Bacon's Rebellion

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed House Bill 761, legislation that will allow small businesses — those under 50 employees — to form health-insurance buying cooperatives. States a press release issued by the Governor’s office:

The legislation is consistent with other federal and state statutes related to small group market issues. It allows businesses to have flexibility in how they form purchasing pools, either by establishing one person or entity to be responsible for collection and payment of premiums, or by allowing each company to take responsibility for its own policy. The savings potential of this health insurance pooling depends on the size, composition and administration of the pool.

Gov. Kaine has pushed for legislation like this for a long time, and anything that makes it easier for small businesses to provide medical insurance for their employees is a positive step. I’m skeptical, however, that this measure, by itself, will have a big impact on the healthcare marketplace because, as I read the bill summary, it does nothing to exempt these insurance pools from mandated insurance coverage.

In Virginia insurance plans are required to include every conceivable health care profession and medical procedure, making it impossible for businesses to offer affordable, bare-bones insurance coverage. If you’re a contractor or shop owner, you don’t have the luxury of offering a stripped down Jeep Cherokee to your employees — you can only offer the model with leather seats, tinted windows, racing strips, surround-sound speakers and the rest of the luxury package. Not everyone can afford it.

HB 761 is a part of the solution to Virginia’s health care crisis — but only part.

A good number of bloggers have already provide ample overviews of the Sorensen affair, thus I will only add some key takeaways that continue to resonate with me. First, Michael Shear made strong arguments for why the vast majority of bloggers are not journalists in the classic sense, and Bob Gibson and others reinforced these points in their comments and in subsequent chats. The significant points of departure revolved around blogging’s lack of self-policing with no widely accepted codes of conduct and ethics – and the dearth of editorial and institutional oversight or structure that is typical of most MSM endeavors. This blog, for one, has proposed some voluntary blogging standards of practice, and in light of what was discussed at Sorensen, I would offer that this idea is worth revisiting.

Reflecting on this, it seems that the real issue at hand is not whether blogging is or is not journalism but whether bloggers who are not reporters can be considered journalists on par with opinion writers and analysts. Seeing as how journalism is a broad field, and given the prevalence of “advocacy journalism” with the likes of The Economist, New Republic, Weekly Standard, and most op/ed pages, the disconnect seems to revolve around the absence of editors. In the end, that’s more of a market innovation issue rather than a fundamental flaw of the blogging medium. In the end, those of us who aspire to raise our craft and produce MSM-quality work should not look to reporters like Mike as our standard, but rather to leading local, state, and federal opinion writers (unless we can play both sides of the fence like Norm’s penpal, Jeff Schapiro). We can also look at local newsweeklies and alternative newspapers which tend to relax traditional notions of objectivity.

Second, Gordon Morse excoriated bloggers for shying away from covering and investigating public policy issues. He correctly noted that most political bloggers prefer the daily soap opera of politicking to discussions of critical issues of importance such as healthcare, public finance, education, and the like. In Virginia, the policy implications of legislative and bureaucratic actions are mostly left off the table of the blogosphere, despite going mostly untouched by the MSM. Waldo’s General Assembly blogging and most of Bacon’s Rebellion are notable exceptions, but for the most part, Morse’s observations hold.

Third, bloggers better mind the store when it comes to campaign finance and election laws. One of the more fascinating tidbits that came out of the session on campaign finance (aside from the notes that my buddy Steven Sisson kept passing me) was that MSM institutions are mostly exempt from these laws due the press exception established by courts and legislatures. So far, the legislative and judicial branches have gradually granted status to bloggers, yet they have not delved as deeply into a universal standard of blogging as a MSM equivalent. However, some groups are pushing that envelope fast at the state and federal levels.

It stands to reason that since blogging is a communication medium, is an outlet for public service, and as bloggers are essentially “embedded citizen journalists” (not my creation), we should take steps to build an infrastructure for our own protection. Whether it is incorporating our blogs as businesses or non-profits, joining relevant associations, or banding together to create our own version of the Virginia Press Association, we would all be wise to pre-empt the courts and the legislatures just to be safe.

