Monthly Archives: October 2005

On November 8th, Virginia voters will choose the man who will be their lawyer for the next four years. The Virginia Attorney General is, in fact, the people’s lawyer: serving as our advocate on consumer matters; defending our decisions as jurors in criminal appeals; protecting our investments in charitable organizations and institutions; initiating and overseeing prosecution of government fraud and conflicts of interest; and advising the state officials and agencies who serve us.

Just as you choose carefully the lawyer who advises your business and your family, each Virginian should look carefully at the qualifications and stated priorities of the two candidates who seek election this year as Attorney General, and vote in November for the person you think would best serve you.

Senator Creigh Deeds (D Bath County) currently represents the people of the 25th district, stretching from Bath County to Charlottesville. He was the elected prosecutor of Bath County for four years before his election to the Virginia House of Delegates. He moved to the Senate in 2001, winning a special election for the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Emily Couric. Creigh Deeds says that as attorney general, “I will use my experience working across the aisle to make the office less political and improve the overall efficiency and responsiveness of our government. I will focus on the rights of those victimized by crime and respond to the surge of gang violence, illegal drug use, and domestic violence.” For more information visit his website, www.creighdeeds.com.

Delegate Robert F. McDonnell (R VA Beach) has represented the people of the 85th House district in Virginia Beach since 1992. Prior to being elected to the House of Delegates, he served as a prosecutor in the Virginia Beach Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office. He is a retired Lt. Colonel who served in the Army for 21 years (active duty and reserves).
Bob McDonnell says that as attorney general he will protect children from violent sexual predators, fight the scourge of drugs and protect Virginians from terroristic threats. For more information visit his website, www.bobmcdonell.com.

Certainly, this information is helpful to those paying attention to this so-called “down ballot race.” Nonetheless, there is more that you need to know about these candidates beyond their carefully scripted, politically marketable platforms and platitudes to make an informed choice in November.

Here are some questions that you should be asking both candidates for Attorney General so that you can decide which man to “hire” as your lawyer when you enter the polling booth to vote on November 8th:

How will the candidates represent your interests as “consumer counsel?”

Under the Code of Virginia, the Attorney General is required to represent the “interests of the people as consumers.” What does this mean to the candidates for Attorney General? Will either of them take an active role in investigating and enforcing Virginia’s Consumer Protection Act?

When she was Attorney General, Mary Sue Terry helped reduce the costs to businesses and consumers of liability and workers’ compensation insurance at a time when premiums were rising and insurance was increasingly unavailable. She did this through legislation she advocated and through aggressive representation of consumers in insurance rate cases pending before the State Corporation Commission.

How will each of these candidates use his authority as Attorney General to represent Virginia consumers? Will he take action to address the malpractice insurance crisis, protect consumers from price gouging during the current gas crisis or prosecute those who deceive consumers by making false claims about their products or services; for example, those businesses who sell international drivers licenses falsely claiming that it is legal to drive in Virginia using such a document?

How will each candidate decide how money from settlements negotiated in consumer class action cases will be distributed?

With the exception of the tobacco settlement funds, the distribution of settlement proceeds from consumer lawsuits is completely within the discretion of the Attorney General pursuant to whatever agreement ending the lawsuit was approved by a court. Some past Attorneys General have distributed money from lawsuits in a manner designed principally to serve their political objectives. One Attorney General distributed money from the settlement of a price fixing lawsuit involving a woman’s shoemaker to so-called crisis pregnancy centers rather than in a manner more likely to benefit directly the consumers who had paid more for shoes because of the company’s anti-trust activities. Another made grants from settlement funds to health care institutions and organizations in jurisdictions that could be of strategic importance in a future campaign.

