Bacon's Rebellion

Personal story. When I was a senior in HS (Yorktown, Arlingon Co.) I got a one-week job as an electrician’s helper (I carried stuff) to work setting up for the 1968 Cherry Blossom festival. Day one we set around the Washington Monument and theater. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr got murdered. Day two when I went to the guy’s shop in the Clarendon neighborhood we could see smoke coming up from DC. We went in to get this guy’s equipment. His van was the only vehicle going into the city.

He had a CB and would call out, “They’re 4 blocks away.” As the rioting got closer and closer. I saw the first convoy of soldiers in trucks come down Independence Ave and stop in the middle. A DC cop and an Army officer looked at a map on the hood of a jeep and then literally circled The White House with troops. School buses loaded with police hurried by.

The rioters got to 2 blocks away. When we left, we could see them on 14th St. running back and forth. I missed my Pulitzer prize photo of smoke billowing across the Mall and making a wreath around the Capitol. We got stuck behind the traffic jam getting out of the city and didn’t get home until after 7. I couldn’t understand, then, why my parents were so upset. They had had no idea where I was.

About 6 weeks later we had a community meeting in the Yorktown HS gym on a Saturday morning. Leaders from DC and VA talked. Why was there a riot? What should be done? etc. Marion Barry spoke.

Marion Barry was articulate and passionate. He was one of the most charismatic men I have ever seen. I saw only a few leaders in the Army who had the real deal, charisma. Many wished and faked. None surpassed Marion Barry.

It is a personal tragedy that Marion Barry lost so much to drugs and alcohol. He had such incredible potential.

It is a National triumph what has happened since 1968. Of course, it started long before that. Even before the War of Northern Aggression. Fulfilling the potential of the Declaration of Independence to acknowledge all men are created equal is awesome.

Moreover, the morally superior and ascendant idea of racial integration is a triumph of right over wrong, good over evil. The concept of racial equality is a profoundly Judeo-Christian concept that bore fruit in the fullness of time – and after huge sacrifices and hard work – and national sin and shame.

It’s great to celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday as a symbol of America’s Civil Rights victory.

It’s sad to see how low Marion Barry went personnally and most of the Civil Rights leadership went politically since 1972. Multiculturalism, affirmative action (quotas not outreach), set asides etc. are the new racism. Hopefully, and hope is not a method, more and more Americans will reject the bitter politics of race baiting and follow the intellectual leaders – Thomas Sowell, Alan Keyes, Walter Williams, etc and political leaders like J.C. Watts, Condoleeza Rice, etc. to make The Dream come true – completely.

In today’s WAPO, Mike Shear reports on what a source told him that Governor Kaine will say tonight about solving the Commonwealths mobility and access crisis.

None of the proposals will make much difference in the short term (or in the long term) as has been pointed our since mid-2005 when Kaine’s program started to emerge. The measures outlined will not address the need to balance transportation system capacity with the travel demand of current and planned settlement patterns. They will not address the simple free market solution to transportation dysfunction: Charging the full and equitable cost of all citizen, agency, enterprise and institution location decisions.

As our colleague Jim Bacon says at least Kaine is addressing the land use / transportation issue and that is a start. The proposals will, at the very best, smoke out some of the obstacles to real solutions.

There is one thing Kaine could do tomorrow morning that would not require the legislature or municipal governments to take any action and would have immediate impact.

Kaine could require by executive order that all VDOT projects not yet under contract be reevaluated to determine the impact of the project in the context of the planned and zoned land use in the project service shed. This is an easy, simple step that, if carried out with diligence, would have profound impact and would open the real discussion of land use / transport relationships.

For an example of the details of such a review process, see our Backgrounder “Anatomy of a Bottleneck,” 14 August 2002 and “The Role of Municipal Panning in Creating Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns,” 23 January 2002 both at www.baconsreblellion.com.

OK this is not a short term “fix” for transport but it is a way to keep congestion from getting worse, faster.

EMR

Last week was a good news/bad news week for Virginia’s gay,lesbian,bisexual and transgender citizens.

The good news was that Governor Kaine continued the ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation in his Executive Order 1 setting equal employment opportunity policy for the Commonwealth’s workforce. [He also added protections for veterans to the policy.]

