Bacon's Rebellion

Lobbyists spent a record $15.4 million courting legislators at the General Assembly last year, easily surpassing the previous record of $13.6 million set two years ago, reports Tyler Whitley with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. (The numbers run from May 1 through April 30, so they do not include the impact of the extended session.)

As sad as it is to contemplate the increase in rent-seeking activity in the state Capitol, I found this even more depressing: “The reports are not computerized. They are filed in cardboard boxes in … the Patrick Henry Building.”

Now, go to the Lobbyist Registration Database. The database purports to be maintained through Feb. 7, 2006, which is hardly what you would call up to date. That means that registration data covering the most recent General Assembly session — with a filing deadline more than three months ago — still is not in the system.

Thus, you can conduct a search on, say, Verizon Virginia for the 2005-2006 year and get the following results: Verizon lobbyist George E. Murphy Jr. reporting zero lobbying expenditures — even though Verizon in fact lobbied very heavily to open up Virginia cable franchises to competition. We get two more goose eggs for William G. Thomas and Maureen Stinger at Dominion Virginia Power, and ditto for the legion of lobbyists for the Virginia Education Association. Not terribly helpful.

If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion: It would cause no more burden upon the lobbyists to fill out the required information electronically than it does to fill out a paper form. But the electronic data could be easily and instantaneously entered into the lobbyist database, where it could be made immediately available to the public. The programming required to create such a form would be negligible — indeed, the effort might well pay for itself simply by saving the cost of manually transferring the data from paper to computer.

How about it, Katherine Hanley, secretary of the commonwealth?

Lead headline in the Daily Press (August 1, 2006) is “NN’s Tax Pickle.” Assessments for property on waterfront skyrocket. This is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.

It wasn’t front page news when York and James City County changed their tax rates because of huge tax increases based on a rising real estate market. It wasn’t a big deal when the same thing happened and taxes still went up – it was reported but as a local item – in Poquoson, Hampton and Williamsburg.

Newport News hasn’t changed their rates. Their Democrat mayor, Joe Frank and his big government, more taxes, more spending majority on City Council didn’t lower the rates. Now, guess who is getting hit with the 29-48% tax assessment increases? The Mayor. And Sen. Marty Williams (1^st SD, R). And the other families that live on the James and run Newport News no matter if the delegates and senators are R or D.

They are talking about getting the Code of Virginia changed to cut $100k from real estate assessments. They could do like everyone else and just lower the rates, but that’s not good enough. Lowering the assessments on personal property keeps the tax rates up for business. Brilliant economists these politicians. There’s a devil in the details of the scheme.

Sen. Marty Williams has been trying to raise taxes since Gov. Gilmore left office. He wants an unelected Regional government to raise sales taxes even more. Apparently, taking dollars from the poor with a regressive tax is better than paying your own property taxes. Which begs some questions.

If the Transportation Tax Scam of 02, the Chicken-Little-surplus-creating Tax Hike of 04 and the Transportation Tax Scare of 06 were all for vital needs of the Commonwealth and local communities, then why aren’t increases in property taxes the same?

Are these tax increases excessive and unnecessary for good government, vital investments, needed infrastructure? If so, how so?

Why is that rich people living on the James need tax relief and poor people paying sales taxes and more fees don’t?

Sen. Williams lived a few blocks away from the water when he was elected. Now, he has moved up. Funny how well some politicians do financially when they are ‘part time’ legislators – and have to take that time away from their jobs.

Finally, it’s really funny that people living on ‘Park Place’ complain about taxes. Didn’t they ever play Monopoly (T)?

Irony is delicious. Best served cold with a dash of salt and lemon.

Good news from Fort Monroe: Preliminary designs under evaluation by Hampton’s Federal Area Development Authority envision a mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly future after the military based is closed. According to the Times-Dispatch’s Andrew Petkofsky, the three plans under consideration differ “only in the size and density of the village that would center on the pre-Civil War fort structure and the historic buildings adjacent to it.”

