Bacon's Rebellion

Speaking of the VA Cost Cutting Blog (see previous post), here’s a topic I wish the contributors would address: Virginia’s Standards of Quality. The little-understood SOQs are so complex they make most peoples’ eyes glaze over. The press writes next to nothing about them, and legislators are apparently terrified to touch them. Yet SOQs are one of the most aggressive drivers of government spending in Virginia — and legislators have little control over them.

In a nutshell: The SOQs set the formula that distributes about 90 percent of all state contributions to local education. This “input” driven model sets the staffing standards for the number, ratio and compensation of teachers, aides, guidance counselors, administrators, etc. in Virginia schools, as well as other educational costs. Not only does this statist, top-down system eliminate any staffing flexibility on the part of local school systems, it “re-benchmarks” the standards every two years, adding huge new costs — more than $1 billion each biennium — that must be borne by the state.

This monstrosity runs on auto-pilot. A handful of bureaucrats who understand the SOQ formula crank out the new standards every two years, and legislators are compelled to find the money to meet them. As a consequence, the Governor of Virginia and the General Assembly have little latitude in launching new educational initiatives because the SOQ standards have the first call on any new educational dollars.

I’ve written about SOQs in my latest column, “The ABCs of SOQs.”

For a detailed critique of the SOQs, readers should consult an excellent report by Lil Tuttle with the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, “Education Funding in Virginia: Aligning Dollars to Achievement Priorities.”

The VA Cost Cutting blog is gaining a good head of steam with commentary focused on a subject near and dear to our hearts at the Bacon’s Rebellion blog: cutting government waste and inefficiency. If you like the subject matter we address here, you’ll like the VA Cost Cutting Blog.

It’s not often that the politics of agency appointments find their way into the news, but Daily Press columnist Wil LaVeist has written two fascinating pieces about behind the scenes maneuvering at the Department of Minority Business Enterprise (DMBE).

In his first column, LaVeist wrote of the unceremonious departure of Ed Hamm, DMBE Director in the Warner Administration:

Some black politicians and community advocates in Hampton Roads believe the 60-year-old Hamm, who is CEO of E.L. Hamm & Associates in Virginia Beach, a consulting and engineering company, was disrespected by the “Richmond Connection.”

There’s lots of juicy gossip and speculation.

In a follow-up column, LaVeist puts more pieces of the puzzle together, reporting on possible candidates for the job, including one who was named Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Trade instead. Instead of the “Richmond Connection,” there is mention of shadowy “Richmond folks.” He criticizes the Kaine Transition team for its handling of the situation.

Why is this important? The state is expending an enormous amount of money and effort as it tries to swing more state contracts toward woman and minority-owned businesses, but results have not been impressive. Incoming Secretary of Administration Viola Baskerville was a huge advocate for more minority contracting when she was in the House of Delegates. Now she is in a position where the problem is her “baby.” Others have also been persistant advocates, including Bacon’s Rebellion‘s own CG2.

Will there be more spending to try and raise minority contracting numbers, or will new leadership try different approaches?

The House Finance Committee passed a telecommunications tax simplification bill 15-7 yesterday, according to the Washington Post, but it faces an uncertain future.

A crazy quilt of local taxes would be replaced by a flat 5% tax on all services, including previously untaxed monthly satellite television bills, Internet calling technology and long-distance service. The rub may be the tax on satellite service, which might increase the taxes paid by rural residents who presumably rely more heavily on satellite technology. Citizens with cable might see their taxes decline.

According to a study cited by the bill’s patron, Del. Sam Nixon (R-Chesterfield), “the Council on State Taxation, a Washington research group, that found that Virginia has the highest telecommunication taxes in the country. ” Nixon’s bill must now pass the full House and the Senate.

[I would have linked to the bill, but the legislative site is either down or overwhelmed as I write.]

A number of bloggers on Bacon’s Rebellion have wondered why Gov. Timothy M. Kaine devoted so much time to holding public hearings about transportation around the state. Transportation has been hashed out in innumerable studies and hearings already. Kaine had heard a belly full of talk about transportation on the campaign trail, and he’d posted detailed and well-crafted commentary about the topic on his campaign website.

Did Kaine really expect to learn anything new in the public hearings? Or was the tour really a smoke screen — designed to provide cover for the $1 billion tax increase proposal that he dropped on the General Assembly last week?

In his campaign essay, “Moving Virginia Forward, Reducing Traffic,” Kaine talks about “locking up the Transportation Trust Fund.” He talks about increasing efficiency at VDOT. He talks about using General Fund surpluses to finance transportation projects. He talks about attracting private investment for toll-financed projects like HOT lanes.

