Bacon's Rebellion

The Virginian-Pilot, Times-Dispatch and Associated Press are reporting that Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has selected David Ekern, who retired last month as Idaho’s transportation director, to run the Virginia Department of Transportation.

According to Christina Nuckols with the Pilot, House Transportation Chairman Leo Wardrup, R-Virginia Beach, who interviewed the three finalists for the job, described Ekern as an “idea man.” Said Waldrup: “The governor is looking for someone who can bring a fresh approach to things.”

Nuckols quotes Sen. Dean Cameron, the Republican chairman of Idaho’s budget committee, as describing Ekern as a “straight forward person” who was instrumental in persuading state leaders to spend more on roads. “He challenged our thinking about how we needed to approach road construction and how we were addressing our transportation needs. He challenged the status quo.”

Cameron said Ekern met with resistance from some lawmakers concerned about increased borrowing to pay for the plan and from state bureaucrats who disliked privatization efforts.

Hopefully, the Governor will explain his thinking behind his selection of Ekern when he makes a formal announcement later today.

Update: Here’s the money graph from the Governor’s press release:

David Ekern is a recognized national leader in transportation operations, management, context sensitive design, and innovative program delivery for the 21st Century,” Governor Kaine said. “He has the vision and leadership to take VDOT to the next level – with a focus on performance, accountability, innovation, and smarter integration of transportation and land use planning.

And reaction from House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford:

When announcing his search for a new VDOT Commissioner on February 2, Governor Kaine stressed the importance of finding “a commissioner who can serve multiple governors.” To truly fulfill that charge, Mr. Ekern will have to be open to new ideas, innovative approaches and possess the ability to resist the reflexive tendency to first call upon taxpayers to solve every challenge facing government. …

I share Delegate Wardrup’s view, as quoted in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, that by selecting a Commissioner from outside the agency, the Governor is sending a very encouraging signal that his administration may be open to the significant reforms and organizational transformation so desperately needed at VDOT.

Next week, House Republicans will be announcing a series of new public policy innovations to continue our ongoing overhaul of VDOT. We remain focused and committed to making this unwieldy state agency more responsive to changing the way it conceives of and delivers transportation services and more accountable for improvements based upon relevant performance measures, such as reducing traffic congestion.

Obviously, we hope that Mr. Ekern shares our positive vision. I am optimistic that his selection is a sign that the Governor will welcome the package of long-overdue reforms and much-needed innovations for the agency.

A new publication, “Measuring Up 2006: The National Report Card on Higher Education,” provides ample grist for analyzing the adequacy of Virginia’s efforts to prepare its population to compete in a globally competitive knowledge economy. The good news: Virginia has improved its performance for the most part since 1992. The bad news. We’re losing ground internationally.

There is so much material that I can’t begin to digest it all. I’m hoping that readers can add insight in the discussion thread. To view the Virginia report card and its treasure trove of comparative data, click here.

Virginians can take some satisfaction in our scores: A- for preparing K-12 children for higher education, B for the participation rate in higher education, B+ in the completion rate and A in economic benefits flowing from the advanced level of education. But… no surprise here… we measure an F in affordability.

The chart at the top of this post represents the percentage of young adults (ages 18-24) enrolled in college in 2003. Virginia performs below the national U.S. average, and it lags such countries as Korea, Greece, Belgium and Ireland — and we’re on a par with Poland.

Well, those are small countries, you say, no big deal. To get the dynamic picture rather than a static one, click here (and scroll down one screen) to see charts comparing the educational attainment of older adults (35 to 64) vs. younger adults (25 to 30). America’s older adults are the second best educated in the world, training only Canada by a narrow margin, and exceeding No. 3 Finland by a wide margin. But the education level of young adults falls to No. 7.

Here’s what’s happening: The same percentage of young adults in America hold a college degree as older adults — no change. By contrast, the younger generations in other countries are zooming up the learning curve. Scary.

Zipcars and Flexcars, purveyors of shared-car services, are making measurable inroads in the metropolitan Washington market, says the Washington Post. Says the Post: “No longer a curious fad, the services boast 530 shared cars in the Washington area, making them increasingly attractive to new kinds of customers, including universities and businesses.”

The Lynchburg News-Advance has an article about the “500-Year Forest Foundation.” The Lynchburg-based foundation is raising money to identify three privately owned woodlands in the state, at least 100 acres in expanse, that exhibit the potential to evolve into “old growth” forest.

Only 0.25% to 0.5% of the forest in the Eastern United States is old growth, where the trees are at least 150 years old. The rest has been cut for lumber at some point in the not-too-distant past. Old-growth forests have especially rich habitats, thus are especially important to preserve — and build upon. The Foundation, states the article, wants to “match forests that have the potential for old growth with land already protected under conservation easements.”

As a number of readers have commented in previous posts about Virginia’s land conservation programs, the state needs a system for prioritizing the distribution of land conservation easements. Land containing rare habitat such as old-growth forest should be a much higher priority for benefiting from the tax abatements than farmland or run-of-the-mill woodland.

If the future of Southwest Virginia is tourism, the region doesn’t have much of a future. So concludes Southwest Virginia blogger Jerry Fuhrman (From on High) in a column for the Gazette in Galax. Fuhrman doesn’t see much coming from the hope expressed by some local politicians that the antidote to the declining manufacturing base is luring more tourists, bikers and hikers to the region.

