Bacon's Rebellion

Today the House of Delegates approved a bill, HB 162, that prohibits private property owners from establishing or enforcing any policy that prohibits a person from storing a firearm in a locked car or truck parked on their property. What’s more the bill says that you can be sued and required to pay damages if you seek to enforce such a policy.

This bill is brought to us by the National Rifle Association which was incensed when Weyerhaeuser fired an employee for violating a company policy prohibiting firearms on its property. The NRA pledged to outlaw such policies in every state in the union. Hence this bill offered by Delegate Lingamfelter. Listen to an NPR report on the push to enact these laws. Read more.

In an act of some irony, given the intent of the proponents, big companies with secured parking lots got an amendment to the Virginia bill that exempts them from coverage.

So whose private property rights would be secondary under this legislation to another person’s gun “rights”?

The property of any “person, property owner, tenant, employer, or business entity” to which access is not “restricted or limited through the use of a gate, security station, or other means”. In other words, every mom and pop store, home on a residential street, office building or restaurant with an open parking lot, shopping center, church, open campus private college, etc.

Now, mind you, if we were talking about 1st amendment rights, the property owner’s right to restrict access would be and is sacrosanct. If you don’t believe me, ask the candidate for the House of Delegates who was arrested at a Charlottesville shopping center for distributing political literature in violation of that private property owner’s policy restricting what would have been protected free speech on a public sidewalk.

To my mind, it is one thing for the state to adopt a policy that all public property should be open to lawful gun toting citizens, whether public parks or the House of Delegates’ office building.

But, I would argue, it is quite another thing for the legislature to tell me that I cannot have a policy at my business that prohibits my employees and customers from bringing guns onto my property and leaving them “stored” in their cars, (unless, of course, I’m a big employer with a controlled access gated parking lot whose lobbyists made sure that I was exempt). And, is it “limited government” to say to me that I risk a lawsuit if I tell people coming to my house and parking in my driveway that they can’t store a gun in their car while on my property?

I find small comfort in the fact that the bill says that the property owner can’t be sued if someone breaks into a car parked on his/her property and uses the gun “stored” there to commit harm to others or if the gunowner him or herself commits mayhem while on your property.

Why might I want to establish that guns are not welcome in my office or on my office property? The rising incidence of workplace violence, for one thing. The number one cause of death for women in the workplace is homicide. Partners and boyfriends commit 13,000 incidents of workplace violence a year. As a private property owner, I should be able to decide that these statistics warrant a “no guns” policy in my workplace and in my parking lot.

The gun rights folks will say that anyone who established a no guns policy on a shopping mall parking lot or at a multi-occupied office complex would risk commercial boycotts and worse. So be it.

If you don’t want to leave your gun at home, and I want to prohibit you from “storing” it in the car while you shop at my store, visit my office, or eat at my restaurant, I should have the right to do so at the risk of losing your business but not at the risk of being sued under a wrong headed law that makes my private property rights subservient to your gun rights.

The economy of the New England states have a lot going against them: High labor costs, high cost of living and high taxes. That’s a deadly combination when it comes to retaining an industrial base, but it hasn’t yet crippled the region’s Knowledge Economy. New England’s secret to survival: World-class universities supported by fat college endowments.

A new study underwritten by the Bank of America sheds light on this little-recognized competitive advantage. Although schools in New England account for 5 percent of the national student body, their endowment assets represent 23 percent of the national endowment total ($62 billion of the total $267 billion in 2004). Endowments in the six New England states generate $3 billion a year for discretionary spending!

It’s not that New Englanders are any more philanthropic than anyone else. I suspect that one could trace the endowments back to the Gilded Era when New England played a leading role in the nation’s economy. Building on the gifts of the era’s super-rich industrialists, universities like Harvard and MIT achieved a preeminence that allowed them to attract the brightest students from across the country. When those students graduated, they dispersed, became successful and donated in turn. As a consequence, New England institutions of higher education have a large and affluent alumni base that continues to donate extraordinary amounts of money — and perpetuates their competitive advantage.

