Bacon's Rebellion

“People who live OR (emphasis added) work in Northern Virginia would pay steep new fees and higher taxes under a $578 million transportation plan being circulated by six Republican delegates from the region.” The opening sentence in a story headed “GOP Plan Would Raise N.Va. Taxes for Area Roads” WaPo for 27 June 2006. Metro section page 1.

“People who live and work in the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregion would pay less in taxes and variable fees based their level of travel demand if they lived in Balanced Communities and the Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region evolved into a sustainable NUR.”

We start with a title that reflects the fact, documented by the recent and continuing rainfall, that for 60 years VDOT and the municipal jurisdictions have been building infrastructure that is deficient.

Instead of building first class infrastructure our governments have been expanding asphalt that enable the scatteration of urban land uses to dysfunctional locations.

Just Sunday “Parade Magazine” (of all places) had a cover story on what to expect from climate change. It looks like evidence arrived with the Sunday paper.

Citizens need to insist that the governance structure builds infrastructure to more than just 100 year flood standards but first we have to up grade what a 100 year storm really is.

One wonders if the hundred-year-old elm falling on the White House lawn will bring in to perspective the relationship between partisan politics and reality.

Next we rewrite that fist sentence of this important “transportation” story. Enough said on that.

Readers of our columns at Bacons Rebellions at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com are invited to see how many errors there are in the original opening sentence.

Here are some clues:

Will more money improve mobility? See yesterdays column “The Free Ride is Over.”

Is this a “transportation plan”? See “Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005.

Where is this place called “Northern Virginia’? See “Where is Northern Virginia,” 11 August 2003.

There are several more.

Note that these “GOP” taxes and fees hit enterprises hardest.

Will MainStream Media or pandering politicians ever catch the boat?

EMR

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine promised to link transportation and land use planning, and so he will, thanks to passage of Senate Bill 699. The legislation, which goes into effect in July 2007, will require rezoning projects in fast-growth counties to be subjected to review by the Virginia Department of Transportation for their traffic impact.

The law is essentially toothless — there are no sanctions for local governments that spurn VDOT’s advice — but the Kaine administration hopes that it will force local governments to at least consider the traffic impact of their rezoning decisions.

The law doesn’t go into effect for another year because VDOT needs time to write the regulations. But that won’t stop the Kaine administration from initiating a “pilot project” in Loudoun County, where the board of supervisors will make decisions this summer on a number of massive development proposals that could shape the county for decades to come.

Road to Ruin writer Peter Galuszka has the skinny here.

For my current contribution to the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, I interviewed Patrick Gottschalk, Tim Kaine’s secretary for commerce and trade. Kaine campaigned for governor promising continuity with the Warner administration, and that’s clearly what we’re getting. But there are some new wrinkles.

First, the Kaine administration is tackling a problem that confounded both the Gilmore and Warner administrations: streamlining Virginia’s redundant and tangled workforce training programs. Kaine has appointed Daniel LeBlanc as a senior advisor with cabinet-level status in charge of workforce development. (After all the hoo-ha regarding LeBlanc’s rejection by conservatives in the House of Delegates as Secretary of Commonwealth, did the MSM ever report this? If so, the story was buried.)

Second, following up on legislation enacted this year, the Kaine administration will be conducting a 10-year comprehensive energy plan to address off-shore drilling for natural gas, as well as alternate and renewable energy sources such as solar energy, biofuels and tidally generated power. Read the full story here.

Doug Koelemay, a regular contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, devotes his current column to an important topic totally overlooked by the Mainstream Media: how Virginia universities treat intellectual property.

Since the time of Gov. Charles Robb in the early 1980s, Virginia’s political leaders have taken a holistic approach to economic development, recognizing the potential for state universities to conduct research and development that could be commercialized locally and provide the basis for new, knowledge-based industries. That insight led to the creation of the Center for Innovative Technology and has justified significant state support for the expansion of engineering, life sciences and other research-intensive programs at public universities.

The fly in the ointment is tech transfer. It’s one thing for state universities to conduct R&D, quite another for the intellectual property to make its way into the local business community for conversion into new businesses and jobs. Although there have been some modest success stories, university research has not had the transforming effect upon Virginia’s economy that some had hoped.

As Koelemay tells the story, a key barrier has been the uniform, top-down state policy dictating intellectual property policies for all state universities. In a 180-degree turn, the state is moving toward a system in which universities can devise policies that work best for them. Read Doug’s story here.

