Category Archives: Efficiency in government

Virginia Very Low Income Housing Voucher Waiting Lists are Closed

SeaView Lofts apartments in Newport News

by James C. Sherlock

Some things don’t change that should.

Or don’t change fast enough to keep up with markets.

Which means they will fail.

From Virginia Housing’s discussion of the Housing Choice Voucher Program

The Housing Choice Voucher Program is the federal government’s major program for assisting very low-income families, low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to decent, safe, and affordable housing in the private market.

Housing assistance is provided on behalf of the family or individual, and allows you to find housing (single-family homes, townhouses, mobile homes, and apartments) that that [sic] fits your needs.

Or not.  From the Housing Choice Voucher Waiting List Portal

We are sorry, but none of Virginia Housing waiting lists are currently open.

That is the list for the entire Commonwealth.

The program is broken. So, what is going on? Continue reading

A More Appropriate Management Model for State Mental Health Facilities

Central State Hospital Petersburg

by James C. Sherlock

I always find it disturbing when state agencies operate institutions that they are also responsible for regulating and inspecting.

It almost cannot work.

I have brought this up with regards to the VDOE operation of a virtual learning program when that same agency oversees private providers of the exact same services.

That is small ball compared to the issues at the state’s mental health facilities.

Now we have a very recent tragic example at Central State of decades-long problems at state-run mental hospitals including overcrowding and inadequate staffing.

A 2021 Associated Press article used Central State as the leading example of overcrowding. The reporter wrote, prophetically:

Virginia sheriffs are reporting being stretched thin after responding to psychiatric emergencies that require them to hold people and transport them for treatment.

‘I’ve had deputy sheriffs tied up for days at a time,’ John Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs’ Association, told the newspaper in an interview on Tuesday. ‘We’re at a crisis point.’

Now seven sheriffs deputies and three Central State staffers are charged with murder in that same scenario.

I view the current management model in which a single state agency oversees, operates and inspects its own facilities as untenable.

There is a proven alternative. Continue reading

Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes

by James C. Sherlock

Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion.

Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact.

I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year, in an attempt to cure that.

Then I will write about the causes.

I will almost certainly be called a racist. Continue reading

Arlington CPS Seizes Baby Girl Over Tylenol

by Asra Q. Nomani and Debra Tisler

Late Wednesday afternoon, in Courtroom 4B of Arlington County’s Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, Sean Jackson beamed widely as a judge granted him and his parents, Carlos Makle and Kim Jackson-Makle, joint custody of Sean’s baby girl, Amoria, instead of relegating her to foster care or instability with a mother struggling with drug addiction.

Kim later said, “Hallelujah,” thinking the nightmare they had been living for over a year with the County’s inept Division of Child Protective Services was finally over. But it was just about to begin all over again. Arlington County’s Child Protective Services was about to dispatch a social worker to an apartment in Arlington to seize Amoria’s second cousin, London, also a cute baby girl, from her mother, Paris Adams.

Why?

Over an alleged missed dosage of Tylenol Wednesday morning that the baby wasn’t even required to get, per doctor’s orders, but was rather prescribed “as needed.” With so much written in the news about public policy, legislation and politics, this story is disturbing because of the sheer inhumanity of bureaucrats operating with complete disregard for actual child welfare or a mother’s heartache.

First, a rewind.
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Is a Reckoning Coming for the Management and Administrative Costs at Virginia’s State Colleges and Universities?

UVa President James Ryan. $750,000 base salary. Courtesy of the University of Virginia

by James C. Sherlock

In 2015, Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado at Boulder wrote an op-ed for The New York Times that clarified for many a major issue in the rising costs of a college education — the exponential growth of the number and costs of administrators.

According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Polytechnic University, Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the C.S.U. system grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.

With inflation putting pressure on budgets, I hope Boards of Visitors are taking a hard look at reducing expenses before increasing tuitions. Continue reading

RVA 5×5: RVA = DIY

by Jon Baliles

Jack Jacobs at Richmond Biz Sense has an update about the ongoing fallout from the collapse of the Enrichmond Foundation last summer. All of the small organizations that used Enrichmond as a fiduciary lost access to their money (which may be gone for good; stay tuned) and other things like insurance coverage.

