Bacon's Rebellion

Gov. Tim Kaine may be furious that the House GOP nixed his nomination of Daniel LeBlanc to Secretary of Commonwealth, but he has himself to thank: Having broken two major campaign promises relating to transportation, he doesn’t have much credibility when he says that he will protect Virginia’s Right to Work law. (I’ve discussed Kaine’s broken promises over on the Road to Ruin blog.)

In a quote buried deep in a Virginian-Pilot pilot story today, House Majority Leader Del. Morgan Griffith calls Kaine’s credibility into question:

Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said he did not trust Kaine’s pledge to uphold the right-to-work law. He said Kaine already has broken a campaign pledge not to seek tax increases until he won passage of a constitutional amendment that would protect transportation money from being diverted to other services.

“If he doesn’t keep one promise, how can you expect him to keep a promise to protect the right-to-work law?” Griffith said.

Breaking promises has consequences. Even if the press doesn’t call you on it, the political opposition will. Kaine has some major repair work to do.

The House of Delegates made a major tactical error yesterday in rejecting Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s nomination of Daniel G. LeBlanc, former president of the Virginia AFL-CIO, as Secretary of the Commonwealth. As critical negotiations over transportation funding unfolds, Kaine and Taxes Axis will use the vote to tar House Republicans as intransigent and obstructionist, putting them on the public relations defensive.

We can see the Kaine/Taxes Axis strategy unfolding. The lead of Pamela Stallsmith’s front-page story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch quotes Kaine as decrying the House’s “McCarthy-style politics.” The article continues in that vein for 12 paragraphs. It’s not until the 13th paragraph that the GOP actions are briefly explained: “The vote was partly viewed as payback for perceived partisan threats by Kaine’s Chief of Staff, William H. Leighty, and the governor’s proposed plan to use campaign-like tactics to break the House’s resistance to higher taxes.”

The article proceeds with another 10 paragraphs of denunciations of the House action, and wraps up the story with a mere three paragraphs of quotes from GOP legislators.

Now, if the issue is really important — like whether or not to raise taxes by $1 billion a year — you have no choice but to hang tough. But when the issue is over who oversees the Governor’s patronage machine, LeBlanc’s opposition to the Right to Work law is irrelevant. You might feel good having voted him down, but you’ve given the Dems and the press corps a club to beat you with!

We can already see where things are heading. In an accompanying Times-Dispatch article, Del. Brian J. Moran, D-Alexandria, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, accused Republicans of being “uncompromising with respect to the budget.” We can expect this meme to be picked up and repeated endlessly in the debate to come. The fact that the Governor and Senate have been equally uncompromising doesn’t matter. What matters is that the press can be counted upon to pick up and amplify the accusation — and the House’s rejection of the LeBlanc nomination will be cited as evidence of the charge.

Update: Michael Shear with the Washington Post gives a more balanced account here. So does Warren Fiske at the Virginian-Pilot here. And the political team at the Daily Press here. All articles emphasize how angry Gov. Kaine is — justifiably, because his reaction is legitimate news — but Stallsmith comes across as carrying water for the Governor.

A fascinating column by Alexandria teacher Patrick Welsh appears in today’s USA Today. Maybe the problem with the educational system in the United States today isn’t the schools or the teachers, he suggests, maybe it’s the students!

Drawing upon his experience as a teacher at T.C. Williams High School, Welsh observes that the best students in English class are foreign students. Native-born students, many of them from affluent families, enjoy a huge advantage when studying their native language but they get lower grades on average. The difference: The foreign students study harder.

What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

A study released in December by University of Pennsylvania researchers Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman suggests that the reason so many U.S. students are falling short of their intellectual potential” is not “inadequate teachers, boring textbooks and large class sizes” and the rest of the usual litany cited by the so-called reformers — but “their failure to exercise self-discipline.”

Compounding the problem is a widespread parental sense of entitlement. Teachers who hand out low grades are accused of destroying the children’s future.

