Bacon's Rebellion

The Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission has completed the sale of bonds backed by a portion of the state’s tobacco-settlement money. The sale will raise $448 million, of which $390 million will be placed in an endowment to finance economic development in Virginia’s Southside and Southwest Virginia tobacco-growing communities.

The bond sale comes on the heels of the recently announced sale of the Danville Regional Medical Center. About $200 million from that transaction will endow a community foundation for the Danville-Pittsylvania area. And let us not forget the Harvest Foundation, endowed with $150 million in 2002 from the sale of the old Martinsville Memorial Hospital.

Virginia’s southern piedmont is well endowed, it seems, to reinvent itself for the 21st century.

Most major national events have a Virginia connection. The Supreme Court’s decision yesterday to strike down discrimination in direct shipments of wine is yet another example.

The Washington Post has a nice profile of Juanita Swedenburg, the Middleburg winery owner who convinced Clint Bolick, counsel for the Institute of Justice, to take the case.

Virginia is not one of the states with restrictive laws and wineries in the Old Dominion should benefit from the ruling. Rick Sincere has complete coverage.

Del. Bill Carrico, R-Fries, spent several hours recently manning the desk at a state rest stop on I-81.

Many politicians in other states get a lot of mileage out of taking a “citizen’s job” for a day. Since Virginia already has a “citizen legislature,” you don’t see what Del. Carrico did very often.

It’s a gimmick and a calculated photo-op, but maybe Virginia politicians ought to do more of it, especially if they make the time by skipping receptions and golf outings sponsored by lobbyists.

Steve. H. Chapman, the 27-year-old challenger to Harry Parrish for the 50th House of Delegates seat, concedes that his opponent may have had nothing to do with misdemeanor charges filed against him for letting his dog run loose eight months ago, the Manassas Journal Messenger has reported. The dog, named Nixon, was killed after escaping from Chapman’s yard last August, but he wasn’t served papers for letting his dog run at large until April, prompting speculation that the charges may have been politically motivated.

However, officers had tried to serve Chapman at his Dale City home five times before they were successful April 20, Prince William County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane wrote in a letter of clarification released Monday. Police denied any political motivation. “I don’t think anyone knew who he was,” said spokesperson 1st Sgt. Kim Chinn, according to the Journal Messenger.

It also turns out that the loose-dog incident was not an isolated one. Chapman was charged twice before with the same offense: Once in March 2000 and again in June 2004, the Journal Messenger stated. Chapman’s police record also includes four speeding tickets and four seatbelt violations since 1996. “When you drive 30,000 miles a year,” said Chapman, who runs a power wash business, “occasionally you’ll get stopped.” But that’s not all. In 1999, Chapman’s driver’s license was suspended because he failed to pay fines and court costs of $80. Later that year, he was charged with driving without an opertor’s license.

With all these revelations, it’s looking pretty hard for Chapman to make the case that he was the victim of hardball politics when charged with lying about his residency in the 50th House district while registering to vote last year. In earlier posts, I was sympathetic to his plight. Given his track record, I’m thinking he sounds like a young man in way too much of a hurry.

The Kilgore campaign is rolling out its first two television campaign ads. Entitled “Experience” and “Education”, the ads will run on a rotating schedule beginning this week. The first ad touts Kilgore’s experience “to take a stand on the tough issues.” The second pushes his proposal to provide better pay to recruit better teachers.

View “Experience.”

View “Education.”

Despite highly publicized measures by elite universities to increase financial aid, access to higher education for lower income families is eroding, charge Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman, two William and Mary economists who have contributed on occasion to Bacon’s Rebellion. Driven by the imperative to increase their standings in the U.S. News & World-Report annual ranking of colleges and universities, institutions of higher education are competing for top students by increasing the dispensation of financial aid on the basis of merit, crowding out aid made available to students on the basis of need.