It will be interesting to compare and contrast the topics covered at the Sorensen Summit with those being developed for the “Bloggers United in Martinsville for free Speech” confab in August. Two months is practically an eternity in the blogosphere, and we will see if any of the lessons learned in Charlottesville will have any practical application in the interim. As I’m on the agenda as a presenter, I will definitely be paying greater attention not only to what I produce but what others do also.

After peaking last August, the six-month moving average of automobile sales in Virginia declined precipitously through February 2006, although the number has ticked back up since then, according to figures compiled by Chmura Economics & Analytics for VA Newswire for publication Wednesday.

The economy is growing and incomes are rising smartly. What could explain the dip other than the rising price of gasoline? Could this be a sign that Virginians are willing to modify their behavior in the face of the higher cost to own and operate a motor vehicle? Could this presage a downturn in the growth in Vehicle Miles Driven?

Deodorant manufacturer Old Spice has declared Richmond to be the 36th “sweatiest” city among the 100 largest in the United States. Washington, D.C., follows at 39, Norfolk at 42 and Virginia Beach at 44. The ranking is based on a composite of average average temperatures and humidity, presumably from the year before.

Among Virginia’s largest cities, Roanoke was clearly the place to spend the summer last year. Roanoke ranked 63. (Bristol, Tenn., across the state line from Bristol, Va., ranked 66.)

Temperatures in Richmond have been surprisingly moderate, even comfortable, so far this June. With the General Assembly winding up its budget negotiations and heading home, the periodic blasts of hot air from the state Capitol should diminish, and temperatures abate even more.

K-12 public education is Virginia’s sacred cow. The Standards of Quality put massive spending increases on auto-pilot. Legislators act as if their job is simply to find the funds to pay for it all. No one dares question how the schools operate: There is very little talk about reforming the delivery of K-12 education in Virginia. And what little there is gets no mention in the Mainstream Media.

From time to time, though, issues do surface. The Virginia Department of Education recently issued a study that says about 90 of Virginia’s 132 school districts have shifted a disproportionately large percentage of minority students into special-education classes. Special ed, it appears, is often regarded as a dumping ground for disorderly students.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch article touches upon the issues raised in the report — are children being unfairly labeled as emotionally disturbed? – but fails to ask any larger questions. fortunately, I do have a few questions.

• Between 1997 and 2004 (the latest year for which figures are available on the Department of Education website), school enrollment increased 8.5 percent to 1,204,808. Over the same period, special education enrollment increased 18 percent to 175,577 — more than twice as rapidly. Why?
• Could the increase in the number of special ed students have anything to do with larger state reimbursements for special ed students?
• Could the increase in the number of special ed students have anything to do with SOL scores? I don’t know the answer, I’m just asking: Are special ed students excluded, or treated differently, in the calculations of school and district performance?
• What percentage of “special ed” students are successfully integrated back into the mainstream school body? In other words, is there any evidence that special ed students are actually being helped?

These are the kinds of questions that our legislators should be asking instead of signing carte blanche checks for Virginia school systems.

Bob Gibson with Charlottesville’s The Daily Progress covered the blogging conference hosted over the weekend by the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership. I attended the first Summit but family obligations kept me from attending this one. Sounds like I missed a great event.

As a sign that Virginia’s political blogosphere is emerging as a significant factor in Virginia state politics, consider that this event was attended by Virginia’s lieutenant governor, attorney general and three members of the House of Delegates. Bolling’s remarks, as reported by Gibson, were revealing:

“A year ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was, and now I’m looking at blogs and reading blogs and I’m worrying about whether you are saying nice things or nasty things about me on blogs,” Lt. Gov. William T. Bolling told the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership’s second annual Summit on Blogging and Democracy. “Now I’m doing blog interviews.”

“Maybe this whole blogging thing has the potential of bringing back responsibility to campaigns,” Bolling told about 90 people Saturday afternoon. He urged the political bloggers to “hold us responsible once we get elected for doing the things we said we were going to do.”

Update: Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, who attended the conference, has published her “random thoughts.” Read them here. She highlights an apparent division between “liberal” and “conservative” bloggers, which strikes me as an unfortunate development…. but probably inevitable. Bloggers, by their nature, are hyper-opinionated, thus prone to schism.

Before anyone other than The Great Fuzz Ball goes off and says “See, I told you so!” concerning today’s WaPo story on job growth between in the National Capital Subregion let us all take a deep breath.

