Bacon's Rebellion

Commonwealth Conservative is all over the political implications of Del. Preston Bryant’s apparent appointment to be secretary of natural resources in the Kaine Administration.

I know it’s fashionable in some conservative circles to dump on Bryant for leading the “Gang of 17.” While I wasn’t crazy about the 2004 tax package, I have always felt Del. Bryant acted in good faith, trying to compromise between higher tax factions and no new tax factions. The session was in overtime, after all.

I have not had occasion to correspond with many Delegates, but I have exchanged some emails with Del. Bryant. He was thoughtful and knowledgeable about some relatively arcane matters I brought to his attention. He was also a real rarity in elected office: a regular newspaper columnist, for the Roanoke Times. Bryant reads and occasionally comments on blogs, another admirable trait, as far as I’m concerned. He’s an all-around stand-up guy.

Natural Resources is not known in state government as a hotbed of innovation or efficiency, so Del. Bryant has a lot of opportunities in both policy and management. I wish him well and hope that his successor in the House will be of similar character. I’m sure Not Larry Sabato will tell us all we need to know about the potential candidates, as he always does so well.

Gov. Mark R. Warner has proposed a $243 million environmental package — the largest single investment in water quality in state history — for the Fiscal 2007-2008 budget. The initiative will, among other objectives, accelerate upgrades to 92 waste water treatment plants in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, helping meet the state’s new, “strictest in the nation” water regulations. (See the Governor’s press release for details.)

There has been a common theme to Warner’s recent budgetary announcements. The bulk of his new spending initiatives — $550 million for R&D in Virginia’s public universities, $290 million to build new, state-of-the-art mental health facilities, and $243 million dedicated to water clean-up — represent one-time expenditures.

Perhaps I’m a trifle over-optimistic here, but my sense is that Warner is being careful not to dump the state’s massive budget surplus into ongoing programs that will inflate the state’s long-term spending commitments. As I’ve argued before, if Warner isn’t willing to give the money back to taxpayers — which, politically, he can’t without admitting that he’d made a mistake raising taxes back in 2004 — the next best use is to apply the surplus funds to one-time expenditures that don’t permanently swell the size of state government. Bravo, Governor, Bravo!

Still, I can’t help but choke on Warner’s rhetoric. “Getting our state finances back on track,” he said, “has allowed us to make significant progress… blah, blah, woof, woof…”

This would have been more accurate: “Increasing taxes back in 2004 gave us a surplus we never anticipated, but now that we’ve got more money than we ever dreamed of, we’re putting it to good use.”

The Winchester Star is reporting (requires registration)that the gubernatorial campaign of Sen. Russ Potts owes $339,125.31. Cash on hand is only $86,971.69.

I was a harsh critic of the Potts campaign, but I take no joy in his indebtedness. I would rather see more third party candidates than less and the financial problems Potts faces have to be discouraging to future third party challengers. It is doubly discouraging when we remember how much support Potts got from Virginia editorial pages and so-called opinion leaders. Few third party candidates can expect that kind of fawning attention.

Sen. Potts only got 2% of the vote despite spending a lot of money (not a lot in comparision to the major party candidates, but a lot nonetheless). I suspect he would have gotten the same number of votes, if not more, if he had run a savvy internet/blog intensive campaign instead of the derivative kind he was suckered into buying.

Maybe that’s the lesson. If you’re going to run a third party campaign, forget the high-priced consultants and don’t count on expensive, “quirky” ads to help you catch fire with the voters. It’s almost counterintuitive, but we could have more and better third party candidates if they run shoestring campaigns instead of becoming slaves to fundraising.

Virginia’s welfare caseload has declined by more than 50 percent — to 36,000 — since 1995 when welfare reform took hold. Many former recipients still rely upon government largess such as food stamps, Medicaid, child-care subsidies and energy assistance averaging $3,700 per family per year. But they are increasingly self sufficient. Those numbers come from a JLARC study, “Self-Sufficiency Among Social Services Clients in Virginia,” reports Stacy Hawkins Adams with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Virginia ranked No. 1 nationally among states based on the proportion of welfare recipients who entered the workforce in 2004. But the situation is far from perfect: Virginia ranked only 48th nationally for increased earnings for welfare recipients, the study noted.

It would be wonderful if everyone in Virginia could earn enough money to climb above the poverty line and become totally self sufficient. That isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Only 54 percent of those surveyed had high school dipomas or GEDs. The occupational prospects for high school drop-outs will only get worse as occupations in the U.S. economy become more and more knowledge-intensive. But the situation is vastly preferable to what it was before 1995 when some welfare mothers never left a state of welfare dependency.

