Bacon's Rebellion

WaPo does it again. In a Business Section front page story today (“Assessing Fort Belvoir’s Problems and Prospects: Increased Traffic Is No.1 Official Concern”) not a single mention of the real solution: Create a Balanced Community, not another focus of excess jobs like Tysons Corner.

The southeastern part of Fairfax County has needed a community focus for over 40 years. One was called for in the 1950s County Comprehensive Plan. That plan had four. “New towns” were planned for Wiehle (Reston), Centreville (still not a real community) and Burke (Burke Centre is one village of such a place) and southeastern Fairfax. Specifically, the land that became Lorton Reformatory was to be a satellite planned new community.

That never happened and when the prison went away another opportunity was lost. Now there is a chance to rethink the southwestern part of the County and develop a real Balanced Community. METRO is not far away, the federal government owns a lot of land… See “METRO Ills and Base Closings,” 20 June 2005 at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com.

It seems no one wants to talk about the real solution, not the military, not the smart growth types, not the governance practitioners, no one.

Just one caution: Do not assume putting federal facilities in a isolated “campus” will make the workers or their work secure from terrorists.

EMR

House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, and other senior House Republicans have committed to passing legislation in the 2006 General Assembly to restrict the condemnation and private property taking – or eminent domain – powers of governments in Virginia. The protection of private property rights has become a pressing public issue since the U.S. Supreme Court decided last month that seizing private property for the purpose of augmenting the tax base constituted a public benefit.

“Homeowners, entrepreneurs, churches and non-profits across Virginia are rightly dismayed by the potential of having their private property rights severely diminished – or their homes and small businesses confiscated outright,” said Howell at a press conference this afternoon. “Citizens need to know that the majority they’ve elected to lead the House of Delegates not only shares their concerns and opposes the Court’s 5 to 4 ruling, but that we will do what is necessary to ensure that property rights in Virginia are protected from the effects of this misguided change in public policy.

“Here in the birthplace of America’s government,” he continued, “we are committed to ensuring that ‘public use’ shall continue to mean what it says: a clearly understood, strictly limited definition that has served us well since our Nation’s founders approved the Bill of Rights over 225 years ago.”

This summer has been hotter than the hinges of hell, yet here in Richmond I don’t think we’ve had any ozone alert days.

Have all our environmental and pollution prevention efforts paid off? Or are ozone alerts a function of chance atomospheric conditions that just aren’t present this summer?

We now have a firm date for the apocalypse.

Sen. Russ Potts, reported by Hugh Lessig of the Daily Press: “He predicted that Kilgore’s refusal to include him will backfire and that by Oct. 15 it will be a Potts-Kaine race.”

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc. did not dispatch any vehicles near the Woodrow Wilson Bridge last weekend. A lot of other people did not drive there and so the massive tie-up did not occur.

This brings to mind the result of the past education programs: The 1984 Olympics in Los Angles, the 1976 Centennial celebration in the Federal District of Columbia. There are many other examples.

Here is a modest proposal: Instead of spending $40-Billion over the next 10 years condemning rights-of-way, grading and laying asphalt, lets spend $.5-Billion over the next five so citizens will understand the root causes of traffic congestion. A comprehensive program for elementary, high school and adult education/community college programs plus intensive governance practitioner re-training would cost that much but “think of all the money we would save…”

If citizens understood that “we cannot build our way out of congestion” and that it is unrealistic to expect government to provide mobility with dysfunctional human settlement patterns a lot of the problem would go away. If citizens understood the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth, the Big Yard Myth and the Skycar Myth, Virginians would see results of more intelligent location decisions in less time that it would take to start building the roads and rails that only make settlement patterns more dysfunctional and congestion worse.

For a summary of the basis for a comprehensive curriculum see “Interstate Crime,” 28 February 2005, “The Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005 and “From Myth to Law,” 29 November 2004 and the material cited in these three columns at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com.

EMR

Michael Hardy reports in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch that the state’s “rainy-day fund” is rapidly filling up. Writes Hardy: “Exected big deposits into the fund — it’s expected to hold about $670 million now — would push its total to an all-time high, according to a new analysis by the staff of the House budget panel.”

With the budget surplus expected to amount to $500 million or more this year, an extra $300 million to $400 million would be earmarked for the fund. However, the state Constitution caps the fund at 10 percent of the average tax collections of the past three years, or roughly $1 billion. Once the rainy day fund is full, writes Hardy, “the extra dollars could then be used to finance core state services from education to law enforcement.”

Or rebated to taxpayers for the 2004 tax increase that we never needed. With the rainy-day fund nearly full, there’s more reason than ever to roll back taxes.

Although not on par with the citizen board financial and oversight shenanigans of the Bay Bridge Commission, DGIF, and VRS, the Western Virginia Workforce Investment Board is in the news for a membership purge that all but eliminated “diversity” of membership. The chairman reduced the size of the board from 40 to 14 and the resulting group had no minority representation. Naturally, this has caused the predictable sturm and drang.

Fixing the diversity issue will be easy, but there’s a bigger problem:

The little-known board is federally mandated by a 1998 law. The Roanoke-area board receives more than $1 million a year from the federal government to fund local work force training programs. It’s one of 17 work force boards in the state and represents eight localities.

But state officials believe the boards are not as effective as they could be.

That’s an understatement. Does anyone have any experience with these boards in their communities? Can anyone point to something tangible they’ve done to help dislocated workers get real jobs?

Regional transportation tax referendums are a big issue… At first, I really didn’t like the Kilgore idea, but have changed my mind.

Commonwealth Watch, Poli Amatuer, has posted a good analysis of the debates and the issue of referendums…Commonwealth Watch

The Blue Dog agrees: Republican Kilgore is right. Democrat Kaine is wrong not to trust the people. And Independent Potts is living in an alternative pro-tax universe.

