Bacon's Rebellion

The balance of power in the taxes-and-transportation debate must be shifting in favor of the House of Delegates. What do I base that on? The fact that some Virginia’s editorial writers are so distraught that they’re practically foaming at the mouth.

I’ve already commented upon the Washington Post’s characterization of House Speaker William Howell. (See “William J. Howell: The Face of Evil.”) But those epiteths were almost mild compared to what you can read today in the Roanoke Times.

The Roanoke Times lauds Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for vetoing legislation that would have given Republican legislators power to appoint a majority of the members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board. Sure, it was a raw power grab, and no one in their right mind expected Kaine to sign it. But the only people who seem to have worked themselves into a froth are the editorial writers at the Times. Here is the Times storyline:

“Miffed” that Kaine, a Democrat, won the election, the Republicans, “sore losers” that they are, “vindictively went after Kaine,” despite the Governor’s”genuine gestures” of bipartisanship. (No word from the Times about Kaine’s principled about-face on tax increases.) The ‘Pubs tried to “strip” Kaine’s appointment powers, and they “stepped over the line” in refusing to appoint a former AFL-CIO official to Kaine’s cabinet. They still hope to “wound the governor” and “slap around Virginians” who support tax increases. Every step of the way, the Times characterizes the motives of the House GOP as vindictive or venal.

What’s interesting here is that the Times writer is so over-wrought that he/she seems unable to draw distinctions between the courageous, fiscally responsible, tax-raising Republicans in the Senate and the pandering, short-sighted obstructionist Republicans in the House. But both chambers had to pass the power-stripping legislation in order for it to reach the Governor.

Guys, the next time Gov. Kaine decides to reach across the aisle in a display of bipartisanship, I doubt he’ll be calling on you for help with his speech writing.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has vetoed a bill that would allow drivers to keep loaded guns in their cars and boats without a criminal background check or firearms training. According to Christina Nuckols at the Virginian-Pilot, Kaine said the measure “presents a danger to our law enforcement officers, who risk their lives for Virginians on a daily basis while patrolling our Commonwealth’s roads and highways.”

The Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police opposes the legislation. Executive Director Dana Schrad said the bill would create a confusion by opening a loophole in existing laws requiring concealed weapon permits. “We just felt the safety of police officers was put at too great a risk.”

A gun-rights advocate said the veto won’t protect police because criminals would ignore the law anyway.

If I’m reading this right, if you pack heat and you really, really want to stash a pistol in your glove compartment, you still can — as long as you pass a criminal background check or have firearms training. The only people who could possibly object to this are the radical civil libertarians of the right who, in my book, are almost as loonie as the radical civil libertarians of the left.

Frankly, I’d prefer that the General Assembly focus its attention of addressing the issues that matter to the other 98 percent of the population.

The RTD reported in 05 that Candidate Kaine said he supported the Marriage amendment ‘as written’ that marriage is between one man and one woman only.

Governor Kaine said he will vote against the amendment and encourage others to do so.

A politician ran for public office saying one thing and did something different in office. Shocked, I’m shocked, I say!

So, why did Gov. Kaine wait six days to change his tune on new taxes for transportation? What happened in those six days? Why didn’ t he announce the flip six minutes after he won? Go figure.

Maybe we ought to have dunking pond for politicians. If they get tested as candidates and drown, the voters know they would have been truthful. If the candidates live, the voters know they will lie.

This news in today: Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed legislation that updates and simplifies the state’s complex and outdated system of communications taxes. Virginia’s citizens currently pay the nation’s highest rate of combined state and local taxes for their telephone service — averaging 30 percent, more than twice the national average. The new law eliminates four existing communications taxes and replaces them with a low, five-percent rate across the board for all communications services.

Said Verizon President Robert W. Woltz Jr.: “This simplified communications tax system will benefit citizens by overhauling one of the most regressive taxes in Virginia, replacing it with a fair, equitable system that doesn’t discriminate among the various methods competitors use to deliver communications services.”

American cities are coming back strong. The suburbs still maintain an edge when measured by per capita income and the median value of owner-occupied housing. But after decades of relative decline, the 22 cities studied by University of Virginia professors William H. Lucy and David L. Phillips held their own in the 1990s and regained some lost ground in the first half of the 2000s decade.