But he never, repeat never, talks about increasing the sales tax on automobiles as a way to raise more money. Indeed, he implies that new tax revenues are not necessary.

There are ways to provide additional support for transportation without raising taxes and without putting transportation projects in competition with schools and other general fund priorities.

Tim Kaine never uttered a memorable line like, “Read my lips, I won’t increase your taxes.” He never swore in front of TV news cameras, like his predecessor did, that he would never, never, never raise taxes. S0, I suppose one could argue that his $1 billion proposal doesn’t represent the world’s fastest breaking of faith with the voters.

But I am inclined to disagree. Consider the quote above: “There are ways to provide additional support for transportation without raising taxes.” Consider that Kaine repeatedly said that “you can’t pave your way out of traffic congestion.” Consider the fact that the $1 billion tax-hike package was never part of his campaign platform. Overall, he created the impression — at least with me — that a tax increase was not in the cards.

The cynical interpretation of Kaine’s action is that he hid his intention from the voters simply to get elected. The charitable interpretation is that he was so blown away by the findings of his transportation hearings that he changed his mind and decided that a tax increase was justified after all. Yeah, right.

Which gets us back to those hearings. Why did he hold them in the first place? Did he really need to be told, again, that the transportation crisis is urgent? Did he really need to hear, again, that people don’t like sitting in traffic congestion? My suspicion is that he needed something to justify the tax increases that he’d planned all along. But it’s only a suspicion. I would welcome any evidence that my ellow bloggers could present either pro and con.

It appears that we are heading for another round of traffic congestion multipliers. Two major stories in WaPo on 11 January made it clear why transport congestion will continue to grow. 11 January was the day the Virginia General Assembly convened and what has happened since then shows WaPo had its nose to the ground, or somewhere else.

On the front page of WaPo’s Metro section for 11 January there was a three column story with a headline: “Some Headway Against Gridlock.” The story suggested that several projects are moving ahead and that, because of these projects, 2006 will be the year when congestion will begin to ease.

No one in their right mind would could say with a straight face that The I-95 / I-495 / I-395 “Mixing Bowl” (to be completed in 2007?) the rebuilt Wilson Bridge (to be completed in 2009?) and the proposed Intercounty Connector in Maryland (to be started in 2008?) will reduce traffic congestion or improve the lot of “commuters” in the National Capital Subregion in 2006. But WaPo and the politicians they quote say just that. What is more they will never improve regional or subregional congestion. See “Self Delusion and Fraud,” 7 June 2004 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com. As the Houston New Urban Region data shows if they had built more roadways 10, 20 or 30 years ago congestion would still be about the same but the potential of fixing the problem would be less likely.

We wonder how many who read the WaPo headline or story will say:

“With all these new roadway improvements being completed it is time for us to move to Western Loudoun where our house cats can roam free on our five acre farm.” [The Christian family said just that some time ago and the story of their cat Cody’s untimely end made the front page of WaPo on Monday, 9 January]

How many will say:

“Wow, they are getting the I-95 bottle neck fixed! Lets sell out here in Arlington while the market is still hot and move to that nice New Urbanist place in Caroline County we have been reading about for two decades. We will have to drive four time as many miles but with the new roadways, No Problem.” [The story of how Haymount in Caroline County is yet again getting underway made WaPo on 27 December 2005.]

Hold those thoughts while we look at the other big story on congestion in the 11 January issue. This is on the front page and has a headline: “Va. Set To Open Assembly Today: Improving Transit Likely to Be Priority.” More good news for those who are expect or believe that “government” can “solve” the National Capital Subregion’s (and the Commonwealth’s) mobility and access crisis!

When you read the front page story you find it is about finding more money for “congestion busting projects” like the ones mentioned in the Metro story.

We will say this just one more time until after this (“The Devil’s Dance”) session ends:

More money for more projects will not solve regional or subregional congestion. More money will at the very best relieve specific bottleneck congestion in a specific corridor but only for a short time. That is what has been happening for forty years and that is what will continue to happen until municipal, state and federal agencies adopt a new strategy that creates Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns.

Our first three columns at Bacon’s Rebellion written following the defeat of the November 2002 sales tax referenda (“What’s Next?,” “Wrong Solution, Wrong Problem” and “Too Little, Too Late”) outlined the parameters of solving the mobility and access crisis and nothing has changed in over three years. More money is not “the” solution. More money is not “a” solution until there is a better strategy of how to spend money.

No one in a position of authority actually says “generating more money will solve the problem” but everyone acts as if this gem of conventional wisdom has validity.

