Bacon's Rebellion

We warned more than a year ago that it might happen, and now it’s happening: After five years of double-digit increases, Northern Virginia property values are expected to increase only one percent this year, according to the Washington Post. The region hasn’t seen a drop in prices yet, as I feared might happen, but that still could come. As Bill Turque reports of Fairfax County:

The number of homes sold in the first five months of 2006 fell more than 20 percent, to 8,232, compared with the same period in 2005, according to an analysis by county staff. Listings of homes for sale have increased more than threefold since May 2005. Houses in Fairfax are now on the market for an average of 56 days, compared with 21 days in 2005. Multiple bids are not as common. And in May, homes sold for 97.3 percent of list price, compared with 101 percent in May 2005.

Fairfax County is wrestling with the implication for taxes. Soaring values allowed the County to cut its tax rate to $.89 per $100 of assessed value, the lowest in modern history, while still increasing the average take from homeowners. Fairfax homeowners are paying an average of $328 more in taxes than last year.

The pain of $328 per year in higher taxes is bearable, I’ve argued, when homeowners can console themselves that their property values have increased $50,000 to $60,000. For years, people could remortgage at lower rates, offsetting the higher taxes, or just borrow against the higher value of their homes. But now the refinancing boom is spent, climbing interest rates make it more expensive to borrow, and thousands of homeowners with Adjustable Rate Mortgages will find themselves paying more. Northern Virginia politicians are facing political dynamite.

Most people are familiar with the concept of “financial” capital and “human” capital. Theorists have found useful the concept of “social” capital as well. And then there’s “natural” capital, the assets bequeathed by nature. We’ve been drawing down our stock of natural capital pretty rapidly. Now, in Virginia at least, we’re getting a handle on just how fast we’re doing so.

Every two years, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality surveys the quality of Virginia waters, which include 50,357 miles of rivers and streams, 116,058 acres of lakes and reservoirs, and 2,248 square miles of estuaries. DEQ establishes whether the waters are capable of supporting six categories of use: aquatic life, fishing, shell fishing, swimming, public-water supplies and wildlife.

The bad news, emphasized in the MSM headlines was this, as reported by the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star: 8,984 miles of rivers and streams in Virginia are unable to support any or all of six categories of use–aquatic life, fishing, shell fishing, swimming, public-water supplies and wildlife. That’s up 29.6 percent from 6,931 miles in 2004.

Of course, there is a proviso: The state is finding more impaired areas this year because the survey has added new waters, and some water-quality standards have been tightened.

Bottom line: The headlines are meaningless. As much as the survey has improved, it’s still hard to tell if water quality if improving or not. But the exercise is critically important. We need to know whether we’re drawing down our natural capital or replenishing it. That means expanding the survey from 90 percent of state waters to all 100 percent. It also requires making apples-to-apples comparisons, on the basis of comparable standards, of water quality.

The centerpiece of the Kaine administration’s Northern Virginia transportation policy is financing construction of the Rail-to-Dulles extension of the Metro system. Not only will the heavy rail project cost an estimated $4 billion in capital costs, it will incur an ongoing subsidy of tens of millions of dollars yearly. It would make Gov. Kaine’s job a whole lot easier if Metro management could be trusted to run the trains efficiently and on time.

The Washington Post published a devastating series of articles about Metro inefficiencies last year. In an editorial today, Examiner.com credits Interim Manager Dan Tangherlini with making positive changes since taking the helm February, but chastises the bureaucratic organization for shameless spinning of its performance metrics. Stated the editorial:

Metro managers must think that nobody notices when they fudge statistics, cover-up problems and fail to communicate truthfully with the public. But people eventually find out they’re being scammed — and wonder what else the transit agency is hiding from them.

Metro is a critical piece of the Washington New Urban Region’s transportation infrastructure. But if Metro management wants that $4 billion extension to Dulles Airport — plus ongoing subsidies from now until… forever — it had better work harder to maintain its credibility.

The American Center for Law and Justice has filed a federal lawsuit against Fairfax County on behalf of the McLean Bible Church. The suit challenges a finding that the county zoning code prohibited Bible study and religious ministry classes at the church because the church did not include them as part of its special use permit issued in 1999!! If the church wanted to conduct study classes, the county said, it must qualify as a college or university… Or, so says the ACLJ’s version of the story in a press release issued today.