“Region’s Job Growth a Centrifugal Force” reports that COG found the R=20 plus jurisdictions gained 78,097 jobs vs 94,847 jobs for those outside R= 20. That 16,750 job difference is just 0.7 of one percent of the 2.4 million jobs COG projected to be inside R=20 by 2025.

The growth of 94,847 jobs puts the “outer” jurisdictions well on the way to the 230,000 jobs that were projected by 2025 in this territory but that rate of growth still brings the “outer” areas up to less than 10 percent of the Subregions total jobs inside R=20 at that time. For a summary of these issue see “Where the Jobs Are,” 24 May 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Besides the small percentage of the Subregion’s jobs this “news” focuses on also consider:

How many of these jobs are construction jobs on housing and residential service projects that will be going away when the buildings are completed? (Have you checked the trajectory of big house prices or how long units are staying on the market in the past six months?)

How many of these jobs are low paying service jobs supported by those with good jobs closer to the centroid (aka, in the “Core”) that have no time to mow their grass, care for their children or even walk their dog?

These are 2000 to 2005 numbers, as Larry Gross points out in his posting on the Gas Shock thread, $4.00 gasoline is going to change “everything.”

One fact is very clear: As of last week, employers were paying twice the rent per square foot for “Class A” places for employees near the centroid and within R=10 as they were in the R=20 to R=30 Radius Band. The latest wage numbers say that is true for the per month earnings as well.

Encouraging new job creation outside R=20 or R=25 (most of the new jobs in both Loudoun and Prince William are within R=25) is a good thing but only as long as those jobs contribute to creating a balance of J / H / S / R / A in Greater Culpeper / Culpeper, Greater Warrenton / Fauquier and other Disaggregated Communities outside the Clear Edge.

The WaPo article says that the “move-out-trend” is supported by the military job move to Ft. Belvoir. Ft Belvoir is just outside R=10, not beyond R=20. How soon the WaPo folks forget the radius map published just 8 days ago.

To its credit the reporter notes that there is a growing consensus that there should be a jobs / housing balance (a J / H / S / R / A Balance) and compact settlement patterns.

The story suggests that the state and municipal agencies continue to do a terrible job of fairly allocating location variable costs and of creating functional, balanced settlement patterns.

EMR

To accommodate a projected doubling of its current 50,000 cars per day, Rt. 7 near Leesburg would grow to 10 through lanes. Including turning lanes, Rt. 7 would be 17 lanes wide at the intersection with Battlefield Boulevard, according to Leesburg2day.com.

Those are the kinds of numbers being tossed around as a result of plans by The Peterson Companies to build 1,366 homes and between 1.1 million and 2 million square feet of retail, office and hotel space on land between the airport and the Dulles Greenway.

A 17-lane Rt. 7 would be wider than the Capital Beltway. Indeed, it might qualify as the widest road in Virginia. Does anyone know of any existing road with 17 lanes?

Seventeen-lane roads strike me as inherently unworkable. There is something very, very wrong with a human settlement pattern that generates so much automobile traffic and concentrates it on a single thoroughfare.

Senate and House budget negotiators have finally completed a budget for the next two fiscal years. Although the $74 billion behemoth offers no broad tax relief and institutionalizes Virginia’s chronic budget surplus, it could be worse.

The best thing that can be said about the budget is that lawmakers resisted the temptation to use surplus revenues to ramp up expensive new spending programs. (There was loads of new money for old spending programs, but that’s a different issue.)

Instead of cranking up programmatic spending, the General Assembly devotes more than $1 billion to one-time capital outlays — without borrowing any money. That means if revenues fall short of projections in future years, Virginia can easily cut back direct outlays for capital improvements and make up the difference by tapping the bond markets. Combine that with a fully replenished “Rainy Day” fund, and the state budget should have lots of insulation from the next revenue shortfall. The bond-rating agencies should be very happy.

Even though there was no broad tax relief, the budget does offer the following targeted initiatives (to quote from Senate spokesman Scott Leake):

• The repeal of the state estate tax, or so-called death tax takes effect July 1, 2007.
• A back-to-school sales tax holiday will begin this August.
• A tax credit for the payment of long-term care insurance premiums is established.
• A tax credit for contributions designed to reduce tuition at schools for children with disabilities begins next year.