Over the past 10 years, the share of state grant aid that is not based on need has risen from just under 10 percent to over 23 percent, Archibald and Feldman write in the Baltimore Sun. “The shift toward merit aid is troubling because it doesn’t increase the number of qualified students who receive a higher education. … Merit aid’s primary effect is to concentrate talent at schools with deeper pockets.”

With tuitions at regional institutions rising at the rate of 6 percent to 10 percent a year, less affluent students are getting priced out of the educational marketplace. According to a June 2002 report by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, financial barriers will shut off access to college for more than 2 million high school graduates from low- and moderate-income families — despite, I might add, a strong ideological commitment on the part of university administrations to economic and ethnic diversity. At the root of the problem: Colleges and universities are not driven by the profit motive — they’re driven by the prestige motive. And the average SAT score of the entering freshman class is one of the key metrics colleges use to gauge their relative status.

That’s only one of the reasons that inflation in college tuitions are out of control. As I noted in my column, “Tuition Trauma” (April 25, 2005), colleges also compete for the most prestigious professors, especially scientists who bring in research grants, by building expensive laboratories and providing financial support for graduate student/research assistants. We Virginians share in the prestige and benefit from the economic development that comes with having world-class universities in the state. But we’ve got to find some way to bring costs under control and make college tuitions affordable.

I am pleased to announce that Phil Rodokanakis, a regular Bacon’s Rebellion columnist and frequent contributor to this blog, has been elected president of the Virginia Club for Growth. Said Club Chairman Paul Jost: “Phil’s election recognizes his many years of involvement as a grassroots activist. He is widely recognized as a leader who has worked tirelessly in Virginia for many years promoting economic growth through limited government and lower taxes.”

Phil replaces Peter Ferrara, who is now working with Free Enterprise Fund as director of the Social Security Project leading the fight to establish individual private accounts.

Congratulations, Phil. Bacon’s Rebellion readers know you for your combative idealism. Soon, no doubt, the rest of Virginia will, too.

Tayloe Murphy, Virginia’s Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources, wove together some interesting threads in a speech delivered to the Environment Virginia Conference in April and republished Sunday in the Daily Press. Environmentalists, we take forgranted, elevate the protection of the Chesapeake Bay watershed to the top of their list of concerns. But environmentalists, he argues, should find common cause with economic developers and faith communities.

The Chesapeake Bay, once one of the most bountiful estuaries on the planet, has been assaulted by decades of abuse. Although the “point” pollution caused by industry has largely abated, the “nonpoint” pollution generated by everything from auto emissions and loss of wetlands to industrial-scale agriculture and pesticide/fertilizer runoff, remains rampant.

A lifelong resident of the Northern Neck before moving to Richmond to work for the Warner administration, Murphy laments the loss of jobs in rural Bay counties that has accompanied the devastation of the marine population in the Bay. “It deeply saddens me,” he wrote, “to ride by one abandoned oyster shucking house after another – by lifeless crab picking facilities that today stand empty – all monuments to a once thriving commercial seafood industry that no longer exists because we placed on that industry the cost of our failure to keep its workplace clean and healthy.”

Restoring the bounty of the Bay could revitalize the local seafood industry, Murphy implies, providing a living for inhabitants who now commute great distances to find work. Furthermore, “quality of life” issues are increasingly a driving force in economic development. If I might be permitted to elaborate upon Murphy’s ideas a little, I would add that, as Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads compete to attract and retain the creative class that disproportionately contributes to economic prosperity, the recreational opportunities offered by the Bay and its tributaries become a vital asset…. but only if they have clean water, vibrant wildlife and protected public spaces.

Murphy closes his speech by noting the spiritual dimension of protecting the environment. He quotes from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer: “We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the beauty of the earth and sky and sea; for the richness of mountains, plains, and rivers; for the songs of birds and the loveliness of flowers. We praise you for these good gifts and pray that we may safeguard them for our posterity. Grant that we may continue to grow in our grateful enjoyment of your abundant creation.”

“Increasingly,” Murphy closes hopefully, “Virginians understand that conservation adds to their wealth, their happiness, their physical and spiritual health, and the well-being of their families, friends and neighbors.” (Thanks to Barnie Day for bringing this to my attention.)