The bad news was that the House of Delegates passed the 2nd resolution on the so-called marriage amendment and the bill setting the ballot question, moving us one step closer to a statewide referendum.

The proposed amendment to the Constitution would define marriage as between one man and one woman and bar creation or recognition of civil unions, domestic partnerships or other legal status for all unmarried relationships (gay or straight).

The language of the proposal now wending its way to the voters is so broad and so vague it threatens continued prosecution of domestic violence cases involving unmarried couples. See this discussion of what’s happening in Ohio which has identical language in its amendment. And, this on other issues.

Why are we rushing to amend our constitution with language no one understands?

Beats me. It’s not like there’s an emergency. We’ve had a ban on gay marriage in Virginia since 1975 (more than three decades!) without a single legal challenge. We’ve had a ban on recognizing gay marriages from other states since 1997. And, we’ve banned civil unions, domestic partnerships and other legal agreements for gay couples since 2004. There’s been no direct legal challenge to any of these laws, and only one case in which the civil unions law has been raised…by a judge (activist?) who reached out to cite it in refusing to recognize a custody order from another state’s courts.

Read traditionalist arguments for marriage equality for gays and lesbians on the Volkh Conspiracy

And for arguments against the proposed amendment now working its way through the Virginia legislature look here and here

As we remember Martin Luther King today and pray for his widow’s recovery from her stroke, we should reflect on what Coretta Scott King has said about issues of equality for gays and lesbians:

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice,” she said. “But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’” “I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,” she said. – Reuters, March 31, 1998.

“We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say “common struggle” because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.” – Coretta Scott King, remarks, Opening Plenary Session, 13th annual Creating Change conference of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Atlanta, Georgia, November 9, 2000.

Ironic that the House will take a formal vote on enshrining discrimination against gays and lesbians in the Virginia constitution on Martin Luther King Day, isn’t it?

Disclosure: As indicated in my profile, I lobby for Equality Virginia, the Commonwealth’s leading advocacy group for Virginia’s GLBT citizens.

As the Cadillac add bellows: “BREAKTHROUGH!!!”

There now seems to be agreement between SYNERGY/Planning and some who have spilled millions of bites trying to discount the relevance of our work. They agree that congestion (the lack of vehicular mobility) is growing worse every year.

We argue that the measures of vehicular immobility leave much to be desired – see “Spinning Data, Spinning Wheels,” (30 September 2004) concerning the 2002 figures and revisited for 2003 in “Regional Rigor Mortis,” (6 June 2005).

More important, the transport strategies propounded by MainStream Media, the Autonomobility Lobby, the Land Development Interests and pandering politicians endanger the prosperity, security and sustainability of contemporary civilization.

Now comes the question about the measures of “accessibility.” Accessibility is the companion of “mobility” in the fundamental equations that must be addressed if there is to be balance between transport system capacity and settlement pattern generated travel demand.

How do you measure accessibility? May I introduce an old friend? Meet Adam Smith.

For reasons we document in The Shape of the Future, and explore in our column “Wild Abandonment,” (8 September 2003) the best measure of accessibility is the market. We can measure accessibility by the market even though what now exists is not a free market or an intelligent market. The current market for the built environment is wracked by counterproductive subsidies but it is still a market with a clear message.

This market documents that a three bedroom rancher within R= ½ Mile of Ballston METRO is worth eight times as much as the same house on a ten times bigger lot that is within a ten minute drive of the Bealeton 7-11.

This market documents that a house on .2 acres within the Clear Edge around Greater Warrenton is worth $200,000 more than the same house on five acres near Clevengers Corners (seven or eight miles to the west) and $100,000 more than the same house on five times as much land in a West Prince William “subdivision.” The West Prince William house is 10 miles closer to the centroid of jobs in the National Capital Subregion but is not convenient to most of the other things that citizens want to live near.

(NB: The numbers used here were documented in April 2003 and have not yet been recalibrated to reflect the last 2 ½ years of rapid escalation because of the equally dramatic readjustment that are likely to occur over the next year.)

