Bacon's Rebellion

This just in from Victoria Cobb, Executive Director, Virginia Family Foundation.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Information Alert: Senate fails to remove Potts from Chairmanship

Today, the Senate of Virginia failed to remove Senator Russ Potts (R-27, Winchester) as chairman of the Senate Education and Health Committee in a carefully orchestrated vote on the Senate floor.

The Committee on Committees introduced a report to the full Senate assigning members to various committees and recommended that Senator Potts be stripped of his chairmanship but not lose his seat on the committee. The report was rejected on a vote of 20-19. Beside Potts, three Republicans joined all Senate Democrats in voting to keep Potts as chair: Senators John Chichester (R-28, Fredericksburg), Fred Quayle (R-13, Chesapeake) and Charles Hawkins (R-19, Chatham). In what may be a General Assembly first, Senator Fred Quayle voted against himself as the proposed new chairman of Senate Ed and Health. Senator Frank Ruff (R-15, Clarksville) was not present today to vote.

Rumors regarding the fate of Senator Potts have been flying around the capital in recent days, and the sense today was that the outcome of the vote was predetermined and Potts chairmanship was never in doubt.

Should a similar vote take place after newly elected Lt. Governor Bill Bolling takes his seat as President of the Senate, and the vote ends in a tie, Bolling would not have the authority to cast a tie-breaking vote. Senate rules prohibit such a vote on a committee report. It is unclear at this point whether today’s actions will be the final decision on the chairmanship.

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The 2007 election can not come soon enough.

Some commentators suggested that Jerry Kilgore’s harping on the illegal-immigrant issue was no more than an election-year ploy. Now comes the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. According to Gary Robertson with the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The council authorized its executive director to voice support in the legislature for admitting illegal immigrants to Virginia’s public institutions of higher education. …

Vice Chairman Bittle W. Porterfield III of Roanoke said illegal immigrants are living openly in Virginia and not much of an effort is being made to remove them. That being the case, Porterfield said, “we have the obligation to educate them.”

Council Chairman Alan Wurtzel of Delaplane said that if illegal immigrants have access to higher education, they can contribute to the economy rather than being a burden to it.

Looks to me like the what-do-we-do-with-illegal-aliens question is an ongoing one, not a campaign stunt. Next question: Do illegals residing in Virginia qualify for in-state tuitions?

Gov. Mark R. Warner and his economic development team are closing out their term on a high note this week. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership has announced eight separate expansions and locations in the first 11 days of January, most of them yesterday. The deals span the state from Loudoun and Suffolk down to Wytheville and Danville. The announcements totaled $172 million in capital investment and 1,040 new jobs.

The biggest was a $105 million investment by Amcor PET Packaging, which will manufacture fillable plastic bottles for the beverage industry in Wytheville. That project will create 144 jobs.

But let it not be forgotten that the greatest wealth creation is still taking place ouside the realm of corporate plant expansions. In just this past week, three companies have raised a total of $152 million in expansion capital: Dulles-based ORBCOMM, $110 million, to upgrade its network of low-orbit satellites; Roanoke-based PixelOptics, $32 million, to complete development of “dynamic focusing” eyeglasses for the far-sighted; and McLean-based Softek Solutions, $10 million, fuel growth for its data migration solutions.

One of the excuses cited for the appointment of Mr. Pierce R. Homer as Secretary of Transportation is that this will insure continuation of the positive improvements that VDOT has shown over the past four years. But what has VDOT accomplished?

The first Secretary of Transportation and the first Commissioner of VDOT appointed by Warner came forward with good ideas but every year for the past four, mobility and access has gotten worse. The agency is still not working to achieve a balance of transport system capacity and settlement pattern travel demand. (See Mobility and Access: A Report Card at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com 31 Oct 2005)

Because VDOT has never seriously considered achieving a balance between demand and mobility system capacity to serve functional urban areas, they are still stuck on 19th century concepts to provide vehicle mobility. The automobile (cars and trucks) and to some extent trains (commuter rail and “subways”) do not serve well the settlement patterns most favored by the citizens and the market. VDOT (as well as other state DOTs and US DOT) are decades behind the competition on the Pacific Rim and Europe. Can you say PRT?

