Bacon's Rebellion

Critics have pointed out a problem with the House of Delegates budget projections, and this time I have to agree. Scott Leake, executive director of the Senate Republican Leadership Trust, puts it this way in today’s critique of the House budget:

“The House budget depends on over a half billion dollars on increased driver fines and fees, 590.2 million to be exact, over the next four years. The Senate expects less than half that amount.

“There are serious misgivings over whether that massive amount will ever materialize. Will low income and youthful drivers be able to comply? And can fees be imposed on actions made before a law is passed? We’ll see.”

Phil Rodokanakis raised that last point in his column today (“Taxing Drivers“). House Bill 527 would increase fines on drivers based on the number of points on their Division of Motor Vehicles driving records. But that amounts to fining someone ex post facto — making someone pay penalties for driving offenses he may have committed before the law was passed! A big chunk of the House’s anticipated revenue could be subject to legal challenge.

Additionally, motorists aren’t going to twiddle their thumbs while the state slaps them with huge fines. As an anonymous Bacon’s Rebellion blogger commented, with more to lose, more motorists will hire lawyers to dispute their tickets — and some will win. The state cannot extrapolate revenue based upon previous patterns based on low fines. Another downside: state police will spend more time testifying in court, less time handing out tickets.

I have to agree with Leake on this one: The senate revenue projections look more responsible than the Houses’ on this particular issue.

Virginians are so inured to the dysfunctional layout of their physical environment — the separation of land uses; the physical disconnect between houses, offices and stores built in pods; the stringing of those pods along feeder and arterial roads — that they take it forgranted. Like the air they breathe, they cannot see it. If they cannot see it, they cannot question the absurdity of it.

I’ve written about the “disconnected” nature of contemporary development patterns in the abstract, but I’m not sure if readers understood what I was driving at. Therefore, I’ve devoted my latest e-zine column to rendering the abstract in concrete terms, illustrating with words, maps and photos how pod-style development contributes to traffic congestion in western Henrico County. Read “Pod People.”

Last Thursday, House Speaker William J. Howell blasted Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for handing over responsibility for the Dulles Toll Road and the 23-mile Rail-to-Dulles Metro extension to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

In a press conference, the Speaker outlined his concerns in considerable detail. By abandoning a number of public-private partnership proposals, Howell charged, Kaine had forfeited half a billion dollars in up-front payments to the Commonwealth, failed to assure that commuters will receive timely relief from traffic congestion and failed to protect Dulles Toll Road Commuters from high tolls.

The Kaine administration responded by releasing a letter that Secretary of Transportation Pierce R. Homer had written Howell on Aug. 9, 2005 — half a year ago. The letter does not address the specific issues Howell raised last week. In effect, it is a non-answer.

What Homer did in the letter was defend the process for evaluating what to do with the Dulles Toll Road. The process sounds reasonable enough. The Commonwealth Transportation Board has engaged the services of the Public Resources Advisory Group, a financial advisor that does not underwrite, trade or market securities and, therefore, has no conflict of interest regarding the advice it dispenses. I would value the judgment of an independent outfit like PRAG over that of an investment banking firm hoping to make millions in underwriting fees.

Homer further stated that he would endeavor to “resolve and clarify the role and status of the Federal Aviation Administration, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, and Fairfax County.” Additionally, he said he would identify major policy issues, including: “the duration of tolling; the type of tolling in the corridor, including congestion pricing; the duration of any potential concession agreement; potential limits on toll rates and rates of return; revenue sharing among public and private partners; long-term maintenance obligations; and future land uses in the corridor.”

It sounds like Pierce was asking many of the right questions. But that half-year-old letter doesn’t provide any of the answers, and it doesn’t address key questions in Howell’s remarks. In effect, the Kaine administration is saying, “We know what we’re doing, just trust us.”

That appears to be good enough for the daily newspapers, which have dropped the issue. If Homer used a few thousand public dollars to unnecessarily charter a private airplane, go hunting in Africa or take his co-workers for a little topless-bar entertainment, the fearless Mainstream Media would be all over the story. But if the House Speaker accuses the Kaine administration of writing off a half-billion dollars in a bad business decision, the story doesn’t merit an inch of ink. Pathetic.

I suspect that Homer has reasonable answers to Howell’s questions, but we won’t know for sure until we hear them. And we probably won’t — because no one is pressing for them.