These same market forces have put a premium on houses in Planned New Communities with densities of at least 10 persons per acre and a balance of jobs / houses / services / recreation / amenity as compared with the same house by the same builder in scattered subdivisions. This has been the case for four decades. We summarized these locational variations in “The $100,000 Difference” section of “The Shape of Loudoun County’s Future” which was widely circulated prior to the 1999 election in Loudoun County.

The same forces work at higher densities. Dwellings in isolated I-395 Condo Canyon projects would be worth much more if the were adjacent to Georgetown, Old Town, Reston Town Center or even Shirlington Village Center.

The numbers change but the relative differences do not. Citizens will pay more for accessible places to live, work and seek services.

To create functional settlement patterns society must fundamentally change to create more of the places where people want to be and fewer of the places they have to be because they have no choice. We outline six overarching stategies to achieve that goal in The Shape of the Future.

The most important step toward creating functional settlement patterns is to charge the full, equitable cost of the 40 +/- location variable goods and services that make contemporary urban civilization possible. At least 96% of the households in the Untied States are urban households. When they are all paying their fair share they will sort themselves out into functional patterns and densities leaving plenty of room and few costs to be paid by those who choose derive their income from nonurban activities and to live nonurban lives.

At SYNERGY/Planning, we call the process of creating functional places “the evolution of Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions” and the basic driving force is paying ones fair share of location variable costs. This process requires open, intelligent markets for land and buildings. The creation of these markets is a major goal of PROPERTY DYNAMICS and reflects the “The Five Critical Realities the Shape the Future” which is a Backgrounder available at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

Of course just collecting the highest price dooryards, clusters, neighborhoods and villages together is not enough to create Balanced Communities but the market provides a place to start sorting out patterns and densities and demonstrating the the market value of accessibility.

Also note that the free market way to lower the cost of great places is to build more of them, not to build cheaper, less desireable ones.

Post Script: Do not come with that weak stuff about the price of well located structures being higher because they cost more to build or maintain them. How many buyers will pay builder “A” more than builder “B” for the same product because builder “A” has higher costs? That is what Adam Smiths invisable hand (aka, the market) is all about.

Poorly located buildings (what real estate agents call “more house / building / square feet for the dollar”) are to some extent priced lower because of unwarranted and / or unintended subsidies. These subsidies are most often the result of the failure to pay the full cost of location decisions. It is also true that they are priced lower because that is all someone will pay. Few sellers price their real estate lower just because it cost them less to build or they bought it or the land upon which it sits at a firesale.

EMR

A reporter from the Augusta Free Press sent me the questions below for an article. No idea what he will write, but here’s my piece.

1. Do you feel that Lee-Jackson Day has gotten the short end of the stick, so to speak, with the split of the holidays in Virginia?

No. Lee-Jackson Day is secondary to Martin Luther King Jr. Day because MLK is a Federal holiday. Federal holidays carry more weight, just like the Federal government does. Folks notice when the Post Office closes.

2. Did you prefer the way it was done until 2000-2001 – with Lee-Jackson Day and MLK Day being noted on the same day?

The combination holiday of King-Lee-Jackson was uniquely Virginian, but it’s history. The combination isn’t coming back. A separate day for MLK answered Black political sensitivities for separate, stand-alone recognition and respect.

3. Is there a stigma attached to celebrating the efforts of Confederate heroes? If so, what can be done to overcome that stigma?

Stigma? Duh.

Send a politician separate invitations to a MLK and a Lee-Jackson celebration on different dates and see what response you get. Elected officials fear anything taiknted ‘Confederate’, especially the Confederate Battle Flag, more than Dracula fears the cross, a wooden stake, a mirror and morning sunlight – combined. Find out how many public schools (out of 134 systems) take off on Lee-Jackson Day. Go to any 100 schools (K-12) and check out how many bulletin boards recognize Lee-Jackson and how many highlight MLK. Do the same for assemblies and guest speakers. Lee and Jackson are part of the Standards of Learning (SOLs), but are ignored as a state holiday because they are politically incorrect.

The three reasons that Lee and Jackson are ignored suggest the answers to fix the problem.

