Bacon's Rebellion

In this week’s column, “Re-VITA-lyzing Government,” Doug Koelemay makes the argument that VITA is living up to its goals of transforming the delivery of information-technology services to state agencies, providing better citizen service, new economic development opportunities and more cost savings for localities. Wrote Koelemay: “VITA was never to be about saving money by spending less. It has been about improving service delivery and avoiding wasteful, redundant spending.”

One reader responds, “Koelemay’s column is a spoof, right? ‘VITA was never to be about saving money by spending less. It has been about improving service delivery and avoiding wasteful, redundant spending.’ Migawd. And I’d thought the original sales pitch for VITA was in large part to lower costs.

see, e.g., § 2.2-2023. “Virginia Technology Infrastructure Fund created; contributions. … B. The Fund shall consist of: (i) the transfer of general and nongeneral fund appropriations from state agencies which represent savings that accrue from reductions in the cost of information technology and communication services, (ii) the transfer of general and nongeneral fund appropriations from state agencies which represent savings from the implementation of information technology enterprise projects. … The Auditor of Public Accounts shall certify the amount of any savings identified by the CIO. …

Is VITA delivering value, as Koelemay says, or is it falling short of its stated aims, as our anonymous correspondent, a local planning official, suggests?

Jim Bacon’s post on the “family farm” made a number of good points. The responses raise a lot more good observations, especially the spacial relationship between raising and consuming food.

In the discussion of extensive (nonurban) land uses it is important to keep in mind that it is economically, socially and physically important that the Urbanside be compact without regard to what nonurban land uses are found in the Countryside.

The Urbanside is most efficient and most effectively serves the market for functional urban land uses if it occupies about 5 percent of the land area in the United States. (The number varies from region to region and from continent to continent.) Scatteration of urban land uses beyond that amount of urban land diminishes the functionality of human settlement patterns in the Urbanside.

Therefore, devoting 95 percent of the land area to nonurban (aka, Countryside) uses is a good idea without regard to what those uses are. We will be documenting this in The Shape Warrenton-Fauquier’s Future.

The support (or subsidies) for family farms, multifamily farms, corporate farms owned by a family or an enterprise, family tree farms or cyanide heap-leach gold mining, etc., etc., depend on the utility/impact of the product (raising healthy, tastier vegetables, sugar beets, tobacco or whatever) and how it is done (e.g. spreading chicken manure in DelMarVa).

EMR

The Virginia Club for Growth PAC issued a Press Release today on the “Big RINO Lie.”

RINO (Republican In Name Only) Delegates that voted for the largest tax increase in the history of Virginia last year are again promoting falsehoods in their coordinated defense regarding their vote against hard-working Virginia families.

The mantra being repeated by the RINO incumbents–including some of the State House and Senate leaders supporting them–has been that their vote was courageous and was needed to avoid a government shutdown. Nothing can be further from the truth. This is another flagrant example of RINO politicians speaking from both sides of their mouths.

You see, Sen. Jay O’Brien (R-Fairfax), had already sponsored a bill (SB 5004) during the extended legislative session in 2004, that would have continued operating the State Government at the prior year’s funding level (similar to a continuing budget resolution at the federal level). This bill was also co-sponsored by Senators Bill Bolling (R-Mechanicsville) and Ken Cuccinelli (R-Centreville).

The Senate Finance Committee did NOT kill the bill–they sat on it, just in case they needed it. Thus, the RINO malarkey that they did the honorable thing because shutting down the government would have cost $100 million just doesn’t fly–there was already a bill in place to address that potentiality.

This orchestrated excuse is another example of the duplicitous and dishonest campaigns waged by RINOs, who campaign as fiscal conservatives, but govern as Ted Kennedy liberals. Politicians should be held accountable and not allowed to hoodwink the voters by spewing out half-truths, lies, and falsehoods.

Michael Graham on WMAL (AM630 — the ABC affiliate in the Washington, DC area whose signal reaches all of Nortern Virginia) is carrying on a RINO Hunt. He’s targeting three NOVA legislators, namely, Gary Reese, Joe May, and Harry Parrish. Apparently, he plans on carrying this theme through June 14!

Graham interviewed Reese, May, and Parrish on Tuesday, May 31, 2005. He also followed up with an interview of yours truly, on the following day. The audio clips of all four interviews can be heard on the VA Club for Growth website.

Graham had an online poll on his website last Friday. The question asked was: “RINO Hunt – Divisive or About Time”. 83% of the respondents answered “Yes, it’s about time!” (See below.) Obviously, this is not a statistically valid poll and it doesn’t even say how many people voted. Nonetheless, it shows a trend, which is also validated by the many callers into Graham’s show–the majority of the callers are speaking out against the RINOs.