The bottom line is that traffic congestion continues to grow worse just as it has been for forty years. While citizens are coming to understand that more money without a fundamental change in VDOT strategy (and Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns) will only make congestion worse, there is no sign that those in VDOT are planning to respond to reality. VDOT continues to plan for and build the wrong facilities in the wrong locations.

Well, you say, VDOT improved the percentage of “on-time” and “on-budget” projects. Yes, they have “improved” when measured by the simplistic “performance measures” used by MainStream Media. That is a PR success, not an improvement in mobility or access.

More projects are on time because VDOT has stretched out the contract periods. This allows them to also claim more projects starts. But is taking four or five years to add two lanes to an existing, straight, flat, Interstate within existing right-of-way and no major new structures a step in the right direction? No one is yet using objective criteria for what should be accomplished for the money.

More projects are on budget because current contracts leave out or weakened maintenance-of-traffic-flow provisions. Shutting down one half the capacity of an overloaded Interstate in midday would have been unacceptable a few years ago. We call this form of intentional congestion “personslaughter” in The Shape of the Future. From field observations it would appear that stormwater and sediment control provisions have also been weakened.

VDOT has done a better job of contracting out design work to compensate for loss of senior staff that the Allen administration forced out so it would superficially appear to be “conservative.” Fixing problems caused by the Allen and Gilmore administrations is a good thing but is that real progress?

Recent field work within R=15 in the Virginia portion of the National Capital Subregion indicates that the core problem is not what VDOT did not do in the 80s, 90s and 00s, it is what they did not do inside R=15 in the 60s and 70s. There are thousands of acres of vacant and underutilized land that was bypassed and / or is not being renewed because of lack of access and mobility. This is because there was and is no attempt to create a balance between transport system capacity and settlement pattern traffic generation. It is inside R=15 where a new commitment to improved access and mobility should focus.

Creating a sustainable New Urban Region by evolving Balanced Communities is not on any VDOT screen. The “More-money-for-more-facilities” advocates want roads and rails to open new land and further exacerbate scatteration of urban land uses and this will result in greater immobility and access dysfunction.

The 10-Times savings in total location variable cost (including savings from less Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and energy consumption) that are possible from functional vs dysfunctional patterns of land use (aka, the creation of Balanced Communities inside the Clear Edge) are still there for the taking if there was an interest in innovation within VDOT.

All we hear about now are ways to mortgage or sell public assets to generate money that will make the problem worse. As we have noted again and again, more money will only exacerbate the problem until there is plan to balance of transport system capacity with the travel demand generated by the settlement pattern.

More money for the wrong facilities in the wrong locations will make congestion worse faster. (See the nine The Shape of the Future columns related to balancing transport and settlement patterns published at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/ between 24 May and 20 September 2004.)

EMR

I was surprised at the reaction to my recent post about the gubernatorial creation of a Motorcycle Advisory Council. Several commenters thought this was a “cool” idea and waxed rhapsodic about motorcycles. There was a discussion about motorcycle gas mileage and noise.

No one picked up on my point that forming this council was contrary to cost cutting and efficiency in government. Maybe I’m just a lousy writer. But maybe people like government programs that cater to their interests, regardless of whether they’re effective and efficient, and regardless of whether they duplicate existing programs. It’s the other guy’s programs that ought to be cut or never started in the first place.

Just to summarize my objections to this council:

1. After boasting of eliminating boards and commissions, here’s a new one of dubious value.

2. The three areas this council is supposed to cover–safety, tourism, and business development–already have state agencies and programs in place. Are they not doing their jobs?

3. Regardless of whether this council is funded or not, somebody has to set up their meetings, print agendas, and buy their lunches. State representatives are taken away from their regular duties to attend and to respond to the “recommendations” this group will make.

4. The suggestion that this council is way for motorcycle enthusiasts to participate in the transportation debate is preposterous. Were they somehow shut out of Gov.-elect Kaine’s town meetings?