When the topic comes up, the leaders in the development industry sit in stoney silence. They send NVTA out to flog for more money for road projects to open new land for development but the leadership of the development industry including bankers and managers of real estate investment trusts, never address the fact that projects of the wrong kind in the wrong location just generate more demand that cannot be met by building more roadways.

The development industry has access to facts and data that demonstrate the futility of just building more transport facilities. They hope that just avoiding the whale on the beach will do the trick for another development cycle.

The road building industry – contractors, aggregate and asphalt suppliers, etc.) has no alternative but to ignore reality and lobby for more roads, otherwise their businesses will shrink, not grow.

Civil engineers are in the same boat as the road builders. In private they acknowledge that more money for more roadways will keep them busy but will not reduce regional or subregional traffic congestion.

In other words, the interest groups who have the information and experience to understand the futility of the more money approach and politicians who live from election to election leave it to pundits and hired PR guns to carry the load. These participants in the “debate” have never built a cluster, much less a neighborhood, village or community. They are “experts” on settlement patterns only because they live there. Some have land to sell, most are blinded by ideological perspectives unrelated to the common good.

Those who say there is no way to:

Make a connection between land use and transportation, or

Distinguish between functional and dysfunctional human settlement patterns, or

Determine the full and true costs of location variable goods and services, or

Achieve a balance between transportation system capacity and settlement pattern vehicle travel demand,

Have all the credibility of Cyrano de Bergerac running around The Hall of Mirrors shouting “I cannot find my nose.”

Advocates for Business-As-Usual cannot “see” or “understand” because to do so would undermine their arguments for their own narrow self interest including being paid to obfuscate reality. Consider those who advertise and lobby against mine safety, pollution control, food labeling and political contribution limits or those who advertise and lobby for smoking / alcohol consumption by teenagers, violent video games and scattered urban land uses.

In our last post (“WHICH BUS, GUS”) we considered the futility of simple, short term solutions.

The current Kaine and Senate “solution” packages demonstrate the dangers of another approach the “Omnibus Solution” which is also less than a Comprehensive Solution. A Comprehensive solution embraces Fundamental Change in settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure.

What is the difference between the “simple solution” and the “Omnibus Solution?”

The “simple solution” (Spend Money on Roadways, Buy more Buses, Build BRT lines, Create HOT Lanes with public-private partnerships, etc.) make some happy and others mad. Omnibus Solutions such as those floated by Governor Kaine and Senator Chichester purport to have something for everyone. They give the impression that somewhere in this pile of manure there must be a pony. Among all these actions, taxes and fees something will “solve” the mobility and access crisis. They achieve a critical mass of support and result in “something” getting passed.

If something does pass, the response from citizens will be: “Let’s move to a five acre farm in Loudoun County or West Virginia,” or “Let’s move to a cute village in Caroline County.”

Kaine says: “We don’t need any more studies.” He is only partially right. We need to understand why some current studies appear to justify building roads. The reason, as noted last week in our post “THE SHORT TERM FIX FOR KAINE,” is that these studies rely on cooked numbers for the projected traffic demand. They do not consider the full impact of currently planned and zoned but not yet built land uses. This potential demand becomes a reality when citizens believe there is fix in sight due to an Omnibus Solution.

The biggest problem with any Omnibus Solution, be it Kaine’s, Chichester’s or the pending one from the House of Delegates, is that it will be 15 years before it is clear to most citizens that it did not work.

Back in 1986 we worked hard to support the Baliles Tax Package. We did not fully understand until 10 years later that raising the gas tax without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns was only a Band-aid. It was a Band-aid that masked a deep infection that now needs radical surgery, not just a bigger compress.

There is reason to support a gas tax increase and other levies that will raise the cost of making the wrong mobility choices as Jim Bacon has noted. But money is not the issue until there is an intelligent place to spend the money.

So for one last time: No! No more money! No more money until we grow up and understand how to spend it.

And what does WaPo say today? On Page One of the Metro section: “Va. Plans Costly but Could Ease Commutes. See “The Commuting Problem” 17 January 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com.

(NB: This post was edited for clarification 10:50 PM 22 Jan 2006)

EMR

Help me out if I am missing something. A few weeks ago when Tim Kaine was running for Governor, did he promise to raise taxes (and fees which are taxes)? I missed it.

I saw TV commercials in Tidewater where he talked about cutting taxes in Richmond. There was a blow up when the Kilgore campaign said Kaine cut the rate in Richmond, but not the actual dollar amount of taxes and the Kaine folks protested – no he cut taxes.

I remember when Gov. Warner swore up and down he wouldn’t raise taxes – and then proposed we raise our own taxes in 02 and got the RINOs to support his largest tax increase in Virginia history in 04. Good politics, bad for integrity.