In sum, through the mechanism of fund-raising and endowments, colleges and universities pump human and financial capital into the New England states, shoring up what would otherwise be moribund and uncompetitive economies. No one disputes the importance of building strong universities in the Knowledge Economy, but the critical contribution of endowments and alumni fund-raising is understood only dimly.

In Virginia, the University of Virginia is the only educational institution that comes close to playing in the same league as the New England universities– and even UVa falls short. I would like to know: How well equipped are Virginia’s universities to compete in such an environment? Does state funding and affiliation help or hinder them? Would they be more competitive as private institutions?

Commonwealth Conservative, for one. The popular blog will host Attorney General Bob McDonnell tonight between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. The purpose of Wednesday’s event is to allow any interested Virginian the opportunity to ask a question of the Attorney General.

The “live blog” will become a regular event for the Attorney General, rotating between various host blogs which are still to be determined.

Update: Read the interview here. Well-informed questions, solid responses. As an outside observer, I would rate the event a success.

I spoke at the York County Republican Committee meeting last week. My message to the grassroots committee folks was that their District (America’s First) Committee and the State Central Committee had not stuttered in their opposition to tax increases in ’04 or now in ’06. This opposition to new taxes for transportation was warmly received at the meeting. One of Republican Sen. Marty Williams’ aides was there. She said she was surprised (Shocked! Shocked, I tell you!) that so many were against new taxes because they have not heard from constituents opposing the tax. That is interesting in several regards.

How can any politician get elected to public office in Virginia, and especially in Tidewater, and not know the political culture that put them in office? Virginians, and especially Tidewater folks, have a special respect and trust for elected officials – because they are expected to keep their campaign promises and do what is right. It’s not gentlemanly and ladylike to nag politicians on every issue. Once elected, a politician – Democrat or Republican – becomes ‘our’ representative and has a pretty good chance to hold on to office for as long as they don’t abuse power. Exceptions prove the rule.

So, apparently, a Republican elected to the State Senate has to be told by his constituents to not raise their taxes – or he will just listen to the squeaky wheel of those special interests who profit from government spending. This begs more questions.

Does a State Senator represent those who nominate him from one political party, and the wider electorate that elected him for his campaign of lower taxes, limited government, etc., or just those who contact him during the legislative session?

Does a State Senator ignore the Republican Party of Virginia creed – which he hears or repeats at every GOP gathering – because special interests activists want him to do so?

Does a State Senator not understand the principles of the Party – and the underlying reasons (Like taxes kill jobs. Lower taxes limit government. Taxes, opportunity and individual freedom are cojoined…) so he has to be reminded for every vote?

It seems that Republican representation requires Republicans to remind some Republican legislators what the Republican principles and positions are on issues. What a bore to have to do that. Yet, I guess it’s necessary.

Okay, Republicans across the Commonwealth, please contact your State legislators and remind them to not forget to vote AGAINST new, extra taxes. While you are at, you might remind them that we, Republicans, are for Motherhood and apple pie.

The looming showdown in the General Assembly looks like deja vu all over again.

In 2004, a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled state Senate agreed on the need to raise taxes, primarily to fund increases in K-12 spending, while a Republican-controlled House of Delegates fought the increase.

Two years later, the situation is eerily similar: A Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled state Senate want to raise taxes, this time for transportation improvements, while the Republican-controlled House of Delegates finds itself in opposition. Indeed, yesterday, the House Finance Commitee nixed measures backed by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to boost the tax on car sales and car-insurance premiums.

We all remember what happened in 2004: The House buckled under pressure from the Governor and the Senate, and a tax increase was pushed through. Will history repeat itself in 2006?

I don’t think so. My sense is that the House sentiment against a tax increase is even stronger than in 2004, and public support for another tax hike is considerably weaker.

In 2004 , Gov. Mark R. Warner and his allies, including then Lt. Gov. Kaine, argued that the state faced a long-term, “structural” budget deficit in the years ahead. It turns out they were wrong. Economic growth brought in far more revenue than the Warner team had forecast, and the state piled up massive surpluses.

