridor Management guidelines to increase capacity of existing thoroughfares. The Kainiacs also altered the debate over land use planning in Loudoun County when it released the VDOT traffic-impact analysis of the South Dulles rezoning proposals.

But these policies are only as good as the people implementing them. And right now, the Kaine administration is firing on only three cylinders.

Update: Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall has responded to our article and blog post. Read it in the comments thread of this post.

The Virginian-Pilot has acknowledged the role of Virginia’s blogosphere in reshaping Virginia politics, most recently in elevating Sen. George Allen’s “macaca” gaff into a full-fledged media feeding frenzy. The editorial also noted that politicians have begun courting bloggers — a trend made manifest by the appearance of high-profile elected officials at the recent blogger conference in Martinsville. (As a side note, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is holding a “press” conference with bloggers later this week.)

“Judging by their traffic and their traction,” the editorial opines, “Virginia’s blogs are only going to grow in influence, a trend more than a few lament as they point out the blogosphere’s penchant for fierce partisanship and fact-free opinionizing.”

(Another side note: “Fierce partisanship”… “Fact-free opinionizing”… sounds like my critique of the the Pilot’s editorials about transportation and land use!)

But the Pilot concludes with a sound observation: “Judging the blogosphere by its worst members is like judging The New York Times by Jayson Blair, a foolish oversimplification. Over time, blogs will be judged by readers. Those who keep their facts straight and their analysis honest will thrive, while others will wither into obscurity. In the meantime, the more voices that are part of Virginia’s debates, the better off we all are.”

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine made some up-beat remarks in a speech to the General Assembly that the Richmond Times-Dispatch ignored in its coverage of yesterday’s events, perhaps on the grounds that it was insufficiently contentious. But I think his comments are worth repeating — occasionally, we need to remind ourselves that, as much as Virginians disagree about things, we agree about a whole lot more. Said Kaine:

It has been a year of remarkable achievements in Virginia.

In its first ever ranking of the best states for business, Forbes ranked Virginia first.

For the first time ever, Virginia’s “Rainy Day” fund is full.

Our public schools and system of higher education – once again – have been ranked among the nation’s best.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation ranked Virginia 41st among the 50 states in state and local individual tax burden. Virginia’s business tax burden was cited as the nation’s lowest by the Council on State Taxation. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce designated Virginia as one of the five top states for overall legal fairness.

Working together, we have ensured that Virginia remained one of only a handful of states that still carries the best-possible Triple-A bond rating.

Strong education, an attractive business climate, award-winning management, rock solid fiscal reliability—these traits combined have continued to produce strong job growth.

In fiscal year 2006, our state added 78,000 new jobs, 14,000 more than forecast.

Our unemployment level remains low – 3.3%, a full point-and-a-half below the national jobless rate.

It’s true, Virginia is in pretty darn good shape. Our strong finances and superior economic performance are no accident.

OK, the time-out is over. Let’s get back to fighting…

At long last, Virginia is on the verge of repealing its death tax. The Senate and House of Delegates finally found something they could agree upon, passing compromise legislation yesterday. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has indicated his support for repeal, so his signature should be a formality.

As Death Tax foes have argued, the tax on inherited estates posed a huge burden to farmers and family businesses. Having already paid taxes on salaries, profits and dividends for years, family business had to pony up one more time, often by taking on a crippling load of debt or selling the land/enterprise outright.

As House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, said in a press release yesterday, Virginia’s top-rated business climate just got better. Citing the state’s Number One “Best State for Business” ranking by Forbes magazine, he said: “Repealing unfair taxes and improving our regulatory framework are precisely the kind of positive state tax and regulatory actions enacted over the past decade and more that enabled our Commonwealth to garner this latest accolade.”