Update: The Washington Post has published an editorial that does a fairly balanced job of summarizing high-altitude issues in the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority deal.

The April 3, 2006, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine has been published. You can view it here. This week’s columns include:

Pod People
By stringing disconnected pods of development along our main roads, local planning policies force Virginians into their cars and aggravate traffic congestion.
by James A. Bacon

Getting to Yes
Some great values, respect, decisiveness and experience were on display this week.
by Doug Koelemay

Democracy as National Religion
Contemporary Americans worship democracy and majority rule. They forget that the United States also is a republic, which imposes checks and balances against the tyranny of the mob.
by Patrick McSweeney

Where Have I Heard This Before?
Tim Kaine says his $1 billion tax increase will help relieve traffic congestion. Sounds uncannily similar to claims made in 1986.
by Patrick McSweeney

Warner Watchdog
To most Virginians, Mark Warner may be out of sight and out of mind. But the Blue Dog faithfully keeps tabs on the former governor’s national ambitions.
by Steven Sisson

Do We Need It All?
Virginia’s wish list of transportation projects fund includes many that will do little to relieve traffic congestion. Virginia needs to rethink the way it sets its funding priorities.
by Geoffrey Segal

Taxing Drivers
Desperate for a new source of transportation revenues, the House has passed a bill that is clearly unconstitutional — fining drivers for offenses committed before the law was passed.
by Philip Rodokanakis

Funny Money
It’s all play money to the economic geniuses in the state Senate. The senators’ transportation- financing plan doesn’t make a lick of economic sense.
by Jim Bowden

None of Your Business
No need for Kaine and McDonnell to argue over the governor’s authority to bar discrimination by sexual orientation. A Supreme Court ruling limits government’s discretion already.
by Becky Dale

Straight Talk about Gay Rights
Nondiscrimination in the state workforce should extend to sexual orientation. The only criteria that should affect employees’ work status should be professional performance.
by Jay Gandy

Nice & Curious Questions:
Happy Trails to You:
Virginia’s Unbeaten Paths
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

It is now clear that governance practitioners, land speculators, design-build investors and their agents have moved the status of mobility and access in the northern part of Virginia to the brink of chaos. When Bacon’s Rebellion and the Metro section of WaPo agree, it is time for profound concern. See today’s story “Fairfax Frets Over Tysons as Dulles Rail Evolves.”

Nineteenth century technology, ballooning costs driven by public and private actors trying to load the train with pork and a total lack of regional or subregional plans that balance human settlement patterns with mobility systems spell disaster.

There is still a chance to snatch mobility from the jaws of gridlock. Here is a slightly revised sketch plan for system changes that would provide mobility and access for the National Capital Subregion. It is based on a plan S/PI outlined for a client several years ago:

1. Extend METRO from West Falls Church to Tysons Corner. Pay a substantial part of the cost from long term leases on the air rights for station-area development at three stations over VA Route 123 and VA Route 7. (See “Blueprint for a Better Region: Putting Development in the Right Places.”)

2. Build a 21st century PRT system from Dulles Airport to the Anacostia waterfront with service to Reston (three stations with station-area development on platforms with leased air-rights over the DAAR) Tysons (tie to METRO Orange Line) Massachusetts Ave Corridor, Georgetown, North of M Street Crosstown (tie to METRO Red and Green lines) Union Station(tie to METRO Red Line, AMTRAK, VRE and MARC), Capitol Hill (tie to METRO Orange and Blue Lines) and South Capital Corridor to Anacostia (tie to METRO Green Line).

3. Build out the changes called for in “It Is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO” on the Bacon’s Rebellion website.

The alternatives look very bleak as depicted in both Bacon’s Rebellion and WaPo. The very worst prospect for the future of mobility and access is the Python Plan by the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority. See “Reality-Based Regionalism” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

EMR

The proposed extension of the Washington Metro heavy rail service to Dulles Airport is the biggest infrastructure project in Virginia today. The project will cost some $4 billion, and it will impact billions more in real estate development in one of the nation’s hottest technology corridors. Multi-billions of dollars in contracts and development opportunities ride on the outcome of how the heavy rail project is built and financed.

It stands to reason that private-sector interests are lobbying heavily behind the scenes for an outcome that favors them. Indeed, private-sector lust for getting a piece of the multi-billion Metro jackpot may explain why less costly alternatives such as Bus Rapid Transit are getting no serious consideration.