Nowadays, it’s the kids who have the power. When they don’t do the work and get lower grades, they scream and yell. Parents side with the kids who pressure teachers to lower standards,” says Joel Kaplan, [a] chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams.

The root problem of our educational system may be the prevailing American culture of entitlement and the decline of the work ethic among American students and their parents. Politicians don’t get elected by blaming the shortcomings of the educational system on voters, but the fact is, this is a problem that no amount of money can solve. If we want to address the shortcomings of education in Virginia, we must start with ourselves.

Today’s Daily Press features an article on the York County School Board meeting last night. About 80 folks showed up with 12 speakers and over 500 names on petitions to get York County to stop culturally cleansing their public schools of Christmas.

I was there.

Most schools in York County had normal observances and education about Christmas last December. Some didn’t. Religious and secular symbols, names, songs etc were banned.

York County School Board and subordinate York County School Division do not have a written policy on Christmas. This is on purpose. When the room mothers started complaining in October because they were being told what they couldn’t do in December, they were answered with white noise ambiquity. No one could find a person or policy responsible.

The point for parents last night was simple and clear. School Board – write a policy. We elect you and hold you accountable.

Some on the School Board denied there was a problem. Some said they would look into it. All deferred to the School Superintendent who offered to meet with the parents. That is exactly what the citizens do NOT want.

The Superintendent, Steven Staples – a candidate for supe at Va Beach, will meet with the parents, declare it an isolated incident and all is corrected. But, it won’t be.

Here is what the policy should say – as was presented by a parent last night:

The York County School Board’s “Policy on Christmas in York County School Division” may look like the following. Even if it is wordsmithed differently, it should contain these elements.

December 25th is a legal holiday for the United States of America and the Commonwealth of Virginia called ‘Christmas.”
Christmas is part of the 400 years of Virginia history since the first permanent English settlement in 1607. Christmas is part of our common customs and traditions.

Educating our students about Christmas shall be part of the instruction in every academic year.

Education about Christmas shall include the following:

Secular and religious traditional and historical Christmas symbols and colors

Secular and religious traditional and historical Christmas songs and music.

Historical stories on the role of Christmas in the U.S., Virginia and York County.

The traditional stories of what and why the Christian majority of America and Virginia celebrate at Christmas.

Education about Christmas shall not require the teaching of other cultures, religions, or holidays.

If anyone is interested I can post the court rulings (the closest thing to law since the legislatures at every level ceded their power to the courts) that support each point above.

As one mother said, “We are just the tip of the iceberg.” This isn’t over. If the School Board doesn’t write a policy, the good People of York County may elect a new School Board.

In the Summer of 02, I asked my Virginia Senator, Marty Williams, for the analysis behind the Yes! Campaign to raise our taxes for transportation. I was the Chairman of the Poquoson City Committee and State Central Committee !st Cong. District representative, RPV. Marty’s staff sent me their inch and half book of expensive analysis.

I found the cherries the politicians had picked for sound bytes – like the $100 a year for an average family in the sales tax bite. Of course, the ‘average’ family had 2.3 people or so and an income that was well below the median of most communities in Hampton Roads.

I found the cherries the politicians ignored – like at the end of 20 years of construction delays and billions of dollars there would be substantially more ‘congested’ road miles in Hampton Roads than before all the concrete was poured. And that tolls alone could pay for most of the cost of a Third Crossing.

Yesterday, I got the latest bowl of transportation cherries from Marty. There are two aspects worth more attention. The first is the flagrant con of cherry picking the stats. The second is the issue of the model they tried to use.

First, go to http://www.thomasjeffersoninst.org/main/main.php where Michael Thompson shows the results from his institute. (Is he still running this thing out of his basement office? When we met several years ago he was). Click on ‘to see a powerpoint summary of each of the proposed tax and transportation plans’.

