Bacon's Rebellion

How many people live in your city? It’s a simple question, and a lot rides on the answer. Federal and state funding formulas allocate money, in part, on the basis of a locality’s population. Businesses choose where to invest and expand based on market demographics. So, you can see why the City of Charlottesville takes such a keen interest in how many people live there.

According to an article in Charlottesville’s Daily Progress, the U.S. Census estimated the city’s population in 2001 to be 45,049, a jump of nearly 5,000 from the previous year. Then it adjusted the 2001 estimate back down to 39,300.

This April, reports the Daily Progress, the Census “released its 2004 population estimates, reporting that Charlottesville had lost 3,494 residents since 2000 for a total population of 36,605. This month, though, the bureau accepted the city’s challenge to the figures, agreeing the estimate should have been 40,745.”

By tracking the number of new houses built, car registrations and enrollment increases at the University of Virginia, city officials persuaded Census that the population had grown, not contracted. “It’s important for our prestige,” said Mayor David Brown. “We are a dynamic, exciting community where people want to be.”

Virginia’s older cities are making a come-back. Tremendous re-development is taking place. People are moving back. It’s vital that the numbers reflect this positive trend. Based on the Charlottesville experience, city officials shouldn’t count on Census to get the numbers right.

The Senate’s START Committee, a large group of senators and citizens charged with writing a transportation bill for 2006, met yesterday with far less fanfare than its first meeting. In the presentations, little new ground got plowed. The next meeting promises to be more interesting, as the group will start its own discussions, working with a professional facilitator.

But when I went to the Senate Finance Committee website for all the documents, I found a diamond in the sand, something that had not been discussed in the meeting. The list included a 9-page letter from Phil Shucet, the former Transportation Commissioner who has instantly become one of the leaders in this effort now that he is out of state government and able to speak frankly. You can find the letter on that list under “Shucet Letter” or by clicking here.

Shucet’s suggestions range from outsourcing more maintenance to demand management techniques to, yes, building more roads — and he seems to be leaning toward the tolling proposal of former Governor Baliles as the main source of funds for construction.

You too can write your own plan for this group to consider, but you have to hurry. The staff has issued a general call for proposals, idea, discussions, and has set up a special email address, [email protected] to receive them. They want them by Halloween. They ask for a one-page summary and a limit of four pages on discussion. Shucet’s is longer, but worth every page.

“Va. scores above average on national report card,” reads the headline in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Virginia’s fourth-and eight-graders are doing slightly better in math and reading than their peers around the country,” continues the text of the story.

But dig into the numbers in “the Nation’s Report Card” published by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and there is some encouraging news on the racial disparity front.

The NAEP reports a composite figure reflecting the percentage of students in each state whose scores are classified as “below basic,” “basic, ” “proficient” and “advanced.” The average reading scores for fourth graders is 226 in Virginia vs. 217 nationally, suggesting that Virginia overall is significantly above the national average. The math score for 4th graders is 240 for Virginia vs. 237 nationally, suggesting that we’re modestly above average. The 8th grade differentials are comparable.

But there are some interesting trends within the broader numbers. Minorities in Virginia — African-Americans and Hispanics — outperform their peers nationally by a wider margin than whites do. For example:

4th Grade Reading Score
Performance Gap Compared to Peers in Other States

Whites……….. +5
Blacks………… +9
Hispanics…… +9

(The performance gaps are comparable for the most part for math and 8th grade scores. I won’t bore you with the details. Look them up here.)

Another way of looking at the performances differences is to compare the size of the racial gap in performance in Virginia and the United States.

4th Grade Reading Score
Racial Gaps Nationally vs. Virginia

Blacks

Nationally……….. 29 points below whites
Virginia…………… 26 points below whites

Hispanics

Nationally………. 27 points below whites
Virginia…………… 15 points below whites

The disparity in scores between whites and blacks is modestly smaller in Virginia than in the rest of the country, and startlingly smaller between whites and Hispanics.