So, where did I miss that Tim Kaine ran on an increasing taxes platform?

On Tuesday, 17 January we posted “NEW AND USED MOBILITY IDEAS IN CONTEXT” on this Blog. Jim Bacon raised several questions to which we responded that evening. Bill Vincent, in his response to our attempt to answer to Jim’s questions concerning Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) shared-vehicle systems, raised several points that deserve further consideration.

First, we are pleased that Mr. Vincent agrees with the need to evolve fundamentally different and more functional human settlement patterns. We will return to this point at the end of this post.

After a careful reading of Mr. Vincent’s points it seems we agree on most issues, even if that does not appear to be the case from the tone of his post. We will address details in a moment but first the major difference:

We said “In Curitiba BRT has been so ‘successful’ on some routes that it is now being replaced by “heavy” rail.” I noted this to amplify the point that the native station area pattern and density of BRT is less than “Heavy Rail” (aka, METRO, Metro, Marta or The Tube.)

Mr. Vincent says the lines are not being refitted based on information he gathered in his recent visit to Curitiba. As we recall we read that information in either METRO or Mass Transit , two transit industry publications that we read on a regular basis. A quick search of their archives does not turn up a citation to that information. What I read (wherever I read it) may have been just a rail partisan’s wishful thinking.

We will take Mr. Vincent’s word that the original and most heavily used BRT line or lines are not being replaced by a rail system to provide more capacity. The fact remains that most BRT systems have less throughput capacity and thus support lower native station-area intensity than Heavy Rail unless it is specially designed to achieve similar capacities and then there is essentially no cost difference between BRT and Heavy Rail.

This brings us to the first point that needs to be made about alternative shared-vehicle transit systems:

Support and opposition of this or that system is a play ground for True Believers.

Those who champion Light rail, Bus Rapid Transit, Trolley, High Speed Rail, Catenary Electric Bus, Horizontal Elevator, Heavy Rail, Conventional (Gus) Bus, Personal Rapid Transit, Vacuum Tube or Commuter Rail all tend to pitch “their system” as the end all and be all for moving people.

That is silly because every one of those systems has a different “native” station area pattern and density. In addition every one of them has a role in providing mobility and access, depending on the station area pattern and density of land use.

In concept all are based on 19th century ideas except for PRT. In addition, all except PRT and some High Speed Ground (e.g. Mag Lev) are based on 19th century technology.

My concern is that instead of focusing on what is important – human settlement patterns – this infighting among shared vehicle system fanatics diverts attention to a side issue. The “which system” question can be sorted out based on facts once a settlement pattern for the New Urban Region and for the Balanced Communities is agreed upon.

The other downside is that the infighting keeps PRT and Vacuum Tube (especially for long distance freight) technology from being given a fair evaluation.

A quick search of the web suggests that Mr. Vincent’s hosts in Curitiba are among the True Believer supporters of BRT and that the detractors cite fundamental differences in settlement patterns as the reason that BRT is not suitable for New Urban Regions in North America. More infighting.

There is another issue that is obscured by inter-system infighting. Every major New Urban Region in the First World with efficient mobility and access – Stockholm, Vienna, Paris, Madrid, London, Toronto, among others with which we are familiar – all employ a combination of systems. London famously has the double decker buses and the Tube but also has added the new Jubilee Line which functions differently than the Tube and then there is the Docklands Light Rail (that is really a horizontal elevator), Commuter Rail etc. Paris has The Metro but also the RER interconnecting with the TGV, etc.

The need to use several shared-vehicle systems is a corollary to a more general axiom: No major New Urban Region functions (or could function) without extensive shared vehicle systems.

For years, Houston, Dallas and Los Angeles were cited as examples of places with no “transit.” That was never true and all three New Urban Regions are now expanding shared-vehicle systems.

The settlement patterns in the Los Angeles New Urban Region were in large part determined by the Pacific Ocean, the Pacific Electric Railway, topography, the size of Spanish land grants, water (or lack of it) and federal land ownership. The reason BRT, Light Rail and Heavy Rail are enjoying more success in the region than detractors projected is that Los Angeles has a higher density inside the Clear Edge than any other major New Urban Region in the United States. “Success” can not be attributed to BRT or any other specific system. As a Left Coast friend noted recently “It is the Settlement Patterns, Stupid.”

Over 40 years ago, Will Owen noted that “there are almost no transport facility solutions to transport problems.” There are only settlement patterns solutions, these are changes that match the pattern of travel demand to the capacity of the transport system.

In the context of today’s mobility and access crisis the important thing to keep in mind is that there are NO SHORT TERM, EASY, OR STOP GAP “SOLUTIONS.” None.