What a shock: “Pentagon Plans to Close 180 Sites, Shift Area Jobs to Outer Suburbs” is today’s five column headline in The Washington Post.

And I thought I read the base closing list with some care yesterday…

Never fear. Turn to page 11 and get out your compass. All the “Gain” symbols are within R=20 Miles of the centroid of the Baltimore or the National Capital Subregions, within R=5 Miles of the centroid of urban agglomerations (e.g. Frederick, MD) or are big enough places (e.g. Quantico/East Prince William) to become Balanced Communities. These are just the places where one would expect them.

This is not putting the Department of the Army in Culpeper or even the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (think what they could do to help cure Geographic Literacy) in West Prince William.

This is exactly the sort of media distortion that generates and perpetuates Geographic Illiteracy and the illusion of jobs scattering to the fringes.

Also think how great a story it would be if the Pentagon had said they were going to use the clout of base realignment to create Balanced Communities. Sounds like a column to me.

EMR

The Defense Department has released a state-by-state breakdown of the winners and losers from the recommendations of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission. To see the detailed impact on Virginia, click here. (Scroll to page 26 in the PDF file.)

Based on my hasty analysis of the list, it looks like Virginia will lose about 2,400 military and civilian jobs. The biggest hit–6,200 military jobs and 15,800 civilian jobs–will come from the closing or realignment of leased office space. I’m guessing that most of that space is in Northern Virginia. Also, Hampton Roads will lose nearly 3,600 from the closing of the Civil War-era Fort Monroe.

The big winners are Fort Belvoir (11,900 jobs) in Alexandria, Fort Lee (7,300 jobs) near Petersburg, and the U.S. Marine Corps base (3,000 jobs) in Quantico.

The usual suspects will come out whining and crying about the loss of jobs in their communities. Maybe I would, too, if I were in their shoes. But if there’s one place in the country that can shake off the loss of a few thousand jobs, it’s Northern Virginia. For Hampton Roads, the closing of Fort Monroe as a military installation will be offset by gains at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the Little Creek Amphibious Base. As a bonus, the Fort Monroe property, which is located on a primo waterfront site, can be redeveloped as a high-end commercial complex.

Oh, and let us not forget that base realignment is in the national interest. The closing of obsolete bases is necessary to support the transformation of the military so it can fight the kind of missions that will be demanded of it in the 21st century. Let’s get on with it.

As noted in a post near the end of the “Potts Elevates the Tone…” thread below, we agree with “Abitmorered” that there is some very good “stuff” in that thread. There is also some opinion and wishful thinking parading as fact as well as some bad assumptions masquerading as “research.”

Here are some items to keep in mind:

JOB MOVEMENT There is absolutely no evidence that a significant share of a New Urban Region’s key employment base “will continue moving towards where people live” so that there will at some point be meaningful jobs near scattered urban housing.

Thousands of individuals, agencies and enterprises lost Billions of dollars (yes, Billions with a big “B”) betting on an extrapolation of that idea in the 70s (REIT Bust) and in the 90s (Savings&Loan Bust). There have been a lot more losers scattered over the past 40 years. Sadly this myth has hit hardest those wanting to build great places to live, work and play (aka, Planned New Communities) in places they could buy cheap land.

Yes, some retail and service jobs move out but only when there was a critical mass of demand as Joel Garreau documented in Edge City.

Yes, once when there was a critical mass in some “Edge Cities” that are in the right location, then substantial numbers of jobs moved but this was an expansion of the regional core from R=2 Miles out to R=7 to R=11 Miles at the most. It is not R=25 Miles or R=30 Miles. A= PiR2

Yes, core regional employment will outsource to some other region or to some other continent if there are significant savings. You do not see many core Creative Class operations moving from K Street, Wall Street or Market Street to Bangalore. (See note on rent below.)

