Bacon's Rebellion

It is obvious that the tax-happy folks at the Newport News Daily Press are behind Russ Potts. They need to end the charade of being open-minded observers of this gubernatorial campaign and formally endorse the Winchester Senator.

The DP‘s latest editorial whines over Potts’ exclusion from tomorrow’s debate. They print Potts’ responses to a few softball questions.

Undoubtably, the Daily Press will comment on the actual debate responses of Kaine and Kilgore. They can redeem themselves if they also compare and contrast the questions asked those two and the questions/responses of their man Potts. I can’t imagine Kaine or Kilgore being any more vacuous and repetitive than this:

Everything has to be on the table including public-private partnerships, land use policies, private toll roads, private ownership of highways, which has proven to be successful in Holland and Belgium, mass transit and rail. Everything has to be on the table. My plan will be presented to the General Assembly early in 2006, and we will call a special session to address the transportation crisis, and I will keep the delegates and senators there until we vote our plan up or down. Everything does have to be on the table ….[italics mine]

Of course, we know that some things aren’t on the table because Potts doesn’t want to use general fund money for transportation and he doesn’t want any regional transportation solutions. But everyting has to be on the table!

Update: Norm at the real Potts Truth Squad is back from vacation and is all over this in much more detail than I provided. Welcome back, Norm, it’s been lonely ….

In what is surely one of the oddest political traditions anywhere in the country, the Republican and Democratic nominees for governor of Virginia hold their first debate at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. I’m wondering if our bloggers could engage in a little handicapping before the event.

Has Tim Kaine so pysched out Jerry Kilgore regarding his accent and debating skills that Kilgore’s performance will be affected?

Given the incredibly low expectations for Kilgore, will merely getting clobbered instead of getting annihilated constitute a “win”?

Given the non-televised nature of the joust, does the debate really matter?

Can we trust the Sunday morning evaluations of the reporters covering the event as to which candidate acquits himself best?

Michael Hardy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that a bunch of GOP notables are praising Attorney General candidate Robert McDonnell because of his “pro-business record.” That record was compiled in the House of Delegates.

That’s nice, but what exactly would McDonnell do as AG that would help or stimulate business?

I’ve got one suggestion. Virginia agencies that deal with business could use some help from the AG’s office when answering queries from business. There’s a lot of confusing Code of Virginia language and the creativity of new business ventures and structures magnify that confusion. A little help, more easily accessed by agencies, would go a long way. Del. McDonnell can contact me for more details.

“Republican candidates for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general are calling for changes to state laws defining when a government can seize private property,” writes Michelle Washington in this morning’s Virginian-Pilot. Virginia Republicans have jumped on the issue in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month that expanded the definition of “public use” to include expansion of the tax base — giving local governments more latitude in seizing private property for economic development.

In a Tuesday news conference, Attorney General candidate Bob McDonnell said that “public use” should be better defined. “Whatever public use means, it will not include the primary purpose of economic development or tax enhancement.”

A word to the Democrats. Don’t let the Republicans dominate this issue. When local governments want to take land for redevelopment purposes, they’re not going after the mansion on the hill. They’re taking run-down property on land that some developer thinks he can make more valuable — in other words, they’re taking land from the poor and the powerless, supposedly a Democratic constituency.

All right, sports fans, Tim Kaine and Jerry Kilgore debate Saturday. Michael Shear of the Washington Post will be online at 11 taking questions and comments about this mildly anticipated West Virginia event. Shear’s story on debate prep is here.

Let’s see if anybody asks about policy, or if it’s all just partisan hackery.

The Washington Post Race to Richmond blog isn’t setting the world on fire. There hasn’t been a legimate comment on the blog since June 28th. Half the comments on the 28th were duplicates from Carol Wolf, a City of Richmond School Board member flacking for Tim Kaine.

The “Question of the Week” in the Post‘s online forum is,

Blogs are playing an increasingly visible role in Washington area politics … What do you think about blogs — are they a good or bad influence?

It’s been up almost a week and has only attracted 37 comments, most of them irrelevant.

The Blue Dog gets that many comments just by signing his name. Heck, NotLarrySabato gets twice as many comments as that from one person.

For the third time, a criminal enterprise of selling drivers’ licenses out of a Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles office has been uncovered. This one occurred in Springfield, with previous cases prosecuted against employees in the Tysons Corner and Richmond offices. There are two contrasting stories on the latest case, one from Jerry Markon of the Washington Post and one from Paul Bradley of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Bradley concentrates on how the DMV employees operated the sale. Markon casts a critical eye on DMV:

DMV spokeswoman Pam Goheen called the arrests “unfortunate and disappointing” and said the “vast majority of DMV employees are honest and hardworking.”

Goheen could not explain how two similar scams might have been carried out so close together in two Northern Virginia DMV offices. But she said the agency has stepped up its enforcement and auditing efforts. Since 2002, she said, DMV “document verifiers” have double-checked every application processed by customer service staffers.