“Like any other house of worship in the country, an integral part of the church’s ministry is a study of the Bible, and the writings and beliefs sacred to its religion,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the ACLJ. “When Fairfax County approved the church’s use permit there was no issue that religious education, which had already taken place at the church since the 1980s, was a central aspect of its mission.”

The suit asserts that Fairfax County’s actions violated the church’s constitutional rights to religious free exercise, freedom of speech and association, and equal protection.

In 2001, the church entered into an agreement with Capitol Bible Seminary to administer some aspects of its Bible study and religious ministry classes. The church does not issue any academic credit, nor does it attempt to confer any academic degrees. However, because CBS may award credit for classes held at the church, the county maintains that the church must obtain qualification as a college or university in order for classes to continue.

In response, the ACLJ contends, the church is a house of worship and has no desire to be officially recognized as a college or university. Said Sekulow: “When the government acts to ban religious activity through zoning or land use regulations, the … law requires it to show it has a compelling, overriding interest supporting its action. Fairfax County has made no such showing.”

[Concluding paragraph deleted. Author’s explanation can be read in the comments.]

Barton Hinkle with the Richmond Times-Dispatch is one of the few newspaper pundits in Virginia to take the trouble to probe beneath the he-said-she-said coverage of the taxes-and-transportation debate. He actually — gasp! — does his own research. And sometimes he offers insights that are new even to an old journalistic hand who, like myself, has been covering land use and transportation issues for years.

Witness Hinkle’s column today. He makes a number of valid points but one stands out: Over the past two decades, he observes, the number of lane-miles of road and highway overseen by the Virginia Department of Transportation has increased nine percent. By contrast, the number of lane-miles increased only 2.4 percent nationally over the same period.

That creates a problem. As Hinkle notes, “VDOT faces a mathematical dilemma imposed by the nature of its business: Current budget growth accelerates future budget growth. That’s because VDOT has to spend money on maintenance as well as construction. A dollar spent on construction this year creates demand maintenance dollars in future roads.”

Thus, the relentless climb in maintenance funding is due to more than the faster-than-inflation increase in construction costs — it’s due to the steady expansion of Virginia’s road and highway network.

There’s one aspect to VDOT’s dilemma that bears illuminating. Much of that nine percent increase in lane-miles is, for all intents, useless to the vast majority of citizens. Those lane-miles reside primarily in cul de sac subdivisions, which means they are utilized by only a handful of subdvision residents and the occasional visiting UPS truck. (To see what I mean, study the photo above from Overland Park, Kansas.) I don’t know the figure for increase in lane-miles for critical connector and arterial roads, but I’m certain it’s far lower than nine percent — it’s probably closer to the national average of 2.4 percent.

This gets us to a foundational problem for Virginia’s transportation system: a cul de sac/collector/arterial pattern of road development in which half (or more) of the lane-miles are way underutilized and the other half is overloaded and congested. You don’t see the same mismatch in urban centers where the grid-street system predominates. Urban centers do have quiet side streets with little traffic, but a higher percentage of urban lane-miles is devoted to moving people at faster speeds.

Moral of the story: It’s not how many lane-miles you build, it’s where you build them and how you connect them.

(Photo credit: George Butler Associates, Inc.)

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is hopping mad at the House of Delegates for stripping $22 million in earmarked projects for everything from day care in Charlottesville to sewage overflow in Lynchburg. He stumped the state yesterday to generate some ink castigating the House GOP for petty partisanship and… how else do I put it… for being mean. Daily Progress reporter Bob Gibson covered the Governor’s stop in Charlottesville at a day care center:

Kaine said his budget amendment would have provided child daycare scholarship money to keep working families on the job and off welfare. One mother told him she would have to stay home with children and not hold a job if daycare scholarship funds were not available.

Making mothers go back on welfare. Mean, mean, mean!

How else can you describe a General Assembly that approved a miserly $34 billion biennial General Fund budget, which, according to a June 30 press release from the Governor’s office, included (my words in parentheses):

• Record funding for K-12 education, including a four percent pay raise for teachers, and more than $1.5 billion in overall funding increases;
• A $200 million investment in the Chesapeake Bay (mostly for waste-water treatment plants);
• More than $40 million in investments in early childhood programs, including the Virginia Early Childhood Foundation, additional investments in the At-Risk Four Year Old Program, and addressing the waiting list for young children needing waiver slots…
• More than $120 million invested in community mental health and mental retardation care, including additional waiver slots for people with mental retardation and developmental disabilities and innovative services to serve people in the community rather than in institutions;
• Funding for construction of a new Eastern State Hospital and planning funds for replacement of three other mental health and mental retardation facilities (Western State Hospital, Central Virginia Training Center, and Southeastern Virginia Training Center).