All the systems noted above can be part of a “comprehensive solution” but individually they perpetuated the myth that a “solution” is possible without Fundamental Change. That is also true for the “Omnibus Solutions” that have emerged over the past week which will be the subject of our next post.

Now back to Bill Vincent’s position on Fundamental Change: He agrees that Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns is needed but thinks it will take “generations.”

As the price of oil last week indicates, we do not have “generations” to abandon the current settlement patterns. We may have to toss Ford, GM and all the DOTs off the back of the sled but there is no time for multi-generational evolution.

It is not just an economic impossibility to prop up the current private-vehicle dependent settlement pattern, it is an environmental and social disaster as well. We will explore this reality in future work via PROPERTY DYNAMICS and other vehicles.

EMR

There are many reasons to be appalled at the latest crop of proposals to raise taxes for transportation improvements, but the one that is making me irritable at the moment is the total absence of economic thinking. Both Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Senate Finance Chair John Chichester have submitted proposals that would raise roughly $1 billion a year — but neither one wants to do it by increasing the gasoline tax. House Republicans don’t want to raise your taxes, just divert General Fund money to transportation spending, but their thinking displays an equal deficit in economic understanding.

The strategy consists of the following: raise revenue from other sources, the more hidden to the taxpayer the better. The idea is to fleece the taxpayer while causing as little squawking as possible.

This is bad policy. If you must raise taxes, then put the burden squarely on the gas tax where it belongs. Make the tax as close to a user fee as you possibly can. At least with a gas tax there is a direct correlation — not a perfect one, but a strong one — between the amount of wear and tear a motorist causes on the transportation system, how much he drives, how many gallons of gasoline he consumes, and how much he pays in taxes. At least raising the gasoline tax encourages people to try to find ways to drive less, thus reducing the stress, at least marginally, on the transportation system.

But apparently this elementary economic concept is alien to our lawmakers. Kaine and Chichester would prefer to raise the sales tax on automobiles. Presumably that would be less objectionable to voters because they could finance their tax payment, along with their car payment, over four or five years! Unfortunately, the same tax rate would apply whether the buyer is a 70-year-old granny who drives 6,000 miles a year or a road warrior who drives 30,000.

That kind of thinking will only keep Virginia on a treadmill: Build more roads to relieve congestion, but do nothing to discourage the relentless increase in Vehicle Miles Driven that causes the congestion in the first place.

(Note: I have revised this post to eliminate ad hominem attacks that I made in a fit of severe grumpiness.)

If Jeff Schapiro and Tyler Whitley at the Richmond Times-Dispatch are right, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will propose later today a plan to raise nearly $1 billion a year in new taxes to pay for new transportation initiatives. “Capitol sources yesterday said Kaine … favors pushing the tax on motor-vehicle sales from 3 percent to 5 percent, putting it in line with the state’s nickel-on-the-dollar sales levy.” (Read the article here.)

Meanwhile, the state Senate is rolling out its own plan for a tax hike, while Del. Leo Wardrup, R-Virginia Beach, chair of the House transportation committee, has his own ideas about raising taxes. Wardrup’s thinking doesn’t necessarily reflect that of other delegates, but it’s certainly an indicator of pro-tax sentiment within the House.

The only viable political alternative to raising taxes, it appears, is discussion in the House to divert existing revenue streams from the General Fund to the Transportation Trust Fund.

Legislators are willing to consider alternatives to building more roads — building more mass transit! In either case, it’s all about spending more money. Only Gov. Kaine has expressed an interest in addressing a root cause of traffic congestion, the disjunction between land use and transportation planning, but there is little sign that this idea is resonating in either chamber of the General Assembly.

If Kaine is shrewd, he’ll tie his tax hikes to land use reform — pass the entire package, or he’ll veto any effort to cherry pick from it. Otherwise, Virginia will wind up pumping more money into the failed, Business As Usual transportation system without changing anything. The state will continue subsidizing dysfunctional human settlement patterns, and legislators will be back in a few years saying that the billion dollars wasn’t enough.

I suppose I should move on. But I can’t. I’m still hung up on the fact that the reasoning behind the 2004 tax hike was irrefutably flawed — and I’m frustrated beyond words that the voting public could care less. Chronic revenue surpluses since 2004, I’ve argued on this blog, constitute proof to any reasonable person that the tax increases were unustified. But a number of readers have responded to the effect that, “Oh, sure, Mr. Monday-morning quarterback, it’s easy for you to say that now. But no one could have prudently forecast the magnitude of economic growth that created that surplus.”

Well, in fixing some broken links on the Bacon’s Rebellion website, I stumbled across what I had written back in 2003 and 2004. You can call me a lot of things, but Monday-morning quarterback is not one of them.