On the downside, legislators continue to throw money at K-12 education to meet the Standards of Quality standards without any regard to the efficacy of that spending. Medicaid spending is still out of control — tax breaks for long-term care insurance don’t address the real source of Medicaid budget inflation, which is payments for disabilities. And, of course, we still have the transportation issue to address, presumably later this summer.

If you’re Arlington County, you create a new vision for the boxy buildings and subterranean passageways in Crystal City that will be emptied by the federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission. In place of the sterile monoculture that now characterizes the office complex near the Pentagon, members of an advisory task force see a more lively street-level scene with a greater mix of shops, restaurants and offices. Writes WaPo reporter Annie Gowen:

[Board of Supervisors Chairman Chris] Zimmerman and others speaking yesterday said that the vounty sees the empty space as an opportunity to “reimagine” and “brand” Crystal City as an attractive destination. Though close to Reagan National Airport and dense with hotels, the area has long been seen as a gloomy 1960s era enclave of offices connected by underground passages. But parts of Crystal City have lately seen a rebirth, thanks to an influx of trendy cafes and a new streetscape. …

Charles E. Smith Commercial Realty, which owns 7.4 million of the 11 million square feet of office space in the neighborhood, has spent $40 million on improvements to enliven the streets and attract new businesses. It turned Crystal Drive into a two-way main street and has recruited new shops and chic restaurants such as Jaleo and McCormick & Schmick’s.

Reading between the lines of Gowen’s story, however, there seems to be one big missing piece: Housing. Creating a livelier commercial district is a worthy goal. But creating a balanced community with a mix of housing, offices, shopping and other amenities — allowing people to live close to where they work and play — is an even more worthy goal. As Ed Risse has pointed out, the relocation of 17,000 jobs creates a rare opportunity to create a genuine balanced communities in Northern Virginia.

The problem, I surmise — it’s not discussed in the story — is that Arlington is concerned about protecting its tax base, which means replacing the vacated offices with new offices, not housing. It’s hard to fault Arlington for pursuing its short-term self interest. But everyone needs to recognize that Arlington’s decision not to pursue a balanced community means that housing will end up somewhere else, presumably in outlying counties. And employees working in the buffed up Crystal City will wind up commuting long distances and clogging Northern Virginia thoroughfares. And the cry for new transportation revenues will grow ever more deafening.

The House of Delegates has posed as an outpost of fiscal conservatism on the basis of its (rightful) opposition to raising taxes at a time the state budget is running a chronic budget surplus. But there’s no disguising the fact that the General Fund budget in fiscal 2007-2008 will be about 11 percent bigger than the budget in 2005-2006.

As the Jaded JD points out in his blog, the delegates have not exactly been paragons of spending restraint. JD enumerates a long laundry list of earmarks and spending amendments proposed by House tax hawks. Writes the Jaded One:

If you add together all the budget amendments proposed by the House conferees (excluding fund transfers), you might expect to see a net reduction in the budget, based on House Republican rhetoric. Alas, no. Total increase from the House budget conferees? $1.926B (that’s billion) over the biennium.

Scary, huh? These are the guys we’re counting on to restrain state spending. I shudder to think what spending would look like if the Senate had its way.

Fourteen Days Left in the Fiscal Year… and Counting…

General Assembly conferees are reporting slow progress in negotiations to craft the next biennial budget, slated to begin July 1, but they haven’t finished the job yet. Tensions between the Senate and the House of Delegates are still running high. To quote the Washington Post account by Michael Shear and Rosalind Helderman:

Reading a missive from the House on Thursday morning, Chichester at one point exclaimed: “God, they’re dumb as rocks!”

After reading a letter from senators aloud, Robert Vaughn, the staff director for the House Appropriations Committee, threw up his hands in frustration. “They’re like an EKG,” he said, referring to the way the needle on a heart monitor bounces all over the place. “They’re going to give somebody a heart attack.”

The impact of high gasoline prices on Virginia transportation policy is prompting more than blog posts at Bacon’s Rebellion — see “Energy Independence and Sustainability,” “Straight Talk about Gasoline Prices and Transportation Policy,” “A World with One Billion Cars” and “Virginia’s Vulnerability to Oil Shocks.” There is evidence that legislators are reappraising their thinking about transportation policy.

