Bacon's Rebellion

The job security of local government managers is notoriously subject to the whims of elected boards and councils. Firings occur fairly regularly for poor performance, alleged malfeasance, or just plain old “personality conflicts.” Luckily, these local government managers usually land on their feet somewhere else.

Here’s a Roanoke Times story of redemption for one fired local official.

This apparently new Roanoke.com column is just getting around to noticing Barnie Day and Becky Dale‘s Notes from the Sausage Factory, available, of course, at Bacon’s Rebellion. College courses are apparently using the book, although Professor Sabato was not mentioned.

Michael Hardy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch is reporting that Governor-elect Tim Kaine will name Del. Viola Baskerville as Secretary of Administration. Del. Baskerville, a member of Kaine’s transition team, brings a unique skill set the cabinet: three term delegate, city council member, lawyer, mediation and conflict resolution specialist, and, of course, William and Mary graduate.

What she also brings that one seldom sees in a cabinet appointment is a long record of advocacy for something she will now have the opportunity to implement. Ms. Baskerville has been a critic of Virginia’s record on providing contracting opportunities to small, women, and minority-owned businesses. She has called for set-asides. As Secretary of Administration, she will control the Department of General Services and, with it, the state’s procurement program.

It will be interesting to see what she can do with her issue from the “inside.”

Rather than implement a family neutral rule on occupancy limits in residential housing, the Washington Post reports today that the City of Manassas has implemented an ordinance that sets a new government definition of family that says a nephew is not a family member. The new rule would allow a mother and father and 16 children to live in a 5 bedroom house, but prohibits a mother, father, two sons, a nephew, a roomer and his girlfriend from occupying the same residence. And, the ordinance is enforced primarily based on complaints. Surprise… most complaints have been against Latinos, who among other things come from a culture in which extended families often live together.

You can understand why the woman and her husband featured in the story (both now citizens who are immigrants) might be confused about why their “family” can’t live together but another “family” can (even if that family is significantly larger).

“Considering, though, that every house on her block more or less resembles hers, and considering that she has only seven people living in a five-bedroom house, she was suspicious about why she was singled out. As far as she knew, she and her husband were just doing what any normal family would do to make it.”

If crowding or multiple cars are the problems they can be addressed by neutral rules that apply equally to all.

The effect of the ordinance on this hard working immigrant family is to require them to sell their $270,000 house (mortgage $3500) and become renters.

Here’s how the city official explains the change in the ordinance:

Then Brian Smith, chief building official, stood up to explain the new concept in town: consanguinity.

Under the city’s old, broad definition of family, just about any group of relatives, however distantly related, was allowed to share a single-family house, along with one unrelated person.

The problem with that, Smith explained, was that when inspectors responded to a complaint, they often found houses full of aunts, uncles, cousins and extended relatives but no violations, because the total number was below the occupancy limit.

“We were stymied by families who met the existing definition,” Smith said. And so the city changed the rules to break up more households.

If homeowners don’t exceed the occupancy limit in their residence, why is the City interested in breaking up their household? If the occupancy limits were too high, why weren’t they lowered? If this isn’t a safety issue, what is the issue? Demand on services? Oh, I get it, an aunt or a nephew demands more services than a child or a parent?

Rules that are not neutral; disparate enforcement against Latinos; perhaps the City official should have said “homogeneity” instead of “consanguinity”?

After the uplifting stories of nationally certified teachers in Bristol, Michael Hardy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the Virginia Education Association’s 2006 legislative agenda. The VEA basically just wants more money for teachers–bring salaries up to the national average and improve retirement benefits. Oh, and raise the speed limit for school buses, too.

Now I happen to believe teachers should be paid more, but in tandem with paring of bloated school bureaucracies and more attention to “pay for performance,” like the bonuses offered to nationally certified teachers. The VEA has nothing on those issues, issues that animate a not insignificant number of Virginians. They reinterate their opposition to voucher programs, another area that many believe might end up actually improving public schools.