Here’s what I wrote Dec. 12, 2003, in a column profiling George Mason economist Mark Craine, who had just written a book, Volatile States:

Crain … contends that Virginia’s revenue forecasting process, which filters U.S. economic projections through a state econometric model in a top-down process, is flawed. The model overlooks one major fact: Over the past 30 years, Virginia’s economy has increased 30 percent faster than the U.S. economy. Thus, the forecasts tend to be conservative and result in budget surpluses. …

Virginia’s financial situation is brightening perceptibly month by month. In October, reported Secretary of Finance John Bennett, General Fund revenues increased $83 million above the amount collected the same month the year before, a 10.2 percent increase and well in excess of the 4.6 percent estimate this year’s budget is based on. If revenues continue to exceed estimates by the same margin, the state could find itself racking up a surplus at the rate of $40 million per month — an amount almost equal to the taxes Warner wants to raise.

And here’s what I wrote Feb. 2, 2004, in a column chastising Senate Finance Chair John Chichester for his budgetary doom and gloom.

The Warner administration based the current, fiscal 2004 budget on the assumption that General Fund revenues would grow by 4.6 percent. According to the secretary of finance’s December 2003 monthly revenue report, the administration now is projecting 6.7 percent revenue growth. That means Virginia is on track to run up a surplus of approximately $250 million this year.

Secretary of Finance John Bennett has built equally conservative assumptions into his budget forecasts for General Fund revenues for the next two years. Under a no-tax-increase scenario, revenue growth looks like this:

Fiscal 2005 – 5.3 %
Fiscal 2006 – 5.1 %

These rates of growth represent a deceleration from this year’s growth, even though Virginia, like the nation as a whole, is in the expansionary phase of the business cycle. These estimates also are much lower than rates Virginia experienced during the last economic expansion, which reached levels — admittedly unlikely to be repeated — of 14.7 percent in 1999 and 11 percent in 2000.

However, there is a good chance of seeing better-than-anticipated revenue growth in 2005. In just the past month, economists have revised their growth forecasts sharply upward. The Warner budget for fiscal 2005 is predicated on real growth in domestic product of 3.8 percent. The Conference Board Economic Forecast has projected that U.S. growth could reach 5.7 percent this calendar year, which overlaps six months with Virginia’s fiscal 2005.

In a $12 billion budget, every extra percentage point of revenue growth translates into $120 million. If the Warner administration has underestimated near-term economic growth –- based as it was on now-obsolete information — Virginia could run up hundreds of millions of dollars in unbudgeted revenues over the next two years. Combine that with this year’s mounting surplus, and the state could be staring at $500 million to $750 million additional revenue for the biennium.

I don’t gloat often, but I gotta say, I nailed that one! The 2004 tax hike was based on faulty premises. Those who fail to understand history are doomed to repeat it. Lawmakers are talking about raising taxes again, this time for transportation (see the next post). Their reasoning is equally flawed, as I will argue in future posts.

Not long ago, I called Ellen Qualls, former Gov. Mark Warner’s press secretary, in the hope of living up an interview after he left office. My thought was to do a retrospective on his administration: successes, failures, lessons learned, etc. Naively, I thought it would be easier for the governor to carve out time after he left office than while he was still encumbered with official duties. Not so. If anything, Qualls told me, Warner would be busier. The national press, it seems, is displaying a tremendous amount of interest in Virginia’s ex-Guv.

The national press may be liberal. The national press may, in its heart of hearts, want Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination. But if there’s one thing that the national press loves even more than its liberalism, it’s a good horse race. And right now, Warner is shaping up as the un-Hilllary. If nothing else, Warner promises to make the 2008 election campaign more exciting than a Hillary shoe-in!

An article profiling Warner appeared in the most recent edition of National Review (unfortunately, not available online). Author John J. Miller knocked Warner for unnecessarily raising taxes in 2004 (sound familiar?) but was otherwise fairly sympathetic. He quotes Ed Kilgore of the Democratic Leadership Council as follows:

He’s a brilliant political strategist. He’s like Bill Clinton that way — he’s a better political strategist than any of the people he can hire as consultants.

Miller also noted that Warner managed to pull in $2.5 million in a Forward Together fund raising party, and that he’s hired lefty blogger Jerome Armstrong to contribute to the F.T. website, presumably “a subtle bid to build enthusiasm among the activist segment of the party’s base.”