Implicit in that policy recommendation, he says:

Southwest Virginia has nothing going for it save some rocks and bushes, so we need to promote what little we have in the forlorn hope that we can lure northerners down here to partake of our scenic splendor, and while doing so, get them to purchase a hot dog and a bottled water at the local gas station. That, friends, is the plan for our future success. …

While we await positive results from all the efforts that are going into developing our tourism business, a troubling trend emerges. Gas prices, some experts fear, are going to curtail vacation plans for many would-be tourists, an issue that may be playing out already.The Forest Service announced recently that some facilities in the Jefferson National Forest are being closed because of poor attendance. …

It’s time – no, it’s long past time – that we changed course. It’s past time that we told our political leaders that the plan they all signed on to is failing us at the very same time the companies they should be doing everything they can to support and defend are failing as well.

We either change course or we pack our bags and head north to find work.

I still remember the stir we created at Virginia Business a decade or so ago when we quoted state tourism director Pat McMahon (may he rest in peace) regarding the promotion of tourism in the far Southwest. He didn’t see much benefit coming from it. The only thing the bikers and hikers spend their money, he said, is bottled water and granola bars. McMahon caught a lot of flack for his honesty.

Southwest Virginia is a beautiful place. I’ve been there, admired it. But there are a lot of beautiful places, many of them more accessible. For inspiration, SW Virginia economic developers should look south to North Carolina, where the mountains are attracting multi-millions of retirement-resort investment.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has nixed plans for building a tunnel underneath Tysons Corner as part of the proposed extension of the Metro heavy rail system to Dulles airport. Said the Governor in a prepared statement yesterday:

“We carefully reviewed the tunnel option at Tysons, and I share the belief of many of our project partners that a tunnel alignment would be the best option. However, too many unanswered questions remain about cost and timing. These uncertainties cannot be allowed to jeopardize this critical project.”

I share the reaction of Fairfax Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman, D-Lee, who also serves on the Metro board. As reported by the Washington Post, he said:

“This will prove to be the wrong decision for the wrong reasons,” said Fairfax Supervisor T. Dana Kauffman (D-Lee), who is also on the Metro board. “Ten years from now, I regret my son may pick up a planning text where Fairfax’s long-awaited rail extension is highlighted as a failed attempt at service and economic development. It can’t only be about the here and now.”

This decision could well define the urban form of Tysons Corner for 100 years or more. It totally undermines the effort to reinvent Virginia’s largest center of corporate activity as a pedestrian-friendly district.

But there could be a silver lining. This could prove to be the decision that prompts Fairfax political and civic leaders to do what they should have done all along: Figure out how to finance the additional cost of running the rail line underground by capturing the increased property values created by proximity to Tysons’ four proposed Metro stations.

The solution is simple conceptually (the devil, of course, is in the details): Establish Community Development Authorities within a 1/4-mile radius of the four proposed Metro stations, issue $50 million in bonds for each CDA, raising the total $200 million or so needed to build the tunnel, and pay off the bonds with a special tax levied against property owners in the CDA. An underground Metro station will increase the value of surrounding property enormously. Fairfax County can sweeten the pot, as needed, by approving increases in development density.

There is no excuse for failing to run the tunnel underground.

Update: Policy Soup has posted the reaction of the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce. Bottom line: The Chamber is disappointed… but supports the Governor’s decision.

Update: Paul Anderson at Virginia Centrist had the opportunity to question Gov. Kaine this afternoon about his decision to go the no-tunnel route, and he provides an explanation of why the CDA strategy will not work. Anyone who’s tracking this issue needs to read his post here. (Who says that bloggers don’t do original reporting! Great job, Paul.)

The battle still rages over the development future of the South Dulles area of Loudoun County. The board of supervisors considered a compromise plan last night. See the Washington Post’s coverage here.

TimesCommunity.com previews hearings on redevelopment plans for Rt. 50 here.

Meanwhile, it’s back to school for Loudoun children. But there’s not enough room for them all — even the trailers are full. The WaPo has that story here.

Anyone driving down Interstate 81 near Roanoke has passed Tinker Mountain, one of the more imposing peaks to line the highway. The mountain also happens to be visible from the campus of Hollins University, and part of the college lore — once a year for more than a century, classes are canceled and students, faculty and staff hike Tinker Mountain attired in zany costumes.

I remember well the view of Tinker Mountain from my days as a part-time student in the graduate creative writing program there. So, I’m delighted to read in the Roanoke Times that a consortium led by Hollins has raised $352,000 to purchase 235 acres of land and preserve the mountain’s wooded vistas.

That’s the ideal kind of conservation — laying out hard cash to acquire land that, because of its vistas or wildlife habitat, are worth protecting. Nobody’s property rights are getting trampled. Nobody’s getting any tax breaks. And they’re targeted. I’m not opposed to conservation easements, but I share Ed Risse’s reservations that, as currently structured, Virginia’s conservation easement program may do as much to promote scattered, hop-scotch development as to conserve lands worth saving.

Die, blood-sucking spammer scum!

The Virginia Court of Appeals has upheld the felony conviction of a North Carolina spammer, along with the constitutionality of the three-year-old Virginia Computer Crimes Act. Jeremy Jaynes, 30, was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Great verdict — only nine years isn’t nearly long enough for this piece of human sewage.

In 2003, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Jaynes used computers in his home in North Carolina to send almost 46,500 e-mails with falsified routing and transmission information through AOL’s servers in Loudoun County. In November 2004, a Loudoun jury convicted him of three counts of violating the law’s unsolicited bulk electronic mail provisions.

Everyone hates spammers — they cause billions of dollars a year in lost productivity. I loathe them more than most. I make a living publishing electronic newsletters, and I have to contend with the defenses that ISPs and corporations erect to keep out spam. Dirtballs like Jaynes hurt my livelihood. I’m proud to reside in a state that treats spamming as a serious crime.

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.