Describing public hearings on the plans:

There was wide agreement that the fort property – essentially a golf-club-shaped island at the mouth of the Hampton Roads harbor – should be ungated and open to the public, and that it should also include a large, open park, public beaches and a waterfront walkway.

The project should include new development within strict limits and should generate enough revenue through commerce, housing and tourism to eventually offset maintenance and operational costs, Dover said. He predicted that Fort Monroe’s unusual waterfront location would make residential housing a major source of revenue.

“Housing is probably one of the strongest pillars in this mixed-used temple,” Dover said. “It’s a unique-enough environment that you can insist on the very best.”

(Photo credit: Ocean View Station Museum.)

No surprises in today’s Times-Dispatch transportation poll. Everyone wants the government to “fix” transportation — they just don’t want to pay for it. Large majorities of those polled opposed higher taxes in general, and even larger majorities opposed (a) an added sales tax on cars, (b) higher fees on insurance premiums, (c) an increase in motor-vehicle registration feeds, or (d) a wholesale tax on gasoline. Virginians also opposed borrowing money to build roads or cutting spending in other programs. A large majority, however, did endorse tougher fines on bad drivers.

Interestingly, two money-raising scheme won a narrow margin of support:

• Raising tolls on some interstate highways: 49 percent in favor, 45 percent opposed.
• Authorizing localities to impose local taxes for regional projects: 50 percent in favor, 43 percent opposed.

If there’s a politically acceptable solution to Virginia’s transportation woes, it wasn’t what the Kaine administration and state senate were pushing this spring.

As we have come to expect, the poll framed the transportation debate as a funding issue. Never considered were alternatives to the tax-and-build scenario:

• Should lawmakers consider privatization and/or outsourcing of road maintenance to generate cost savings?
• Should the Commonwealth Transportation Board prioritize projects designed to mitigate traffic congestion over projects that open up new areas for development?
• Should the state do more to ensure that transportation and land use planning are coordinated?
• Should the state encourage telework?
• Should the state make it easier for the private sector to enter the marketplace with van, bus and other shared-ridership services?
• Should major new developments be required to put into place Transportation Demand Management plans?
• Should landowners whose property values increase thanks to transportation improvements be required to help pay the cost of those improvements?

Don’t tell me there’s no bias in the press. I’m not saying it’s a conscious or malevolent bias — it’s probably just tunnel vision, a lack of awareness of the alternatives. But lawmakers respond to daily news stories and editorials, and when reporters define the problem as a lack of money, they are defining the terms of the debate and limiting the range of options.

Could this have anything to do with the high cost of housing in Fairfax County?

The Board of Supervisors has decided that buyers of new or renovated homes that exceed the 35-foot height limit will have to lower the roofs or raise the ground around the foundations before they move in. According to Lisa Rein with the Washington Post, some 15 buyers have been denied occupancy permits because their houses are too tall.

The violations stem from a difference of opinion between builders and the county on how to measure the height of a house. For years, builders have interpreted the zoning ordinance more liberally than the county when measuring structures with multiple roof lines. They averaged the heights of all the roof lines, while the county says the midpoint of the highest roof line should have been measured.

County officials acknowledged last week that they had issued valid permits to build at those heights and had failed to monitor compliance with their zoning rules.

Now homeowners are paying the price for the County’s negligence. More to the point, what’s the reasoning behind the County’s regulation of the height of housing in the first place?

The high-stakes maneuvering over the $4 billion Rail-to-Dulles project is heating up. It turns out that the Bechtel/Washington Group construction consortium has a rival, a team headed by Fairfax developer WestGroup. The state has a no-bid, public-private partnership proposal from Bechtel to build the Metro extension. But according to Alec MacGillis at the Washington Post, state officials may entertain a bid from the rival WestGroup group.

On the upside, WestGroup may come up with a lower bid for the gigantic project. One of its team members is Dragados, a Spanish company that specializes in the large-bore tunneling needed if the Metro line is to run underneath Tysons Corner rather than above ground. On the downside, there’s no guarantee that WestGroup will submit a better bid, and the bid solicitation itself will create another delay could run up construction costs and spook federal funding, which is already looking tenuous.