Hopefully, we’re witnessing the shrinking away of the multi-generational welfare class and, with it, a cultural change among Virginia’s poor that will better equip them to participate in mainstream society.

African-Americans in Virginia may have a different take on the issue of eminent domain than the good-government and social-engineering types who have wielded the power over the past 50 years in the name of the “public good.” Interstate highways were built primarily through lower-income neighborhoods, many of them predominantly black. Urban “clearance” projects, too, were concentrated mainly in African-American neighborhoods.

Those projects are almost ancient history now, but ancient history has a way popping up when least expected. In Roanoke, retired dentist Walter Claytor and 17 of his family members recently won a case against the city’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority for, in effect, taking the family’s one-acre lot in the predominantly black Gainsboro neighborhood three decades ago. By holding the threat of eminent domain over the property while never actually condemning it, the Authority rendered the land economically useless.

According to a report in Roanoke.com: “Last month a court-appointed panel determined Claytor and the 17 family members he represents deserve $281,590 as repayment for rent they could have collected during the 20 years the housing authority held the property.”

Joe Waldo, the Claytor family’s attorney, will be one of the speakers addressing the future of eminent domain in Virginia, in the Public Private Partnership Forum later this week. Anyone interested in the protection of property rights, especially those of the poor and powerless, should attend. For the latest update on the conference agenda click here.

House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, has unveiled a comprehensive program to address Virginia’s run-away Medicaid budget while preserving the quality of care for the poor and indigent. Said Howell in a prepared statement issued this afternoon:

The current Medicaid system is an impediment to better health for Virginians. It has suffered from the inertia of maintaining the status quo. Now, it faces fiscal instability in the short term and – if not remedied – a potential reduction in access to quality care over the long run. Therefore, we want to reform Medicaid and make it a program that offers better health outcomes at lower costs for the neediest Virginians.

Highlights include:

• Enroll Medicaid recipients into Health Savings Accounts, with the goal of instilling a sense of “personal responsibility” among Medicaid recipients.
• Expand disease management programs
• Encourage the use of electronic medical records and benefit transfers
• Establish small business insurance pools
• Provide tax credits for long-term care insurance

For details, see the House press release here and accompanying handout here.

I’ll be interested to see what others say, but at first blush this looks very promising. As Del. Phil Hamilton says, “The positive reforms we are introducing today are not the cuts on services and participation levels that have been the hallmark of changes to Medicaid in other states. Instead, after a comprehensive review of how state government supplies needed health care, we realized we must restore integrity – on an individual, systemic, and fiscal level – to this program. “

Sidney Gunst, the developer of the Innsbrook office park, is probably the best-known developer in the Richmond region. Innsbrook encompasses 850 acres, 100 buildings and seven million square feet of commercial office space; 25,000 people work there. Financially, it was a tremendous success. But Gunst says that if he knew then what he knows now, he would have done things very differently. (See my latest column, “The Gunst Guide to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” in Bacon’s Rebellion.)

The problem is that Henrico County’s zoning code, like that of most other counties, mandates low densities and the separation of land uses. The resultant scattered, disconnected, low-density development is very expensive to serve with roads and other infrastructure, Gunst says. If he had to do Innsbrook over, he says, it would have a more balanced mix of housing, stores and offices. He would have built a definable town center. And, in places, he would have built at greater density.

Gunst’s critique is nearly identical to that of the “smart growth” advocates. But his proposed remedies are very different. Rather than giving more authority to local government — such as adequate public facilities ordinances — he says we need to create more flexibility for developers. Builders should be allowed to create a wider range of real estate product, including higher-density projects that make more efficient use of infrastructure.

One thing that Gunst and the Smart Growth advocates agree on: Most county zoning codes need to be re-written from scratch. If Tim Kaine wants to address the fundamental, underlying causes of traffic congestion and strained infrastructure in Virginia, that’s where he needs to start.

In today’s Bacon’s Rebellion, Doug Koelemay contributes his insights to Gov. Mark R. Warner’s plan to pump $550 million into state university R&D programs. As a follow-up, he suggests creating a “Governor’s Technology Opportunity Fund” to help recruit R&D facilities. There’s more at stake than most people realize, Koelemay contend:

Consider, for example, the tug-of-war now growing over the future of federal R&D agencies — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Army Research Office — now located in Northern Virginia, specifically in Arlington County. While its recommendations about Master Jet Base, Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach have gotten a lot of attention, the Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) also recommended moving 20,000 jobs out of Arlington County. Potentially more important than the empty office space that results in Crystal City may be the empty minds if DARPA, now in a building in Ballston that does not meet new security requirements, moves not to another location in Ballston, but to Maryland. What if other federal research agencies followed?