5. If a citizen wants to give input to this group, how would he or she do it? The truth is that these kinds of groups are resume-enhancers for the members, not ways for the public to be more engaged in important policy decisions.

I know this little council isn’t going to sink the Commonwealth. I wish it well. Over time, however, the multiplication of these groups adds costs–tourism needs more staff because they’ve got to support the motorcycle council, the motorsposts initiative steering committee, the Southwest Craft Council, and god knows what else. All these groups also dilute accountability from organizations that should be serving the interests of all customer/stakeholder groups.

Now I see that we have a Cost Cutting Caucus blog. I wish them well, too, but I have to wonder if they really have the will to name names and take on sacred cows. I’ve been railing about cost cutting on a nuts and bolts level from this perch for years to no avail. Maybe that’s why the new blog hasn’t invited me to contribute–I’ve battled costs and costs won.

If Republicans wonder why Virginia voters no longer associate the GOP with fiscal conservativism, you need look no farther than a bill submitted by Del. L. Scott Lingamfelter, R-Dale City. A retired Army colonel, Ligamfelter proposes legislation that would exempt federal, state and local government retirees’ pay from state income taxes.

Reports the Manassas Journal-Messenger:

“Lingamfelter, who also represents Quantico and eastern Fauquier, said that many of his constituents and residents are retired government employees. He said Virginia’s income tax on their retirement pay is driving retirees away to live in states that don’t touch their pensions. ‘They believe they are being taxed too much so they move to states that guard their income,’ said Lingamfelter.

A tax relief will help stimulate and sustain the commonwealth’s economy and encourage more people to live in Virginia during their retirement, said Lingamfelter. “They’re going to spend money in your community, and as they spend money they pay sales tax,” he said. “As you create more business you create more jobs.”

How many problems are there with this idea? Let me count the ways.

(1) The tax exemption would cost lots of money. How much? The article doesn’t say — because Ligamfelter probably doesn’t know. I would hazard a guess that the number is in the tens of millions of dollars, possibly the hundreds of millions.

(2) Why privilege government retirees? Why not extend the tax exemption to all retirees? After all, some states have lower state income taxes than Virginia. Indeed, a handful of states have zero state income taxes. A lot of retirees establish residence in Florida as a result. By Ligamfelter’s logic, eliminating the state income tax for all retirees would keep more of them in Virginia.

(3) If we want to make Virginia more attractive to live in, why focus on retirees? Why not focus on working people! They have jobs. They earn wages and salaries. They generate even more in taxes than retirees! If we cut the state income tax, they’ll have a greater incentive to stay in Virginia, too!!

We have too many exemptions in our state income tax. We need to close loopholes, treating everyone the same, and lower the rates for everyone.

I don’t know if Bearing Drift is the first Virginia blog to podcast, but it’s the first that I’ve seen. (If other blogs have podcast, please let me know. I’m happy to give credit where credit is due.)

In the most recent podcast, Bearing Drift blogger Squeaky Wheel interviews Del. Sal Iaquinto (R-84), who won Attorney General-elect Bob McDonnell’s old Virginia Beach district.

In case you haven’t seen it plugged already on Commonwealth Conservative and One Man’s Trash, there’s a new blog that should prove to be worth watching: The Virginia Cost Cutting Caucus blog set up by Del. Chris Saxman, R-Staunton, chairman of the House cost cutting caucus.

The blog creates a forum in which citizens can engage in constructive criticism of Virginia’s state budget. Such public scrutiny would have been impractical only a year ago, but the latest online version of the budget provides greater detail than ever before. The guiding philosophy of the blog in Saxman’s words: “We believe that a more transparent, accountable and competitive government will yield better services at a lower cost to the taxpayers.”

Late last year, linking to the same budget documents, Bacon’s Rebellion urged readers to “Blog the Budget” — to little avail. Perhaps we picked the wrong time of year, right before Christmas. With Saxman behind it, I suspect that the Cost Cutting blog will prove more successful. The Staunton delegate has invited “several people” to contribute to the blog, including Norm Leahy at One Man’s Trash. We wish the new blog the best of luck.