To their credit, the VEA has their website poll on the subject of national certification and indicate that they helped preserve the incentive pay for those teachers obtaining national certification. The VEA, like so many advocacy organizations, “preaches to the choir” too much and refuses to seriously consider opposing ideas. They’d help their members more if they did.

Today’s Bristol Herald Courier has a pair of stories by Brian O’Connor on the national teacher certification program and local teachers who have attained the honor.

Certification is tough–“Each year, less than 30 percent of the first-try teachers earn certification. Just 40 percent pass before the three-year mark.” Tracey Dingus, one of the profiled teachers, “reckons she put more than 800 hours of work into the certification in the past year.”

To get the certificate, Dingus built a portfolio of her students’ work and videotaped herself in front of her class. Then, she took a written examination.

Finally, her portfolio and examination were evaluated by a board of nationally certified teachers.

Locally, teachers who attain certification get an $1875 stipend. The Virginia Department of Education pays a teacher who obtains certification $5000 in the first year and $2500 annually for the next nine years.

Does the extra compensation matter? Virginia has 905 certified teachers. Tennessee, with no extra financial compensation offered to certified teachers, has only 173.

Tip of the hat to Becky Dale for pointing out these stories.

Re: Tribes threaten Jamestown protest

By Allen G. Breed

ASSOCIATED PRESS

December 26, 2005, Washington Times

JAMESTOWN, Va. — American Indian leaders in Virginia are threatening to turn their participation in Jamestown’s 400th anniversary celebration into a protest if they don’t gain federal recognition by 2007.

The main sticking point is casino gambling — something the tribes insist they don’t even want.

“We’re not asking for something that is not ours,” says Stephen Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy tribe. “We’re trying to reclaim that sovereignty that we believe God gave us. And why should man be allowed to take that away from us?”

The latest push for recognition coincides with the Christmas release of the movie “The New World,” a retelling of the story of Jamestown leader Capt. John Smith and Pocahontas, daughter of the great chief Powhatan.

Between 3,000 and 5,000 people belong to the eight state-recognized tribes that have applied for federal recognition through the Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

That tortuous 20-plus-year process requires tribes to submit voluminous historical and genealogical evidence to back claims of legitimacy.

Arguing that those records have been obscured by systematic discrimination in Virginia, the Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi, Eastern Chickahominy, Monacan, Nansemond and Rappahannock are seeking an expedited route to recognition via an act of Congress.

The Mattaponi and Pamunkey tribes, the only Virginia Indians with their own reservations, are not part of the congressional efforts.

Virginia’s two U.S. senators have pushed recognition bills since 2000.

The state’s General Assembly has recognized the tribes on the state level since the 1980s and overwhelmingly passed a resolution backing federal recognition.

The federal effort has stalled, largely because of the efforts of U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican whose district includes Frederick and Loudoun counties and part of Fairfax County and a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Wolf argues that the tribes could have achieved recognition three years ago had they been willing to agree to local boards of supervisors going to jail.

The tribes blame their lack of recognition on Virginia’s 1924 Racial Integrity Act, which made it illegal for whites and nonwhites to marry.

After pushing for passage of that act, Walter Plecker, registrar of the state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, campaigned to prevent the “mongrelization” of the white “master race” by what he called “pseudo-Indians.”

Plecker ordered that the Indians be classified as “colored” on birth and marriage certificates and threatened doctors and midwives with jail for noncompliance.

The result, say the tribes, was a “paper genocide.”

Kenneth Branham, 52, chief of the Monacan tribe of the western Virginia mountains, said his parents were wed in Maryland because they couldn’t be married as Indians at home.

He was one of the first Monacan to graduate from public schools in rural Amherst County because Indians weren’t allowed to attend schools with whites until 1963.

A few miles outside Richmond, Kenneth Adams, 58, sits in the two-room, red-brick Indian school he attended until his senior year of high school.

The chief of the Upper Mattaponi tribe has said that federal recognition means much more to him than slot machines, roulette wheels or blackjack tables.

Mr. Adams said he seeks the same benefits enjoyed by the 562 tribes acknowledged by the Department of the Interior.

