Bacon's Rebellion

E&E Enterprises Global, Inc., a minority-owned government contractor, has filed suit against the Virginia Department of Education for discrimination in the agency’s solicitation for services under Gov. Mark R. Warner’s “Education For A Lifetime” initiative. The suit alleges that the agency discriminated against E&E by requiring the firm to fulfill requirements that not required of the non-minority bidder, and disqualified E&E once it was apparent that E&E was the lowest responsive and responsible bidder.

A 2003 disparity study commissioned by the Commonwealth reported that the Commonwealth awarded only $34.4 million out of nearly $8 billion on minority-owned businesses from July 1, 1998 through June 30, 2002 — less than 0.44% of its total spending. Statistics for the Virginia Department of Education for this same period show that the agency awarded over $75 million in contracts to non-minority-owned businesses compared to awarding only $17,000 in contracts to minority-owned businesses. Read the press release.

Any comment, Will?

Nibbling away at the problem of traffic congestion in one of Virginia’s most densely populated localities, Seattle-based Flexcar and Cambridge, Mass.-based Zipcar have increased their commitment to their car-sharing partnerships with Arlington County. Since the county began the program with the two companies last March, reports the Washington Business Journal, Flexcar and Zipcar have seen a combined 150 percent increase in usage and membership that more than doubled.

The two firms have added a total of 15 additional vehicles, bringing to 40 the total parked at designated locations in the Ballston-Rosslyn corridor, Crystal City and Pentagon City. They plan to add another 15 vehicles in the county before the end of the year.

Pilot project survey results, corroborated with evidence from studies in North America and Europe, show that carsharing: has allowed members to reduce their car ownership; encourages more transit trips; reduces the number of cars on the road; reduces the number of vehicle miles traveled; and provides for a much more efficient use of parking spaces.

Shared car programs like Arlington’s won’t “solve” Virginia’s increasing traffic congestion. There is no single solution. Public policy must encourage a wide variety of solutions–often by partnering, as Arlington has done, with wild-eyed entrepreneurs with crazy ideas. It would be encouraging if Sen. Chichester’s transportation task force–manned primarily by Republicans, members of the business community and others who profess to believe in free markets–chose to solicit innovative ideas from the private sector.

There’s an interesting press release emanating from Newport News today on PR Newswire. Superintendent Marcus Newsome is understandably proud that his urban school system had four of its five high schools listed in Newsweek Magazine’s list of 1,000 top performing high schools in the country.

Newsom has succeeded in the face of conditions typically cited as reasons for failure. Newport News is a working class town with its fair share of poverty. Approximately 45 percent of the city’s 33,000 students are eligible for free or reduced lunch; 55 percent are African-American and 1o percent are Hispanic.

Newsome credits a systemic approach coupled with “research-based means of changing school cultures” and building strong leadership teams. In partnership with the HOPE Foundation (Harnessing Optimism and Potential through Education), based in Bloomington, Ind., the school system has worked intensively with low-performing schools to train leadership teams of teachers and administrators.

Notes Jay Mathews, creator of the Newsweek list: “The more schools I have examined, the more I have come to believe in the power of high school cultures, which are different in different parts of the country for reasons that often have little to do with the usual keys to high school performance — the incomes and educations of the parents.”

Would somebody please convey this message to our lawmakers? We’ve tried pouring money into schools. Maybe it’s time to try a little HOPE.

Someone on the Kilgore team knows their stuff when it comes to healthcare. I was pleasantly surprised at the substantive nature of the proposals in the latest release from the Kilgore campaign. The plan overdoes it with new tax “credits”, which are nothing more than back-door expenditures, but there’s no way to fix Virginia’s health care system on the cheap. All things considered, there are some meaty ideas that deserve consideration. This may be the Kilgore team’s best effort yet. The highlights:

• Information Technology. On the grounds that IT can boost productivity of a health care system plagued by paperwork and redundancy, Kilgore would encourage physicians, public-private partnerships and the state to invest in IT projects and integrated information systems. Good idea. IT can save billions and improve patient safety.
• Long-Term Care. Kilgore would allow individuals purchasing long-term care insurance for themselves or their parents to receive a tax credit. Sounds good, but could be a budget buster. It’ll drain the treasury, but won’t save the state any money: Poor people won’t buy the insurance — they’ll just go on Medicaid.
• Rural Primary Care. Kilgore wants to put a rural health center in every distressed community in Virginia. Good idea. Money spent preventing illness in a primary care setting can save money spent on curing an illness in a hospital.
• Health Savings Accounts. Kilgore wants to “work closely with the federal government” to expand access to health savings accounts. OK. That’s something that insurance companies should be doing, but I can’t see any harm coming of it.