Bacon’s Rebellion is launching a new blog, “The Road to Ruin,” which will focus on transportation and land use issues. The blog is a key component of a broader initiative to provide deeper, more insightful coverage of the transportation policy debate.

Thanks to the generous financial support of our donors, led by the Piedmont Environmental Council, Bacon’s Rebellion has hired a full-time staff writer to research and write about transportation issues through the 2006 session of the General Assembly. (Read more about the initiative here.) Bob Burke, a former writer for the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star and senior editor of Virginia Business magazine, will tackle the transportation topics that the Mainstream Media has consistently ignored. Bacon’s Rebellion will disseminate his stories electronically.

Burke has extensive experience writing about the environment, transportation, land use and economic development. As part of his daily routine, he will round up transportation-related news in Virginia publications and link to the articles from the new blog. Also, I will shift my transportation-related blog posts to “The Road to Ruin.” I invite readers of this blog interested in comprehensive and in-depth coverage of transportation/land use issues to frequent www.virginiatransportation.blogspot.com.

A month ago, I promised Bacon’s Rebellion bloggers that great things were coming. While Virginia has a number of excellent blogs, none have had the resources to create much in the way of original content. For the most part, we have been limited to putting our own spin on news reported by the Mainstream Media. By hiring Burke, Bacon’s Rebellion breaks the mold. We will provide a depth of coverage that will put the Mainstream Media to shame. Yes, that’s a challenge. And a promise.

In his new book, “Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much,” Richard Vedder contests a key justification for public investment in higher education: the argument that higher ed spending contributes to the general prosperity. A brief version of Vedder’s argument appears in the current edition of Forbes magazine (requires registration). I haven’t decided if I agree with his arguments or not, but he raises excellent points that should be considered in the context of public funding for Virginia universities.

Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio State University, compared the 10 states with the highest state funding for universities to the 10 states with the lowest between 1977 and 2000, and found that the low-spending states enjoyed a 46 percent growth in real income per capita while the high-spending states racked up only 32 percent growth. How could this be? Vedder raises a couple of possibilities.

Colleges have devoted relatively little new funding over the past generation to the core mission of instruction (spending only 21 cents of each new inflation-adjusted dollar per student on it), preferring instead to assist research, hire more nonacademic staff, give generous pay increases, support athletics and build luxurious facilities. … In 1976 American education employed three nonfaculty professional workers (administrators, counselors, librarians, computer experts) for every 100 students; by 2001 that number had doubled.

Vedder also notes that educated people are mobile. Many of them leave the high-tax states where they were educated. Where to? To low tax states that don’t invest nearly as much in higher education! “Taxes reduce private-sector activity,” he says. “People who must pay high taxes tend to work and invest less and also tend to migrate to lower-tax areas.”

This comes from “Clean Virginia Waterways,” a Longwood University organization dedicated to the cleanliness and quality of Virginia’s waterways, and organizer of the International Coastal Cleanup here in Virginia: In last year’s clean-up, nearly 4,000 volunteers picked up more than 176,000 pounds of litter, including these top 10 items:

1. Plastic beverage bottles, two liters or less
2. Glass beverage bottles
3. Food wrappers/containers
4. Cigarettes/ Cigarette filters
5. Beverage cans
6. Bags
7. Caps, Lids
8. Cups, Plates, Forks, Knives, Spoons
9. Straws / Stirrers
10. Balloons

Dis-gus-ting!

I’ve had it with all this talk about “saving the family farm!” What’s so special about the family farm? Nobody gives a rip about the disappearance of the “mom and pop” store. I don’t hear anyone singing the praises of the “family blog.” So, why do we have this sentimental attachment to the family farm?

The latest pabulum comes from Tim Kaine, as quoted by Chris Graham in the August Free Press: “What I want to do as governor is to organize my agriculture policy around a simple principle, and that’s to do what we can to save family farms. I started to really focus on this as a main goal, more than increasing output or increasing percentages or the tonnages of soybeans or other products. I want to focus on saving family farms.”

Here’s the reality of farming in Virginia. Outside of a few niche products, farming is not profitable! It requires long hours of hard work, and the return on investment is lousy. Virginia simply lacks the competitive advantages that farming has in other states, particularly the Midwestern breadbasket. Most Virginia farmers still working today fall into one of two categories: (1) Old guys who’ve been farming all their lives, and (2) affluent farmers who raise grapes, horses and cattle as part of their patrician lifestyle.

If farmers’ children don’t care about saving the farm, I don’t see why state government should. As far as the patrician farmers, god bless ’em. They maintain beautifully manicured estates that the rest of us can gaze upon as we drive through the country. But I don’t buy the argument that semi-retired financiers from New York are worthy of state support.