The embarassment of riches has two implications. First, as the House Republicans have argued effectively, it’s ridiculous to raise taxes when the state is enjoying large surpluses. Secondly, the fact of the surpluses casts the pro-tax camp as the boy who cried wolf. The Big Tax zealots cried “fiscal crisis” in 2004, and it turns out they were wrong. The Big Tax apologists argue that road funding is facing a crisis as well, but they have less credibility than they did two years ago.

Here’s another important difference. The Democrats are less united behind a tax increase today than they were in 2004. Two years ago, the tax hike went to a cause that all Democrats could feel good about: public schools. Democrats are more ambivalent about raising money for transportation improvements, the bulk of which will go to roads. The influential environmentalist/ conservationist wing of the Democratic Party loves Gov. Kaine’s proposal to give local governments more power to restrain growth. But the Smart Growth activists have been less than vocal in their support for more money to build more roads. Indeed, many Smart Growth proponents regard it as a huge mistake to ramp up spending on transportation until fundamental land use reforms have been put into place first — and the Governor’s land use reforms only scratch the surface.

Here’s one more difference. In 2004, spending money on schools had broad bipartisan support across every region of the state. In 2006, voter frustration with traffic congestion is concentrated mainly in Northern Virginia and, to a lesser degree, in Hampton Roads. Outside those two metropolitan areas, legislators aren’t feeling any pressure to raise taxes. As long as a transportation tax scheme is statewide in scope while traffic congestion is localized, it will be a very hard sell.

The General Assembly has been doing yeoman’s work in studying the needs of manufacturers in Virginia. Although it accounts for an ever-diminishing percentage of jobs in Virginia, the manufacturing sector remains a vital contributor to the Commonwealth’s economy, especially in Virginia’s smaller metropolitan areas. The Senate has been investigating what the state might do to become more competitive in the manufacturing arena.

A joint subcommittee studying manufacturing has issued a preliminary report, with a final draft to follow after the General Assembly session. Among the highlights:

• Revamp the rules regarding the ownership of intellectual property developed at state universities through privately-sponsored research.
• Adopt a state energy plan which would include measures to improve the supply of natural gas.
• Reduce the state/local tax load on manufacturing, which is higher than for any other sector of the economy.

The usual criticism of blogs is that they are parasites on the Mainstream Media, that they do little original reporting. We’ve done our best to dispel that stereotype here at Bacon’s Rebellion, doing original reporting in the Road to Ruin project, as well as for the column in the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine.

Now comes Waldo Jaquith, who has dared do something that we have not — actually attend the General Assembly and report directly on the proceedings. Waldo spent Friday blogging from the state capitol. Visit his blog, scroll down to his Feb. 2 posts, and give him encouragement.

The following is a two part posting:

PART ONE

First, let us consider “takings” – the use of eminent domain to create functional human settlement patterns. This topic was stirred up by the New London Hotel Case in the Supreme Court last June and was discussed at length last week on this blog:

(Before we start, yes this post is spilling more ink on the topic of “takings.” It is presented in the hope that it will lead to the spilling less ink on a whole range of issues as noted in PART TWO below.)

The problems and solutions raised by the recent series of postings and comments on the topic of eminent domain (26 Jan 2006 6:40 AM “BB&T Ahead of the Curve,” 27 Jan 2006 1:10 PM “Who Really Profits” and 27 Jan 2006 5:54 PM “Anonymous Graffiti and Cheap Shots” provide the basis for an important observation:

There is a solution that is completely unrelated to the emotional diatribes over “taking the poor widows house” and “property value/property rights.” This long overdue reform would cause most of the legitimate settlement pattern reasons to use eminent domain to disappear.

With the vast majority of the takings cases never coming up, it would be easier to develop a fair and equitable way to deal with the hard cases where balancing public rights and private rights is really the question.