Ms. Clinton has a lot of baggage — it’s not played up in the national media, but a number of her political cronies are under investigation for scandalous doings, which I’m too weary to recite here. She’s also prone to making extravagant statements, such as the one she made recently in a speech to an African-American audience, comparing the U.S. House of Representatives to a “plantation.” Warner, by contrast, is squeaky clean, and he’s much more temperate in his language. At a minimum, he would run very well in Southern states. If the national media chooses to anoint him as the most credible alternative to Clinton, he has a decent shot at winning the nomination.

The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star has outlined the legislative agenda advanced by Speaker William J. Howell and other senior members of the House of Delegates. Highlights:

• Cut taxes: eliminate the estate tax, create a “back to school” sales tax holiday, and revive the phase-out of the car tax, which was frozen during hard budget times several years ago.
• Clean up the Bay: Dedicate $500 million over 10 years to Chesapeake Bay clean-up.
• Reform Health Care: Create individual “health savings accounts,” create tax credits to encourage people to buy private long-term health-care insurance, and allow small businesses to band together to buy employee health care.
• Reform Transportation Oversight: Allow the legislature, rather than the governor, to appoint some members of the Commonwealth Transportation Board; create a commission to oversee agencies with transportation authority; and let local governments award contracts for local roads.

Del. Leo Wardrup, chairman of the transportation committee, also proposes shifting revenue streams from the General Fund to the Transportation Trust Fund to pay for additional transportation improvements.

Anyone who has seen the animated movie “Pocahontas” will recall how politically correct the encounter between the English and Indians was portrayed. Rather than exploring the encounter of two mutually uncomprehending cultures, the writers depicted the Indians as noble savages and the English (with the exception of John Smith) as arrogant, violent buffoons. If there was anything remotely virtuous about the founding of the first permanent, English-speaking colony in the New World, it couldn’t be found here.

Now comes New Line Cinema with a real-actor version of the Pocahontas-John Smith story: “The New World.” And Virginia Indians aren’t happy about it. In a press release floated on PR Newswire (it’s not clear who released it), Karenne Wood (Monacan), chair of theVirginia Council on Indians and a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Virginia, complained that the movie reproduced the discredited story about the young Pocahontas saving Smith from execution by throwing her body across him. Over and above that flaw, Wood said, “Our women appear as either princesses or squaws, and our men are either noble or warlike.”

The press release continues: “Particularly offensive to Virginia Indian women is the characterization of Pocahontas as the object of Smith’s physical desire, even though she was only 11 or 12 when they met, and Smith was closer to 30. The role is played by a 14-year-old actress.”

As a backdrop to the criticism, Virginia’s Indians are frustrated, too, by the way the film is tied to the promotion of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown’s founding, while they have yet received the federal status enjoyed by some 567 other Indian tribes.

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment — other than to say, “The New World” can’t possibly be worse than “Pocahontas”…. Can it?

Here at SYNERGY/Planning we are a little weary of “new” as well as used ideas to solve the mobility and access crisis. We suggest all must be wary of those proposing “solutions” that do not include Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure.

First let us outline some of the background for our position on access and mobility innovation:

We have advocated village and community scale applications of telework to eliminate vehicular trip demand since 1969. All we have seen so far are pork barrel “telework centers” and individual / small scale, scattered-site applications which do little to address core mobility and access dysfunction. The number of “telecommuters” seem impressive to those who do not take into account the impact of the scattered location of the users.

In the early 70s we supervised and coordinated the development of a sketch plan for a 150,000 population energy self-sufficient Planned New Community for our client Weyerhaeuser Corp which owned the 26,000 acre site. Food, fiber and employment would be based on the resources of the site and adjacent land owned by Weyerhaeuser. Energy was to come from a combination of solar applications and waste recycling. Mobility and access was to be provided by a hybrid private / shared vehicle system designed by project-partner Ford Motor Co. Ironically, Ford’s reaction to the October 1973 Arab Oil Embargo killed that project.

One of our efforts to articulate region-wide settlement pattern and mobility / access solutions was outlined in “Down Memory Lane with Katrina,” 5 September 2005″ at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com .

Since the 80s we have advocated weight-distance fees to pay for the maintenance of roadways. In 1984 we outlined, with others, a proposal to use the reversible lanes on Shirley Highway / I-395 as variable-fee HOV lanes (aka, Hot Lanes). That was over 20 years ago and these are now among the “new” ideas on the table.

We have advanced these “new” ideas not just as a consultant, a professor and an author but also as a board member, committee chair and committee member of some of the largest business organizations in the Commonwealth and as a representative of one of the most influential enterprises in the northern part of Virginia.

Now there is a fresh generation of advocates of “new” ideas like public-private partnerships and private sector funding of transport facilities. These acolytes seem to be driven as much by ideology as by the desire to improve mobility and access. But are they “new” ideas and will they improve mobility and access?