The Kaine administration faces tough choices in a very high-stakes game. It will be interesting to see how well the Kaniacs play big-league political poker.

(P.S. Kudos to MacGillis at the WaPo for his solid ongoing reporting of the Rail-to-Dulles controversy. The Post’s coverage is much improved from earlier this year.)

Dora Sullivan, the mayor of Cape Charles, rides a golf cart to drive to official meetings, do her grocery shopping and convey her grandchildren around town. And she has plenty of company in the Eastern Shore town of 1,100. So many Cape Charles residents use the carts to tool around that a cottage industry has sprouted up. According to the Virginian-Pilot, one local woodworker customizes carts, some with paint jobs, some with dune-buggy tires.

Now Paylor Spruill, developer of the proposed Belharbour Station project in Cheapeake, is asking the city to allow golf carts on public roads in the South Norfolk community. In his vision, the carts could be driven not only around his $200 million development on the Elizabeth River– with 350 condos, 230 apartments, and 150,000 square feet of commercial space — but along river trails, over bridges, into historic sections of South Norfolk and into Portsmouth.

While the idea of “electric cars” as substitutes for gas-powered vehicles has yet to take off (see “Hybrids Out, Electric Cars In“), golf cart sales are surging. Since 2001, according to Pilot reporter Mike Gruss, Club Car and E-Z-GO have manufactured one million vehicles.

Golf carts may be emerging as a mainstream transportation alternative, but not in the way envisioned for electric cars a decade ago. Golf carts are cheaper to buy than cars, they run on electricity, and they’re fun. The same could be said of bicycles, but golf carts are more versatile: They have seats, can carry light cargo, and can run up to 25 miles per hour. Long confined to resort and retirement communities, they’re spreading beyond their normal haunts.

As golf carts establish themselves as a legitimate transportation mode in some communities, I would expect to them to morph into all kinds of specialized vehicles. Some bigger, some smaller, some designed for fair weather, some for foul, some adapted for bike paths, some for city streets. (Click here to see the incredible variety that exist already.) Over time, communities will accommodate the new vehicles through municipal ordinances, special lanes and designated parking. It will be interesting to see how municipal authorities sort out the inevitable conflicts with automobiles.

There is something seriously awry in Fairfax County when the local Redevelopment and Housing Authority may provide public housing assistance to a family of four earning $90,300 a year. The supply of affordable housing is so limited that many middle-class families — not just lower-income families, not just working-class families, but middle-income families — cannot afford to live in the county.

Writes Brian McNeill with the Connection Newspapers:

Using 2005 data, [George Mason University] researchers … found that a family earning the median income of $90,000 could afford payments on a house that cost $265,000. Last year, however, only 115 single-family homes sold at that price or less, out of more than 20,000 homes sold, meaning that families below the median income cannot afford to buy a house in the county.

The report’s findings provided the basis for the Housing Authority’s push to change the definition of “moderate income” to mean at or below 100 percent of the median income. Approximately 50 percent of the county’s households could theoretically be eligible for housing assistance under the new proposed definition.

“This is lunacy,” said Housing Commission John C. Kershenstein (Springfield). “It’s one half of the county supporting the other half of the county.”

When the housing marketplace cannot provide shelter affordable by families earning the media income, then the housing marketplace is seriously broken. Restrictive zoning and planning policies of Fairfax and neighboring jurisdictions have created an artificial shortage of housing and, thus, a massive transfer of wealth to homeowners from non-homeowners. Homeowners reap massive equity increases in the value of their dwellings while non-homeowners find themselves locked out of the housing market unless they are willing to commute horrendous distances along increasingly congested roads from more affordable communities.

Replicated in New Urban Regions across the country, this government-engineered transfer of wealth is unprecedented in size and scope — yet almost invisible in the sense that the public does not understand what is happening.

(Hat tip to Tobias Jodter and Joe West both for pointing out this story.)