While there are efforts underway to transfer two historically Black cemeteries formerly under Enrichmond’s purview to the city, there has not been any statement, hint, clue, concern, or any sign of emotion uttered by the Mayor about when or if the city will help restore the funding of these small groups that do a lot of valuable work to help the City and save staff time.

Since no one at City Hall seems to be interested in helping, Richmonders are doing what they do best — they are doing it themselves (aka DIY).

For example, the group RVA Clean Sweep counts nearly 1,500 people who support it by going around the city picking up trash. They lost their insurance coverage and about $3,000 when Enrichmond folded. Have they quit trying to help clean up the city? Nope.

They held fewer cleanups and told volunteers to be extra careful as they were volunteering without insurance, but they still kept cleaning and sweeping. But no insurance means they were not able to apply for grants or hold as many cleanups as they would like, according to RVA Clean Sweep Director Amy Robins.

But they still held cleanups because they wanted their volunteers to stay engaged. “Robins feared that a prolonged hiatus on activity would cause volunteers to drift away from the cause of cleaning up litter in the city,” wrote Jacobs.
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Virginia Emergency Management During COVID – A Well-Documented Scandal

By James C. Sherlock

The National Incident Management System Preparedness Cycle

We could see it wasn’t right as it unfolded.

Virginia’s flawed response to COVID was slow for all Virginians.

Fatal for some.

But the public just saw the broad stroke external effects.

  • We saw executive orders that seemed sudden, sweeping, and disconnected from the information we had. It turns out that often the governor himself was operating in an information vacuum.
  • In the pandemic’s early phases, the Commonwealth finished last or next to last among states in crucial responses like testing and vaccination program rollouts.  Everything seemed to be invented ad hoc rather than from a plan.  It turns out that was true.
  • There was a prescient and well-drawn pandemic operations plan that had been produced by a contractor, but virtually no one in the administration knew what it required, and certainly had never practiced it in any meaningful way or fine-tuned it based on realistic exercises.  When BR found and reported on that plan in 2020, it was pulled from public view.

It is important to make sure that doesn’t happen again, whether in another pandemic or in a cyber attack, hurricane, flood, mass shooting, kinetic terrorist attack, nuclear plant emergency, or something else.

In response to my request, a very cooperative Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) FOIA official has provided a remarkable and profoundly disturbing two-volume series detailing a running history and operations analysis of what happened inside the government.

It is titled “COVID-19 Pandemic History and After Action ReportVol. 1 (covers 2020) and Vol. 2. (covers 2021) hereafter referred to as the HAAR.

It was compiled and written under contract by CNA, a highly regarded federal contractor, who had people on site in Richmond during the COVID response.

The HAAR describes and assesses a series of widespread and seemingly endless internal and external government breakdowns that compromised the health and lives of Virginia’s citizens.

Management turmoil in the state government during COVID was so extensive as to be almost indescribable by any group with less talent than the CNA team.

The HAAR documents that Virginia’s COVID response was hamstrung by a lack of operations management experience in the leadership.

I understand that with authority comes responsibility.

But the governor, his Secretary of Health and Human Resources, and his Health Commissioner were effectively the chain of decision makers during COVID.  All three were physicians.

But that is one reason we have a civil service.

Virginia’s civil service failed to prepare for its roles in emergency response long before Ralph Northam was governor.  HAAR documents the complete inability of the bureaucracy to plan, organize and equip, train for, exercise and execute emergency plans.

It is clear to me that without capable civil service support, no administration would have fared well.  I hope, by exposing this deadly failure, to prevent the same thing from happening again tomorrow.

I will make strategic recommendations here in this first part of what will be a series on this issue.

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Richmond’s Skinny Budget: Low Stakes Poker, High Stakes Rhetoric

by Shaun Kenney

Virginia’s General Assembly managed to pass the Richmond equivalent of a continuing resolution to fund the government until Senate Democrats and House Republicans can hammer out a compromise on corporate tax breaks.

One will have to pardon me for not getting terribly wound up about tax breaks for corporations while small businesses and working families are struggling with back-to-back  years of 9 percent inflation from Washington.