I have given insufficient visibility to a regular feature that Conaway Haskins is penning for the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, a regular column entitled, “Blogology.” Each edition, Conaway compiles a Q&A with a Virginia blogger covering state/local politics. In previous editions, he has profiled Waldo Jaquith, Will Vehrs and Kenton Ngo.

You might have seen these features if you had the patience to read the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine table of contents I publish on the blog each issue. But that’s clearly insufficient. Committed to building the Virginia blogosphere, Bacon’s Rebellion needs to do more to highlight the contributions of other Virginia bloggers. From this edition henceforward, we will promote the “Blogology” Q&As in separate posts.

Conaway’s current Q&A shines the spotlight on blogger/activist Lowell Feld, founder of the Raising Kaine blog. Not only is Feld a tireless and talented blogger, he combines his writing with political activism and a political action committee. As a key player in the Jim Webb senatorial campaign, he arguably has had more impact on Virginia politics than any other blogger to date. Read the Q&A here.

The June 26, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion is now available online. Articles and columns include:

Gottschalk Got Game
Virginia’s new secretary of commerce and trade is eager to help Tim Kaine put his own imprint on Virginia’s economic development policy. Likely starting points: energy and workforce development.
by James A. Bacon

Ip, Ip Hooray!
Virginia is conducting a 180-degree turn in its approach toward intellectual property originating at state universities. Lighter central control could stimulate more commercialization of R&D.
by Doug Koelemay

A New Political Laboratory
The days are gone when Virginia politics were of local interest only. Campaign themes and strategies in the Old Dominion are increasingly visible on the national stage.
by Patrick McSweeney

It’s Never Enough
Even the next two-year budget, at $74 billion, isn’t big enough to satisfy some legislators. Spending discipline isn’t likely to be restored as long as Republicans are divided.
by Patrick McSweeney

The Free Ride is Over
The General Assembly paid lip service this year to the transportation-land use connection but it didn’t come close to Fundamental Change. Until it does, Virginia’s mobility crisis will only get worse.
by E M Risse

Envision This!
What the “Washington region” needs is not another visioning session — it needs a rational definition of the region, an understanding of the nature of its problems and the political will to enact real change.
by E M Risse

Failure is OK – When It’s Cheap
Virginia’s transportation system is a mess. But with state spending hitting $74 billion, up 20 percent, in the next two-year budget, Virginia government can hardly be described as cheap.
by Geoffrey Segal

Dumb as Rocks
If the “fiscal conservatives” in the House of Delegates think they held the line against spending in the state’s new $74 billion budget, John Chichester’s epithet may well be justified.
by Phillip Rodokanakis

Why Not Webb?
Senatorial candidate Jim Webb exerts a strong, gut appeal for many Republican constituencies. He could give Sen. George Allen a good run for his money.
by James Atticus Bowden

Want Students to Learn?
Try Enforcing Truancy Laws.
The city of Richmond has among the worst attendance records of any Virginia school system — and is doing very little about it.
by John Butcher

Nice & Curious Questions
Behind Bars: Virginia’s Jails and Prisons
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

Blogology
Caught in the Webb: Lowell Feld
by Conaway Haskins

The premise of Christina Nuckols’ story in the Virginian-Pilot this morning is that “[Gov. Timothy M.] Kaine’s freshman year has gotten off to a difficult start.” Few would disagree. The question is why. For Nuckols, Kaine’s problems are mainly about personal style and legislative tactics.

Kaine has only begun to seek out allies and nurture relationships in the Republican-controlled legislature. Legislators say Kaine’s leadership style bears little resemblance to that of his predecessor, fellow Democrat Mark Warner. … Some Republicans said the governor has failed to reach out to them and has alienated them with a blitz of campaign-style automated calls. …

Although Kaine aligned himself with state senators, who shared his desire to increase investment in transportation, they clashed over strategy at times. Senators, who included a gasoline tax increase in their own plan, resented Kaine’s public statements that a fuel levy was politically unwise.

Those observations are all true — yet they miss the point. Kaine and the Senate leadership share a very different vision for Virginia government than that of the House leadership. No amount of schmoozing on Kaine’s part could have papered that over. The fact was, Kaine was heading for a show-down with the House the day he announced his taxes-for-transportation plan, and he put himself at a severe disadvantage from the very beginning because it was a plan he’d never mentioned in his campaign and he could not by any remote stretch claim a mandate for it.

If Kaine continues pushing the taxes-for-transportation plan in the upcoming special session of the General Assembly, no amount of kissy-face is going to sway the GOP delegates. Kaine would be best advised to seek areas of common ground with the House — reforming VDOT, promoting public-private partnerships, reforming land use — declare victory and start preparing for the inevitable confrontation next year over his universal pre-K plan.