“It’s two sets of eyes on every transaction,” Goheen said. “There is a heightened awareness of the importance of a driver’s license.”

Most reporters might have stopped there, but Markon has researched this case:

Yet court documents said the latest alleged scam was uncovered not by DMV but by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. After a six-month investigation that included the FBI and the DMV, officials are alleging that Francisco Martinez issued the licenses and falsified DMV records to make it appear that applicants had surrendered valid licenses from other states.

The DMV might still have some work to do on that “two sets of eyes” process.

Journalists focus on problems they understand. As a result, they address trivial matters while overlooking systemic ones. Nowhere is this truism more evident than the realm of transportation policy. Take the latest mini-scandal at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Commission.

It turns out that board members racked up a $900 restaurant tab at topless cabaret in Paris two years ago, putatively while learning how other toll roads operate. When the (Newport News) Daily Press disclosed this abuse of public funds, people were understandably outraged. The press flogged the story and now the Commission has changed its travel policy: No more than $45 per day food allowance while on travel.

I have no problem with changing the policy. Here’s my concern. At the bottom of today’s Daily Press’ wrap-up on the policy changes, we read: “Lawmakers also criticized the commission for a plan to spend an estimated $900 million for two additional tunnels. … Commissioners say the tunnels are needed to handle increased traffic in 20 years. Lawmakers said traffic projections do not justify the expenditure.”

Whoah, Nelly! I’d say the $900 million construction is a lot more important than the $900 bill for food and champagne in a Paris strip club. But what gets the attention — the strip club, or the new tunnels and higher tolls directly impacting the lives of thousands of Virginians? The strip club, of course. Where are the headlines about the $900 million boondoggle?

Hopefully, the Daily Press will continue its coverage of Bridge-Tunnel governance by digging into the proposed Bridge-Tunnel expansion. Which lawmakers are opposed? Why are they opposed? Who developed the idea for the project? What are the numbers in the traffic projections? Are those projections, in fact, flawed? Those are the kinds of questions we need to be asking. And we need to ask them not just about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, we need to ask them about the other $108 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) worth of transportation projects that the Warner administration asserts in VTrans2025 that Virginia needs but cannot pay for.

I thought the boys at Road to Ruin might jump on this, but since they haven’t, I’ll take a crack at an Augusta Free Press report that Gov. Warner wants to fill the VDOT Commissioner job quickly–and involve the gubernatorial candidates in the selection process:

Warner proposed getting the three candidates for governor – Democrat Tim Kaine, Republican Jerry Kilgore and independent Russ Potts – to be part of a selection process that he would like to see get going “sooner rather than later.”

“I’d love to have all the candidates for governor be a part of a selection process. But that would require the consent of all three candidates for governor,” Warner said.

To date, the governor has but one taker – Potts.

On the surface, this seems like a terrific idea to fix a problem that was ironically caused by the guy who fixed a lot of problems–Shucet. It’s hard to fathom why he couldn’t have hung on until November, at least.

Looking more closely, suspicions abound. Why would Warner make this public? Why wouldn’t he quietly contact each candidate, get their answer, promise confidentiality, and then just go ahead with the recruiting and selection process if all agreed? Why would Potts, the least likely to be elected, get to make public his answer first? Potts has nothing to lose and plenty of credibility to gain by cozying up to Warner on this–why is Warner giving him this free statesman makeover? Why does the Kilgore spokesperson say they are “going to wait until we hear from the governor before we address that issue?” Did Warner contact Kilgore or not? Why does the Kaine campaign give some mumbo-jumbo about being committed to a “process?”

Further, what’s wrong with the interim guy at VDOT, supposedly carrying out Shucet’s policies? I can’t imagine a candidate for the job taking it, not knowing if his boss would be Kaine, Kilgore, or Russ Potts, and not knowing if one of the three could torpedo him during the “process?”

These are some strange machinations and I’d like to hear any theories.

Jeff Schapiro of the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the latest example of an outrageous payment to a public servant: the 2x salary severance payment to the former head of the Virginia Retirement System (VRS). On the editorial page, a VRS board member who represents teachers bemoans justifying this action to the low-paid beneficiaries of the retirement fund.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like every week we’re seeing state or local officials receiving huge payments or spending large sums of money on questionable activities. School superintendents are hired then summarily fired (with severance) with alarming frequency. High officials travel around the globe to learn about the latest thing, but rarely implement anything new.

Something’s wrong. Hiring practices and/or expectations are out of whack. We ought to stop a lot of this “national search” balderdash and start focusing on developing talent that can move up within organizations. We ought to select promising candidates from a diversity of backgrounds, not insist that hires have held the same job somewhere else (and somewhere else before that). We hire high-priced retreads who are represented by agents that negotiate lavish (by government standards) perks and severance packages upfront. We don’t check backgrounds as well as we should. We frequently don’t give new hires enough time to establish their leadership and we don’t start overseeing financial matters until they reach scandalous proportions.