The advocates of “new” ideas were well represented at the recent conference on public-private partnerships. As we note in the End Note Two of “The Devil’s Dance,” (3 January 2006 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com ), this conference addressed a number of topics that need to be considered if we are to solve mobility and access dysfunction. The ideas put on the table were summarized in three columns in the 3 January issue of Bacons Rebellion.

Here are some thoughts on the “new” ideas that were raised at the conference:

First it is not the 19th century where we find the most widespread application of private sector construction of roadways in the Commonwealth. Between 1965 and 2005 far more lane miles of roadway in Virginia were designed, paid-for and built by the private sector than by public funds.
Prof. Gary Johnson provides data on the extent of some of these roadways in his guest column “A Modest Plan” in the 16 June issue of Bacons Rebellion.

Most of those miles of new roadways were turned over to VDOT to maintain. Others were turned over to quasi governments created to own and maintain common roadways, parking lots and openspace for which existing municipalities and the state were unwilling to assume responsibility. Some of the roadways are still owned and maintained by private enterprises.

In summary, far more lane-miles of roadway and acres of asphalt to support autonomobility were designed and paid for by the private sector that the public sector. We believe that a good argument can be made that, had the public been required to pay for these roadways (much less understood the settlement pattern impact of these facilities), there may well have been far more public scrutiny and a greater understanding that this “private” contribution was building the wrong system in wrong place.

This is why understanding the big picture is important: Over the past 85 years the governance structure has failed to evolve. Elected and appointed governance practitioners have ducked their responsibility to create new governance structures at regional level and at neighborhood, village and community scales. They have left it to the private sector to do what the private sector does best: Lobbying for and establishing land use and transport processes that make the most money possible in the shortest period of time for those in control.

Citizens have been hoodwinked because governance practitioners have left it to private sector to create quasi governments (aka, Homes Associations) to be responsible for many small scale governance responsibilities. These same governance practitioners have completely failed to evolve village, community, subregional and regional governance structure. One major aspect of this failure is that the majority of a transport system that does not work. See “From Myth to Law,” 29 November 2004 and “Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005.

In his column on the public-private partnership conference (“Roads and Reason,” 3 January 2006), Jim Bacon articulated the core principle with which most participants agree:

“From the standpoint of economic efficiency, transportation should be a ‘user pay’ system.”

Who could disagree with that?

Well, before we figure out how to pay, we need to figure out what to pay for. Any transport system in which there is public or private investment should provide mobility and access for a desired human settlement pattern.

Let us get first things first. Lets answer first order questions before we answer fourth, fifth and sixth order questions. Before we come up with slick ways to raise money, there must be a plan for what will be done with the money. The National Capital Subregion is marching toward the implementation of a system of Hot Lanes build by public-private partnerships before anyone has considered how these new facilities will impact the existing human settlement patterns much less whether HOT lanes will contribute to the evolution of functional and sustainable patterns and densities of land use.

As noted in our last post ( “The Short Term Fix For Kaine” ) we must understand the impact and functionality of all VDOT programs before we spend public or private funds on them.

So much for the “new” ideas. Now what about the “used” ideas? The 16 January issue of Bacons Rebellion offers three columns on mobility and access that are a dictionary of “used” ideas:

Guest Columnist William Vincent offers three: Improved “buses”, “transit” as part of HOT lanes and telecommuting. Setting aside the problems with language, the three ideas are an absolute sink-hole for public money without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns.

Stalwart Columnist Patrick McSweeney is still mired in vocabulary issues. See “Babble Postscript,” 3 January 2006 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com. For this reason it is not as clear as it could be that, as noted above, the next step is not to “tap the creativity of the private sector” but to understand what settlement pattern is desired on a regional scale and then what system of transport will provide mobility and access to that configuration of human activity. Finally society must allocated the costs of that system fairly and equitably.

Guest Columnist Prof. Gary Johnson offers a “Modest Proposal.” His ten points are not as radical as those of Jonathan Swift, in fact they are downright reasonable. Most of his points are well taken and his historical perspective is sound.

It is not until one gets to Johnson’s last point about the transportation problems in “rural” Virginia that it is clear that “new” or “used” ideas have no chance of solving the problems of mobility and access unless there is an understanding of the need for Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns and Fundamental Change in governance structure. So long as persons of good will believe that “rural” still exists in 2006, society will never solve the mobility and access crisis or the equally critical shelter crisis. That is the challenge of PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

In the meantime, more money or ways to raise money will make both mobility / access and shelter worse until there is a rational basis for spending the money. As the “private” investment in “suburban” / subdivision roadways shows, money paves the road to nowhere.

EMR