A panel of engineers has strongly recommended that the Rail-to-Dulles extension of the Washington Metro system be run underground for a four-mile stretch in Tysons Corner. Alec MacGillis with the Washington Post paraphrases local officials as saying that the tunnel “would not be prohibitively more expensive” than an above-ground track.

This recommendation comes on the heels of a warning by Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-10, that the added cost of the tunnel could imperil federal funding regarded as necessary for the first phase of the heavy rail project. The situation now, as MacGillis sums it up: “With the panel’s strong support for the tunnel, it is now up to Kaine and [Secretary of Transportation Pierce] Homer to decide whether to forge ahead with it despite the concerns of Wolf and others.”

One option that some are discussing is to put up the project for rebid. The project’s contractors, a consortium of Bechtel Corp. and Washington Group International Inc., maintain that the tunnel is too expensive.

Bechtel, as reader Robert Jackson reminds me, is also the contractor for Boston’s infamous Big Dig project, which has gone billions of dollars over budget and suffers from major flaws, and as well as a nuclear waste treatment facility in Washington state that could go $7 billion over budget and six years past the completion date. I suspect that there’s plenty of blame to go all around for these two fiascos, including meddling government regulators, changing specifications and the sheer complexity of the projects. But Bechtel’s track record does not inspire confidence.

Rail-to-Dulles is much more than a transportation solution. Without a tunnel, the Metro line would shred the fabric of Tysons Corner, Virginia’s single largest commercial complex, rather than add to it. An underground rail line, by contrast, would create property values high enough to induce developers to spend billions of dollars transforming the dysfunctional, ill-connected cluster of office buidings into a world-class, pedestrian/transit-friendly business center that all Virginians can be proud of.

Hybrid cars are losing their luster. As noted in a number of articles, including this recent commentary on the Reason Foundation website, they don’t get the superior gas mileage claimed in their EPA ratings. Hybrids may reduce gasoline consumption modestly but not enough to justify the handsome premiums charged by auto manufacturers — as my wife, who paid about $5,000 extra for a hybrid version of the Toyota Highlander last year can testify.

Hybrid sales are slowing, and Ford Motor Co. is backing away from a pledge to ramp up its hybrid production by 10 times, leaving the market mainly to Toyota. Ironically, the federal tax credits for hybrids and the special privileges, such as the right to travel in HOV lanes, will induce American motorists to buy Japanese cars manufactured in Japan. (Most hybrids are made in Asia.) Now, there’s an industrial policy that we can all be proud of!

Meanwhile, the humble electric car is making a comeback. The Wall Street Journal has an article in its personal section today, “The Electric Car Gets Some Muscle.” Manufacturers are shaking up the image of electric cars as a golf carts with windows by improving performance, extending their driving range and adding popular features such as sunroofs. Tesia Motors Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up, is selling a roadster that it claims can reach speeds of 135 miles per hour and run 200 miles per charge. (Let’s hope Tesia’s numbers aren’t as inflated as the hybrids’.)

What does this mean for Virginia? For starters, the economics of electric vehicles are more favorable here because the cost of electricity is below the national average. Indeed, Dominion was pushing electric vehicles a decade ago, only to give up, apparently for a lack of interest. But, then, gasoline prices were a lot cheaper than they are now, and the technology less advanced.

When the state Energy task force looks at energy alternatives for the Commonwealth, it should take a look at electric cars. Short of providing subsidies, always a bad idea, the task force should ask, what regulatory barriers can the state remove to facilitate the widespread use of electric cars? For instance, do Dominion and American Electric Power offer off-peak electric rates for cars that recharge their batteries at night when demand is low?

As I’ve noted before on this blog, every $.20 increase in the price of gasoline sucks about $1 billion out of the pockets of Virginia motorists and transfers it, in part, to countries where mullahs and imams use it to finance American-hating Islamic madrassas or, worse, terrorists. Inducing Virginians to drive electric cars won’t do much to starve the mullahs, but at least it would substitute home-generated electricity for oil, keeping those dollars circulating in our local economy and insulate us from oil-supply disruptions in unstable and war-torn countries.