Former Gov. Jim Gilmore has run a thoughtful piece on educational reform in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. He makes the point that there is only a loose correlation between per-pupil spending in and educational outcomes. In particular, he focuses on the “Standards of Quality,” an arcane funding formula that drives educational spending significantly higher when the standards are rebenchmarked every year.

Virginia could do better, he suggests, if the state replaced the SOQ formula with a simple, per-pupil funding allowance. Citing research by the Herndon-based Claire Booth Luce Policy Institute, Gilmore says that “a $6,000 per pupil amount–and $7,200 for students with limited English proficiency, living in poverty or having learning disabilities, and $11,400 for severely disabled students–would generate more state funds for all but 13 Virginia school systems.”

He continues: “Changes such as this would free local school systems to have more flexibility in providing educational opportunities based upon actual student needs rather than out-of-date mandates that tie the hands of local school boards and administrators.”

Gilmore also champions school choice, proposing changes to the law that would allow the creation of more Governor’s schools, more charter schools and tuition assistance for private schools.

Discussion of these ideas is way overdue in Virginia, a supposedly “conservative” state that allows pitifully little school choice.

OK, policy junkies, there’s a cool new data source online: The “Commonwealth Data Point” maintained by the state Auditor of Public Accounts. This website collects a number of interesting data series and makes them available from a single Web page.

State and local revenues… state and local expenditures… the state budget… population… food stamps… income… workforce… schools… and more. All presented in a common format, covering fiscal years 2003, 2004 and 2005. The goal is to accumulate 10 years worth of data. I’m not sure what the logic was for selecting the particular data series that appear on the page, but are all are potentially useful for anyone studying policy issues in Virginia.

Thanks to Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Henrico, who sponsored the legislation making the data publicly available. Huzzah! Three cheers for transparency in public data!

House Speaker William J. Howell has proposed raising money to fund transportation improvements in Virginia by selling off chunks of the Interstate to private investors who, presumably, would be allowed to recoup their investment by imposing tolls. Howell has not said (at least not in print) how he would invest the proceeds of such sales, but there is no denying that the strategy could raise substantial sums of money. And if anyone in the Virginia press corps would inquire, Howell’s ideas about privatizing Interstates are part of a broader re-thinking of the role of state government in providing transportation solutions.

Personally, I don’t know if I’m comfortable with the idea of privatizing Interstates, but I’m willing to hear the Speaker out. Apparently, Michael Hardy and Jeff Schapiro with the Richmond Times-Dispatch have already written off the idea as a “scheme” — in contrast, say, to raising unspecified taxes by some $1 billion to $4 billion a year to continue the Business As Usual policies that created the transportation crisis in the first place. Here’s how they chacterize the Speaker’s ideas in an article about Gov.-elect Tim Kaine:

Kaine is not keen on such House Republican proposals as flipping highways and other commuter links for quick cash from investors. Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, has suggested such privatization schemes, saying they could generate billions.

“I don’t like the idea of selling assets,” said Kaine. He is, however, favorably inclined — if the deal helps the state — to consider selling income streams from tolls when proceeds are used for transportation projects.” (My boldface.)

Everybody clear on the distinction? Selling highway assets outright amounts to a “scheme” for “flipping” them for “quick cash.” Merely selling the highway income streams for 30 to 50 years — which also would raise up-front cash for the state to spend — is an idea respectable enough to warrant no such invidious characterizations.

These gems were passed along by Joseph West to ponder as the General Assembly convenes.

“Anyone taken as an individual, is tolerably sensible and reasonable – as a member of a crowd, he at once becomes a blockhead.”

— Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805), leading German 18th-century dramatist, poet, and literary theorist and an intellectual contemporary of Hamilton and Madison.

“In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. … Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”

— Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (Federalist No. 55, 15 February 1788)

This just in from Virginia Tech (4:47 p.m.):

Virginia Tech quarterback Marcus Vick has been permanently dismissed from the Hokie football program due to a cumulative effect of legal infractions and unsportsmanlike play. Virginia Tech had suspended Vick in 2003.