Culture War. The same Liberals who declare War on CHRISTmas can’t stand Lee and Jackson because they served the Confederacy – which equals racism in their paradigm, were devout Christians and heroic warriors. The Liberals who control most of the media and public education simply are following their agenda. Since culture ‘commands’ in a civilization, the winner, Liberal or Conservative, of the U. S. Culture War will predominate in politics, the media and public education. Conservatives have lost the main stream media and government schools for now. Much can be done in public communication, like the decade plus dramatic shift towards pro-life attitudes, if someone has the resources – money.

Historical Ignorance. The History SOLs had to be ‘re-normalized’, dumbed down, because so few schools could pass them, right? When the teachers don’t know history or teach the Liberal trinity of race, class and gender(s) (as my youngest daughters AP History textbook bragged) then Lee and Jackson will not be honored appropriately. Years ago in Arlington, I learned my 4th grade Virginia history from a New York City native, Mrs. Scharf, who cheerfully taught us that Lee and Jackson were heroes indeed. I also learned history from walking the battlefields with my grandfather and father. Keeping alive the oral history at home for Virginians with ancestral ties Lee and Jackson is important. Newer Virginians can learn and share the same common historical heritage by visiting our many Civil War sites – just as they would visit Colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown and Jamestown as part of our common history.

Evolving Culture. Cultures evolve or die. Virginia as part of Southern culture is changing its identity. The culture used to be so powerful that most, even newly arrived, immigrants from the North and foreign lands joined their Virginia neighbors of a few years to take up arms in 1861 against their relatives and absolute strangers. 6 out of 7 Black slaves stayed on their farms, even after the Union Army conquered, and many, slave and free, served the South in war. Today, the power of our culture with many, many more immigrants from the North and foreign lands is less powerful. And it’s profoundly different. Southern culture isn’t about being a sovereign nation. Southern culture isn’t about race any more for the White majority. Southern culture is about Christian identity with Bible reading and believing, as well as absolute, unchanging, truths in the Ten Commandments, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution, extended families, love of land, sense of place, men are men and women are women, honor, personal freedom, more fun-loving than money/work-driven, admiration for the military and willingness to fight.

4. Other thoughts on this issue.

What is right for the future? Not a worship of the past, but pushing the best of the past forward. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is the symbol of victory of the Civil Rights movement. The morally superior idea of racial integration was a victory for all Virginians. Lee and Jackson should be seen as symbols of military genius, devotion to duty, and honorable leadership that motivated unparalleled acts of courage by all kinds of Virginians. Dr. King will get more recognition as a fact of life in a Federally-dominated America. Yet, Lee and Jackson deserve considerable recognition, significantly more than today, for future Virginians to follow their example as heroes. All three heroes need to be carried into the future as part of our Virginia culture. It’s up to the Good People of Virginia to make it so.

Gov. Mark R. Warner may well be remembered in history as the “good government” governor. Arguably, he has done more than any of his predecessors to bring best business practices to Virginia state government — no mean accomplishment when you consider that Virginia was already considered one of the two or three best run states in the country long before Warner came to office.

In his farewell speech to the General Assembly, Warner noted that government operations is a topic he gets “jazzed” about, and he listed a number of accomplishments. (I add my comments in italics.)

• We’ve maintained our triple-A bond rating – one of only six states in the nation to have that sterling credit rating. (Warner did a great job responding to the last recession with timely spending cuts. Too bad he felt he had to raise taxes after the crisis had passed. See previous post.)
• We’ve leveraged the state’s buying power with centralized purchasing – savings more than $95 million in fiscal year 2005 alone. (True. But don’t forget, Warner is building on procurement reform launched under Gov. Jim Gilmore.)
• We’ve improved collection of money owed the state, producing over 110 million more dollars each year. (Kudos!)
• We’re finally managing real estate more like a business would, which could save more than $68 million over the next decade. (More kudos! Under Warner, the state has developed the first-ever comprehensive inventory of its real estate assets and obligations. Now it’s time to take the next step and track real estate utilization — find out how much of that office space is actually being used.)
• We’ve undertaken school efficiency reviews in 9 school divisions, identifying almost $10 million in annual savings – a figure that will grow as more divisions participate. (Kudos. But in a multi billion-dollar budget, it’s only a start.)
• Virginia leads the states in a cutting-edge consolidation of information technology. (Double kudos. This initiative hasn’t saved as much money as hoped, but it has significantly improved the quality and security of the state’s IT infrastructure. Also, giving credit where credit is due, Warner aggressively used public-private partnership legislation that the Gilmore administration had put into place.)
• And for the first time in history, we’ve fully replenished our Rainy Day Fund to its Constitutional maximum of more than a Billion dollars. (Bravo!)

