Bacon's Rebellion

Contrary to a rumor that surfaced a few weeks ago, Governor-elect Kaine has decided to fill the Secretary of Technology position. His choice is Aneesh Choprah of Arlington, an information technology executive and campaign contributor. Choprah certainly appears qualified and, according to Jeff Schapiro, said at his introductory press conference, “I view myself in many ways as the technology advisor to all the other secretariats.”

Choprah might do well to look beyond all the fancy hardware and gadgets to check if all the information technology infrastructure is really delivering information. For all the money spent on technology, many Virginia government web sites remain stubbornly impervious to offering user-friendly information. Failing to provide useful information raises or sustains unnecessary costs down the line.

Let me just give one small example of many–I’m considering doing a larger commentary on this for the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine.

The Virginia Employment Commission administers the state unemployment insurance program for employers. Many would-be employers want to factor in the cost of unemployment insurance before they hire someone. I challenge our readers to go to the Virginia Employment Commission website to find the unemployment insurance rate. When someone can’t find the rate online, they are forced to make a phone call to ask. They get a tape, they get frustrated, and they wonder if Virginia really is as “business friendly” as advertised.

Virginia could do a lot more with existing resources in the area of information technnology, but I know that’s not as sexy as big contracts with CGI and Northrop Grumman.

Gov. Warner announced today that the budget he’ll submit tomorrow will include $625 million in general funds for transportation.

$339 million will go to one-time project funding–completing federal earmarked projects, matching new federal earmarks, and Port of Virginia improvements.

$229 million will go to previously approved transportation bonds.

$57 million will go to public transportation capital projects.

Is it ok to use general funds for tranportation? A lot of folks seemed to think that was a terrible idea during the gubernatorial campaign.

In today’s Washington Post, columnist Richard Cohen is critical of Sen. Hillary Clinton and her position on flag burning. He offers this Virginia gem:

The ubiquitous Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia quotemeister — need a quote/do not tarry/call U-Va. and ask for Larry — opines that Clinton is readying herself for a presidential run by adjusting her tint, toning down the blue and heightening the red. He fancies that Virginia Gov. Mark Warner’s incipient presidential campaign is already pushing Clinton to the center. A New York Times editorial reached a similar conclusion. It suggested that she was “pandering” to the 70 percent of Americans who think outlawing flag burning is a dandy idea.

If Gov. Warner is influencing Sen. Clinton, he is a more credible candidate than even I thought. But did Cohen have to lampoon Professor Sabato?

A brief but fascinating passage appeared in a Free Lance-Star story about a legislative luncheon hosted by the Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce. House Speaker William J. Howell “would like a thorough shake-up of the way the Virginia Department of Transportation does business,” reported Chelyen Davis. “While senators are talking about tying road planning to land use planning, Howell said he’d like to see VDOT use different measuring sticks to determine the success of a road project.

“For example, instead of measuring a project by whether it gets done on time and on budget, Howell said, he’d like to measure things like whether that road mitigates congestion“.

Now that’s breakthrough thinking! Imagine if the Kaine administration developed a methodology for ranking all highway projects, all rail projects, all demand-mangement projects (like telecommuting), and all capacity-improvement projects (like synchronized stop lights) by how much traffic mitigation they offered per dollar spent. Imagine if transportation projects were funded on a Return on Investment basis!

Do you think such a list would bear any resemblance to the top-priority projects on the books today? If we could combine this idea with the idea of connecting transportation and land use planning, we could truly revolutionize transportation policy in Virginia. (Note: This post also appears on the Road to Ruin blog.)

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.