Meanwhile, much of the damage done by the Northam administration with regard to Critical Race Theory, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) requirements, gender ideology, and the long litany of progressive efforts to remake Virginia were left both untouched and unchallenged.

Even school choice — the marquee legislation championed by Lt. Governor Winsome Sears — was left to die in committee.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are promising a “brick wall” against House Republicans until they get what they want — in other words, reneging on the pledge from conferees to honor a $950 million tax cut. The stopgap fixes the $200 million shortfall snafu created by the Virginia Department of Education’s spreadsheet, puts another $25 million into the Virginia Retirement System, and another $100 million towards cost overruns for existing building infrastructure. What mystifies most is that the Senate Democrats haven’t been precisely clear on what they want beyond platitudes for higher salaries for bureaucrats, public education, higher education, etc. Continue reading

Virginia Rail Safety Inspections

Courtesy Norfolk Southern

by James C. Sherlock

After the Ohio disaster, it is timely to review rail safety in Virginia.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation is the federal rail safety regulator in cooperation with state authorities.

FRA’s Office of Railroad Safety employs 400 railway inspectors. Federal safety management teams are organized by railroad or type of railroad.

The FRA summary of State rail safety participation states:

state programs emphasize planned, routine compliance inspections; however, States may undertake additional investigative and surveillance activities consistent with overall program needs and individual State capabilities.

FRA both conducts and pays for training of state inspectors.

Code of Federal Regulations 49 CFR Part 212 provides state rail safety participation regulations.

Railroad Regulation represents one of the original areas of responsibility assigned to the State Corporation Commission (SCC) when it was created by the Virginia Constitution of 1902.

Virginia statutory authority is found in Code of Virginia Title 56 Chapter 13.

Virginia today has two Class I (major) railroads (Norfolk Southern and CSXT), nine Class II (short line) railroads, and more than 6,700 miles of track. Continue reading

General Assembly: Status of Selected Issues

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn on Saturday, February 25.  Time to check on the status of some issues that have been discussed on this blog.

Budget bill. The budget bill contains not only the usual appropriations, but also all those tax cuts proposed by the Governor. There is activity behind the scenes, but, so far, no public hint that any sort of compromise is near.

Utility bills. One major utility regulation bill has been passed, but the others are in conference. I will defer to Steve Haner to comment on these as he deems fit.

SCC judgeships. Last year, the General Assembly could not agree on a person to fill a vacant SCC judgeship. The House supported one person; the Senate favored another. In late 2020, one of the two sitting judges, Judith Jagdmann, announced her retirement with a year left on her appointment. That left two vacancies, seeming to solve the problem: Each legislative house could have its own favorite. But, there was a fly in the ointment.  ne vacancy, Jagdmann’s, was only for the year left on her term. The other vacancy was for a full six years. Who was going to get the short straw? Another impasse. Continue reading

RVA 5×5: Needed Resources for Human Resources

by Jon Baliles

Last week we had a story about a glut of open positions at Richmond’s City Hall and the difficulty in filling them. Lo and behold, the Richmond Free Press this week put out an article about the struggle to fill positions as the department responsible for filling those positions (Human Resources, aka HR) is upside down and employees are being told to reapply for their jobs. In case you didn’t read last week’s edition, the HR department has a lot of vacancies which makes it hard to fill any vacancy in any department. HR “is involved in every aspect of employee services, from hiring and retention to designing and administering classification, compensation and performance evaluations, overseeing employee data, handling employee grievances and providing training and development.”

Think of it like a clogged sink — it takes forever for the water to get through. And reporter Jeremy Lazarus notes that word has leaked out that everyone in the department was “told at a staff meeting in early February and urged to reapply for new positions that are being advertised, but that there were no guarantees they would have jobs. But three department employees have separately told the Free Press that effective Friday, all of the remaining full-time employees are to be laid off except for the three top managers….”

And one employee spoke directly but anonymously: “We’ve been told our department is the heartbeat of City Hall, but we’ve been left in the dark. None of us knows what will happen. Maybe we’ll all get rehired. Even so there will be fewer people left to do the work,” the employee said, as result of the transfers that have already taken place.