How will each candidate decide when to challenge or defend a law passed by the legislature, appeal a case or sign an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief in a case pending in another jurisdiction?
I
n past administrations, Virginia Attorneys General, acting on behalf of the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia (their ultimate client), have: 1) refused to defend the legislature’s decision to increase office allowances for members of the House and Senate (the legislature won); 2) defended at trial and on appeal a plainly unconstitutional statute passed by the legislature that sought to ban a particular abortion procedure (the so-called partial birth abortion bill); 3) filed lawsuits attacking the application of certain EPA rules and the federal Motor Voter Law to Virginia; and 4) authored or signed briefs that advocated severe limitations on the right of individuals to sue the state for discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination Act and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

What policy will this year’s candidates follow in making these kinds of decisions? Will their actions reflect their personal beliefs, those of their respective political parties or some other standard? Will they consult with the Governor before committing the people of the Commonwealth to a side in a legal dispute?

How will the candidates interpret the law in official opinions they write as Attorney General? Will the candidates be “activists” or “strict constructionists?

One of the important roles played by the Attorney General is quasi-judicial. The Attorney General is obligated by law to issue a formal opinion regarding how the law should be interpreted when asked by certain public officials. The questions asked each year cover far reaching issues from the legality of “pull tabs” in fraternal lodges to the right of localities to regulate shooting ranges to the right of citizens to distribute anonymous political leaflets.

An official opinion of the Attorney General is not the same as a court decision, but it is entitled to great deference by the courts. Once an Attorney General issues an opinion, the failure of the legislature to take action to override it by changing or clarifying the law is read by the courts as an indication that the legislature agrees with the Attorney General’s reading of the law.

Just as it is important to know how a judge will apply the law and what regard he or she will have for past decisions, it is important to know how a candidate for the office of Attorney General will approach this quasi-judicial opinion writing function.

One example illustrates well the power the Attorney General can wield through the opinion function. In 1962-63, in 1966-67 and in 1991, three Attorneys General had opined that it was unconstitutional under the Virginia Constitution for public school divisions to provide free bus service to students att
ending private religious schools. Each of these Attorneys General interpreted the Virginia Constitution as setting a stricter standard for the separation of church and state than is set by the First Amendment. This longstanding interpretation was never addressed by the Virginia legislature nor overturned by the Virginia courts. In 1995, stating simply that “I am of the opinion that these prior opinions do not accurately state the current law,” then Attorney General James Gilmore issued an opinion overruling the prior opinions and interpreting the law as permitting local school divisions to provide bus transportation to students attending private religious schools. Ironically, the 1995 busing opinion was requested by and issued to one of the candidates for Attorney General this year, Delegate Bob McDonnell.

Will the candidate be a good steward of your tax dollars?

The Attorney General of Virginia is the managing partner of a public law firm with almost 300 employees and a budget of more than $25 million — not including almost 60 additional lawyers paid for by various state agencies but supervised by the Attorney General, and the millions of dollars spent annually on outside counsel (private lawyers and law firms) who handle matters ranging from issuance of bonds to mundane collection work.

What steps will each candidate take to be sure that dollars spent on the state’s legal work are well invested and that the quality of representation provided to taxpayers is high? What will the candidates do to improve the state’s collection of debts owed and fines and penalties unpaid? How will each candidate account for the $9,000 a year that he will receive as Attorney General for expenses “not otherwise reimbursed?”

Will the candidate’s management practices as Attorney General reflect a commitment to full equality of opportunity at all levels?

Every employee of the Office of the Attorney General is an at will employee who serves at the pleasure of the lawyer elected by the people to serve as Attorney General. Will the candidate seek and hire employees based on merit? Will the candidate commit not to discriminate in employment based on race, national origin, gender, religion, disability, Veterans’ status, sexual orientation or gender identity? Will the candidate commit to ensure that the Office’s hiring and personnel practices reflect a commitment to merit over political affiliation and full equality of opportunity and compensation at all levels of employment? How will each candidate assure that the contracting and procurement practices of the Office of the Attorney General under his leadership assure that small, women and minority owned businesses get their fair share of the state dollars that the Office spends?

How the candidates for Attorney General answer these questions will reveal much about what kind of leader each will be in the role he is now seeking and more about what kind of leader he might be as Governor when he (inevitably, it seems) decides to move up in four years.

The Oct. 31, 2005, edition of Bacon’ s Rebellion has been published. You can read it online here.