The university provided one last opportunity for Vick to become a citizen of the university and readmitted him in January 2004, with the proviso that any future problems would result in automatic dismissal from the team.

Bravo for Virginia Tech!

Let us hope that Marcus Vick is not a scape goat. Let us hope that this action represents the beginning of a new standard of sportsmanship that will be enforced across all Virginia colleges and for all sports — including those that don’t appear on national television.

Now, let’s see how long it takes for Vick to go pro.

After clearing out ineffective and inefficient boards and commissions in Virginia, Gov. Warner is creating new ones with noble and lofty purposes. The latest is the Motorcycle Advisory Council:

The group, comprised of state and local officials, state agency representatives, and motorcycle enthusiasts, will work to promote motorcycle safety, tourism, and business development in Virginia. The Council is the next step in Governor Warner’s “Motorcycle VIRGINIA!” initiative created in 2004.

“Virginia has worked to expand its tourism markets in so many areas – and motorcycle tourism is a great opportunity for us,” said Governor Warner. “As an example, the annual Gold Wing Road Riders Association state rally in Roanoke generates over $320,000 each year for the Roanoke Valley; and we know motorcyclists are generous with their time and resources in raising hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for charities in communities across the Commonwealth. Additionally, as the Commonwealth grapples with the transportation challenges of the next decade, motorcyclists need to have a voice in that debate.”

Until the creation of this council, I had not realized that bikers had no voice. I can only hope they will use it to tie transportation to land use planning and to lobby for changes in human settlement patterns.

It’s an impressive group of Virginians that Warner named to the council–many are affiliated with existing motorcycle groups or own their own machines. They’ll be able to ride their Harleys to meetings, weather permitting. I must admit disappointment that the list of state agencies represented did not include my own. I’ve had five or six calls over the last three years from individuals wanting to start chop shops or become motorcycle dealers/repair centers. Now I can refer them to the council and they should receive special business development assistance.

Thankfully, the Alcohol and Beverage Control Board is represented. We know intuitively that motorcyclists have special needs when it comes to alcohol.

In our column this week “The Devil’s Dance” at https://www.baconsrebellion.com/ we cautioned against expecting positive results vis a vis mobility and access (or anything else) from the 2006 legislative session. In a Wednesday, 4 January posting on this blog (“The Governor and Mobility”) we considered the Governor-Elect’s potential to improve mobility and access.

Right on cue, Governor-Elect Kaine named Mr. Homer as Secretary of Transportation. This assures citizens of the Commonwealth that traffic congestion will continue to grow and the long-term prospects for prosperity, security and sustainability will continue to erode.

This sort of a slap in the face happens to the good-government / community-responsibility / conservation organizations and their supporters after every election. They endorse the lesser-of-two-evils candidates. That candidate wins and then the newly elected office holder turns around and takes actions that support the Business-As-Usual / private-rights / consumption goals of the candidate that the voters turned down. It is clear that enough citizens who would not have voted or would have voted for Woody Woodpecker voted for Kaine because of his pledge to relate transportation to land use (aka, create functional human settlement patterns.)

Mr. Homer’s land use / transportation credentials are clear. He is best known for his cheerleading role for Disney’s American and Nissan Pavilion (nee, Cellar Door) in Prince William County. These are two of the greatest land use / transportation disasters to ever face the R=20 to R=35 Radius Band in the National Capital Subregion. He won one out of two and hundreds of thousands of citizens have been inconvenienced on many summer days since Nissan Pavilion open its gates.

In an interview with WAPO he cited two reasons why the detractors of his nomination (who had been supporters of Kaine) were wrong. Homer said that he had worked to raise money for shared-vehicle systems as well as roads. That completely misses the central point that roads or rails in the wrong location create dysfunctional human settlement patterns and cause long-term immobility. The clincher, however, is that Homer cited his work to support the badly defeated sales tax referendums. In tune with the the real world?

The best anyone has had to say about Homer is that he plays well with others, especially the groups responsible for the growing gridlock and that he understands the need to raise private money to build the wrong infrastructure in the wrong locations. We will address these two issues in future posts.

EMR