Look at slide 12 – Marty’s plan adds 8405 government jobs in year one and KILLS 5805 private sector jobs in year one. Oddly and magically, then the private sector employment increases by year 4. Marty only shared the last number.

Look at slide 12 – Marty’s plan LOWERS disposable real income and per capita income. Translation – Virginia’s families have less money. Then, the magic happens again and it gets better by year 4.

Keep reading the slides… conversely, the House Plan INCREASES private sector jobs and income from year 1 on. Duh.

Second, this study needs study. It’s called the ‘Virginia’ STAMP Model, but it’s actually other states’ econometric models kinda sorta made to fit for Virginia.

Like all economists the folks in Massachusetts who put this together made assumptions. If you drill down (same url as above) and click on “to see an explanation of the Virginia STAMP Model, along with the formulas, data, and assumptions used in the model when first developed two years ago. None of the formulas or assumptions have changed since that time”, you will note that this model doesn’t include the economic impact of the 04 largest tax increase in Virginia history.

See the assumptions on household taxes.
Look at how it assumes the expenditures for vehichles from a model for the NE is good enough for Virginia. Likewise, the distribution of households used is one for the NE.

This isn’t a macro-economic model for Virginia. It’s a proxy. Someone with econometrician friends at the Heritage Foundation – please share this with them.

I’d like to know the model magic that increases income after 4 years – what drives that – certainly not the tax hike?

Sen. Marty Williams is a gifted politician. Read that in many meanings. But, when it comes to analysis and economics, he should stay with his chosen employer – waste management.

Sen. Marty Williams, R-Newport News, has pulled out the big guns in the Senate’s negotiations with the House of Delegates over transportation funding — he’s detailing how much more pork the Senate plan will bring to the folks back home.

“So much of the debate so far has focused on what the two plans would cost and where the money would come from,” Williams wrote in a news release issued yesterday. “This report by the professional staff of the Senate Finance Committee reveals side-by-side what the two plans would achieve in each region.”

Here’s how much each VDOT district gets over the next two years:

• Bristol: Senate plan, $143 million; House plan, $16 million.
• Culpeper: Senate plan, $107 million; House plan, $14 million.
• Fredericksburg: Senate plan, $119 million; House plan, $16 million.
• Hampton Roads: Senate plan, $325 million; House plan, $222 million.
• Lynchburg: Senate plan, $104 million; House plan, $16 million.
• Northern Virginia: Senate plan, $470 million, House, $268 million.
• Richmond: Senate plan: $219 million; House, $26 million.
• Salem: Senate plan, $182 million; House plan, $19 million.
• Staunton: Senate plan, $116 million; House plan, $15 million.

Here’s what I’d really like know: How much the taxpayers of each district would pay in higher taxes, stacked side by side with the amount of money returned to each district.

Congratulations to Chad Dotson (Commonwealth Conservative) and Waldo Jaquith (Waldo Jaquith), who have been named contributing editors at Campaigns & Elections Magazine. They will write side-by-side columns about the intersection of technology and politics, with an emphasis on the blogosphere.

These two young men certainly deserve the recognition: They published the pioneer blogs of Virginia politics. Indeed, they were the inspiration for the Bacon’s Rebellion blog. I’d still be limited to bi-weekly newsletters if they hadn’t demonstrated what blogs could accomplish at the level of state/local politics.

Here’s what Waldo has to say. And what Chad has to say.

All I ask, guys, is this: Stay true to your roots. Don’t forget the little guys who made you famous!

The Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial page today reminds us of the circumstances in which Gov. Tim Kaine told voters he would not raise taxes:

Resurrected Quote of the Day: Tim Kaine, in response to Jerry Kilgore’s statement that “he’s going to raise your taxes if he’s elected Governor”: “There you go again, Jerry, making stuff up. You’re not fit to be Governor if you make stuff up on this stage.”