A “top Democratic source” has informed the Washington Post that the Democratic Party of Virginia will announce as early as Monday that former House majority leader C. Richard Cranwell will replace Kerry J. Donley as chairman.

According to the source, who did not want to be named because some key people still were being informed of the change, Donley asked to step down because of a job he is taking. The source said Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) and gubernatorial candidate Timothy M. Kaine support Cranwell as his replacement. Cranwell, a sharp-tongued lawmaker who was considered the party’s top legislative strategist, is popular in Roanoke and other parts of rural southwest Virginia.

Donley has been a predictable, somewhat bland, mouthpiece for the Democratic Party viewpoint. Dickie Cranwell is not only “sharp-tongued,” as the Post describes him, but a Machiavellian genius who, after years in the General Assembly, knows where all the levers of power are. He is the consummate legislative insider. Politics in the Old Dominion will undoubtedly become much more interesting to follow. Whether he can win elections for Democratic Party candidates remains to be seen.

Democratic candidate Tim Kaine is more than holding his own in the money-raising end of the gubernatorial campaign — raising $10 million so far, compared to $8.6 million for Jerry Kilgore, according to the Roanoke Times. But the Kilgore camp professes not to be worried. First, Kilgore has yet to collect on promised assistance from the Republican National Committee. Second, he hasn’t yet called on the GOP’s No. 1 fund raiser, President Bush, to help out.

And third, Kilgore is making inroads among the moneybags who’d helped bankroll Mark Warner’s 2001 campaign. Sayeth the Times:

Kilgore reported two sizable contributions from business executives who backed Warner in 2001, including a founding partner in Warner’s Northern Virginia venture capital firm. Mark Kington of Alexandria, who contributed $131,000 to Warner’s campaign, has given Kilgore a total of $75,000 – including $25,000 since April 1. And the Chesapeake contracting company Armada/Hoffler Enterprises, which also contributed to Warner, gave Kilgore $10,000 during the past two months.

Quipped Tim Murtaugh, Kilgore’s press secretary: “The Mark Warner money machine has not opened its coffers to Tim Kaine.”

On the other hand, Warner helped raise $1 million for Kaine at a single fundraising event he hosted for his party mate on May 24 in Tysons Corner. And Warner, one of the biggest moneybags of them all (latest Virginia Business net worth estimate: $180 million), has contributed $60,000 so far to the Kaine campaign.

The Newport News Daily Press has two editorials this morning (here and here)on the gubernatorial race. Both are highly critical of Jerry Kilgore; the second is mildly critical of Tim Kaine.

In the second editorial is a tantalizing hint that the DP‘s endorsement is up for grabs, offering Russ Potts a wonderful opportunity:

Spring is soon to become summer and the two likely major party candidates – Kilgore and Kaine – are still favoring campaign tactics over a public strategy for shaping and improving Virginia’s future. In this manner, the two men hope to demonstrate their worthiness for higher office.

Just wondering: Is there anybody else out there?

Yes, Russ Potts is “out there.”

You gotta love it. Sen, R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, a candidate for attorney general, has proposed slapping a Geographic Positioning System (GPS) tracking device around the ankles of sex offenders who had been sentenced with prison terms of 10 years or more.

“There’s no science out there that says these sex offenders can be rehabilitated,” Deeds told the Charlottesville Daily Progress. Oklahoma, he noted, uses GPS devices to track the whereabouts of registered sex offenders at a cost of about $9,000 per offender per year. Tagging all of Virginia’s 13,000 sex offenders could potentially cost as much as $117 million, the Daily Progress said. Yes, Deeds countered, but the cost would come down as manufacturers of the ankle bracelets achieved economies of scale with growing volume.

I’m admitting my ignorance here. Are those 13,000 “violent sex offenders” all child molesters? Or do they include rapists, wife beaters and others convicted of crimes against adults? From my understanding, rapists and wife beaters–as much as they richly deserve their time in jail–are not considered incorrigible and, therefore, are less of a threat than the child molesters.

If we could bring down the cost to a few million dollars, the idea would be well worth it. With the cable news networks fanning the flames of hysteria every time some poor child is abducted in Florida or Arizona, mothers of young children across the country are consumed with fear. Deeds’ idea, though a little nutty sounding, might give them some piece of mind.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed a 175-mile swath running from Charlottesville to Gettysburg on its list of the nation’s most endangered historic places. The region encompasses six presidential homes, including James Madison’s Montpelier, Civil War battlefields and other historic sites too numerous to mention. Sadly, this picturesque piedmont of small towns and elegant horse farms is under threat by metastasizing growth in the Washington metro area.