I’m sorry, but if that Charlottesville daycare center were truly a priority, Gov. Kaine could have found a few thousand dollars from among the multi-millions in other spending he approved.

The Shape of the Future makes many points about affordable and accessible housing. Two of them are:

1. To support a prosperous, stable and sustainable society the housing delivery process must change because now it is delivering the wrong size house in the wrong location for those who need better housing the least. Trickle down helps those at the top of the food chain, not those who need housing.

2. A major reason for locational and size dysfunction is that municipal and county controls, programs and incentives related to housing focus on the unit scale. The unit is only one of the five scales of organic components that make up Balanced (Alpha) Communities.

In a Sunday WaPo story (“In Land of Giants, Smallest Houses Bigger Than Ever: Home Buyers Redefine Concept of Starter Home,” Alec MacGillis Page 1A) focuses on the first point but misses the second.

Most of the “experts” quoted are not “wrong,” they just do not yet understand the context – that same context we discuss in this week’s column with respect to governance burnout.
Those quoted in the story who came closest to understanding were New Urbanists.

Unfortunately, many New Urbanist think of development in terms of their own cute and precious “projects.” These projects are often Beta Cluster and sometimes Beta Neighborhood scale. That is one step better but only 2 / 5s of the way home.

We need strategies for Alpha Communities that are made up of Alpha Villages. Alpha Villages are in turn made up of Alpha Neighborhoods and Alpha Neighborhoods of Alpha Clusters composed of Alpha Dooryards.

Great homes of any size are Units in Alpha Dooryards, Alpha Clusters, Alpha Neighborhoods and Alpha Villages that make up Balanced (Alpha) Communities. Anything else is uncivilized.

EMR

In my column in the new edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, I develop an idea that has become a recurring theme in this blog.

The starting premise is this: When government makes transportion improvements — highways, transit stations, interchanges, road widenings, whatever — it creates economic value for the landowners lucky enough, or shrewd enough, to own property in the right location. The public (through the agency of the government) creates this value, not the landowner. Why, then, shouldn’t the public capture some of that value to help finance the transportation improvement?
Virginia transportation policy relies overwhelmingly upon taxation of motorists to build the improvements, and to a lesser degree upon tolls levied upon the users of a particular facility. In some localities, developers contribute to the funding of road improvements through proffers, but the proffers are rarely integrated into a coherent system. I propose a four-part approach to major transportation projects:

• Create a Community Development Authority (CDA) to issue bonds to pay for public improvements such as roads, light and heavy rail lines, transit stations or even bus shelters.
• Overlay the CDA with a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) district that taxes the landowners who benefit from the public investments. Use the revenue stream to pay off the CDA bonds.
• Sweeten the pot, as necessary, by giving landowners the right to develop their parcels at greater density. The combination of higher density and public improvements would more than compensate landowner/developers for the expense of the special tax district.
• Require developers to implement Traffic Demand Management (TDM) plans to offset local congestion resulting from denser development. It is critical that these plans be robust, capable of taking large numbers of cars off local streets. They also must be sustainable, capable of standing on their own after developer has completed the project and has ended subsidies to van pools and other ride-sharing programs.

I don’t pretend this approach will work everywhere. It won’t. But it can work in a lot of places. When combined with the other alternatives explored on this blog — congestion tolls, telew0rk, ride sharing, VDOT reforms, intelligent transportation systems and all the rest — there’s no reason that Virginia can’t stitch together an effective transportation policy without recourse to higher taxes.

Bacon’s Rebellion columnist Chris Braunlich has pinpointed a fundamental problem with the education systems in Virginia and most other states: Funding formulas are based on the wrong metrics.

Education funding is designed for “Ozzie and Harriet.” The stars of that old ‘50s-era TV show were not poor, they spoke English, their children rarely had acknowledged disabilities. Furthermore, they and their neighbors never moved out of the neighborhood and always attended the nearest school. If some kids didn’t do as well as others, if there were achievement gaps … well, people just looked the other way. Guys named “Lumpy” could always make a decent living as an auto mechanic.

But in a standards-based era, achievement gaps are not, and cannot, be tolerated. The jobs of tomorrow, whether rocket scientist or auto mechanic, demand a higher level of skill, training, and education than those required to fix a 1955 Chevy.