It’s a good start. If only someone would (1) tackle mandated insurance benefits which makes the price of medical insurance unaffordable for small business, and (2) eliminate the Certificate of Public Need process, which discourages competition between hospitals and specialty health care facilities.

The Virginia League of Conservation Voters has endorsed Tim Kaine for governor, Creigh Deeds for attorney general, and the following four candidates running in House of Delegates primaries:

• Joe May, R-Leesburg
• David Toscano, D-Charlottesville, running for Mitchell Van Yahres’ seat
• Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, running in Viola Baskerville’s seat
• Peter Schmidt, R-Virginia Beach, running against GOP incumbent Harry Purkey

Said Executive Director Lisa Guthrie: “These candidates … demonstrate a whole-hearted commitment to conservation in the commonwealth.” The League hasn’t posted the press release online yet (that I can find), but here’s the website.

Tim Kaine is being praised for not letting the “attack ad” aired by the Republican Governor’s Association go unanswered. I wonder, though, if the “answer” doesn’t open Kaine up to more attack ads. “Turned Richmond Around” isn’t a theme that I think will resonate with most Virginians. To the extent that the City of Richmond is in the news for budget battles and crime, it’s hard to make the case that it got “turned around.”

I still think Kaine’s best selling point is “Warner, Con’t.”

Former Gov. Jim Gilmore has endorsed Attorney General hopeful Bob McDonnell of Virginia Beach in his contest with Richmonder Steve Baril. Sayeth the Roanoke Times:

In a press conference outside the Henrico County courthouse, Gilmore called McDonnell “uniquely qualified” to hold the office that Gilmore himself occupied from 1994 to 1997. Gilmore served as governor from 1998 to 2002. “I’ve thought about it very carefully for a long time,” Gilmore said. “I’m absolutely convinced that Bob McDonnell is the man I want to endorse for attorney general.”

Baril’s response: The former governor “is repaying his political debts. … “Bob McDonnell is the career politician and is building his campaign on lots of endorsements.”

As a practical matter, do endorsements like these make a difference? Conceivably, there are voters out there who don’t know much about either McDonnell or Baril, but they know and trust Gilmore, so they’ll take his word for it. On the other hand, there are other people–yes, even Republicans–who don’t like Gilmore. Wouldn’t an endorsement of McDonnell sway them to vote for Baril? Are gathering endorsements really worth the trouble?

Any good political reporter picks up lots of juicy nuggets in the process of covering his/her beat that just aren’t worth writing a full-length story about. But the morcels could well translate into two-three paragraph items that could feed a blog. That, it seems, is the motivation behind the blog maintained by The Washington Post’s Michael Shear. Check out his “Race to Richmond: Notes from the Virginia Governor’s Race” blog.

It’s not very profound — I suppose he saves his deepest thinking for his articles — but Shear seems to be posting an average of one item per day, so blogophiles might consider adding it to their list of bookmarks. It will be interesting to see if other political reporters follow his lead.

In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bart Hinkle pleads for someone, anyone, to study transportation in Virginia.

Just kidding… But you can vote early. Steve Baril’s campaign extends this thoughtful public service message to anyone planning to be out of town on June 14 but still would like to vote for his or her favorite candidate in the primary. Your options:

• Fill out an application at the Registrar’s Office (click here to find your nearest office)
• Print out the application, which you can find here. And then fax or mail it to your local registrar’s office (see previous link).

In a page right out of the Mark Warner/Preston Bryant playbook, Senate Democrats and a dozen centrist Senate Republicans, led by–who else?–John McCain–have handed Bush and Frist their backsides in a ringing repudiation of the Republican Right’s my-way-or-the-highway philosophy of governance. Frist fired his vaunted nuclear option, all right–into his foot. Who are the winners? America! America! God bless America!