As if the Rail-to-Dulles project didn’t have enough hurdles already, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inspector general is launching an audit of the project, which is projected to cost $4 billion or more. Reports the Washington Post:

In a letter sent last week to the Federal Transit Administration, the inspector general’s office said such a “major project monitoring effort” was needed in this case because of the large amount of federal money expected to be spent on it: roughly $900 million.

Also justifying extra scrutiny, the letter stated, was Virginia’s transferal of control of the project to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Because the authority leases its airports from the federal government, the letter states, the authority’s role in the rail project gives further reason for the federal government to have a “vested interest in ensuring that the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project is completed efficiently and effectively.”

The project, a top priority of the Kaine administration, has stalled while a task force recommends whether or not to include a tunnel underneath portions of Tysons Corner. The addition of a tunnel would add to the project’s expense, threatening to render it cost ineffective according to federal guidelines, which would threaten the loss of federal funds. But many Fairfax County officials deem the tunnel crucial for long-term plans to re-engineer Tysons into a more cohesive, pedestrian-friendly community.

In today’s WaPo Page A 3: “Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says: Researcher Cite Drop in the Average Number of Confidants as an Indicator.” The story reports on the General Social Survey funded by the National Science Foundation being published today. The conclusions receive “I-told-you-so’s” from the likes of Robert Putnam (“Bowling Alone”) and others.

With those billions of cell phone calls occupying what seem to be everyone’s ear and attention how can there be growing isolation? Is this another failure of IT to overcome the impact of dysfunctional human settlement patterns?

Dysfunctional (disaggregated, scattered, unconnected) human settlement patterns (sometimes called “urban sprawl”) cause social isolation? Who would have thought it?

Anyone who has been reading Bacons Rebellion. For details see the social chapters of “The Shape of the Future.” (Chapters 8 and 9.)

EMR

Hampton Roads Transit has invested $8 million in equipping its buses with Global Positioning System locators, upgrading bus communications and installing signs at some bus stops to tell passengers when the next bus is due. Reports the Virginian-Pilot: “Through GPS, Hampton Roads Transit will know the location of all 250 buses at all times. HRT says it will allow the agency to reduce delays and tell customers at stops just how long they have to wait.”

People hating waiting for late buses, not knowing when they’ll arrive, not knowing if they’ll be late to their destination. In theory, predictability is key to inducing people to rely upon mass transit for transportation. It will be interesting to track what effect these investments have on ridership.

The Virginia Department of Transportation is ceding responsibility for maintaining roads in the City of Suffolk — and turning over $4 million a quarter to pay for it.

I cannot comment upon the significance of this development, as the Virginian-Pilot article describes the turn-over without explaining why it is happening. But the shift does seem to be consistent with a devolution of responsibility for local roads from VDOT to local governments that is taking place in other localities across the Commonwealth. The key points in the agreement, according to the Pilot:

– The city will begin handling all permitting and licensing procedures that were previously handled by VDOT, such a reviewing subdivision street plans and overweight-hauling approvals.

– The city will handle all grass, ditch and stormwater issues. The city has contracted with a private company to handle mowing along all the city’s primary roadways, beginning July 1.

– VDOT will allocate urban-construction funds to the city based on population. That agency will continue to oversee all new construction, although the city can request to handle special projects, Nielsen said.

– VDOT will retain all ownership for the portions of Interstate 664 and Route 164 in Suffolk. Also, the truck scales on U.S. 58 will remain state property.

This chart, prepared by reader/blogger Jim Patrick, breaks down high school graduation rates in Virginia by demographic category, making several points more forcefully than I managed to do in my recent post, “Grievance Mongers Strike Again.”

The good news: Virginia seems to be doing something right — H.S. graduation rates are higher across the board in Virginia than they are nationally. (Hopefully, the difference reflects reality, not just different definitions of “drop out” or different methodologies for calculating the rate.)

Especially encouraging is the fact that blacks in Virginia are graduating at a significantly higher rate than elsewhere in the country. Much work remains to be done, of course. The key is figuring out what needs to be done. Is throwing more money at schools the answer? I’m skeptical.

The bad news: Take note of the disparity in graduation rates between males and females, which exists among both blacks and whites. It is tempting to accuse Virginia’s school systems of bias and discrimination, of favoring girls over boys. Such a ploy would turn the Conventional Wisdom of the grievance lobbies and the Mainstream Media — the notion that American institutions systematically discriminate against girls and women — on its head. It’s tempting, but I won’t take the cheap shot.