Perhaps the most appropriate measure of comparison for Virginia, however, is not with other American states but with foreign countries. There’s a global marketplace for employees with education and skills. Unfortunately, the performance gap may well be the other way around — how far behind the Poles and South Koreans are we? That’s where our attention really needs to be.

Let’s see now…. The state Department of Education awarded Pearson Educational Measurement a six-year, $139.9 million contract to develop, score and report Virginia’s Standard of Learning tests — even though a competing proposal by Harcourt Assessments, Inc., would have cost $35 million less. And it turns out that Pearson made scoring errors that resulted in 60 students being told they’d flunked tests they’d actually passed — and that firm had been involved in a legal settlement in Minnesota back in 2000 for scoring errors that had flunked 8,000 students.

There may have been legitimate reasons for hiring Pearson despite these revelations, but the leadership of the House of Delegates is right to want to know what those reasons were. They are understandably concerned after finding out from newspaper reports that the soon-to-retire state school superintendent Jo Lynne DeMary had served on what the House leadership described as an unpaid “advisory council” for Pearson and she characterized as an annual “think tank” session for state and local school officials.

There may be a perfectly legitimate explanation for giving the contract to Pearson. But the House is right to look into the matter. That $35 million differential is a lot of money — even in a budget as inflated as Virginia’s. As House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, put the sum in perspective yesterday, the $5.8 million a year extra paid to Pearson would translate into 150 more teachers across the state.

Read the Richmond Times-Dispatch story here.

The three gubernatorial candidates addressed about 400 people at a Richmond forum sponsored by AARP Virginia Monday and, not surprisingly, told the crowd why old people should vote for them.

Mr. Russ “Blunt Talk” Potts, 66, noted that he was the only candidate who was a member of the American Association of Retired People and “the only guy with gray hair running in this race.” Wow, that’s a great way to get someone to identify with your vision for Virginia — emphasize your similarity in age. Let’s see. I’m 52. Tim Kaine is five years younger, Jerry Kilgore is eight years younger, and Russ Potts is 12 years older than me. I guess that means I should vote for Kaine. And I would, oh, yes, I would, if it weren’t for the fact that…

Kaine’s idea of appealing to old people is to shovel money at them. He would seek additional money from the 2006 state budget if rising heat bills begin to hurt low-income seniors, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. He said he’d spend more money on Meals for Wheels, an adult day care service for the handicapped that has a long waiting list. And he bragged about the Warner administration’s track record of boosting the pay of caregivers and Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Kilgore matched Kaine pander for pander. He, too, would seek to help old folks hurt by rising heating costs, increase funding for rural medical clinics, and give tax incentives for the purchase of long-term care insurance.

If I were running for governor, here’s what I would tell old people: You old people have more disposable income, more assets and more free time than your children and grandchildren. Sure, some of you are poor, and I’ll make sure that there’s a social safety net to guarantee that your basic needs are taken care of. But I’m not treating you as a privileged class deserving of special consideration based on your age. What I will do is stop sticking it to your children and grand-children by promising you stuff and taxing them to pay for it!

The Kaine campaign is touting a new Survey USA poll showing Tim Kaine with a 47 percent-to-45 percent lead over Jerry Kilgore in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign.

The Kaine camp is spinning the poll this way:

• Since the first Survey USA poll in this race in March, Tim Kaine has gained 11 points, while Jerry Kilgore has lost one.
• Because this poll was taken just this past weekend, we know that Jerry Kilgore’s dishonest negative ads are backfiring on him.
• Virginia’s moderate and independent voters overwhelmingly favor Tim Kaine. Tim leads 63 percent to 29 percent among moderates and 50 percent to 38 percent among independents.

The October 17, 2005, edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine is now online.