Most of the cases where those concerned with the evolution of functional human settlement patterns would suggest use of eminent domain involve avoiding obscene monetary windfalls and preventing “real estate interests” from playing dog-in-the-manger with vacant and underutilized land until they are bought out. See “Who Really Pays” posted at 1:10 PM on 27 January.

The bottom line is that the current practice causes disaggregation and scatteration of human settlement pattern that cannot be sustained. Civilization depends on the evolution of Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions.

The “solution” (or at least a major step forward for vacant and underutilized land that triggers the need for the use of eminent domain)? We give you two words: Henry George.

Not two guys named “Henry” and “George” but one named Henry George. Mr. George was a 19th century “newspaper man” cum land economist why proposed a reform so simple, so logical and so powerful that he became a cult figure and was run out of the country by land speculation interests. If you do not already know a lot about Henry George, Google him.

In a nutshell, George argued that the property tax on land and improvements should be reformed to tax land and not tax improvements within the Clear Edge.

The George thesis is based on the reality that land has almost no value for urban land uses unless there is extensive public investment. The reasons why governments exist in the first place is the core issue here. Governments are formed to protect citizen’s heath, safety and welfare. Economic prosperity and social stability sustainability depend on enlightened government actions.

Stability – security and safety – provided or insured by the governance structure is required for functional markets in land and goods as well as for personal safety. Without these protections, there is no urban life and so no demand for urban land uses.

Mobility and access – roads, rails, pedestrian ways and the rights to use them are critical government contributions to urban civilization.

Of course, there are the “public utilities:” water, sewer, stormwater management, electricity, gas, telephone, cable, wireless, etc. are critical. There are forty plus or minus goods and services that make urban life possible and most are provided by or regulated by the governance structure.

If land owners each paid their fair share of the cost of providing those services regardless of what they built on the land, then almost no one would keep land vacant and underutilized as a strategy to secure future speculative profit. In addition, the public would not have to waste resources extending services, either directly (by paying for extensions e.g. roads and sewers) or indirectly (e.g consumers paying higher electric or cable rates).

(It goes without saying that those who own land outside the urban service area would pay far less than they pay now. There is some debate about the details of tax treatment in the Countryside but none inside the Clear Edge where the eminent domain problem is focused.)

Running urban services past vacant and underutilized land is very expensive. If you do not think this is the case, try a factor of 10. It is ten times more expensive to provide basic urban life support to dysfunctional human settlement patterns that it is to provide the same services to functional settlement patterns. That is the 10X Natural Law of Human Settlement Patterns and only address those services at the Alpha Neighborhood scale.

If the Henry George tax reform were implemented, it would wipe out most of the reasons to use eminent domain to aid the evolution of functional human settlement patterns that we have cited in the postings noted above and in previous discussion of eminent domain (See posting on this blog “New London Hotel Panic,” 23 June 2005.)

PART TWO

Now for the real reason for this posting:

Why not deal with all the social and political wedge issues that stir up partisans by focusing attention on a constructive way to solve the underlying problem rather than a knee jerk rush to a pandering “constitutional amendment” solutions that only addresses the surface condition and not the root cause?

In the case of the “do not raise taxes” issues the root cause can be gleaned from the Friday post and comments that dredged up the “bond rating crisis” (CA’s AAA Bond Rating Controversy: A Look Back,” 3:48 PM 2 Feb 2006).

The core problem is failure to allow the governance structure to evolve so that:

A The governance structure reflects the economic, social and physical reality of human settlement patterns, and

B The level of control is the level of impact

If governments evolved and were not moribund within ancient boundaries and saddled with outdated organizational structures citizens could understand and intelligently provide guidance for governance practitioners.

From time to time we will point out the underlying issue that plague discussion of:

Teen drivers auto accidents

Low public school test scores

And other issues directly related to human settlement pattern.

EMR

Please humor me and follow this train (wreck) of logic taking place in Virginia’s state Senate:

(1) Virginia is running short of money to pay for road maintenance and transportation improvements.