They include college scholarship money for the tribe’s young students, housing assistance for its elderly and the right to possess and use eagle feathers in the tribe’s sacred ceremonies.

————————————————————-

My Conservative Congresswoman, Jo Ann Davis, and both Republican Senators are behind this feel good legislation which is racist to the core.

It requires a racial census to determine who is one-eighth Indian from the six tribes.

It provides benefits and privileges based on race. The fact that other enjoy racist, humanity and identity by group rights, doesn’t make right to do it again.

Especially, since Virginia’s Indians have assimilated and become Virginians and Americans since about 1700. If 300 years is not long enough to become fully American, then when, if ever, is it enough.

The tribes today may have wonderful conservative Republican leaders who don’t want casinos. But, this legislation opens the door to future leaders. Moreover, the day the legislation is passed a new soveriegn government exists in counties in Virginia which must be consulted on public policy and law. The day it passes a Virginia Indian can open a tax free liquor, cigarette, you name it store in any county designated as ‘reservation’.

My wife is one-sixteenth Indian. We deserve nothing special based on bloodline.

Craft new legislation that grants recognition without racism.

Godspeed, Cong. Frank Wolf.

In a Peter Bacque update in the Times-Dispatch on the Virginia-CGI software deal, I found two things that struck me as curious.

The state is about to buy $300 million in enterprise software from CGI, the big Canadian firm. CGI has said that by “improving the collection of overdue bills and maximizing federal revenues … it can bring in an extra $500 million for the state in seven years and also save the government an additional $125 million.” Wow! But check the reaction of Tim Bass, state enterprise applications program director:

“We’re skeptical of that,” Bass said. “We do a great job of [cost recovery and collections] already. The numbers they have floated around are in no way, shape or form endorsed by the commonwealth.

“It’s not like we see some huge pot of gold out there,” he said.

Maybe it’s just me, but aren’t unrealistic claims by a vendor a big red flag? Is the state skeptical of anything else?

The second curiousity for me stems from Virginia having been named the “best managed” state in the union earlier this year. According to Bacque’s story, look at what Virginia has to overcome to manage itself:

State agencies currently run more than 150 financial computer systems, over 100 different accounting systems, at least 18 purchasing and supply IT systems, more than 50 computerized personnel systems, and more than 60 administrative IT systems.

This number may be accurate in a technical sense, but I’ve no doubt that it’s closer to one of those “bureaucratic legends” that float around, like Gov. Warner’s claim early in his term that the state buys computers from 30 different vendors (my agency’s IT guy snorted when he heard that one), or the claim that there are 60 different worker training programs in the state (try to access that list).

If Virginia is doing such a great job of cost recovery and collections, plus managing itself so well despite all those different systems, do we really need to throw everything overboard for one CGI solution? Just asking.

Jeff Schapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in a front page, above the fold story, reports that state employees have set a new record for giving to charity this year. Over $4 million dollars went to the Commonwealth of Virginia campaign, including over $500,000 to hurricane relief.

Schapiro doesn’t mention the unsung heroes of this effort–the individual agency coordinators for the campaign. These individuals have the thankless tasks of sending out materials to their fellow employees, encouraging giving, reminding everyone of deadlines, and collecting the donations. The coordinators deserve a lot of credit.

Who is chosen to be the coordinator, both at state agencies and at private companies, is a fascinating peek into the psychology of indidvidual organizations. Some entities choose to slap the job on an already busy administrative staffer, some choose an “up and comer,” and some choose a staff member on the way out. However the choice is made, the coordinators perform a vital function and should be commended.

After all that’s been written about traffic on this blog, I just had the most wonderful experience. There’s Christmas magic in the air.

I drove from Richmond to Manassas–exit 79 to exit 150 on I-95–almost without tapping the brakes today. The return trip was just as good. At times I thought I was dreaming–cars passed in the left lane and slower traffic stayed right. I never saw a cop and don’t think I ever dropped below 65 mph.

Oh, and the family time went well, too, with all the presents opened during halftime of the Redskins big win. It was like the good old days in so many ways.