Speaker Bill Howell and friends are talking about selling highways and bridges to private investors. If he wants to sell Mr. Jefferson’s Academical Village, today he could probably persuade me. Maybe it’s a Halloween prank article, and maybe it’s not.

A couple of days ago, I expressed skepticism regarding the usefulness of a state Senate task force formed to examine long-term energy policy for Virginia. I based my comments upon an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which emphasized issues such as price gouging after hurricanes and heating bills for poor people. Those sounded like the ultimate in short-term issues, I observed. I should have reserved my skepticism for the article, not the task force.

It turns out that Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, who will lead the study, truly is thinking long-term. In the op-ed pages of today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, he advocated relieving Virginia’s dependence upon easily disrupted Gulf Coast natural gas supplies by supporting construction of a Liquefied Natural Gas terminal in the Commonwealth. I’m impressed. Watkins is thinking outside the box. I think he makes a strong case.

Virginia’s electricity supply, Watkins observes, is increasingly dependent upon clean-burning natural gas. The addition of gas-fired electric generators across the United States has outstripped the production of gas domestically, and environmental policies restrict the ability to produce more. What’s more, 25 percent of our natural gas comes from the Gulf Coast, which, as we have seen, is vulnerable to disruptions by hurricanes. The solution, he says, is to import more gas. “[Liquefied Natural Gas] is the best mid-term solution to ease the supply crunch because it is a safe and proven technology, and new terminals for receiving LNG from Alaska, South America, the Caribbean and other regions can be permitted and built in just a few years.”

Columbia, the gas pipeline company, already operates an LNG terminal in Chesapeake. Dominion operates another in Maryland. Says Watkins: “The addition of a major LGN import terminal in Virginia … would provide the Commonwealth with long-term energy stability and economic development resulting from a clean and reliable energy source. We would also gain natural gas supply diversity to provide price competition and serve as a cushion against future disruptions in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Watkins has a good idea, though I would argue that it’s only a start. If Virginia wants to insulate its energy supplies from the vagaries of hurricanes, terrorists and despots, we also should examine market-driven, environmentally sound solutions such as:

• Expanding Dominion’s nuclear power capacity
• Pushing electric-powered automobiles (substituting domestically generated electricity for imported petroleum)
• Reforming the scattered, disconnected and low-density patterns of development that increase automobile dependence, Vehicle Miles Driven and gasoline consumption
• Easing regulatory barriers that inhibit the spread of micropower (small-scale solar energy production and fuel cells to store electric energy)

The Washington Post poll is out today. When the attacks on its credibility started a day or two ago on Republican blogs, I had a feeling it would be really bad news for Kilgore. It shows a three point lead for Kaine, within the margin of error, similar to earlier polls from other sources showing Kaine up a bit, and no surprise given the Post’s history of oversampling Democrats. Main message: what we’ve always suspected — a tight race.

One thing is missing though — the summary sheet. With the September poll, a full summary of the Post results was provided. That is still linked as a sidebar to this story, but we don’t have the October results to put beside it. Perhaps with some prodding they will post it. (Update note: And perhaps they are waiting to do a story on some of the other questions before they do.)

Lacking that data, and having set that standard of disclosure themselves, there is reason to treat this poll with more than usual skepticism. As you should treat EVERYTHING that appears in the newspapers, in new TV ads and on these blogs (where everybody always tells the truth!) between now and 7 p.m. on November 8. After Halloween things start going bump in the night.

Update! The Post has put up the background info, with one page missing for tomorrow’s story (probably.) Thanks, guys.

According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Sen. William C. Wampler, R-Bristol, chairman of the Virginia Coal and Energy Commission, has named John Watkins, R-Powhatan, to lead the development of a “long-term energy policy” for the General Assembly’s consideration. (See story here.) Of special concern: price gouging after hurricanes and heating bills for poor people.

Gut reaction: If I’d put my mind to come up with the most short-term issues that I could think of, it would be those two. Now, it’s entirely possible that the state Senate will address matters other than those mentioned by reporter Greg Edwards, so I will withhold judgment.