This blog recently addressed Gov.-elect Tim Kaine’s proposal to make pre-K schooling universal. A column by Chris Braunlich, published today in Bacon’s Rebellion, questions the utility of expanding the program from the 18,500 tots who already receive subsidized pre-school to all 78,000 four-year-olds in the state.

Although there seems to be agreement that poor children benefit from pre-K, the same does not apply to middle-class children. Apparently, the pre-K schooling makes up for deficits in the poor munchkins’ home life. The same does not appear to be true of their middle-class counterparts.

If Braunlich is right, Kaine’s proposed $300 million initiative would seem to be a solution in search of a problem — and an unnecessary expansion of an entitlement.

For details read Braunlich’s column, “Does Universal Pre-K Work?”

The December 12, 2005, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion can now be viewed online.

Came back from CA on Friday and didn’t check the news carefully. Saturday, I was at a CHRISTmas party and heard from a local GOP unit chairman he had been contacted by an Allen staffer that Sen. Allen had fixed his position on including homosexual behavior as a protected class of persons in a hate crimes amendment to a crime bill. Today, I find the news in Virginia blogs and at Newsmax (dated Friday). Here is the piece.

Friday, Dec. 9, 2005 9:58 p.m. EST
Sen. Allen Withdraws ‘Hate Crimes’ Support

This article by Jeff Johnson originally appeared at CNS.com

Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen will no longer support “hate crimes” legislation that includes “sexual orientation” as a protected status, even if the proposal is identical to a bill he voted for in 2004. The Virginia senator acknowledged Friday that such legislation could be used by federal courts to extend civil rights protections to homosexuals and to squelch free speech.

“Senator Allen is going to vote against adding ‘sexual orientation’ to federal ‘hate crimes’ laws,” Mike Thomas, Allen’s state director, told Cybercast News Service Friday.

Thomas said Allen has two serious concerns after monitoring how the federal courts have applied similar laws.

“The first is, he feels that those changes to hate crimes laws could have a chilling effect on First Amendment rights,” Thomas said. (Editor’s Note: Click on the comments button below to read the rest of this article.)

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Sen. Allen’s position helps him with his Right Flank during the 2006. But, frankly, I am surprised and pleased to see this movement when the conventional wisdom is to moderate, mush, weaken, pander, pacify and wimp Conservative positions to run for President in 08.

Hooah x times.

Hate crimes are thought crimes. Protected classes of persons are anathema to the Republic. Homosexuals as a class of persons protected from hate crimes (including ‘hate speech’) is a stealth assault on the First Amendment free speech and free exercise of religion against Evangelical Christians.

Two articles in today’s Washington Post highlight upcoming debates on spending priorities at both the state and local level. There is a connection.

Bill Turque surveyed Washington Metro localities in the wake of slowing growth for their golden goose:

Despite signs of a cooling real estate market, most area homeowners will see hefty increases in property assessments when notices go out early next year, leaving them once again with fattening equity but bigger tax bills, officials said.

… officials increasingly are looking at what would happen if the housing market flattens so significantly that it no longer provides enough tax money to underwrite steady growth in spending. Some have instructed their staffs to craft proposed budgets that cap expanded spending.

A cap on spending? The reaction to that will be telling.

At the state level, reporter Maria Glod examines the chances for Governor-elect Tim Kaine to get the funding he seeks for universal pre-kindergarten. Lawmakers say pre-K will compete for funding with transportation and other priorities that constituents say are more pressing.

This might be deal-breaker in light of the possibility that localities will cut spending:

Kaine’s plan will build on an existing state-funded program that serves about 11,300 children.

State officials said 25 localities didn’t seek funds for the program this year, largely because there was no space for classes in public schools or local governments didn’t provide required matching funds.

It’ll be tough to cut spending, or even keep it flat, if a massive new program is imposed. Of course, since Georgia and Oklahoma have pre-K, expect to see the “shame on Virginia” card played.