Normally, I save Pat McSweeney’s columns for publication in Bacon’s Rebellion, but his most recent report is too important and too timely to sit on. According to McSweeney, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has yanked support for a bill that embodied his winning campaign issue: giving municipalities more power to block rezoning projects that would overwhelm the surrounding transportation system. This story has gone unreported as far as I can tell (in another example of the ongoing failure of the Mainstream Media to cover land use issues).

Here is McSweeney’s account of what happened:

Just last week, Kaine had another opportunity to honor his campaign promise to give localities greater authority to control growth. He was pursuing an amendment that would add his legislative proposal to a House-passed bill dealing with the use of cash proffers for road improvements.

That House bill had been reported by the Senate Local Government Committee on a unanimous vote and had strong support in the full Senate.Kaine abruptly withdrew his support for that tactic after actively pressing forward in that direction for more than a week.

The chief patron of the House-passed bill, who agreed to let Kaine use his bill as a vehicle to keep the governor’s growth proposal alive even at great risk to his own bill, felt let down by Kaine’s change of heart. Slow growth advocates expressed great disappointment upon hearing of the governor’s reversal.

Kaine’s official explanation was that he felt that the amendment might ultimately be rejected by the House of Delegates. Slow-growth advocates were more than willing to press ahead because they consider a recorded vote in the House on this measure a victory in itself.

The real reason for Kaine’s unexpected abandonment of this central element of his growth control strategy may be his desire to appease developers…

I don’t know if Kaine cut a deal with developers or not. I’m open to the possibility that there’s more to the story than McSweeney reports. And I’ll be the first to say that I had problems with Kaine’s campaign proposal, which I thought, if handled improperly, would have make development patterns more dysfunctional, not less. But if McSweeney’s report is accurate, Kaine has some ‘splainin’ to do. First, he broke his promise not to raise taxes until after a constitutional amendment protected transportation funds from budgetary raids. Now, he is betraying his Smart Growth supporters on their core issue.

Kaine may get away with this maneuver in the short run because Virginia’s political reporters have defined the transportation debate as a budgetary issue, all but ignoring the land use dimension, and the editorial writers in the major daily newspapers (save Richmond’s) are salivating for tax increases. But betraying the constituency that gave him his winning edge over Jerry Kilgore — and there is widespread acknowledgement that tapping the Smart Growth sentiment in Northern Virginia’s suburbs put him over the top — will not help Kaine govern in the long run.

Update: James Young at the Skeptical Observor has posted correspondence from Del. Robert Marshall, R-Manassas, who carried Gov. Kaine’s legislation in the House. A Marshall letter to Chris Miller, president of the Piedmont Environmental Council, confirms the basis of McSweeney’s column and, indeed, may have been the basis for it. For some strange reason, Blogger is not accepting a direct link to Young’s article. Cut and paste this URL to your address line: http://skepticalobservor.blogspot.com/2006/03/kaine-ably-abandons-growth-controls.html

I haven’t heard much about “affordable housing” in the transportation debate, but it’s been lurking there in the background. One of the mechanisms the state Senate proposes to employ to raise $1 billion a year for new transportation expenditures is a tax on real estate transactions. In an earlier post in this blog, I noted that it made absolutely no sense to tax real estate transactions in order to fund transportation projects — there was no rational nexus between those who paid the tax and those who benefited from the expenditure.

It’s nice to see that someone else fails to see the common sense in the proposal. Del. Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg, has spoken out against a version of the tax now being considered in the House of Delegates. In prepared remarks, she said on the House floor:

Affordable housing is essential for all Virginians. Affordability of housing diminishes each time another tax or fee is added to the homeowner’s bill. And, as all of you can attest, many of us are seeing our assessments going through the roof!

During this last election cycle, all the candidates for Governor recognized this when they proposed to protect homeowners from real estate tax bills — some of which have doubled for many Virginians in the past five years.