My humble suggestion: Sen. Watkins should focus on ways to conserve energy and shift to more stable energy supplies. In contrast to the 1970s, when the old Virginia Electric Power Co. was every populist’s favorite bad guy, Dominion is supplying electricity at very stable and competitive rates. To the extent that Virginia can shift its energy consumption from gasoline to electricity — electric cars, anyone? — we benefit.

If this new study commission wants to tackle a real “long-term” issue, it ought to take a look at nuclear power. Nuclear energy has turned out to be quite a bargain. The more of it we can get, the cheaper and more stable our electric supplies. Dominion has made preliminary moves towards erecting two more nuclear-powered units in Virginia. This task force could act to remove the regulatory hurdles.

See this story from today’s Daily Press:

U.S. history still trips up students

The state has excluded history scores from the accreditation process for many middle schools.

BY KATHRYN WALSON

757-247-4535

October 27, 2005

STANDARDS OF LEARNING — Virginia is steeped in national history, but its young students aren’t too familiar with the United States’ early years.

Scores on the state’s Standards of Learning exam on American History to 1877 – given to fifth- or sixth-graders – were so low that state officials have decided ,for the past two years, that the scores on the History I exam don’t have to count toward a school’s rating.

The students’ limited understanding of American history is disappointing – especially in a place surrounded by historical sites, said Bill White, director for educational program development at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

“Neglect of history in our schools has already generated two generations of Americans who don’t have a good grasp of who we are as a people,” he said. “This is a national problem and a long-running problem. It’s not something that’s going to be fixed in a school year.”

Because the foundation’s mission is to improve history education, it offers training for teachers and interactive television programs for students nationwide.

“What we need a public school system to do is to create good future citizens of the United States, and the only way to do that is to make sure children understand American history,” White said.

The current history exams began in the 2003-04 school year. Students previously took a cumulative test in eighth grade. But most now take an exam each year of middle school – on American History to 1877, American History Since 1877, and Civics and Economics.

“Changes require a time period for adjustments – for the new curriculum to be in place, for teachers to revise their classroom instruction,” state Education Department spokeswoman Julie Grimes said.

The History I exam is particularly challenging because of all the information that it requires fifth- and sixth-graders to know, Grimes said. “These are some of the younger students … that are being tested on a lot of facts,” she said.

Still, Grimes said, next year’s History I scores would count in the accreditation process.

It couldn’t be determined how many schools in the area and the state excluded History I scores because of low passing rates. But many schools pressured the state to allow the exclusion, she said.

Mathews County schools are among those that benefited from the state’s decision. “Being able to not count, that certainly played out well for us,” Assistant Superintendent George Kidd said.

For two years in a row, Mathews students’ passing rates fell far short of the state’s 70 percent benchmark. Just 50 percent of fifth-graders passed the History I exam last school year, up from 39 percent in 2003-04.

Eighty percent of Mathews’ sixth-graders passed the exam for American History Since 1877, while just 66 percent of seventh-graders passed the Civics and Economics exam.

The reason for low scores is a mystery to Kidd. He said a position was created for a teacher to review students’ SOL answers and pinpoint trouble spots.

“We’re puzzled as much as the state as to why we’re not seeing better scores, ” Kidd said. “We’re grateful that the state gave us another year to get to the bottom of this with them.”

In Isle of Wight County, the History I exam was excluded at Smithfield Middle School as a result of a 66 percent passing rate, which administrators attribute to one low-performing class. The poor scores were the result of an instructional issue that’s been resolved, said Mary Mehaffey, assistant superintendent for instruction.

Poquoson was one of the few school systems that kept the cumulative history test, which 92 percent of eighth-graders passed last year, said Marilyn Barr, assistant superintendent for instruction.

She said, “We had a good system in place, and our students were doing well with it.”

End of Article.

Please note that the Poquoson kids passed. Hmm. Maybe the history teachers did what the tiny (two teacher) biology department did years ago. The biology teachers looked at everything taught in science k-9 and looked for the holes in building blocks of scientific knowledge. They filled in the instruction in what should be cumulative learning. The results were spectacular.