Citing the bi-partisan work of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Braunlich suggests that school funding should “follow the child.” This is similar to a voucher program, but it sidesteps the ideological divisions of vouchers because it applies only to public schools. It also differs from vouchers in that children with with disabilities or limited English proficiency would bring more money with them. Such a system, writes Braunlich, would:

Drive those dollars down to the school level, empowering school-based leadership to decide how best to spend the funds educating the students. By putting resources for decision-making at the school level, principals can do for kids what’s needed at their particular school, not what’s decided at the district level. If one school needs more tutoring, or another needs an additional aide, or a third needs more teacher training for new teachers – the school chooses, rather than a “one-size-fits-all” central office decision.

Drawing from analysis conducted by Richmond economist Christine Chmura, Doug Koelemay has written a column, “Connecting the Crescent,” that will change the way downstate Virginians perceive Northern Virginia.

We downstaters have always recognized (and envied) the incredible economic success of NoVa. The more enlightened of us have even appreciated the disproportionate contribution that NoVa has made to the Commonwealth’s tax base. What we residents of the Rest of Virginia (RoVa) have not sufficiently understood was the growing contribution that NoVa businesses are making to growth in our downstate communities. Here are the key numbers:

For the five years ending in 1995, the [Chmura] report notes, Northern Virginia firms created 17,191 new jobs in other areas of the state. That’s an average of 3,400 jobs a year downstate. For the five years ending in 2000, Northern Virginia firms created 28,560 jobs in other areas of the state, an average of 5,700 jobs a year. And for the five years ending in 2005, Northern Virginia firms created 36,191 jobs in other parts of the state. That’s an average of 7,200 jobs a year, double the rate of the early 1990s.

Playing on its defense industry ties, Hampton Roads has been the primary beneficiary of NoVa’s dynamism, but the Richmond region has benefited as well.

Koelemay, a Northern Virginian who sallies frequently to Richmond and other downstate locations, draws the inevitable conclusion: It’s in RoVa’s self interest to ensure that NoVa’s economic prosperity continues. If that means investing more in transportation, then so be it.

In this week’s edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, Conaway Haskins interviews Vince Harris, author of the Too Conservative blog. Harris, a conservative Republican, began blogging a year ago at age 17, and has built Too Conservative into one of the more popular GOP-leaning blogs in Virginia. Though only a college freshman now, he has packed in an extraordinary amount of campaign and legislative experience, including stints with Rep. Tom Davis, and Sean Connaughton in his run for lieutenant governor.

Read the profile here.

Building on the Bacon’s Rebellion policy of highlighting the efforts of fellow bloggers, I will append my biweekly “blog spottings” to Conaway’s profile. Some of these blogs are newly published, some are new only in the sense that they have come to my attention. But one thing you can count on: They are geared heavily to covering state/local political, public policy, economic development and/or community development issues. This week’s spottings include:

Ox Road South, a blog maintained by Chap Peterson, a Fairfax lawyer, former member of the Fairfax City Council and former member of the Virginia legislature.

The Practical Populist, a blog maintained by “Mason,” a self-described populist.

The Shape of the Future, a blog maintained by Andrea Epps, of Chesterfield County, with a focus on local growth and development.

Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, a blog maintained by Richard Layman, of Washington, D.C., covering urban design and growth issues in Metropolitan Washington and nationally.

The July 10, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now online. Columns and features include:

CDAs, TIFs and TDMs
Lawmakers are overlooking a huge source of revenue to underwrite new transportation projects — the increase in property values made possible by the transportation improvements themselves.
by James A. Bacon

Connecting the Crescent
The Northern Virginia economic engine isn’t powering growth only in metro Washington, it’s creating jobs in Hampton Roads and Richmond, too. Politicians need to get with the program.
by Doug Koelemay

Burned Out
The story of Bill Downey, a Fauquier County supervisor who declined to run for re-election, is more than the tale of one man’s frustration: It’s emblematic of spreading dysfunction as non-urban communities begin to urbanize.
by E M Risse

Ozzie and Harriet School Funding
It’s time to overhaul arcane educational funding formulas that might have worked in the ’50s but create endless red tape today. Dollars should “follow the child” to his or her public school.
by Chris Braunlich

Hold on to Your Wallets!
GOP delegates are bragging that they held the line against new tax increases. They are either disingenuous or too naïve to realize that the next tax increase has been set in motion.
by Phillip Rodokanakis

Marriage A,B,Cs
There are good reasons for Virginia to define marriage as between a man and a woman. It is the best institution yet devised for raising healthy, productive citizens.
by James Atticus Bowden

Nice & Curious Questions
Blasts from the Past: Virginia’s Drive-In Theaters
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

Blogology
Too Conservative: Vince Harris
by Conaway Haskins

Virginia’s cultural liberals and conservatives are locking horns again, this time in Loudoun County. The issue: R-rated movies in public libraries. The Board of Supervisors has a problem with spending public money to stock the library with R-rated titles, according to an article in the Washington Post. Civil libertarians are accusing the supervisors of something akin to censorship: violating the public’s right to read (or listen, or view).