Lucy and Phillips compared 22 cities with populations of 250,000 or more with surrounding jurisdictions within their Metropolitan Statistical Areas. Drawing upon American Community Survey data, they found that per capita income rose from 86 percent of the MSA average in 2000 to 89 percent by 2004. The median value of owner-occupied housing increased from 83.7 percent of the MSA average to 86.4 percent over the same four-year period.

What’s happening? In a reversal of white flight/middle class flight, affluent households are moving back into the city and rehabilitating the housing stock. At the same time, lower-income households are leaking into surrounding counties and occupying the single-family houses, tiny by today’s standards, built in the 1950s and 1960s.

Lucy and Phillips conclude: “Rearrangement of the income geography of cities and suburbs presents new opportunities and challenges for public policy makers. Alleviation of effects of concentrated poverty and depleted city government treasuries remain daunting challenges. But now, market forces may contribute to reducing these problems rather than compounding them.”

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. According to the Manassas Journal-Messenger, there’s a canopy over the Virginia Railway Express station at Manassas Park — a canopy that’s the same size as those at other VRE stations.

But the City Council of Manassas Park wants a bigger canopy — one big enough to cover the entire train platform.

Because VRE and City Council disagree on whether or not their contract provides for a bigger shelter, City Council is refusing to pay the city’s $25,540 share of the purchase of 50 new VRE rail cars needed to replace expiring leases and aging equipment.

Six other localities along the VRE route have kicked in about $1.25 million for the new rail cars. Manassas Park is the only hold-out. But without the participation of all seven localities, the state of Virginia will not contribute critical matching funds.

Here’s the irony: Without the funds to buy new cars, VRE will have to cut the number of rail cars in service. That means fewer passengers, which means that Manassas Park won’t need that bigger canopy anyway!

Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling sees no need for a broad-based tax increase this year, for transportation or anything else. He believes that making VDOT more efficient and aligning transportation with land use planning will do wonders for Virginia’s ailing road system.

“We just need to exercise some fiscal discipline,” he told a dozen or more bloggers in a conference call arranged by Norm Leahy of One Man’s Trash fame, with technical assistance from the Virginia Institute for Public Policy. “When we’ve got economic growth sufficient to support a 19 percent increase in spending, it’s unfathomable that folks are calling for a tax increase.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Bolling also believes the way out of the General Assembly’s budget gridlock is to set aside contentious transportation-tax issues for the moment and “agree on those areas where agreement can be reached.”

The differences between the House and Senate on the budget are “very small” in every area but transportation, Bolling said. “The differences between the Senate budget and the House budget are … very easily resolved. … Let’s not hold other sections of the budget hostage.”

Tax-hike hardliners in the Senate expect the budget gridlock, which could lead to a government shut down if unresolved by the end of the fiscal year, to panic members of the House into making concessions. Their calculation, the Lt. Governor said, is that “the closer you get to the deadline, members of the House will start peeling off in their opposition to higher taxes.” That won’t happen, he added. “In fact, I see the opposite of that happening.” Based on his conversations with individual senators, he thinks the Senate could accept his preference to set the transportation issue aside for later.

Buttressing that line of argument, Bolling noted, is the fact that the House and Senate aren’t as far apart on the transportation issue as commonly portrayed. Both parties would funnel General Fund budget surpluses to transportation, increase taxes on automobile insurance premiums, and bump up motorist “abuser” fees. “Rather than play brinksmanship with the rest of the budget, let’s agree upon what we can agree upon.”

In the wide-ranging blog conference, Bolling commented on a number of hot issues, from illegal immigration to educational vouchers. Read the take of these other bloggers: Elephant Ears, Too Conservative, Kilo, Nova Townhall, CatHouse Chat, Virginia Virtucon, Spank That Donkey, From On High.

Tuition alert! This from the Virginian-Pilot: Old Dominion University will raise tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates 8.6 percent, beginning with the summer session. ODU’s Board of Visitors on Friday approved increasing the annual amount from $5,614 to $6,098.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and the General Assembly don’t disagree about everything. According to Warren Fiske at the Virginian-Pilot, there seems to be accord on a number of transportation-related reforms. Kaine said he would support:

• Expanding the Virginia Department of Transportation’s efforts to privatize work for tree trimming, ditch clearning, guardrail repair and other maintenance work along state highways.
• Ending limitations on how many “design-build” contracts the Commonwealth Transportation Board can issue. Design-build contracts would allow the same company to design and build a road or a bridge, which would lead to greater productivity and savings from the current approach of separating the work.
• Allow local governments to establish tolls on new roads – or those with new capacity.
• Grant multiple jurisdictions the authority to sign agreements for tolled highways, bridges and ferries.