Likewise, my wife’s school in York County has passed the SOLs every year from year One when under 1% of the schools made it. They evaluated each child to see what they didn’t know. Then, golly gee whilikers, they taught the children – as individuals – with extra instruction including volunteer tutors in class and after school to bring them up to speed. This is a school with 20% ‘at risk’ population in schoolese.

K-12 teaching isn”t rocket science. If it is done properly the kids can become rocket scientists.

I still remember things I learned in Arlington County history (3rd grade), Virginia history (our Yankee 4th grade teacher, Mrs Scharf, actually taught about the feats of Confederate arms) and U.S. History (5th grade). The best class I have had was a two hour course combining English and History in the 11th grade – called American Civilization (soon to be the web site I am building).

Final note. It’s wrong to exclude the failing subject for accreditation. Either schools pass or they don’t.

In a commentary released yesterday, titled, Immigration Reform is Everyone’s Business, Thomas Donahue, President and CEO of the US Chamber, talks sense about immigration:

The Chamber supports immigration because immigrants have always been a key to the success of our economy. Immigrants fill jobs that Americans don’t want or refuse to take, and will play a key role in alleviating inevitable worker shortages that will be created as aging Baby Boomers start retiring.

Here’s the Chamber’s plan: penalize undocumented workers with fines, extend permanent legal status to many immigrants after a long test period, allow employers to keep an essential part of their current workforce, and require that immigrants pass additional security checks and pay their taxes.

It’s important to ensure that American workers have a fair shot at job openings before they’re open to immigrant workers, and that’s a key part of our plan. We also need a fast and reliable way to match willing employers and willing employees, combined with visa limitations that fluctuate according to market needs. Finally, a reliable employment eligibility confirmation system that is easy to use will aid small businesses with deciphering federal immigration relations so that they can avoid having to hire expensive lawyers.

One thing is clear, however: we can’t simply round up every illegal immigrant and ship them back. There are an estimated 10.2 million undocumented workers in the United States. Their families include another 3 million children who are U.S. citizens. Aside from the inhumanity of separating children from their parents, it would take about 200,000 buses to carry these workers to our borders. Lined up, bumper to bumper, the bus convoy would extend over 1,700 miles and carry a population the size of Ohio. The results would paralyze our economy. That’s not going to happen.

Taken together, these proposals can help fix our broken immigration system and return business owners to doing what they do best: creating jobs.

So, unless you’re in the busing business or you’re a baby boomer who wants to be making beds in hotels or picking fruit in the Valley in your retirement years, enlightened self-interest should have you urging your reps in Congress to do something that makes sense regarding immigration ….

something that doesn’t further devolve federal responsibilities to state and local governments with no money attached;

something that doesn’t assume that closing our borders to all immigration is either desirable or possible;

something that realistically secures our borders against those who seek to harm us rather than serve or work with us;

something that isn’t so fraught with bureaucratic excess that the paperwork kills whole forests and small businesses;

something that doesn’t reflect or serve the protectionist, isolationist, nativist, jingoistic rhetoric too often infecting the current immmigration debate;

something that sounds like common sense and works in the real world.

Learn more.

Virginia Chamber? You’re next…

From the Free Lance-Star:

John Cole Goolrick, 70, a native of Fredericksburg, died Sunday, Oct. 23, 2005, at Henrico Doctors’ Hospital in Richmond.

He was a graduate of James Monroe High School and a graduate of the University of Richmond. He was a longtime journalist for The Free Lance-Star; a district representative for several U.S. congressmen from Virginia, most recently, Jo Ann Davis; and had served 20 years with the Virginia Army National Guard.

Goolrick also was an occasional contributor to the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine. We will miss him.

Peter Bacque with the Richmond Times-Dispatch is doing a good job of staying on top of ongoing developments at the Virginia Information Technology Agency. In today’s report, he reveals that Northrup Grumman has received the state IT Investment Board’s backing for a nearly $2 billion contract to rebuild Virginia’s IT infrastructure.