The Warner administration has delivered some very tough — but very necessary — news to employees of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. As Peter Bacque put it in this morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Despite official assurances that their jobs will be secure through Virginia’s information-technology outsourcing, state government IT employees cannot expect to remain in their jobs in retirement, officials now say.

“The whole concept of lifetime employment doesn’t exist anymore,” said Secretary of Technology Eugene J. Huang.

Don’t be surprised if a lot of people want to shoot the messenger. But Huang is only saying what needs to be said. No one in the private sector enjoys lifetime employment. Employees’ only security comes from their ability to stay employable by embracing the skills required by a fast-evolving economy.

State employees are insulated from direct competition in the sense that state employees from North Carolina or Texas aren’t going to take away their jobs. But Virginia companies compete in a global economy, and their social overhead includes the cost in taxation of supporting state government. As the Warner administration seems to understand, the state cannot continue doing Business as Usual. (If only the Warnerites would apply insights gleaned from the reforming government processes to fundamentally restructuring the way the state approaches education, transportation and health care!)

The Commonwealth is negotiating with IBM and Northrop Grumman to privatize significant chunks of its computer and electronic-communications infrastructure. If a deal is struck, it could be, according to Bacque, “the farthest-reaching such outsourcing among U.S. state governments.” More than 2,000 state employees could see their jobs directly affected.

VITA has promised no mass layoffs, but a lifetime sinecure in state government is not in the cards. “My generation has . . . been told that lifetime employment is not a given,” said Huang, who is 29. “Over the course of one’s lifetime, one can expect upwards of six or seven different jobs.”

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if Virginia’s other cabinet secretaries were delivering the same message?

Sometimes it’s hard to maintain a focus on my primary interest — creating more prosperous, liveable communities in a globally competitive economy — when there are so many kumquats out there stirring up controversy over the most ridiculous cultural issues. If it’s not right-wing zealots trying to ban Harry Potter from school libraries on the grounds that the popular series promotes sorcery and witchcraft, it’s left-wing zealots trying to expunge the slightest taint of religion, no matter how deeply embedded it is in our cultural heritage, from the public sphere.

Here’s latest idiocy: Dennis Brown, the band director of the C.D. Hylton High School in Prince William County, has pulled “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” from the band’s repertoire for fear of sparking a controversy — all because a parent who’d seen the band perform the song wrote a letter in the Potomac News wondering “how a song about the devil could be played at school events, because of the separation of church and state,” according to the Washington Post.

Said Hylton: “I was just being protective of my students. I didn’t want any negative publicity for C.D. Hylton High School.” Sadly for Hylton, his decision sparked a highly critical backlash among parents, alumni and local residents.

I take Hylton at his word that he just wanted to spare the school negative publicity. But, my gosh, negative publicity over what? A violation of the First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”?

Liberals point out (rightly, I believe) that the Second Amendement protecting the right to bear arms should be interpreted in the institutional context of the late 18th century when the citizenry was organized in militias. If only liberals would interpret the First Amendment in the institutional context of the late 18th century, when the Anglican Church had, during colonial rule, been established as an arm of royal English authority. Rather, they see the First Amendment as mandating the “separation of church and state,” and, in recent years, justifying the extirpation of any cultural symbol reminiscent of Christian culture from public schools and public property.

In the name of multi-culturalism and tolerance, of course, it’s OK for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other religious minorities to celebrate their cultural heritage, even when it’s imbued with religious symbolism. But it’s not OK for members of the religious majority, whose ancestors created the first society on the face of the earth to bequeath constitutional protections to religious minorities, to express any sign of their religious heritage.

Now the madness has spread to questioning the mere expression of any symbol that might be remotely construed as religious. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” isn’t talking about God, or Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, but “the devil.” And we’re not talking about Satan, or Lucifer or Beelzebub here. No, we’re talking about an imaginary, Faustian demon who plays the fiddle in a story told as a folk tale.