Everyone agrees that we need to wean ourselves from our oil addiction, but Virginia legislators act as if they are powerless to do much of anything. The Energy study group needs to seriously rethink Virginia’s energy-intensive transportation and land use policies, as noted frequently on this blog, but it also needs to think creatively about ways to jump-start the adoption of electric cars.

Maintaining the integrity of the power grid is one of those topics that make your eyes glaze over — until the power grid collapses and the lights go out, as it did for much of Virginia after Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and then it becomes all-consuming.

But the power grid gets the juices flowing every day at Virginia Tech’s Consortium for Energy Restructuring. Many of the power grid’s vulnerabilities could be alleviated through the use of Distributed Generation (DG), argues Richard Hirsh, the Virginia Tech technology historian who leads the interdisciplinary consortium. Writes Hirsh in the latest edition of Virginia Tech Research:

It makes sense to begin moving toward a decentralized system that contains small-scale, modular, and diverse types of equipment that produce power close to cities or even within buildings that use a lot of electricity. Employing diesel generators, or better yet — from an environmental point of view — fuel cells, micro turbines, and photovoltaic cells, such a system would reduce the strain on the existing grid by providing power to users without depending on transmission lines at all.

The economic viability of Distributed Generation has improved in recent years thanks to technological advances such as metering enhancements, fuel conversion technology, thermal engineering, and automation and control devices.

Adoption of a DG strategy is impeded in many states, however, by monopoly rules and discriminatory rate structures protecting established electric utilities. The Virginia Tech article was not clear what barriers might exist in Virginia — other than the fact that electric rates here are lower than the national average, which is hard to complain about — but a worthy goal of the task force developing recommendations for a state energy policy would be to investigate what might be done to encourage Distributed Generation in Virginia.

Virginia Tech has just published the Summer 2006 edition of “Virginia Tech Research,” which it dedicates to the topic of energy-related R&D and public policy. Many of the research projects taking place at Tech are interesting in their own right — from pinpointing disruptions to the national power grid to designing solar houses, from developing more efficient fuel cells to creating bio-based fuels.

As a public policy wonk, however, I found most fascinating the commentary by John Randolph, director of Tech’s school of public and international affairs, who explores the concept of “whole community energy.” One element of whole community energy is “distributed energy,” in which small, independent sources of energy are connected to the power grid, supplementing the energy supplied by giant, central power plants. (More on that topic in the next post.) But there’s more.

The Whole Community energy concept goes further than building efficiency and distributed energy. Buildings are part of the fabric of the community. Their location, site characteristics, and density define our neighborhoods, our land use, and our transportation energy, which is 96 percent dependent on oil and consumes 68 percent of the oil we use. Our sprawling land development patterns dictate heavy use of auto transport and preclude more efficient rail and non-motorized commutes.

Green building and development guidelines that recognize the opportunities for improved land use and transportation efficiency will soon appear in building codes and “form-based” zoning. And new personal vehicles can be a part of our Whole Community, distributed energy future. In addition to hybrid-electric vehicles (HEV) and flex-fuel hybrids that can use 86 percent ethanol (E85), plug-in hybrids (PHEV) can use distributed generation energy sources, such as a PV array on a south facing garage. On those sunny afternoons when the car is not in the garage, the array could feed the grid. Vehicles fully charged with off-peak power overnight can be plugged in at home or in parking garages during the day to feed the grid during periods of peak demand. This vehicles-to-grid (V2G) system can provide electrical storage for intermittent distributed generation like wind and solar power, which cannot be controlled to match peak demand.

This vision for Whole Community energy integrates 1) energy-efficient, green buildings, planned and developed in mixed-use, compact, and transit-oriented developments; 2) on-site a distributed electricity generation to add resilience and efficiency to the local power system; and 3) electrified transportation vehicles with V2G storage capacity.

The Commonwealth is undertaking a major study on state energy policy this year. I would hope that it takes Randolph’s vision as a starting point.

Would someone please explain to me what’s so god-awful about importing trash from other states? As long as the landfills are properly permitted, why does it matter from an environmental perspective whether trash winds up in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York or somewhere else?