Exhibit A: Sen. Martin E. Williams, R-Newport News, chairman of the state Senate’s Transportation Committee.

As reported by Peter Galuszka in the latest Road to Ruin article, “Gas Shock,” Williams is a self-described conservative Republican who for years supported free enterprise, property rights and the extension of development and roads into the countryside. As gasoline prices have risen, however, he has come to realize that Virginia’s transportation policy cannot continue as it has. Consequently, he has been willing to support measures linking land use and transportation that he never would have before.

“I never thought I would agree with a growth management strategy that hurts property rights but I am already there,” he says. “We just can’t accommodate growth in outer areas like we used to.”

I’m delighted to see that Williams is open to change, and I probably shouldn’t quibble. But I just have to set the record straight on one issue. I, too, support free markets and property rights, but I never equated those with the policies responsible for the pattern of scattered, disconnected, low-density development commonly referred to as “sprawl,” much less our sprawl-inducing transportation policy. To the contrary, few sectors of the U.S. economy are as heavily regulated (zoning codes, subdivision ordinances, comprehensive plans) and subsidized (road construction, the pricing of utilities and public services, mortgage financing) as real estate.

For me, “property rights” means that government should not have the right to take someone’s property, or diminish the value of someone’s property, without compensation. “However, property rights” does not entitle land speculators to make a profit, nor does it require local government to extend roads, utilities and public services to any old place that a developer decides to build a subdivision.

As Sen. Williams thinks through the implications of higher gasoline prices for transportation policy, I hope he also reconsiders what the terms “free markets” and “property rights” mean in the context of the heavily regulated, heavily subsidized real estate sector.

“A combination of no state budget, more expensive construction materials and declining revenues from gas taxes is adding up to less money for secondary road construction and public transit in Virginia,” writes Kelly Hannon with the Free Lance-Star. “If nothing changes, just $800 million of the $6.9 billion slated for road projects would go to local governments for secondary roads. That’s a statewide decrease of $200 million from last year’s plan.”

State officials are making a big deal out of the impact of high gasoline prices on the consumption of gasoline. Fewer gallons of gasoline sold translates into lower gasoline taxes.

What state officials aren’t emphasizing, and reporters aren’t reporting, is that fewer gallons of gasoline sold also reflects the fact that Virginians are driving less. If they’re driving less, presumably the need for massive road and rail improvements isn’t quite as urgent.

Admittedly, rising energy costs creates a double whammy for the transportation budget. It also drives up the cost of construction materials, which would cut into state construction plans even if gasoline sales weren’t falling. But at some point, someone needs to begin rethinking fundamental assumptions: How long can Virginia afford to maintain a transportation policy predicated on the assumption of cheap energy? Along those lines, see our post above.

Judicial Watch, a government watchdog group, has formally requested that Virginia’s Secretary of Transportation, Pierce Homer, make future meetings of the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Review Panel open to the public and the press. Times-Community.com has the story here.

Says the story written by Kali Schumitz: “The panel began closed-door meetings last week to formulate a recommendation for the state to pursue either a tunnel or aerial tracks for running Metro through Tysons Corner as part of the project to extend rail to Washington Dulles International Airport.”

Spokesmen for the American Society of Civil Engineers, which formed the panel at Homer’s request, argued the meetings should stay closed. Said Patrick Natale, ASCE president: “We need to move quickly and have frank discussions.”

It’s in the Kaine administration’s interest, however, to keep the meetings open.

The Rail-to-Dulles project has an estimated cost of $4 billion, assuming no overruns. As I’ve argued in previous posts, the funding mechanism proposed by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority — 50 percent coming from a toll on the Dulles Toll Road — would put into motion a massive transfer of wealth from mostly middle-class commuters to wealthy owners of property near the Metro stations. A recommendation to run either a tunnel or aerial tracks would have a tremendous impact on the property values in Tysons Corner.

Any deliberations held behind closed doors, protected from public scrutiny, will only feed the impression, justified or not, that the interests of the general public are not being considered. Surely, the Kaine administration does not wish to be depicted as the willing tool of a handful of rich, influential landowners. Opening up the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Review Panel will help dispel such notions.