(2) One of the main reasons the Commonwealth is running short of money is that gasoline tax revenues are failing to keep up with the amount of driving that people do.

(3) A commonly cited reason for inadequate gasoline tax revenues is that people are driving more fuel efficient vehicles, which means they can drive farther between filling up their tanks and paying the tax.

(4) Therefore, to pay for Virginia’s road-funding needs, the Senate proposes raising taxes to the tune of more than $1 billion a year (although, for what it’s worth, not by raising the gasoline tax.)

Got that? Now, please explain this. According to an item in the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star, “The Virginia Senate has voted to allow hybrid vehicles to use high-occupancy vehicle lanes until July 2007, extending the exemption for the pollution-cutting cars for another year. “

Hybrids, of course, don’t just pollute less — they’re more fuel efficient. It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner in economics to see that encouraging the purchase of hybrids makes the transportation funding problem worse!!

I can hear the apologists bleat: But that’s the price we pay for cleaning the air. Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa!

Let me propose a better way to clean the air. Convert the HOV lanes to HOT lanes that people must pay congestion tolls to use. Charging a toll for scarce roadway capacity encourages people to ride share… thus taking cars off the road and reducing pollution!!! As a bonus, the state raises more for highway improvements.

In poking around the General Assembly’s electronic archives, I stumbled across the findings of the Debt Capacity Advisory Committee in a report filed just before Christmas in 2005. Based on then-Gov. Mark R. Warner’s budget forecast, the Committee concluded that the General Assembly could prudently issue $886 million in new debt in 2006 and a like amount in 2007.

That got me to thinking… What did the Advisory Committee write two years earlier, in December 2003, when Gov. Warner, Sen Finance Chair John Chichester and others were beating the drums for a tax increase on the grounds that Virginia’s coveted “AAA” bond rating was in jeopardy?

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we can call up that very document, which the General Assembly considerately archives on its website. The Advisory Committee reiterated its endorsement of the “5%” rule, which holds that the debt service on state debt should never exceed five percent of anticipated revenues. Then it quoted the Fitch credit rating agency as follows:

Virginia’s AAA rating reflects its … careful attention to both the level and security of its debt obligations… The Commonwealth’s superior credit standing has reflected its conservative approach both to debt and to financial operations.” (Fitch Ratings, New Issue report, June 3, 2003)

After reviewing the state’s outstanding debt, the Advisory Committee said that based upon the state’s debt capacity model and the Governor’s official revenue forecast, the General Assembly could prudently issue up to $661.91 million in tax-supported debt, to be matched by a like amount in 2004.

A little refresher regarding the political climate at the time: Tax advocates were citing a move by a different credit rating agency, Moody’s, to put Virginia’s AAA bond rating on “credit watch.” Fitch and Standard & Poor’s never put Virginia on credit watch but, citing a threat to the AAA, Warner, Chichester and others argued that Virginia needed to raise more than $1 billion in taxes in the next biennial budget. Without the additional revenues, they warned, the margin of safety was perilously thin.

Yet the Warner administration’s own Advisory Committee, chaired by Secretary of Finance John Bennett, calculated that finances were sufficiently robust to borrow an additional $662 million without jeopardizing the AAA rating!! Further, the report noted how critical debt ratios had improved in 2003 over the previous year. Tax supported debt as a percentage of personal income had dipped in Virginia from 1.8 percent to 1.7 percent. Net tax-supported debt per capita had declined $566 to $546. Meanwhile, interest rates had declined by 22 basis points, creating opportunities, presumably, to refinance some debt at lower interest rates.

Why re-hash all this ancient history? Because the advocates of the 2004 tax increase have never admitted, despite gushing revenue surpluses, that they made a mistake. And now, unrepentant, Sen. Chichester and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine want to raise our taxes again, this time for transportation. Virginia doesn’t need to raise taxes now, and it didn’t need to raise taxes then. And the message must be hammered home until the voters understand it.