The Free Lance-Star observes that trash “imports” decreased 10 percent last year — but “don’t rejoice,” it cautioned, as if declining volumes of garbage were something to celebrate: Waste Management Inc., wants to bring in more trash on barges.

I’d say that the declining volume of trash is bad news, especially for the poor, rural counties that reap a $40- to $50 windfall for every ton of garbage dumped in their state-of-the-art landfills. Take a look at the budgets of some of these counties, like Amelia, Charles City and King George counties. Local residents get tremendous benefits from the presence of a business they can’t see, hear or smell.

The Free Lance-Star cites the problem of traffic accidents caused by the trash-hauling trucks.

After numerous reports of nonfatal accidents involving trash haulers, two motorists died when their vehicles were struck by trash trucks. Then recently, a county deputy was run off the road on a foggy morning by three trucks traveling together, possibly going too fast for the conditions. The three drivers were arrested on reckless- driving charges; two of them face deportation to their native Ecuador. Though the truckers in the fatal accidents were not ruled at fault, the situation points to a roadway woefully unprepared for the heavy truck traffic that is using it.

The answer isn’t fewer trucks, it’s more. With more tax money rolling in, Prince George can afford to fix the roads!

Bad news for rail junkies: Despite rising gasoline prices and ever-worsening congestion, ridership on the Virginia Railway Express is falling. VRE ridership declined about 2 percent, or by about 178 passengers, in the fiscal year that ended June 30 compared to the prior year, according to the Manassas Journal-Messenger. That’s quite a contrast to the average ridership growth of 13 percent annually in the five previous years.

VRE officials blamed rail maintenance by CSX and Norfolk Southern, which own the rail lines, hot weather that warps the steel rail and forces trains to slow down, and limited parking around the stations.

Zounds! I never thought it possible: A sliver of economic logic has entered into the discussions over how to finance the Rail-to-Dulles project — in particular, how to pay for the heavy-rail tunnel that everyone in Tysons Corner prefers to running above-ground. The Washington Post reports that the Governor’s office will receive a two-month study tomorrow by a panel of independent engineers and that a go/no go decision on the tunnel is imminent. Although digging the rail line for four miles underground would add $200 million to the $4 billion price tag of the entire Rail-to-Dulles project, it would contribute to the vision of Tysons as a walkable, urban-style business center.

Richmond is leaning toward the tunnel option, sources tell writer Alec MacGillis, which raises another question: how to pay for it.

The funding option getting the most attention, at least for now, is to increase the tax being paid by landowners along the Tysons portion of the line, who are contributing $400 million to the project through a special tax district. The landowners — the owners of shopping malls, office buildings and car dealerships, among others — agreed to the contribution partly because Fairfax zoning rules will allow many of them to build more densely once rail is in place.

The landowners are likely to gain even more from a tunnel, because an elevated track would be less aesthetically pleasing and would limit development along the route. That is why they are a natural candidate to contribute even more toward a below-ground approach, said Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D).

Some of the financing is anticipated to come from a special tax district already. But here’s the kicker, says MacGillis: “There is also talk of creating a second district that would apply only to those with land closest to the four planned stations at Tysons. The argument for the second approach is that those nearest the stations would be granted the biggest increases in allowed building density.” (My emphasis.)

Please forgive me for engaging in a little self-congratulation. That is almost exactly the logic I laid out in a column “Rail Rip-off” back in May 15! It is very, very encouraging to see public officials embrace the core principle that those who benefit from a transportation project are those who should pay for it, even if in a limited way.

No surprisingly, Macerich East Development president John Anderson told MacGillis that he is open to paying more for a tunnel. “We’d need to see the details … but . . . we would certainly give a tax district change our best consideration.” Of course, Macerich would go with the plan. The company is getting higher density and a Metro station out of the deal! Macerich would be willing to pay up a lot more than its share of just $200 million, I would suggest. Even with this deal, the state could be leaving a lot of money on the table. But it’s a step in the right direction.