As Virginia’s House and Senate leaders play chicken during state budget talks, hurtling ever closer to a government shut-down, public perceptions are critical. The side that tars the other with blame for the impending disaster gains the upper hand in the battle for public opinion and, hence, the negotiations. Two years ago, Gov. Mark R. Warner and the Senate succeeding in pinning responsibility on the House of Delegates for a looming shut-down, causing consternation and panic in House ranks.

This year, the House may turn the tables. As Patrick McSweeney argues in a recent column, “Legislation by Extortion,” the Virginia Constitution prohibits legislators from passing a budget bill predicated upon tax increases that have not been enacted yet. But that’s exactly what the Senate is doing: pushing for a budget that requires $1 billion a year in added taxes.

Now we’re hearing arguments like McSweeney’s emanating from the House. The Lynchburg News & Advance quotes Del. Lacey Putney, I-Bedford, one of the six house budget negotiators, as pushing for a halt to budget negotiations until the Senate strips all transportation-related tax increases out of its proposed budget.

“We will not sign a conference committee report on any budget if it contains a tax increase,” The News & Advance quotes Putney as saying. “If the Senate and the governor would recognize what I think is a very unsound proposal of embedding taxes in a budget, if they could accept that, I think we could adopt a budget in short order.”

Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, a key Senate negotiator notes in the article that the same logic applies to the House’s proposed use of debt. If the House wants to make the case that Senate instransigence is holding up the budget, then it should consider stripping from its spending proposals the issuance of new debt. All tax increases and debt issues should be considered in a separate session that treats new transportation revenue sources as add-ons to the next two-year budget.

When Gov. Gerald Baliles pushed through a transportation tax increase in 1986, he did so in a special session. He made the case for the tax increase on its own merits; he didn’t need to threaten a tax shut-down. That’s what Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Senate leadership need to do as well — or risk taking the rap for any mayhem caused by the prolonged wrangling.

In a press conference two weeks ago, Del. David Albo, R-Springfield, brushed up against the most important question of the entire Rail-to-Dulles debate, but he didn’t really pursue it: Could the $4 billion needed to build the Rail-to-Dulles extension of the Metro buy more congestion relief if it were spent differently?

What combination of congestion-priced HOT lane tolls, Bus Rapid Transit operations, intelligent transportation systems, telework incentives and other alternatives could be put into place for $4 billion? How much congestion could those alternatives mitigate? The Metro extension is projected to serve only 48,000 passengers along the entire route. An aggressive telework campaign could get more than 48,000 passengers off Northern Virginia roads for a fraction of that price!

Thinking even more outside the box, how far would a $4 billion investment go if it were combined with an intelligent re-thinking of Northern Virginia land use policies?

This question is fundamental, but the House leadership chose not to make it an issue. House Speaker Howell has accepted the goal of completing the Dulles-to-Rail extension, and he’s accepted the idea of dedicating revenue from the Dulles Toll Road to help pay for it. As I see it, his argument with Gov. Timothy M. Kaine isn’t so much how to spend that money, but who should control the spending.

I’ve finally found the time to read carefully through the criticisms leveled by House Speaker William Howell, R-Stafford, and Del. David Albo, R-Springfield, against Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s Rail-to-Dulles solution. After nearly two weeks, a number of the charges still hold water. Here is how I would rephrase their concerns:

1. The mission of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority does not align with the interests of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The MWAA priority is to improve transportation access to Dulles Airport. The Commonwealth has a number of priorities, which include optimizing land use around Metro stations, minimizing the tax burden on citizens, and minimizing tolls for commuters. Whose interests will be served by this transfer of authority?
2. The MWAA board is not accountable to the citizens of Virginia; a minority of board members are appointed by the Governor. (See “Railroad the Rail to Dulles Project.”) Whose interests will board members feel obligated to represent — the airport authority’s or the Commonwealth’s?
3. Firms competing for the Dulles Toll Road concession have proposed upgrading the toll road, including a $300 million of four lanes of congestion-priced HOT lanes. There is no assurance that the MWAA will fund that improvement instead of funneling every dime of toll revenue into Metro.
4. The Kaine plan forfeits a $500 million up-front cash payment under one of the Dulles Toll Road proposals, which could be applied to Metro or other transportation improvements.
5. There has been no open debate. We’re talking about $4 billion here — real money, even by the standards of Virginia’s ever-escalating budget. The Governor needs to lay out his case to the public, not simply count on his communications staff to answer inquiries from a dilatory press corps.

Update: Gov. Kaine has announced the formation of an advisory committee yesterday “to provide input” on the MWAA’s oversight of the Dulles Toll Road and the Rail-to-Dulles extension, according to this morning’s Washington Post. Kaine spokesman Kevin Hall said the authority did not object to giving local officials “a voice” on toll increases and other decisions on which the authority has the final say, under the agreement.

Somehow, I don’t think critics will find that having “input” and “a voice” will be as reassuring as having the “final say.”

Who is that caped man — the one twirling his handlebar moustache and emitting an evil laugh, mwa ha ha ha ha – at the suffering of Virginia commuters?

Why, it’s arch fiend William Howell — or at least the cartoon image of the House Speaker as penned by the editorialists at the Washington Post.

“To all appearances,” the Post writes, “Mr. Howell cares not a whit for Northern Virginia’s transportation nightmare.” He has “thumbed his nose” at federal funding for Metro, and has mindlessly “attacked” the Governor’s proposals to turn the Rail-to-Dulles project over to the unelected Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. “In short, when Northern Virginia commuters, lawmakers and business leaders speak of a transportation crisis, their pleas fall on Mr. Howell’s deaf ears.”

I would respond this way: To all appearances, the Washington Post cares not a whit for either Northern Virginia’s commuters or its taxpayers. Its editorial writers want to raise taxes to perpetuate the same Business As Usual transportation and land use practices that have landed Northern Virginia in its current unsustainable predicament – tax and build, tax and build.

Where Howell is at least flexible enough to explore alternatives for improving mobility and access, the Washington Post is stuck on the same tired nostrums of the 1980s. To all appearances, its editorial writers have learned absolutely nothing in the past 20 years. To all appearances, they have shown absolutely no curiosity about any remedy not spoon fed to them by the tax-and-build lobby.

It’s not as if the Post has weighed the alternatives — building balanced communities, improving neighborhood connectivity, promoting telework, managing transportation demand, promoting shared ridership, implementing intelligent transportation systems, outsourcing maintenance — and found them wanting. The Post hasn’t evinced the slightest awareness that such alternatives even exist.

In addition to re-examining its sanctimonious attitude, the Post editorial writer might stop thumbing his nose at the facts. “Never mind,” he sneers, “that Virginia has not raised a new dime for transportation in 20 years.” Not one dime? Apparently, some $2 billion in revenues allocated from General Funds surpluses (in the current budget and proposed for the next) counts for nothing.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s decision to turn control of the Rail-to-Dulles project over to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority is catching ack-ack fire from the Governor’s friends in the conservation community. Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, raises three weighty objections:

1. “MWAA would be less accountable to the public because it is appointed and not elected.” The board could raise tolls and exercise eminent domain without accountability to voters. (See “Who Runs the MWAA?” Only five of 13 board members are appointed by Virginia’s governor.)
2. “MWAA lacks experience in local land use and urban design.” The great challenge in successfully extending Metro to Dulles is integrating the Metro stations with local land use. Fairfax County’s authority and role in the project are not spelled out clearly.
3. The MWAA’s primary interest is extending rail to Dulles Airport as soon as possible. That priority is not necessarily tops for Northern Virginia citizens, who have competing interests such as keeping a lid on taxes and tolls, and creating more liveable, balanced communities around the Metro stops.

Democracy is a messy business. But it beats handing over authority to an unaccountable board with its own institutional interests. If Gov. Kaine’s sole purpose is completing Rail-to-Dulles as quickly as possible, his decision may be a good one. If his purpose is finding a balance that works for citizens, his decision was questionable indeed.