Wish it could always be Christmas Eve … may everyone enjoy the spirit of the season as I did today.

Since things are slow and I’ve been quiet ….

Paul Goldman I think Paul Goldman running his political consulting business on the “side” while employed by the City of Richmond is/was wrong. I think the Kaine campaign hiring him was a bad decision and that they should admit it was a mistake. That said, I think Goldman’s punishment–suspended for six weeks without pay–was unduly harsh. Apparently, the city wanted to make an example of Goldman, but I think plenty of city employees have been running businesses on the “side” and a less severe punishment would have been enough put everyone on notice. There’s a difference between Goldman and some poor Department of Public Works schlub who hauls brush on the “side.” I would hope the city would offer a disclosure/approval policy and a prohibition from marketing or performing outside work on city time.

Blog the Budget Not many takers on our opportunity to comment on the budget Governor Warner recently submitted. That’s not surprising–it is the holiday season and people are busy. Of course, maybe that’s why so little of the budget has ever been challenged. By the time folks get out of holiday mode, the session has started and the budget goes into committees where the real action takes place more or less out of public view. Meanwhile, high profile abortion, “droopy drawers,” or open container debates are reported breathlessly.

Special Elections I hope bloggers in the districts where special elections are being contested try to get interviews with the candidates. While I don’t think candidates in special elections should be any more forthcoming about their views than the candidates we elected in November, it would be nice to know if they have some familiarity with the just introduced budget and some degree of passion on the major issues of transportation, education, and public safety.

Pit Bulls I love dogs–my mutt “Rags” is one of the joys of my life. However, I will support proposed legislation regulating dangerous dogs such as pit bulls and I believe the woman on trial in Fredericksburg, if it is proven she owned the dogs that killed an elderly woman, should be put in jail for a long time. There are so many choices of dog breeds that to own a breed that is constantly in the news for aggressive behavior is unconscionable.

Since Bacon is grinchy this morning I’ll take another tack — this is what cheers me: the orderly, gentle and reasonable way the McDonnell-Deeds recount was conducted and concluded. Hundreds of Virginians took time out of a holiday week to take part, the vast majority of course for no or little pay (the legal meters were running.) Perhaps things got testy in some of the count rooms, and of course Creigh’s many friends and supporters are disappointed, but even on the partisan blogs it was clear both sides were treating each other and the effort with respect. The winner was the election process itself. Deeds’ concession showed real class (as Brad Marrs’ had the day before when the recount went against him.)

To everyone who took any part at all on either side or in the middle, thank you.

I am confident that if any glaring errors had surfaced, the court would have taken proper notice. No human election process will ever be perfect, whether manual or electronic. Doubt will always linger with a result that razor thin. Sadly, the biggest winner on Nov. 8 is unchanged –none of the above — since most people didn’t vote at all. Those are the people I don’t get. (Inappropriate comment removed by author in spirit of the season.)

Open store doors in the middle of winter, that’s what bugs me!

I walked through Stony Point mall the other night. It was about 30 degrees outside, and a number of retailers kept their doors wide open. I suppose that’s supposed to be more enticing to customers. I find it ridiculous. What a waste — a waste of money, a waste of energy and a small but utterly useless waste of finite resources. Not to mention, a contribution to global warming, too. Just call me Scrooge!

Retailers be forewarned: There is at least one customer who will steer clear of your establishment if you keep your doors wide open. (Of course, I’d probably steer clear anyway. I hate shopping. But I could deal out some real damage if I could persuade my wife to do the same!)

No matter how you slice it, state spending has been growing steadily and aggressively over the past 10 years. The 2001-2002 recession briefly dampened the upward climb, but spending has more than made up for the momentarily lull since then.

Over the past 10 years, the total operating budget for the state rose 80 percent, according to the Legislative Audit and Review Commission’s annual report on state spending. Adjusting for inflation, spending still increased 45 percent. Adjusting again for population growth, it still increased 30 percent.

Read the JLARC report here, or read the “cliff notes” version in Barton Hinkle’s Richmond Times-Dispatch column here.

Click here to read a summary of capital projects.

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