House Speaker William J. Howell has leveled substantive criticisms against a decision by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to give the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority power to set tolls on the Dulles Toll Road and control many aspects of the planned Metrorail extension. Pardon my cynicism, but I find it difficult to imagine Kaine making the decision he did, or Howell making the charges he did, without a Greek chorus of private sector interests egging them on. I’m not suggesting that either man is carrying water for anyone, but I am suggesting that neither man is acting in a vacuum.

The Rail-to-Dulles story is huge. It is not merely a story about the clash of political personalities: Kaine vs. Howell. It can’t be shoe-horned into a simple political narrative such as the ongoing struggle between the Axis of Taxes and the foes of taxes. This also is a story about the power of government to commandeer billions of dollars of resources from taxpayers and to shower private-sector intersts with billions of dollars in engineering contracts, construction contracts, bond deals and development opportunities.

The public has no hope of fully understanding this story until it understands the array of special interests that have lined up behind the Governor and the Speaker. We can always hope that the Mainstream Media will do its job and dig past the dueling sound bites and press releases. But we can’t count on it. This is a job for the blogosphere.

So much for my predictions of a media firestorm. The Washington Post gave 10 paragraphs of space to a story about House Speaker William J. Howell’s criticisms of the Governor’s Rail-to-Dulles gambit — and that included three paragraphs of rebuttal. What the heck, it’s only the largest infrastructure project in the Washington New Urban Region, costing a projected $4 billion and impacting billions of dollars of future real estate development. Wouldn’t want to go overboard, would we?

Judging from the Post’s coverage, the Kaine administration’s strategy at this point is to simply ignore the Speaker’s criticisms. (See previous post, “Kaine has Stuck His Hand in the Hornet’s Nest.”) If the media ignores the criticisms and Kaine ignores them, maybe they will fade into oblivion. On the other hand, the response of Kevin Hall, the Governor’s press secretary, may simply reflect the questions posed by the reporter. If the reporter didn’t raise the Speaker’s criticisms point by point, Hall couldn’t very well answer them.

(Update: Jeff Schapiro’s article in the Times-Dispatch today noted that Kaine’s office “released an August letter to Howell from Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer addressing concerns on which the speaker went public yesterday.” Bacon’s Rebellion has obtained a copy of that letter. You can read it here.)

In any case, here’s how Chris L. Jenkins with the Post characterized the Kaine response:

Kaine’s press secretary said the deal has the support of GOP lawmakers in Congress and the House of Delegates whose constituents use the toll road, including Sen. John W. Warner and Reps. Frank R. Wolf and Thomas M. Davis III, as well as Fairfax Dels. Thomas Davis Rust and Vincent F. Callahan Jr. Kevin Hall, the press secretary, said Howell was flouting the support from powerful members of his own party.

“I would suggest that the speaker’s antics today were rash and irresponsible,” Hall said. He rejected Howell’s contention that the governor’s office had not adequately vetted other proposals. “This is a proposal that is supported . . . by the region’s congressional delegation, General Assembly delegation and business community,” he said. “The proposal will allow the faster and cheaper completion of the entire project.”

Supporters of the deal say it would remove much of the uncertainty surrounding the nearly $4 billion project to build a rail line through Tysons Corner, Reston and the
airport and into Loudoun County because the airports authority would assume responsibility for the state and federal portion of the cost.

This story is big, very big. It may well reach media-frenzy status. On March 27, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine signed a memorandum of understanding handing over responsibility for the Dulles Toll Road and the Rail-to-Dulles Metro extension to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The import of that decision eluded me at the time, and I let it pass without comment. Truth be told, I have no idea whether the decision was sound or unsound. The issues are incredibly complex, and they need to be aired thoroughly before anyone rushes to judgment.

But I will say this: House Speaker William J. Howell and Del. David B. Albo, R-Springfield, today made some troubling criticisms of the deal. Today’s press conference did not consist of the kind of rhetorical mud wrestling we’ve seen so much of during the General Assembly session. The delegates leveled substantive charges.