But truth is, the real issue in 2005 is a funding source for Virginia transportation needs.

Kilgore = tax referendums for transportation
Potts = new, or increase taxes for transportation
Kaine = transportation lockbox: in other words, absolutely nothing, but…

In the weekend debate, Kaine claimed the title of ‘heir’ to the Warner tax-increasing legacy.

Since fuel prices have increased so dramatically in the past two years, candidate Tim Kaine ‘probably’ backed away from his initial suggestions of a ‘Gas Tax’ increase for transportation needs. That would have been the ‘kiss of death’ in the 2005 Gubernatorial campaign.

In Sunday’s Outlook section, WaPo pundit Gordon Morse criticized both the Kaine and Kilgore campaign for “No Pay. No Plan. No Go in Virginia.”

Morse wrote, “Somehow that message needs to get across to Virginia road users: not free. But don’t count on our leading gubernatorial candidates — Republican Jerry Kilgore and Democrat Tim Kaine — to post the notice.”

Between fiscal 1997 and 2004, the city of Norfolk school system lost 1,539 students, or 4.3 percent of its enrollment. If the logic of the private sector had applied, the school system would have trimmed its staff accordingly. But school systems function according to a logic all their own. Norfolk schools added 704 positions to its payroll, an increase of 22.7 percent.

Virginia schools are gripped by a productivity crisis, according to “Too Much of a Good Thing: Staffing and Students in Virginia’s School Districts,” a report issued by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. Norfolk was hardly atypical. Stated the report: “More than half of the state’s school districts — 68 in all — added instructional staff over the eight years although the number of students they had to educate declined.”

Advocates of higher educational spending argue that increasing the number of instructional employees is a good thing. More teachers for fewer students translates into a better teacher-student ratio; in theory, smaller class sizes improve the quality of education. But the surging number of teachers has not, in fact, resulted in improvements in student performance, the study observes.

Some blame the state’s “Standards of Quality” staffing mandates for the relentless increase in the number of school personnel. But the report suggests that “incremental financing,” the process of determining school budgets by adding or subtracting incremental spending from major line items, also is a villain.

Numbers junkies will find historic breakdowns on spending, staff and student-staff ratios here.

(Thanks go to Tim Wise, El Growler Grande, from the Arlington Taxpayers Alliance for the tip.)

scheduled for Aug. 27 in Charlottesville (contact Sorensen or see particulars elsewhere), please, as we contemplate this one, let us keep foremost in our minds that part of our Constition that begins with the words “Congress shall make no law…” Sure, there are other issues–technology, responsibility, fairness, ethics, privacy, copyright, access, political, regulatory, etc.–and I expect that we will mull over these things, but they are but pale, distant, vacuous pretenders to anything resembling parity with Free Speech.

I’m enrolling in Braille classes and shopping for a seeing eye dog!

When the editorial page of the Washington Post grudgingly concedes that Jerry Kilgore wasn’t clubbed like a baby seal at yesterday’s debate, I think it’s possible to get a real sense of who “won” the Greenbrier debate:

But the mismatch that Democrats had hoped for, and Republicans had feared, did not materialize.

Call it a draw, with the psychological edge to Mr. Kilgore.

I’m sure it pained that writer to pen those words. One has to wonder why Democrats always put so much faith in debates, hype their capabilities, and always gleefully shackle their opponent with such low expectations that it is impossible not to exceed them. Republicans gladly play along and usually benefit, as appears to be the case from the Greenbrier.

Update: Poli Amateur has a good survey of debate coverage in Virginia papers over at Commonwealth Watch.

Third party gubernatorial candidate Russ Potts didn’t need to be in the debate to get his message out. Bob Lewis of the AP, after writing up the debate with a balanced look at both Kaine and Kilgore, then rushed to do a full story just on Potts’ reaction. It’s on the Times-Dispatch website.

It’s obvious that Potts is almost exclusively an anti-Kilgore candidate. He whined,

“I thought it was a sad commentary on democracy in Virginia when a candidate for governor doesn’t have the courage, the conviction or the confidence to get on a podium with the two other candidates for governor.”

If this is such a bedrock principle, it’s curious why Potts doesn’t criticize Kaine for lacking the courage to refuse a debate in which Potts can’t participate.

Potts’ transportation stand would seem marginally closer to Kilgore than Kaine, but Potts only criticizes Kilgore:

He would have demanded Kilgore and Kaine say how they would pay for any substantive highway improvements since both offer initiatives that rely on constitutional amendments that could not take effect before 2009.

But the nominees addressed the issue anyway. Kilgore said he would sign no tax increase legislation not first submitted to a referendum. Kaine said he would veto any tax bill passed before dedicated transportation funds are protected by a constitutional amendment.

“I’d oppose the referendum because you spell referendum C-O-W-A-R-D, coward,” Potts said.

At least with Kilgore’s plan, there’s a chance that a tax hike Potts is itching to impose could take effect before 2009. But, it’s cowardice to submit it to voters! It’s much more courageous to wait until 2009 for a potential constitutional amendment before raising taxes.

The real winner of the debate may have been Potts, not a master debater, but a master media manipulator.

Even I felt bad for Jerry before this one was over. It was painful…like watching the Rodney King beating all over again. I understand now why Kilgore is hesitant to debate. He should be. Watch for any future encounters already scheduled to be cancelled.

Bob Lewis of the Associated Press has posted a story on today’s gubernatorial debate that is on the Virginian-Pilot website.

He doesn’t declare a winner, but quotes highlights and declares that well-worn answers and barbs were the order of the day.