I’ve heard many stories, none of which have made it into print or even onto the blog, of the businesslike attitude that Warner has brought to government. Rest assured, this list of accomplishments is an abbreviated one. The Governor and his team deserve a lot of credit for Virginia’s rating by Governing Magazine as the best run state in the country. Let us hope that Gov.-elect Tim Kaine can maintain that distinction.

Gov. Mark R. Warner will go to his grave insisting, in the face of massive and recurring state budget surpluses, that the 2004 tax increases were needed. He sounded that theme again in his final speech yesterday to the General Assembly:

Two years ago, I came before you to tell you that the fruits of our [budget-cutting] labor had not been enough. Our first-ever six year financial plan showed that we faced a structural imbalance well into the future. It made us an unfit partner to local governments, a fair-weather friend to public education, and a weakening credit risk to Wall Street investors. …

Together, we hammered out our competing visions for the Commonwealth. Together, we achieved our goals of restored fiscal integrity. Together, we developed a fairer and more equitable tax code. Together, we made critical investments in education, public safety, and the core services of government.

Notice how Warner referred to the state’s largest tax increase not as a “tax increase” but as a reform of the tax code — a reform that just happened to yield an additional $1.4 billion in revenue for the biennial budget.

Warner’s justification for the tax increase is interesting. The tax hike is usually portrayed in the press as a prophylactic to ensure that Moody’s, the bond-rating agency, did not reduce Virginia’s coveted AAA bond rating. That argument has always been weak, because state revenues were rebounding ahead of projections at the very time that Gov. Warner was pushing through the tax hike. One could argue that Virginia was already in the clear.

The real reason for the tax hike is this (in the Governor’s words): “Our first-ever six year financial plan showed that we faced a structural imbalance well into the future.” Warner feared that revenue increases would be insufficient to meet Virginia’s long-term budget obligations.

But events have proved him wrong, and very few are willing to call him on it. Notice one word that never appeared in the Governor’s speech: “surplus.” He never once mentioned the recurring and growing budget surpluses — revenues consistently outstripping his six-year forecasts — that have taken place since 2004. The fact is, the growth in Virginia’s budget has been sufficiently robust to pay for all of Warner’s ongoing programs without a tax increase. This has been obscured by the fact that he has found clever ways to spend the surplus on one-shot programs such as university R&D, environmental clean-up and mental health reform.

The biggest failure of the Warner administration was taking that six-year budget forecast seriously enough to act upon it. Rather than waiting to see if events would bear him out, he argued for a pre-emptive tax increase. He got what he asked for, but events didn’t bear him out — his revenue forecasts were far too timid. No one in the General Assembly wants to make an issue of it because, after all, most everyone voted to go along; they share they blame. Besides, politicians are only too happy to spend the money.

Gov. Mark R. Warner gave his swan song to the General Assembly Wednesday, and he sounded the major themes that make it possible for him to leave office with a 70 percent approval rating. The secret to his success is simple: Refusing to allow himself to get sucked into America’s raging culture wars, he has focused steadfastly on core issues of state government. Whether you approve or disapprove of Warner’s record on taxes and spending, you have to give him credit for staying on message with both his rhetoric and his policy initiatives.

I believe together we found that place on the pendulum of public discourse — where most Virginians are. The place I call the Sensible Center. I believe we have been able to set aside some of the conflicts of the past . . . some of the divisiveness of the present . . . and some of the inertia which sometimes paralyzes our public debate. And for a sustained period of time, we have been able to make progress on problems we’d faced for many years.

You can quarrel with his execution if you’d like, as I have on occasion, but his overall vision –of solving problems, increasing government productivity, and creating economic opportunity, especially in Virginia’s hard-luck rural regions — is an undeniable winner.

Other elected officials, pay heed. That’s the winning formula.

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.