I don’t want to hear this “you have to pay for talent” line, either. Sure you do, but there’s a price break point. We all know that the new outsider comes in and leans on the existing staff for everything. Surely there’s someone in every organization that could run the place as well as the high-priced resume. It’s tough to check out the high-priced resume; it’s a lot easier to know what someone who’s been in the organziation many years can do.

How anyone can claim the mantle of “public servant” while simultaneously grabbing outlandish cash and perks is beyond my comprehension.

One specific issue regarding VRS was interesting: Del. Leo Wardrup, Jr., R-VA Beach, criticized the Attorney General’s office for not monitoring the VRS more closely. Is that the AG’s job? Here’s a real live issue for the two AG candidates to debate, as opposed to “top-cop” peripherals.

Yesterday morning someone emailed me a chart showing that Virginia workers ranked 7th among states in the amount of time wasted. Today, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the story on the front page. So much for my nose for news.

According to a survey by AOL and Salary.com, Virginians waste an average of 2.7 hours per day, most of it surfing the internet or socializing.

Of course, there’s less here than meets the eye. In many jobs, the main responsibility is just to be there. Surfing the net while waiting for the next call to come in to a help desk isn’t necessarily wasting time–it’s passing time. Many workers spread their time wasting over 10 or more hours at the office. Still, the survey probably can lead us to conclude that many jobs are not well-designed and that management oversight could be improved. I know that is the case in the public sector, the second biggest time-wasting sector after insurance.

Usually Virginia is criticized for a “race to the bottom” with Mississippi. Not in this survey. Our low budget colleagues down there were estimated to be 17th–not enough responses were received. They were too busy.

There always seems to be a battle raging somewhere in Virginia between developers and preservationists. The Roanoke Times has a story on the latest skirmish. In Franklin County, the Board of Supervisors is considering “four special use permits to allow construction of a 30,000-square-foot shopping center, an office park, patio homes and town houses” adjacent to the Booker T. Washington National Monument.

Of course, as the supervisors consider this request,

A group of activists has rallied to spread the word about what they see as a threat to the tranquility and health of the 239 acres of federally owned land. They oppose the rezoning, saying that heavy development next to the national monument, which had 18,477 visitors in fiscal year 2004, will damage views and a creek that runs along the border between the two properties.

Booker T. Washington, controversial today because of his “accommodationist” racial views, would probably be pleased that the developer is trying to accomodate the concerns of opponents by offering a larger than required wooded buffer between the development and the park. The opponents aren’t interested in being accommodated.

One might argue that there is plenty of undeveloped land in Franklin County, so a spritz of development near a national monument isn’t a big deal. One could also point out that Manassas National Battlefield Park used to be miles from the nearest commercial or residential space.

In a smaller battle, a Williamsburg resident has written to the Daily Press to argue against putting lights at William and Mary’s Cary Field/Zable Stadium. Colonial-era light conditions must be preserved!

This morning CNN headlines the “research” that leads to identifying the 10 Best Places to live in the US of A.

Peachtree City, Ga a place I helped design and manage is number 8. I should be happy, right?

The real estate agents in “Vienna, VA” are happy because it came in number 4.

Unfortunately the whole story and the “research” behind it is more evidence of the Fundamental Thesis Number Two: Citizens do not know where they are.

Go to the “Contenders by State” listing and look up the 41 Virginia candidates. The headlines say these are “cities.” At first glance it appears that most are unincorporated places within counties. The ones that have the same names as cities have the populations of the postal zip codes with that name.

See “Where is Northern Virginia,” 11 August at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com for the reason knowing where one is important.

EMR

The July 11, 2005, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been posted to the Web. You can read it here.

As indicators of the mainstream media’s decline continue to accumulate, I have noticed that the Richmond Times-Dispatch has been trying to adapt to new realities.

Those realities include this wry observation by projects editor Gordon Hickey:

Surveys, studies, focus groups, and countless letters to the editor inform us that we are losing circulation in the ages 4-98 demographic.

I’ve become so convinced that people aren’t reading the paper anymore that I feel safe in telling you that you’re not reading this.

Hickey goes on to subtly disparage one of the paper’s competitors, blogging, in a tongue-in-cheek way, but one has to take seriously the idea that blogging by RT-D staff is under consideration.

More substantively, President and Publisher Thomas Silvestri introduced a major change to the Sunday Commentary section that debuted today. He also described a “Public Square” initiative to tie the paper more closely to the local community. Apparently, one public event will be held this year to test the concept before a large number are held next year.

While the RT-D is to be commended for attempting to change, that kind of lumbering pace doesn’t exactly instill confidence.