The numbers do, in fact, reveal a problem, although it’s not clear whether the problem resides in the schools or in the way we raise little boys. Perhaps it’s both. One possible explanation has gotten insufficient attention: The epidemic of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder among boys. The problem barely existed 50 years ago, which suggests that the epidemic is a cultural phenomenon. But that’s a topic for another post.

In an example of the kinds of land use-impacting decisions that the Commonwealth Transportation Board makes (see previous post for context), the CTB has voted to approve the controversial Battlefield Bypass around Manassas National Battlefield Park. Reports the Times Community Newspapers:

The purpose of the bypass is to reroute traffic around the battlefield. Route 234 and U.S. 29 are now so jammed that visitors have a hard time getting around the park; area residents have an even harder time getting to work. In 1988, Congress ordered the National Park Service to start considering whether it is feasible to close both roads inside the battlefield and reroute traffic onto a beltway instead.

Hundreds of residents have turned out to oppose the route, which they fear will open up development in the county’s Rural Crescent. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has made it clear that he wants to curtail development in areas where the transportation system is inadequate to support it. But does he want to halt the practice of opening up new countryside for development when there is plenty of land closer to the urban core that could be re-developed more efficiently? We don’t know the answer to that question.

Right now, Kaine could plausibly disown the CBT’s Battlefield Bypass decision (if he wanted to) because other governors appointed most of the board members. After June 30, when the terms of five board members, it will be more difficult to disassociate himself from board actions.

As a footnote: The CBT didn’t grant any money for the project, so the road will remain “little more than a line on a map,” writes reporter Tara Slate Donaldson, “unless Congress opts to donate federal funds for construction.”

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has the opportunity at the end of this month to advance his agenda to link transportation and land use planning. The terms of five of the 17 members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CBT) expire June 30. Kaine’s choices on whom to appoint, or reappoint, will speak more loudly than any speechifying about how serious he is about addressing the disconnect between Virginia’s transportation system and its human settlement patterns.

Unlike most boards and commission in Virginia, the CBT has real power: It allocates highway funding to specific projects, locates routes and provides funding for airports, seaports and public transportation. It also sets administrative policies for the state transportation system. If Kaine wants to change the way the system works, the CBT is an important place to start.

Unlike Kaine’s failed effort to raise transportation taxes, independent columnist Robert Legge recently observed in the Culpeper Star-Exponent, Kaine doesn’t need General Assembly approval to change course at the CBT. Writes Legge: “He has sole authority over appointments of the members of the CTB. It would follow that he would appoint people who share his view that development worsens traffic congestion.”

Three of the five board members up for reappointment are partners in law firms that assist land developers, Legge observed. A fourth, Helen Dragas of Virginia Beach, is CEO of The Dragas Companies, “a large concern that deals in condos, apartment management, office parks and residential mortgages. Last year, VDOT Commissioner Philip Shucet left VDOT to become president of her firm.”

Links to the real estate sector should not disqualify someone from serving on the board. After all, developers and real estate attorneys have a first-hand understanding of how transportation and real estate interact. But Kaine should take special pains to ensure that whomever he appoints, or reappoints, will not defend Business As Usual. It is imperative that CBT board members share his conviction that Virginia needs to think very differently about transportation policy.

Rarely have I seen a public official hit so many of the right notes regarding transportation in such a short space. In an e-mail summarizing the General Assembly’s budgetary accomplishments, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling says the following:

While I fully support efforts to make a significant ongoing investment in transportation, I remained convinced that we can do this without raising taxes. With Virginia’s economy continuing to grow at a very rapid rate, we can increase funding for transportation without raising taxes if we are prepared to direct our resources to our highest priorities.

There may be other acceptable ways to provide additional funding for critical transportation projects, such as the use of tolls to help pay for projects that are constructed through the Public Private Transportation Act. However, I do not see any appetite at the legislative level for higher taxes.

As the debate over building a transportation system for the 21st century continues, we must also remember two other important areas – improving efficiency within the Virginia Department of Transportation and doing a better job linking land use planning and transportation planning at the local level.

This doesn’t cover every Bacon’s Rebellion priority — fundamental land use reform requires more than “linking” land use and transportation planning — but it’s about as good as it gets from an elected official. No new taxes (at least not now)… a user-pays system (tolls) for financing major new construction… improving efficiency at VDOT… and linking land use and transportation planning…

It’s a start.