I list the charges here not to endorse them but simply to emphasize the immensely serious nature of a deal with a multi-billion impact on Northern Virginia commuters:

• The Administration failed to comprehensively analyze the long-term value of the Dulles Toll Road.
• The Administration cut off the PPTA process and stopped private-sector competition that would have ensured top value to the state for the long-term rights to Dulles Toll Road revenues.
• The agreement does not assure commuters will receive timely relief from traffic congestion.
• The agreement forfeits entirely a half billion dollars or more in up-front cash payment to the Commonwealth.
• The agreement fails to protect Dulles Toll Road commuters from high tolls.
• Opportunities to receive additional federal funding were abandoned by the Administration.
• The Administration failed to consult with the General Assembly before giving away the Dulles Toll Road, a state asset worth billions.

Because the Speaker does not post his press releases online, I will load them on Bacon’s Rebellion and make them accessible as soon as possible. They are worth close reading. I await a detailed response from the Governor’s Office.

Key Documents:

Gov. Kaine’s March 27, 2006, press release

Speaker Howell’s March 30, 2006, press release

Remarks by Speaker Howell, Del. Albo, March 30, 2006

Washington Post article, “Opposition Building Over Toll Road Deal,” March 30, 2006.

The Michigan legislature is giving serious attention to Rapid Transit, not only as a transportation alternative but as a strategy for urban renewal. In the state that once was synonymous with the automobile, that’s a big deal. Argues Keith Schneider with the Michigan Land Use Institute:

Since 1981, when San Diego built the new light rail line that started its remarkable downtown resurgence, 39 cities have opened new street car, light rail, and commuter rail systems in the United States. Each time, jobs, housing, businesses, and economic opportunity blossomed along their routes.

In Virginia, the solution to financing light rail may be Community Development Authorities (CDAs) and Tax Increment Financing. A CDA would encompass the property around a proposed transit stop. The authority would issue bonds, which would defray the cost of building the rail line, erecting the station, if any, and making other improvements within the authority boundaries. The bonds would be repaid by added taxes levied on the property owners covered by the authority. Presumably, landowners would be willing to pay the taxes because the transit and other improvements would increase the value of their property.

A string of CDAs could be constructed along the light rail route, raising large sums for the project – conceivably enough, when combined with fares and federal funds, to pay for all ofit.

Even I get tired of arguing about tax hikes. For a change of pace, I invite you to contemplate the hazard posed by that old computer monitor sitting in your basement or the pre-big screen TV collecting dust in your garage. They contain toxic chemicals — don’t dump them in the trash! Be responsible and unload them at one of 18 electronics recycling events scheduled in Virginia this April.

If landfilled or incinerated, hazardous materials in common electronic products may be released into the soil, air or water. Televisions and computer monitors use cathode ray tubes (CRTs), each of which contain as much as 8 pounds of lead. Flat screen TVs and monitors contain mercury. Printed circuit boards and switches in electronic devices contain small amounts of chromium, cadmium, mercury and lead.

“Almost seventy-five percent of all obsolete electronics are still stored in offices and homes. This is a great opportunity to get rid of that old PC or VCR that has been collecting dust and know it will be responsibly reused or recycled,” said Computer Recycling Initiative’s Director, Carrie Dorsey.

Click here to find a recycling event near you.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine isn’t just a good public speaker, he’s a good writer. His travel journal of his recent five-day trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, published in Richmond’s Style Weekly, makes for good reading. Despite his reservations about the war in Iraq, Kaine went out of his way to “support the troops,” meeting with many of the 7,100 Virginians serving in the two war-torn countries.

Among other scenes, the Governor describes Forward Operating Base Union, located in a compound of the former Republican Guard.

The Virginians had cleared the bomb debris from the compound to build a patio Tiki bar — very, retro, very cool, and authentic in every details, right down to the thatched roof — except that they were not permitted to have any alcohol.

It’s worth finding the print verison of Style just to see the photo of Gov. Kaine playing “You Are My Sunshine” on the harmonica to students at an Afghani girls’ school.

The 2006 session of the General Assembly hasn’t been a total bust: The Senate and the House of Delegates managed to agree on legislation permitting local governments to implement Transfer Development Rights. The Mainstream Media hasn’t bothered to explain the issues in any detail, but Bob Burke gives the low-down in his story, “A Quiet Victory.”

In my personal estimation, the TDR legislation represents no more than a single step down a long road of reform. The real significance may not be the legislation itself but the recognition on the part of lawmakers that land use, infrastructure and transportation issues are inextricably entwined.