But that’s not the end of it. No one was actually singing the song. This was a band, not the glee club! The band was playing the music to the Charlie Daniels song, not singing the words! But the mere song title, “The Devil Goes Down to Georgia,” apparently is so dangerous that it might send the C.D. Hylton High School down the slippery slope toward crazed, Jerry Falwell wannabes hikjacking the county school board and indoctrinating impressionable young students about sexual abstinence, the right to life and the need to seek salvation in Jesus. (Addendum: Upon reading the original letter, I see that the author was not making this slippery slope argument.)

I, as long-time readers of this blog know, am an atheist-agnostic with strong convictions. I do not attend church. But neither do I live in mortal dread of the dominant religion. What I do see is a secular minority imposing its secular values, built upon secular metaphysics regarding the nature of good, evil and morality, upon a religious majority — not through the exercise of reason but through the power of the courts. I will have no part of it.

You know the gubernatorial campaign is heating up when Adolf Hitler gets dragged into it. In today’s development, two prominent Jewish leaders have called upon Jerry Kilgore to pull his pro-death-penalty ad that mentions Hitler — and to apologize. The Jewish leaders were Richmond lawyer Tommy Baer, a former president of B’Nail Brith International, and Rabbi Jack Moline of Alexandria, a former president of the Washington Board of Rabbis.

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the two men directed their criticism at Stanley Rosenbluth (himself Jewish), who had appeared in the Kilgore ad. Rosenbluth, whose son and daughter-in-law had been murdered, chastised Tim Kaine for his tangential involvement in saving the couple’s killer from execution. As paraphrased by reporter Tyler Whitley, Baer and Moline said that Rosenbluth, “by invoking the name of Hitler, had trivialized the Holocaust and insulted its victims.” Said Whitley: “The two used such terms as blasphemous, sacrilegious, callous and cynical to describe the ad.”

My, my, my. I would characterize such scathing criticism as fully justified for someone who, to pick a hypothetical example, not that it would ever happen, compared President George Bush to Adolf Hitler.

But Rosebluth didn’t compare Tim Kaine to Adolf Hitler. He referred to Kaine’s own words in an interview with Times-Dispatch reporters some time ago, in which Kaine was asked whether, given his faith-based opposition to the death penalty, he would have executed Hitler, Josef Stalin or Idi Amin. The T-D’s summary of his response:

While he said they deserve the death penalty, he said, “God grants life, and God should take it away. … They deserve the death penalty. I just — you know, I look at the world. Most nations have decided not to have a death penalty. And — many are very safe. I don’t think — I don’t think it’s needed to be safe.”

Draw your own conclusion as to whether Kaine would have pulled the switch on ol’ Adolf. To me, it doesn’t sound like he would have. And decide for yourself if Rosenbluth was out of line by saying, “Tim Kaine says that Adolf Hitler doesn’t qualify for the death penalty.”

You can agree or disagree, given the vagueness of Kaine’s remark, but Baer and Moline are just flat-out wrong. Neither Kilgore nor Rosenbluth “invoked” Hitler’s name gratuitously. They were addressing Tim Kaine’s response to a hypothetical question. I find nothing “blasphemous,” “sacrilegious,” “callous” or “cynical” about Rosenbluth’s remarks, or Kilgore’s decision to run the ad.

As Whitley wryly observed in his story, “Baer and Moline said they had not read the full transcript of Kaine’s remarks about the death penalty.” Looks to me like they jumped the gun. What I find “cynical” is the way Baer and Moline “invoked” the sanctity of the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jews to make a partisan attack on Jerry Kilgore.

Nothing gets peoples’ juices flowing like an empassioned debate over the death penalty. I happen to agree with Jerry Kilgore’s stance on the issue — I support the death penalty — and I think he’s gotten the better of Tim Kaine in the latest round of television ads, press releases and newspaper articles. I’m grimly fascinated by the spectacle of Tim Kaine wriggling like a worm on a hook as he insists that, though he opposes the death penalty, he’ll uphold the law. Score a political point for Kilgore. He’s keeping Kaine on the defensive.