I hope many of you will agree with me that home equity is the single greatest source of retirement savings for most homeowners.

Real estate and grantor taxes leave Virginia’s seniors with less money in their retirement to pay for skyrocketing health care and other costs.

I hear people talking about how this tax is only a few hundred dollars — but to my constituents in Petersburg and to many of yours across the Commonwealth — a few hundred dollars is real money.

Virginia Commonwealth University Political Science Professor Robert D. Holsworth was right this last election cycle when he observed in the Washington Post that, “Virginia is on the verge of a property tax revolt in many localities…”

… Our friends in the Senate propose a plan which will require property owners to pay almost 50% more in real estate taxes in the year they sell their property.

Encouraging homeownership is really encouraging the American Dream, Mr. Speaker. This is the time when we are all going to make some difficult choices, but I encourage the conferees and the House to oppose any fee that will be a barrier to Virginians wishing to own their homes.

Call me Mr. Cranky. Sometimes, it seems, nothing pleases me. Take car tax relief, for instance. I don’t agree with anyone on that issue.

The Political Class doesn’t like car tax relief because it diverts too much money from spending on their favorite government programs. Well, that ticks me off because taxpayers do deserve a break! Giving the Political Class more tax money is like giving a crack addict “just one more hit.” If you give politicians the money they want, they lose all pressure to think creatively and spend with discipline. What we need is more creativity, innovation, productivity and discipline in government — not more money.

Take Gov. Mark R. Warner. When the state faced a fiscal crisis, he did a tremendous job of cutting expenses and rationalizing government. As soon as the crisis was over, it was back to business as usual, looking for ways to spend all the money — and more — that came rolling in. The impetus for cost cutting just died.

So, I believe in giving money back to the taxpayers. But the car tax has got to be the most jury-rigged arrangement I can think of to do it. As Ronald Reagan taught Republicans — before they promptly forgot the lessons — taxes affect behavior. If you’re going to cut taxes, cut them in a way that creates incentives for people to behave in socially useful ways.

What does the car tax relief do? It reduces the cost of car ownership. In other words, it encourages people to spend more money on newer, more expensive cars. That’s just dandy if you’re an automobile dealer, but the problem in our society today is not a lack of conspicuous consumption. If you cut taxes, cut income taxes or business taxes. Reward people for working harder or doing business in Virginia — not for buying bigger cars!

When you reward people for working harder and doing business in Virginia, you increase economic activity. Greater economic activity offsets at least a portion of the revenue you lost through the tax increase. Duh!

Instead of expending political capital on nickle-and-dime tweaks to the car tax — and raising the cap on car tax relief by $50 million is nickle-and-dime in the context of a $35 billio-a-year state budget — the House of Delegates needs to think boldly about tax reform. How about applying the concept of flat taxes to Virginia’s income tax? Eliminate the billion dollars or more in income-tax loopholes identified by the Warner administration, and use that money to reduce the top rate! Or repeal the BPOL tax and stimulate entrepreneurship. Think creatively, darn it!

I’ve always thought of Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling as a low-tax conservative, but he sure didn’t sound like one in the Feb. 28 edition of the Bolling Report. In the newsletter, he raises the question: Where does all the money go?

Over the past 10 years, state spending has increased 80 percent, from $16 billion in 1996 to $29 billion in 2005. The average annual increase during this period was 7 percent. That sounds like a lot, he says. But it’s not as bad as it seems. When you adjust for inflation and population growth, he notes, state spending has increased only 3 percent annually.

Oh, I feel a lot better now. Actually, I don’t. Has the average paycheck increased inflation+3% a year over the past 10 years? No, not close. Most Virginians are lucky if their paychecks kept up with inflation.

Bolling is saying that state spending increased “only” 30 percent over 10 years adjusted for inflation and population growth. That sounds like a lot of growth to me. Even more alarming, the state’s appetite for money hasn’t slakened in the slightest. Now the Political Establishment wants to raise another $1 billion a year!