The potential savings are significant. The deal would be worth $1.986 billion over its 10-year length — about $38 million a year less than VITA spends annually now on the state’s hardware and software. That’s about 19 percent per year. That’s serious money, folks.

Of course, aspects of the deal must be opened to public scrutiny and subjected to public critique. But based on the numbers reported so far, it looks like a major win for efficiency in government.

Jerry Kilgore has opened up a can of worms, accusing the “liberal press” of “defending a liberal soulmate” — Democrat Tim Kaine — from criticism of his opposition to the death penalty. (See Jeff Schapiro’s article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

I have two reactions. First, so what else is new? Second, that’s the way it is, quit whining and get over it.

Of course the Mainstream Media is biased. The only people who can’t see it are those who share the same mental framework for viewing the world as the journalists themselves. To liberals, reportorial coverage just looks normal. The rest of us can see the bias plainly. How do we know? Because we live in daily stupefaction at the spin put on the nightly news and front pages of the leading newspapers. We know there’s bias because we know that we’d write the same stories very differently, ignore stories that get replayed incessantly, and give greater weight to stories that the MSM doesn’t bother to cover.

The fact of bias in the national media is so blindingly obvious that I won’t bother to defend my statement any further. If you can’t see it, I’ll never convince you. It’s a conservative thing, you wouldn’t understand.

On the other hand, I would argue that local reporters tend to be less biased than their national counterparts. Yes, biases exist, but they’re not nearly as intrusive. While the national MSM, cloistered in liberal enclaves like Manhattan and Washington, D.C., ignores vast bodies of evidence that contradict its worldview, local journalists live amidst the mainstream culture, not in isolation from it. That tends to moderate their views. Furthermore, most local reporters, I’ve found, are fairly diligent about reporting both sides of a story. You might have to read a little deeper to read the pro-death penalty quotes, but they’ll be there in the article. There may be subtle bias in the way reporters write the leads and slant the story, but, honestly — and I can say this because I’m very sensitive to it — it’s not nearly as egregious as with the national media.

The true failing of local media, to my mind, is the superficiality of coverage, particularly of public policy issues. Political reporters are, by nature, generalists. They cannot become experts in every field of policy — taxes, budgets, transportation, health care, education, etc. So, they tend to engage in he said/she said reporting without making any great effort the claims being made. Regarding the death penalty debate, why isn’t the T-D’s Frank Green, who has won numerous national awards for his reporting on the death penalty, part of the team covering the debate? Why leave the issue to the generalists?

Kilgore is unhappy because his death penalty initiative isn’t giving him the traction he was looking for. But he shouldn’t blame the media. It’s like Democrats kvetching that Republicans raise more money. As Tom Silvestri, my old boss and now publisher of the Times-Dispatch, used to say about some intractable problem: “It is how it is.” The sub-text of his message was, you can pout about it, or you can work around it. A biased media is part of the background of any political campaign.

Reporters, no matter how liberal, are drawn to many elements of a story. They like conflict. They like human interest. And, yes, they strive to uphold a standard of objectivity and fairness in their coverage. They often fall short of that standard, but the existence of the standard does moderate their biases. Finally, I would add, the local MSM is not monolithic. Blogs provide a limited corrective. So does local talk radio.

Ultimately, the existence of a biased media puts the onus on the Kilgore campaign to craft and deliver its campaign messages in such a way as to penetrate the filters of the MSM. Jim Gilmore succeeded eight years ago, and George Allen did four years before him. It can be done.

It’s time for Phil R. to chime in, and where better than here on Bacon’s Rebellion?

The mailman brought me a bit of a surprise today, a copy of the fake Club for Growth mailing challenging Kilgore on taxes. But it is only sort of a fake, since it is based on a real Oct. 10 news release from the Club for Growth. You have to really hunt to find the Kaine for Governor disclaimer printed on the right side of Kilgore’s photo, but it’s there.