Those who did move to the fringe (the percentage of the region’s total is very small) beyond R=20 were folks like Steve Case (AOL) and UUNet’s promoter (Sedgemore sp?) because they thought they could make money as speculative office developers since they controlled a lot of office demand generated by their staff. They took advantage of overzoning, fire sales of land following a downturn and municipal/state subsidies direct and indirect.

Steve proved himself not to be the sharpest knife in the drawer on a number of topics, land speculation was one of them. Neither were those who bought UUNet and sunk MCI/World Com. Some say AOL cratered because it could not attract enough Creative Class people to fill key jobs all the way out at the Wal*Mart in the Weeds” site.

S/PI’s work with high tech employers suggests this will not change soon. Prince William’s and Loudoun’s percentage growth is high because they had so little to start with. You can still buy thousands of acres at fire sale prices in both counties if you want to build non-residential (aka, employment) land uses. (Again check the rental rates as noted below.)

We will address this issue in more depth in a planned column on current epidemic of myths about job location. In the meantime take out a compass and a calculator and see what you make of Monday’s (9 May The Washington Post Business Section.) survey of new office locations built since 2002. Note the rental rates for the “Wal*Mart in the Weeds” sites.

THE U SHAPED CURVE Vienna (Wien) Austria and the U shaped curve brings back great memories. I do not know if it was our idea or their idea but I recall discussing the U shaped curve with the senior transport staff in Wien in the mid 80s. We were scouring Western Europe for ideas to implement in the Virginia Center project at Vienna/Fairfax METRO. I am very clear on the fact that in the following 15 years we worked with graduate students and citizen education programs to develop the theory and expand the U Shape Curve to apply to the 40 +/- location variable services that make urban life possible. This became the second of the Five Natural Law of Human Settlement Patterns.

A real understanding of the U Shape curve would eliminate most of the blabbering about private vehicles vs. shared vehicles (aka, roadways vs. railways) in this thread and elsewhere.

There is a U Shaped Curve for each transport mode and it shifts on the x axis and y axis depending on a number of factors. The sweet spot for roadways is between 10 and 15 persons per acre at the Alpha Community scale. For a high capacity spared-vehicle systems the sweet spot is between 100 and 200 persons per acre in the Alpha Village scaled station area. With overlapping station-areas (i.e. Manhattan, Central London and the core of Paris) the density can be higher. These sites can be very expensive to build but there is demand in all these locations.

The most valued and the most functional settlement patterns in urban agglomerations of over 20,000 are higher in intensity than can be served by private vehicles. Sorry, there will never be functional urban agglomerations of over 100,000 without shared vehicle systems. That is not policy, that is physics.

(Some shared vehicle systems like jitneys, omnibuses, school buses, etc., are needed for every agglomeration to provide mobility for those who can not walk including the very young and the old.)

THE 20% MYTH The idea that savings in vehicle travel demand created by functional settlement pattern are in the 20% range is off by at least one decimal point; Perhaps half-way to two decimal points. It is 2 times at the very least and more likely 10 times. Jim Bacon is right, there are no Balanced Communities to test. Fundamental Change turns out to be hard to imagine, especially for those who have preconceived notions of that something else will make them more money in the short run.

Those who think putting three rickety tables on the side walk in front of Starbucks with a view of the McDonalds drive-thru is “pedestrian oriented” or that a Fresh Fields grocery store on the ground floor of an apartment building is “mixed use” or that a new urbanist project of cluster-scale or neighborhood-scale in the wrong location is a good idea have a hard time grasping the reality of what a community of 150,000 with a balance of jobs/housing/services/recreation/amenity might be like. It has nothing to do with what has been modeled in Oregon (LUTRAC) or anywhere else.

THE DAILY GRIND Almost no one would really like to ride shared-vehicle system to work every day if it functioned like METRO. (See our backgrounder “Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO …”) That is what Balanced Station Area Villages are all about. Also see the two key shared vehicle understandings in our current column “Antidotes.”