(Bolling does make one legitimate point. A big chunk of the increased state “spending” consists of payments to localities to reimburse taxpayers for the car tax. Take that out of the equation, and real, adjusted state spending may have increased “only” 20 percent or so, I’d guesstimate, over the decade.)

Bolling gives a laundry list of all the core functions that the state undertakes — roads, K-12, higher education, public safety, Medicaid, mental health, etc. These are all very important things. But he implicitly accepts the notion that there’s not much that we can do about the ever-escalating expenditures. He passively accepts the idea that Virginians must continue providing these core functions as we always have. There’s no mention in his missive about restructuring, re-engineering or re-thinking the way in which the state meets any of these core needs.

Here’s the brutal fact: At the end of the day, if Virginians bite the bullet and pay the taxes, nothing will change. When there is no pain, the Political Class feels no pressure to undertake fundamental reforms of any kind.

To his credit, Bolling concludes his letter by saying that, with record revenues, Virginia should not be raising taxes now. “We can have the best of both worlds,” he writes. “We can invest in the things that help improve our quality of life and keep taxes as low as possible. These goals are not mutually exclusive. It’s all about leadership.” But it’s the wimpiest case against raising taxes that I’ve seen in a long, long time.

(Thanks to Phil Rodokanakis for passing along the Bolling Report.)

Looks like Virginia has its own version of an anti-Wal-Mart bill. A bill winding its way through the General Assembly may not force the retail giant to pay health insurance to all of its employees, as our neighbor to the north did, but the legislation does restrict the ability of Wal Mart and other giant retailers to compete in Virginia.

The Senate Commerce & Labor Committee has endorsed a bill that passed 98 to 0 in the House of Delegates that would prevent Wal-Mart or other retailers from opening branch banks in their Virginia stores under the auspices of an industrial loan association. But the bill specifically grandfathers First Market Bank, which is owned in part by the Ukrops family and located in most Ukrops grocery stores in the Richmond region.

I’m a big fan of the Ukrops brothers, who have contributed generously to worthy Richmond causes, and I shop regularly at their stores. But I don’t see why they should be allowed to put branch banks in their stores while their competitors cannot. There may be more to the story than appears, very briefly, at the bottom of Greg Edwards’ article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today. If so, I would like to know what it is.

You can view the bill here.

Those who follow the MainStream Media in the northern part of Virginia know that the list of unethical practices and potential crimes at Fannie Mae over the past 10 years is growing and the topic of editorial and news analysis outrage.

MainStream Media has not yet noted that the real crime at Fannie Mae (and Freddy Mac) is that these federal agencies have catalyzed, leveraged and exacerbated the creation of the wrong size houses in the wrong locations. They are major contributors to the Shelter Crisis. See our column “Solutions to the Shelter Crisis,” 24 July 2005.

The actions of Fannie Mae have generated profits for financial institutions, land speculators and the raw land development industry. They have created inflated home prices and paper profits for house speculators. The modest increase in home ownership – a good thing for some – is off set by the drastic, long-term economic impact of dysfunctional settlement patterns – a very bad thing for everyone.

EMR

There’s a big debate brewing between the state Senate and the House of Delegates over what to do with sexual predators after they’ve served their jail time: Should they remain confined, in a process called civil commitment, or should some of them be returned to the community under heavy supervision including satellite tracking?

The House wants a 300-bed facility; the Senate wants 100 beds. Cost is a major factor. According to Newport News Daily News reporter Hugh Lessig: “The two sides are roughly $40 million apart in construction and operating costs for a civil commitment facility – the Senate around $36 million and the House around $76 million.”

I would lean toward’s the House position on this one, which errs on the side of public safety. But I don’t see it as a black-and-white issue. Cost is unavoidably a consideration — that $40 million could be used many other ways to improve public safety. So is the fact that sexual predators, having paid for their crime, do have rights.