The best place to see it for yourself (if you are not on the Republican primary voter list like we are) is at the Washington Post’s blog. They have the full PDF posted. I’ve seen it discussed on a couple of other blogs as well. Our readers should chime in.

When I first saw it on line, I thought it was really from VCFG. Then I read today it was a Kaine mailing, but used real rhetoric questioning Kilgore on taxes from a Club for Growth news release. It even goes so far as to state that the text was originally “approved” by the Virginia Club for Growth — wouldn’t want anybody claiming plagarism or failure to disclose.

First thought, there Phil goes again — right in character, shooting at a Republican who doesn’t meet his measure of perfection and putting purity above victory. Second thought — how deceptive of the Kaine campaign. But it’s growing on me. As a tactician, it’s growing on me. In my reporting days I used to say that the meanest thing I ever did to a politican was quote him accurately.

This mailer is going in the permanent collection. It won’t change the outcome, but it will sow confusion and resentment on our side and it must be ruining somebody’s day. I hope it is causing the Club for Growth the most grief, frankly. To my D friends: A tip of the hat, guys — I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Another old rule of mine: Never underestimate the Republican Party’s gift for self-destruction.

One of the most imaginative legislators in Virginia today is Chris Saxman, the Republican delegate from Staunton. Saxman has devoted more energy than almost anyone else in the General Assembly to devise creative ways to reduce state spending. His latest brainstorm: Encourage college students to graduate early rather than drag out their educations for five or six years at public expense.

The State Council on Higher Education projects enrollment demand for in-state students to increase by more than 56,000 students by 2012; Virginia’s four-year institutions are expected to absorb 11 percent of that increase. State support covers roughly 68 percent of tuition and general fees for in-state students. Incredibly, there is no requirement for students to complete their educational requirements on time. Indeed, Saxman notes, it takes students five years on average to graduate. “By offering incentives to students to complete their undergraduate degrees in less than four years,” he says, “we will help to free up space for incoming students.”

Saxman’s idea: Provide students with graduate school scholarships if they graduate in three years from public four-year colleges and universities. In return, scholarship recipients would obligated to remain and work in the Commonwealth for a minimum period or pay back the cost of graduate school tuition. He is particularly keen on encouraging doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers and other professionals in short supply to stay in the state.

Phyllis Palmiero, former director of SCHEV and a member of the Joint Subcommittee Higher Education Funding likes the idea. “Many students come to college with a number of college credits, some equivalent to a full year, however, they do not have the incentive to finish their degree early,” she says. “They prefer to remain with their class and ultimately enjoy their senior year. This is partly cultural and partly because there is no financial incentive to graduate early. Providing incentives or rewards for finishing early, such as graduate school scholarships, would certainly provide that incentive.”

Chris Craddock, a Republican candidate for a House of Delegates seat in western Fairfax County, has a little driving problem. The 27-year-old youth minister has racked up nine driving tickets over the past five years, including a citation last week for reckless driving, the Washington Post reports.

The politics of transportation could get interesting in the 2006 General Assembly if both Craddock and Republican gubernatorial nominee Jerry Kilgore win their races in November. Kilgore has proposed levying heavier fines on traffic scofflaws as a way of discouraging the kind of reckless behavior that causes traffic accidents and creates traffic gridlock. He also sees the fines as a revenue stream to pay for more road improvements.

Craddock’s Democratic opponent, Chuck Caputo, says the tickets show Craddock’s unfitness for office. But I rather like the idea of electing a politician who will help pay the cost of government out of his own pocket!

Here comes a new Mason-Dixon poll confirming the findings of earlier polls: The issues that matter to voters are the ones that impact their daily lives — not cultural wedge issues. The most important issues in this year’s governor’s race, as summarized in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch:

21 % – education issues/public schools funding
17 % – state taxes/state spending
15 % – roads/traffic/transportation
8 % – economy/jobs/economic growth
7 % – crime/death penalty/criminal justice
6 % – leadership/character/personal qualities
5 % – moral issues/family values

One final plea: Would the gubernatorial candidates please focus their speeches, press releases and, above all, their campaign ads on the issues that matter to the electorate?