“Today, I am concerned about what progress means. Some of our candidates espouse not leadership, but bargain basement visions. “Vote for me, I’m cheaper,” they say. Instead of inspiring us, instead of calling us to large actions like building community college systems, they are consumed with tedium, with the process of taxing our cars and houses, and such.”–Alan Diamonstein

“I was joined in my first year in the House by Dr. W. Ferguson Reid, a Richmond Democrat, and the first black member of the House since Reconstruction. He was cordially accepted by his colleagues on the floor of the House, but that acceptance did not extend beyond the Capitol grounds.”–Vince Callahan

“It was always clear that secrets were expected to be kept, and that any indiscreet behavior was not to be broadcast or ever mentioned again. I followed those rules then, and I follow them now.”–Eva Tieg-Hardy

“I said many times during the 1990s, and have often commented since then, that our successful reforms represented a victory, not for Republicans, but for the people of Virginia.”–George Allen

“These country folk stuffed brown paper bags with hand-me-down clothes that their own children could no longer wear, and they brought them to church to pass along to my siblings and me.”–Paul Harris

“In politics, for example, my dad never voted for a Republican because, even if he admitted the GOP candidate were “a good man,” helping him get elected would “take a spoke out of the wheel,” the metaphor implying that the Democratic Party rolled the general welfare forward.”–Paul Akers

“The worst thing about Jay Shropshire’s funeral, other than its necessity, was not being able to schmooze with him about it later.” –Margaret Edds

‘Notes from the sausage factory,’ Barnie Day, Becky Dale, publishing mid-July, Brunswick Books, 434 pgs.

…for allowing me to rejoin this stable of thoroughbreds. My mother told me once, in a fit of exasperation, that she could leave me in a strange country and in two hours I’d know every loose screw and odd-ball within 200 miles. And that’s before she evey met any of ya’ll! I have spent my time away in productive pursuit of knowledge and understanding. I know my role here is to catch the spears you throw, and I am game for that. And while you’re limbering up, I’ll go over a couple of things I’ve reaffirmed as truisms: you can’t borrow yourself out of debt, you can’t pave your way out of congestion. I’m still having a little trouble with ‘human settlement patterns,’ but I have figured out why good Baptists don’t engage in intercourse standing up. They don’t want folks to think they’re dancing!

Today’s The Washington Post has published an article describing the difficulties that thousands of Washingtonians on the exurban periphery have getting broadband Internet access. Staff Writer Amit R. Paley quotes one woman as saying, “My husband is just screaming his brains out because it’s so slow,” she said. “It’s killing us. It’s absolutely killing us.”

My reaction: Duh! What did you expect?

A remarkable number of people who move into the exurbs, with their low taxes and low cost of housing, bring with them an expectation of an urban level of services. It just doesn’t work that way. Not only does scattered, disconnected, low-density development make transportation expensive to provide, it makes utilities expensive to provide, too.

The Post quotes Steve E. Collier, vice president of emerging technologies at the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, as saying that subsidies from the federal government probably will be needed to ensure that high-speed Internet access extends to the most far-flung parts of the country. The Post doesn’t quote anyone mentioning the obvious alternative: If broadband is really important to you, don’t move to the stinkin’ exurbs! Or if you do move, don’t expect everyone else to subsidize your poorly planned locational decision!!

The Richmond Times-Dispatch ran an article this morning about R. Jerry Parker Jr., the man who is bankrolling the Virginia Conservative Action PAC. VCAP has donated $10,000 to $25,000 to each of the six Republican primary challengers to incumbents who voted in favor of last year’s $1.4 billion tax increase. Parker has personally contributed $212,000 to VCAP this year — 85 percent of the money collected. Founder and CEO of Chesapeake Capital Corp. in Henrico County, a $1.6 billion hedge fund, Parker hired Republican activist Robin DeJarnette to run the PAC. Sayeth the T-D:

Parker contends the tax increases were unnecessary, pointing to the eventual $1 billion surplus and an improving economy. “I’d like to play offense and say we need to reduce taxes,” he said. “We can’t even get there. We can’t even convince Republicans to hold the line.”