But I remain unmoved. The fact is, the chance of Virginia repealing the death penalty in the next four years is about zero. It ain’t gonna happen. No one has any intention of even trying to make it happen. Therefore, the entire debate is revolving around an issue that, for all intents and purposes, is largely theoretical.

Here’s what will happen: The state Senate will present a proposal to raise taxes for transportation — as much as $2 billion a year, from the whispers I’ve heard. The General Assembly will be greeted with a gusher of revenues to dispose of. Funding for schools, transportation, higher ed, economic development, mental health, Medicaid — programs that will have a real impact on peoples’ lives — are matters that a new governor will have to grapple with.

Let’s hear less about capital punishment and more about budgetary priorities.

On the subject of whether or not Jerry Kilgore ever lobbied for an increase in the Buchanan County gas tax, Frank Kilgore (no relation), the former deputy county attorney who hired Jerry, says the following:

Two media sources asked me for a summary of exactly what Jerry Kilgore’s role was as lobbyist for the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors when he was in private practice at Richmond. Here it is:

Jerry helped Buchanan County on the Coalfields Expressway project, did an able job, charged the County a remarkably small fee for his work, advised me the gas severance tax bill would not fly and that he would not waste the County’s funds pursuing it, I pursued it for my client, the bill died as predicted and that is the end of the story.

How can I prove I was involved at all? Answer: The Secretary of Commonwealth lists me as the supervisor of the County’s lobbyists for the time in question. What is my definition of “lobbying”? Answer: Requesting a legislator or legislative body to vote for a particular bill pending before them.

My challenge to anyone who claims Jerry Kilgore lobbied for a 66% increase in natural gas taxes: If anyone can authentically document that Jerry Kilgore appeared before any legislative body, committee or sub-committee in behalf of this bill, or produce a true copy of any letter, email or other written thing from Jerry to any individual legislator asking them to support the bill I will donate $1000.00 to the Kaine campaign. My offer expires November 1, 2005. Down here in the mountains we call this challenge “put up or shut up time”.

An interesting glimpse of Jerry Kilgore can be read between the lines. Kilgore was employed as a lobbyist in Richmond — he derived his income from generating billable hours. Yet he turned down the work from Buchanan County because he thought it was a waste of time. A lot of people might have given the same advice but taken the work anyway. By Frank Kilgore’s account, Jerry Kilgore acted in an honorable way. It is ironic that the Kaine campaign used this particular episode to inaccurately tar Kilgore.

Jerry Kilgore increasingly strikes me as a decent and honorable man. I still worry, though, how strong he would be as a leader. I don’t look at this election through a partisan lens. I want to know who would do a better job of standing up to Senate Finance Chair John “Tax-and-Build” Chichester on the issue of raising some $2 billion a year in transportation taxes in the 2006 session — Jerry Kilgore or Tim Kaine? Who’s got the stronger backbone? I don’t know.

Today’s Daily Press has an article on a transportation forum held Wednesday in Hampton, sponsored by three local Chambers of Commerce. Those of you in the Hampton Roads region with Cox Cable will have numerous chances to see the discussion on its public access channels. The heart of the show (after some rousing warm up by yours truly and a very fired up Phil Shucet) was the legislative panel: Senate Finance Chair John Chichester, Senate Transportation Chair Marty Williams, House Transportation Chair Leo Wardrup and House Transportation member Mayme BaCote, with Secretary Pierce Homer in the middle.

What was argued yesterday will be argued over and over again as this next General Assembly approaches. Should we use general funds for transportation? Should we grant private concessions on potentially profitable roads and bridges? Can the Hampton Roads region agree on priorities and will a regional approach work after that was rejected so soundly in 2002? Has VDOT improved sufficiently or at all?