Everybody knows, or thinks they know, that Virginia doesn’t pay its school teachers enough. But how about college faculty? The higher up the economic food chain you go, the more competitive the salaries are. Do our public colleges and universities pay enough to attract and retain the bright stars of academe?

The House of Delegates has concerns, and has directed the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) to look into them. The logic goes like this: “a college education is essential in a knowledge based global economy, and … increased knowledge and skills result in enhanced employability, higher earning power, career advancement, and a better quality of life. … Faculty expertise enables college graduates to become productive, tax paying employees for thousands of employers across the Commonwealth, region and nation.”

Citing a $350 million “base budget funding gap” in higher ed, the House resolution directs SCHEV to compare salaries and benefits by academic discipline and academic rank, identify best practices for recruiting and retaining high-quality facilty, and develop recommendations for Virginia’s public colleges and universities.

Bacon’s Rebellion published an earlier edition of Mike Thompson’s column, “How to Fund Transportation Without Really Trying” based on a preliminary draft. The published version omitted several important changes made by the author. We have since replaced it with the proper version. We apologize both to Mike and to our readers for the error.

Were it not for my friend Steve Nash, a University of Richmond journalism professor who has written extensively on the subject, I would know next to nothing about invasive species. But, trust me, the subject is really important. The consequences of introducing of alien species into environments where local flora and fauna have not evolved defenses against them can be devastating. You don’t have to be a tree hugger to be concerned. Nationally, invasive species cause billions of dollars of damage every year.

As a case in point, consider a story buried in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today: Virginia has hired a private firm to eradicate the only known infestation of zebra mussels within the commonwealth. The mussel, writes Kelley, “can clog industrial water-intake pipes, soil beaches and drive out native shellfish.” The price tag for removing them from a single quarry in Northern Virginia: $365,000.

O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay!” Pardon my chortling, but it’s not often that I espy unadulterated good news coming from the General Assembly. According to Jeffrey Kelley at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, a bill to encourage cable-TV competition sailed through the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee yesterday in an undisputed decision.

As Kelley explains:

Verizon Communications Inc. is laying a network in more than a dozen states, including Virginia, that will allow the phone giant to provide video and compete with satellite and cable-TV providers. But the New York-based telecommunications company wants to sidestep what it believes is too long a process to gain cable-licensing deals from every city or county it plans to serve.

Real competition is long overdue. Verizon, as I understand it, wants to extend fiber-optic cable directly into the home, at least in selected neighborhoods. That would provide a lot more bandwidth than can be pumped through a coaxial cable.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the quality of my Comcast, “high speed” Internet access has diminished steadily over the nearly four years that I have been subscribing to it. It still works intermittently as billed, but much of the time it’s no faster than dial-up service. For that I need to pay $49.95 per month (plus taxes)?

Bring it on, Verizon, bring it on!

The American Journalism Review has published Marc Fisher’s feature on the Virginia blogosphere. Fisher, a Washington Post columnist, did a great job of capturing the vibrancy of blogging in the Old Dominion. Not Larry Sabato, Commonwealth Conservative, Waldo Jaquith, Raising Kaine, 750 Volts, Change Servant, Bacon’s Rebellion and Road to Ruin all garner mentions.

According to Fisher, Virginia has one of the most vibrant political blogging communities in the country. Bloggers have been a factor in national politics for a few years now, but Virginia bloggers are the first in the nation to become a major factor in a gubernatorial election.

In Virginia, one of only two states that hold gubernatorial elections the year after a presidential race, blogs became important enough that some campaign managers neglected their daily duties to obsess over the latest blogospheric gossip, state regulators began watching the blogs for compliance with campaign finance laws, lawmakers started grumbling about how to regulate speech on the blogs, and bloggers themselves began talking about setting standards and figuring out just how much coordination makes sense in a fraternity of extreme individualists.

Overall, it’s a thoughtful, well balanced piece, well worth reading. Not a bad job, coming from an unrepentent member of the MSM!

Waldo Jaquith has posted on the column already, as has Will Vehrs at Commonwealth Conservative.