The Washington Post, in “Trust Decries Development in Tri-State Area,” notes that a coalition of 100 groups, working under the banner of “Journey Through Hallowed Ground,” is seeking a designation from the Federal Highway Administration naming parts of Routes 15 and 20 as a National Scenic Byway. The coalition also is developing a teaching curriculum about the area at a local community college, promoting “heritage tourism” focused on the area’s many historic homes and other sites and studying the creation of a “socially responsible” investment fund to purchase land it views as threatened.

The point person in this effort is Cate Magennis Wyatt, former Secretary of Commerce and Trade in the Wilder administration. Wyatt, who lives in the village of Waterford, founded by Quakers in the 18th century, stands right in the path of unbridled growth in Loudoun County. But instead of seeking recourse to the usual array of ineffective local growth controls, she’s pursuing a market-based strategy to preserve the land she loves. First step: Create awareness that there’s something worth saving. Second step, find market-based solutions. Writes the Post:

She said that she hopes to build a public-private effort that will prove that heritage tourism can make money and that she is seeking the resources to buy endangered land to protect it. “We fully recognize that landowners have rights to sell their land, and we are earnestly trying to find a means to purchase land at market rates,” she said.

The people of the piedmont have the most to lose if their homes are overrun by McMansions and crossroads shopping centers. But all Virginians have a stake in this region. I have spent many memorable weekends motoring through the back roads of the piedmont, admiring the manicured, fenced-in fields and the old homes, and enjoying the fruit of the region’s many vineyards. There is no place more beautiful in Virginia, save possibly the Shenandoah Valley. It is the back yard of the Washington and Richmond regions, and allowing it to be despoiled with careless growth is the communal equivalent of junking our own properties with cast-off refrigerators and rusting cars.

Yet Wyatt is right: We must balance our conservationist impulse with respect for property rights, which Virginians also cherish. Let’s hope she can find the formula.

Today’s Washington Post online chat with columnist Marc Fisher has some commentary on Jim’s water ferry post that’s immediately below this one.

There was one exchange in the chat that reminded me of a comment someone made here some time ago–there are still dirt roads in Virgnia:

Chantilly, Va.: Hi Marc: I don’t know how closely you pay attention to goings-on in lovely Loudoun County, but you might find it amusing that homes costing close to a million bucks a pop are going up just west of South Riding, and the only access to those developments is Braddock Road, which is STILL UNPAVED out there!

Most people probably think of Braddock Road as a major, multi-lane highway, but it gets narrower and narrower as you move west, and by the time it ends at Route 15 it probably looks just like it did when British General Braddock used it to fight Indians back in the mid-1700s.

You will soon be hearing frenzied traffic reports from such heretofore obscure intersections as Braddock Road at Pleasant Valley Road. This county is nuts.

Marc Fisher: And there’s a lot more coming through the pipeline. If the Loudoun board gets its way, the county will maintain its position as America’s fastest growing for quite some time to come.

I’m wondering if it’s the county that’s nuts for allowing developments off a dirt road like this or if it’s the buyers who are nuts.

I’ve been harping on the theme that there are abundant alternatives to the tax-and-build approach to solving Virginia’s traffic congestion woes. No one alternative constitutes a silver bullet. But maybe 10, 20 or 30 small alternatives, each serving a distinct niche, could add up to a system-wide solution. The latest idea, which may or may not be financially practicable, comes from the District of Columbia: Water ferries.

According to today’s Washington Post, “D.C. Plans River Ferry Experiment,” our neighbors across the Potomac River are exploring plans to put a ferry service into effect by next year for destinations on the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. Writes the Post: “At least four companies have expressed interest in securing the $500,000 contract for an 18-month pilot program that would run a water coach or ferry serving commuters in the mornings and evenings and tourists during the day.”

The obvious advantage of a ferry service: It does not require building roads or building rail lines, just ferry docks. It’s encouraging that other cities — New York, San Francisco, Seattle — operate what the Post describes as “thriving” ferry systems for commuters. So do cities in other parts of the world. Why doesn’t Virginia? The Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries offer miles and miles of nearly cost-free right of way.

A 1999 Virginia Department of Transportation study concluded that a commuter service from Woodbridge to the Navy Yard in D.C. would cost about as much as a commuter rail trip. Unofrtunately, that’s not much of an endorsement — commuter rail, to my way of thinking, is not always a good investment of public dollars. To be a viable alternative for Virginia, ferries would have to provide a better financial pay-off than that. We’re going to need some creative thinking if the ferry idea is to prove feasible.

I’m thinking of writing a column on this topic for the next edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. Any observations on the “water ferry” transportation alternative, and how a ferry service could be made financially viable, would be most welcome.