The key moments to my ear:

John Chichester expressing his concern over the interstate tolling proposal from former Governor Baliles: “People who pay the toll may not see the benefits during their entire working lives.”

Chichester admitting one difference from 2004: There is nothing comparable to the threat to the AAA bond rating looming out there.

Leo Wardrup: “We have to view the word toll as as not a four-letter word” and pointing out (I didn’t know this) that the original Eisenhower interstate proposal was based on tolls.

Marty Williams: Keying off the stock phrase we can’t tax our way out of this with his own version: “We can’t toll ourselves out of this.”

Wardrup: Taking credit for the steps taken in 2005, which totaled $850 million when you include revenue growth already in the pipeline and some one-time expenditures. He said they should be able to propose “at least that much this year again, actually for both of the next two years.” (And he may be right, especially if they count normal revenue growth and the extra federal money.)

Chichester: Still opposed to using general funds, except for specific investments, such as (his example) the “Heartlands Corridor” project to increase rail capacity by raising overpasses to handle double-stacked trains.

Wardup: Who has asked his ongoing subcommittee to look at changes in the formula. “The formula is not the issue. I’m convinced of that now.”

Wardrup: Hinting that his opposition to tax increases does not necessarily apply to local taxing authority on transportation (he didn’t say with or without a referendum.)

Pierce Homer: None of this matters until we deal with the underlying fiscal problem created by the maintenance costs, growing so fast they are now draining existing construction funds.

All the Democrats who have been screaming “scurrilous” and “pathetic” over the cartoon cutout of Kaine will I’m sure join in condemning Leslie Byrne’s new ad, which I first saw this morning. I couldn’t find a link. It is posted at www.lesliebyrne.org. It portrays Bill Bolling as a bobblehead doll, attacks him as a friend of the insurance industry and ties him to the legal problems of his former employer.

This punch was telegraphed well in advance and takes advantage of a well established truth of logic — you cannot prove a negative. The issue floated out in the primary but Bill’s opponent then never pressed it home (to his credit). Byrne trotted it out front and center at the Virginia Chamber of Commerce debate late last month. Byrne has zero evidence that Bill Bolling played any role or profited in any way from the problems with his employer, The Reciprocal Group, but she puts the burden on him to play the Nixon role and assert over and over “I am not a crook.” Bolling has quite a bit of evidence that he was not part of the problem at the firm and he was never a target of the investigation, let alone charged, but expect four weeks of her demanding more evidence, more records…demanding proof of a negative.

Creigh Deeds and Bob McDonnell have opened with some nice ads touting their experience, families, backgrounds, endorsements — ads that make you like them. At some point they are likely to take off the gloves. Kilgore and Kaine are probably keeping some positive ads in the mix, if not the 51 percent Sabato demanded. Leslie starts nasty and forces Bill to choose his opening card carefully. It is the political equivalent of leading trumps.

Yesterday, I declared that Tim Kaine had lost my vote. I totally disapproved of his proposal for giving local governments power to block real estate development projects on the grounds that they would overwhelm local transportation networks. (See reasons here.) I should have known not to be so melodramatic.

Today, my vote is back in play. Why? Because I’ve been digging into Jerry Kilgore’s endorsement of the proposed $3 billion Coalfield Expressway. I’ve always maintained that the project was a colossally bad idea. Now comes the revelation — it’s a revelation to me, if not to anyone else — that Kilgore has helped engineering/construction firm Kellogg Brown and Root win more than $60 million in engineering and design fees for the project…. while KBR has contributed $25,000 to Kilgore’s campaign.

I’m not saying that KBR has “bought” Jerry Kilgore. I don’t think he can be “bought.” But Kilgore’s lobbying relationship and continued associations with KBR appear to have colored his objectivity and led him to pursue a really bad idea against the best interests of Virginia and even Southwest Virginia. Sorry, but that’s no way to devise transportation policy. For details, see my blog entry over on The Road to Ruin.