If you think truck traffic on Interstate 81 is bad, just wait to see what U.S. 460 and U.S. 58 look like in 25 years if Virginia Port Authority projections for truck traffic pan out. According to an article in today’s Daily Press, surging Asian imports through Virginia ports could triple the volume of warehouse and distribution space, about 10- to 15-million square feet now.

“My fear, as an engineer, is gridlock,” Mike Crist said. He’s an engineer with Moffatt & Nichol, the firm that has worked with the Port Authority to study the need for more distribution center space. Crist said the potential for trucks leaving distribution centers to hit gridlock at tunnels or interstate-highway bottlenecks should nudge developers to look westward – where trucks can make a cleaner getaway to U.S. 58 or 460.

Warehouse and distribution facilities pay lots and lots of taxes, so they’re a great benefit to the Commonwealth — at least as long as international trade patterns persist. However, it’s widely acknowledged that trucks are way undertaxed, given the pounding they put on pavements and the roadway maintenance demands they create. By all means, let us try to find a way to accommodate this economic bonanza, but let us find a way that doesn’t entail sticking the tax burden on the general public or accelerating the spread of dysfunctional human settlement patterns to outlying counties. Trucks need to pay their fair share of the multi-billion dollar improvements that will be needed.

The state Senate is going through contortions to avoid raising the retail tax on gasoline. Earlier in the session, the senators proposed slapping a five percent tax on the wholesale price of gasoline while allowing a rebate for anyone who saved their gas receipts and filed twice a year. They dropped that plan after it was roundly ridiculed, but now they’re back: proposing a six percent tax on terminal operators, dubbing it the “Baghdad tax.” According to today’s Times-Dispatch:

“This will sock it to the Saudis,” said J. Scott Leake, a consultant to Senate Republican leaders. Senators figured that the Virginia terminal operators, including such giants as British Petroleum and Shell, are making record profits and would absorb the added tax costs rather than pass them on to consumers.

I’ll leave it to Scott, who is normally a commonsensical guy, to explain exactly how the tax will “sock it to the Saudis” when BP and Shell are owned by Europeans, and the vast majority of oil imported into the U.S. comes from Mexico and Venezuela.

Here’s what really tickles me: Senators “figure” that Virginia terminal operators will absorb the added tax costs. Hmmm. Figuring is what you do on the back of an envelope. What kind of analysis is this “figuring” based on? Have any terminal operators testified before the Senate regarding the economics and profitability of local oil/petroleum terminals? If so, there is no mention of it in the article.

Here’s what I “figure”: If all the terminal operators were being taxed, no one would risk losing sales by passing on the tax to consumers, so that’s what they would do. If for some undecipherable reason they actually did absorb the costs, thus reducing the profitability of their Virginia operations, I “figure” they would be less likely to invest in their expansion of their terminal capacity in order to meet future increases in gasoline consumption. Of course, the resulting restrictions on gasoline supplies would mean higher prices for consumers.

As I’ve argued repeatedly, the logical way to raise money for transportation is to raise the gasoline tax. That’s based on the premise that those who benefit from such taxes should be, to the greatest extent possible, the ones who pay the taxes. I don’t think we need to raise any taxes for transportation right now, so I’m not advocating a change to the gas tax. But if you had to raise taxes, that would be the logical way to do it.

The Senate risks appearing dazed and confused by refusing to acknowledge the obvious. Combine this gambit with the back-pedaling on the regional transportation authorities, and the opening round of the special session clearly goes to the House.

Let’s say the Virginia Senate tries again to push a new level of government, unelected regional transportation authorities, on Virginia. Virginians rejected this at the polls twice – 3 times if you count Jerry Kilgore’s loss.

Need a little help from the lawyers amongst us or those in the know of the Code of Virginia.

What prevents the Governor and VDOT from starting any major transportation projects – if the GA provides the funds?

For example, what stops the Governor from saying, “Here is the answer for the Third Crossing. It will cost $x million in Year One. It will connect truck and rail traffic from the Port of Virginia to the southside connection to Rte 460. It will include the expansion of the existing Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel with four new lanes and two new tubes carrying two lanes each. Tolls will be collected on every crossing of the James River from the Jamestown Ferry, James River Bridge, Monitor-Merrimac to the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to help pay for the Third Crossing. VDOT will set the fee for the tolls and I will review it. I need the GA to provide the funds for the next 20 years in these amounts – please include the first two years in this budget.”