To my mind, this is the wrong debate. I don’t think the Loudoun public library system should be spending any of its $10.5 million budget on videos of any kind, whether it’s “Bambi” or “Braveheart”.

Are there not enough video stores in Loudoun County? Does the cable service, with its movie channels and and Pay Per View, offer an insufficient choice of movies? Has Amazon.com ceased delivering DVDs to Leesburg?

Frivolous controversies like this one are the inevitable result of government getting involved in something it has no business in. By its intrinsic nature, government in a democratic society politicizes everything it touches.

Federal education officials, reports the Associated Press, are warning Virginia that it could lose federal money “because its standards for highly trained teachers are too relaxed.”

The state claims that the number of classes taught by “highly qualified teachers” is 95 percent, up from 83.5 percent three years ago. But the U.S. Department of Education is questioning those numbers.

Under the No Child Left Behind education law, all classes must be taught by educators who have a bachelor’s degree, a teaching license and can demonstrate knowledge in their subject area. At issue is how Virginia measures whether teachers are knowledgeable in the subjects they teach. For example, veteran teachers in Virginia can be considered highly qualified if they have at least a master’s degree. But the federal government thinks teachers’ advanced degrees should be in the subject they teach.

Predictably, victims rights groups are chiming in. The Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights said Virginia’s standard is unfair to students with disabilities. Said Executive Director Dianne Piche: “It’s almost like some of the states are saying that special-education students aren’t entitled to have teachers who really know math or really know history.”

If Virginia doesn’t address the putative problem, the federal government could cut $2.1 million in funding.

Is the problem real? Is this another example of federal bureaucratic meddling? Or is it a case of state bureaucrats manipulating the numbers to look good? I don’t know. (Conaway Haskins has addressed the issue in his column, “Teaching Our Teachers.”) In either case, it strikes me as an example of everything that’s wrong with a public education system accountable to three different, oft-conflicting levels of government: The system consumes itself with bureaucratic controversy.

In the next edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, columnist Chris Braunlich will highlight a brilliant, bipartisan proposal from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute that would end much of the bureaucratic nightmare.

Virginia’s 110 wineries have lost the right to sell their products directly to retailers such as restaurants, wine shops and grocery stores, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has reported. A letter from the state ABC board last week confirmed that the wineries, after a lengthy lobbying and legal duel with wine wholesalers, were limited to selling their wares directly from their farms. Reports Greg Edwards:

The loss of self-distribution is a bitter turn for the wineries. Some say the loss could end what has become a welcome success story for Virginia agriculture — three decades of growth by the state’s wine industry.

The regulatory issues are too complex to summarize here. I would refer readers to Edwards’ story. But the bottom line is this: The wine-and-beer wholesalers have upheld their state-sanctioned monopoly control over wine distribution in Virginia, preserving their monopolistic profit margins. The most immediate losers are the small wineries who can’t afford to hire wholesale distributors to handle their products. Other losers are wine lovers, such as myself, who enjoy buying local wines and now will be faced with a diminished selection.

If Virginia wineries go out of business, the roster of losers will expand to include everyone who appreciates the beauty of Virginia’s farmscapes. Farming is an endangered activity in Virginia. When farmers give up on farming, their land generally reverts to woodland or gets sold to developers. A consequence of upholding the wholesalers’ monopoly could be the loss of more picturesque fields, meadows, fences and farmsteads.

“There is no winner except the wholesalers,” said Mitzi Batterson, of James River Cellars, a Hanover County farmer who added that she expects to lose 25 percent of her business. Not quite true. There is one other winner: Virginia’s political class. By protecting the privileges of Virginia wine-and-beer wholesalers, legislators ensure a steady flow of campaign contributions. Anyone who thinks of Virginia as a commonwealth committed to free market principles is living in la-la land.