Riffing off an essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine, “Conservative Blogs Are More Effective,” Virginia Blogger Lowell Feld (“Raising Kaine“) has analyzed the impact of the “conservative” and “liberal” wings of the blogosphere in Virginia’s elections. His conclusion: The conservative blogs are more numerous, more active and better organized. But the Democratic blogs in Virginia more than held their own through the power of their ideas.

Feld’s thoughts stirred some observations on the part of Norm Leahy (“One Man’s Trash“): The Kaine campaign, he notes, reached out to the blogging community more aggressively than the Kilgore campaign did. Wrote Leahy: “While there were more, and more active, GOP blogs, the Kilgore campaign had no strategy that I can tell for including, networking or otherwise engaging the people willing to blog on their behalf.”

Both posts are worth reading. I would add only one note. The NYT Sunday Magazine piece attributed the power of the conservative blogs to their ability to plug into the “right-wing media infrastructure,” primarily talk radio. No such right-wing media infrastructure exists in Virginia as it relates to state-local issues. There are conservative talk shows — the Mac Watson show on WRVA in Richmond is the one I’m familiar with — but none are statewide in reach. There is nothing analogous to Rush Limbaugh. Furthermore, based on the limited airtime that I’ve heard, Watson doesn’t draw his material from blogs.

WRVA is counter-balanced here in Richmond by the local National Public Radio station, which works in some local content, including weekly interviews with Times-Dispatch reporter Jeff Schapiro. The content, from my limited observation, is less overtly opinionated. The only other radio station that airs local political content is the local “Indy” radio station, WRIR, which is inclined to the liberal/progressive viewpoint. Momentarily taking leave of their senses, the producers invited me for an interview. But the market share for that station is tiny. I have not yet encountered one person who heard that interview.

Local talk-radio appears to be animated in Northern Virginia — conservative commentator Linda Chavez interviewed me once, but I know nothing more than the fact that she hosts a talk show. Are there other talk-radio shows around the state that address state-local issues? Are they liberal or conservative? Are they plugged into the blogs? Can my fellow bloggers enlighten me?

Overall, it seems safe to conclude that the “conservative media infrastructure” that exists nationally has no counterpart for exploring state/local issues in Virginia. Thus, the critical transmission belt for migrating ideas from the blogosphere to the public consciousness is still missing. Virginia’s blogs remain on the periphery of public opinion, though, given the incredible progress we’ve made in 2005, that may well change.

The story was buried on page B-4 of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, but don’t underestimate its significance. Gov. Mark R. Warner has proposed investing $27 million to expand the modeling & simulation industry that has sprung up in Suffolk and environs. The money would come from the $550 million research fund, preivously discussed on this blog, that the governor wants to set up.

Modeling & Simulation entails the use of supercomputers to run highly complex scenarios. The technology has been pioneered by the military, which uses it to run war games, but it is spilling over into health care, transportation and other private-sector arenas. Hampton Roads is emerging as a national center of M&S expertise, with the U.S. Joint Forces Command, defense contractors and local universities all getting into the act. Regional planners estimate the industry employs about 4,000 people in Hampton Roads.

Warner would stimulate the growth of this sector in two ways: (1) by providing funds to support more local university R&D, and (2) enabling the extension of Lambda Rail, a super-fast Internet connection that allows supercomputers in different locations to work together. (Secretary of Technology Eugene Huang has told me that he regards Lambda Rail as one of the most important, though unsung, accomplishments of the Warner administration.)

There is one more thing that the state can do: Focus its industrial recruitment activities on the Modeling & Simulation industry. In other words, position Hampton Roads as a leader in the M&S field and make the case that every business who wants a piece of M&S action (that’s “M&S”, not “S&M”) has to maintain a presence there. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership may be doing this already, but if it is, it hasn’t been reported. If it isn’t, it needs to begin right away.

In the highly competitive economic development arena, the VEDP can go after two kinds of companies: (1) those it entices with financial incentives, which benefit primarily the targeted company, or (2) those who are drawn by unique assets possessed by the community, be they a critical mass of employees with special skills; the presence of vendors, suppliers and potential partners with unique capabilities; or the existence of specialized infrastructure like Lambda Rail.

It makes sense, I would argue, to invest scarce state resources in building capabilities, as illustrated by the Modeling & Simulation sector, that will reside in the community even if a particular targeted business, for whatever reason, packs up and leaves.

The Kaine administration will be required to submit an economic development strategic plan within a year of assuming office. Let us hope that the new plan builds on the cluster building initiated by the Warner administration.

Another “nationwide search,” another applicant right under their nose. When will state and local governments stop this expensive charade?