For the person who expressed his preference not to ride METRO and who looked forward to leaving “NOVA.” If the can convince Dick to move your office from Mass Ave I believe I can arrange a site, the capital and a streamlined process to get your office relocated to a place that has the potential to become a Balanced, Disaggregated Community. It could be a world class example of how to do it right.

Sorry, you will still be in the northern part of Virginia. (See our column “Where is Northern Virginia.”) and even your move would not be enough to ensure the evolution of even one Balanced, Disaggregated Community. It would be a great start.

The scale of the problem ahead is why citizen education is the first step to Fundamental Change.

EMR

The intra-Republican feuding is getting ugly — as nasty as anything between Virginia Republicans and Democrats. From Leesburg2day comes the report that the campaign of Del. Joe May, R-33, has filed a formal complaint alleging that his challenger, Christopher Oprison, has violated numerous campaign laws.

The complaint, filed with Loudoun Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Plowman and Clarke County Commonwealth’s Attorney Suzanne M. Perka, potentially could lead to criminal and civil charges against Oprison and members of his campaign staff, and disqualification of Oprison from the ballot. The offenses range, according to Leesburg2day, from the Oprison campaign having an ineligible campaign worker collect signatures and sign affidavits to accusations of tampered and mishandled documents. Sayeth Leesburg2Day:

Many of the complaints center around 22-year-old Andrew Tyrell, a Patrick Henry College student working for Oprison. Tyrell came from Florida and apparently was registered to vote there until May’s campaign raised questions with the local Republican Party shortly after the petitions were delivered about whether he was an eligible Virginia voter. Tyrell’s car was also registered in Florida.

Tyrell signed many of the affidavits verifying the signature on the campaign petition forms. The form states that the person signing must be at least 18, have no felony convictions and be eligible to vote in Virginia. After the concern was raised, Tyrell registered to vote in Virginia, an action confirmed by the local electoral board.

While Bacon’s Rebellion staffers like myself were diligently pursuing our reporting assignments, Boss Man Jim Bacon added a blogroll to the site. It’s already attracted notice from One Man’s Trash and Commonwealth Conservative, including pleas to add The Salt Lick and River City Rapids.

At the risk of raising Jim’s ire and having him assign me to cover Steve Chapman’s tax returns, I hereby join the calls to add these two worthy sites.

In today’s Roanoke Times, Steve DelBianco, an NVA entrepreneur, argues against Virginia signing up for a national “streamlined” sales tax system for internet retailers. The RT had editorially endorsed the concept.

I suspect Russ Potts neglected to mention this tax idea during his appearance in NVA yesterday, but I’m sure he’d disagree with Mr. DelBianco and side with the tax-happy bunch in Roanoke.

“Independent Republican” Russ Potts spoke in Northern Virginia yesterday and received favorable coverage in the Washington Post. For those who are tired of “Accent-gate,” Potts offered new heights of substance:

Potts railed against what he called the “free lunch bunch” and “flat-earth crowd” in the Republican Party that he said have not acknowledged how much it will cost to improve the state’s transportation network.

He excoriated conservatives for what he called their “obsession” with social issues. And he blasted a Kilgore proposal for a constitutional amendment that would require a voter referendum before raising state taxes, calling it a way to avoid leading.

“Let me spell referendum for you,” he said. “It’s spelled C-O-W-A-R-D.”

Demonstrating his wonkish streak, “Potts vowed to let local governments reinstate the car tax to pump more money into state services.”

He laid out his complex transportation plan:

Potts promised to put together a blue-ribbon panel to consider ways to improve transportation, with all ideas on the table, including a gas tax increase. As governor, he said, he would hold a special session of the General Assembly to pass a transportation plan and travel the state to sell it.

Of course, one idea is apparently off the table: referenda. Potts wasn’t asked about that. He also wasn’t asked about his past support for referenda. Had he once been a C-O-W-A-R-D?

Obviously, at this stage of the campaign, with reporters trying to make the race more interesting by boosting the Winchester “straight-shooter,” questioning Potts on the details just isn’t newsworthy right now.