“I don’t know how everything we’re involved with will get done,” one of the employees said. “The city is fortunate. Instead of running for the exits, for the most part, everyone has stayed on and kept focused on the work. But it becomes so stressful when the reward for loyalty is uncertainty and worry. This is not what we signed up for.”
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Something Is in the Water

by Joe Fitzgerald

Those aren’t wood chips or bark in the cow pasture.

David Foster Wallace tells the story of two young fish swimming along when an older, wiser fish swims past and asks, “How’s the water?” One of the young fish looks at the other and asks, “What’s water?”

Absurdity is the water that proponents of the Bluestone Town Center (BTC) are swimming in. Like the young fish, they’ve been in it long enough and deeply enough that they don’t know that’s what it is.

Consider this scenario. A city council member who serves as the council’s representative to the planning commission listens to a long recommendation from the planning staff. She then makes a motion to more or less accept the recommendation. Four weeks later, she asks the planning staff what their recommendation meant.

Yes, this really happened. So did the argument that building apartments in a cow pasture would preserve farmland.
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Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Virginia Public Schools – Big Complications and Major Changes

Credit JAMA Pediatrics, April 6, 2020

by James C. Sherlock

Rebecca Aman, a member of the Newport News School Board, is frustrated. She told me in an interview that:

Without sufficient discipline and access to clinical mental health services, behavioral intervention does not work to make schools safer and healthier.

She believes that Newport News schools need to improve both discipline and the effectiveness of behavioral interventions.

She is absolutely right.

But school-based mental health services offer different, very complex and rapidly changing challenges.

The profession of psychology has recognized that the one-on-one clinical treatment model is permanently out of reach for the broad communities needing assistance because the supply of qualified professionals cannot now and will never meet the demand.

So the delivery model is in the midst of profound change.

Three key changes being pursued are

  • a far bigger emphasis on prevention, much of it to be delivered by school staff;
  • better diagnosis; and
  • “school based” (their term) group treatments.

Which raises at least three questions:

  • Are the pediatric mental health delivery models changing so much that the schools are “shooting behind the rabbit” in the hunt for more services?
  • What does the profession of psychology mean when it describes massively expanded “school-based” services? The schools and parents better find out.
  • Should schools even be in the hunt for more in-school services? I say no. They are already trying to do too much.

Continue reading

Push to Return Federal Workers to Offices – Monsoon or Squall in Northern Virginia

The benefits of 60 years of headlong federal government expansion, Northern Virginia edition.

By James C. Sherlock

The federal government has for nearly three years been paying very expensive leases for D.C area office buildings that are virtually empty.

COVID emergency.  Or was.

Now it is a battle between the comfort of federal employees with working from wherever they can get a good network connection vs. actually showing up at the office.

The feds report that as of the beginning of this calendar year, 47% of federal employees were still working remotely.

Since civilian federal employees thankfully still include people who work in other than an office as their normal place of work, we can assume that more than 47% of Northern Virginia federal workers are working remotely.

And we can assume they like it.  Would you like to try to get to D.C. every day from, say, western Fairfax County, much less the exurbs, if you didn’t have to?

Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Democratic mayor of Washington D.C have formed an unusual coalition to get them back to the office.

Beltway Democrats in the House fought it there and have lost so far .  Senate Democrats and President Biden, mindful that federal employees are one of their most dependable voting blocs, are unlikely to follow the House’s lead.

But it is secretly kind of fun to consider that Northern Virginia would sort of explode if they all tried to return in the same week.

Perhaps the experience would prompt efforts to return some of NOVA to a semblance of livability by distributing the headquarters of most of the agencies across the country.
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RVA 5×5: State of The City – What The People Think

by Jon Baliles

There is a little-known part of Richmond’s City Code that requires the City Auditor to produce a “Services, Efforts, and Accomplishments” (SEA) Report by conducting a thorough poll/survey of Richmond residents to see what they think about the level of service and performance and deliverability of City government. In other words, it’s the poll that every politician fears more than anything because they can’t B.S. their way past the peoples’ opinions of what they see and experience every day.

Doug Wilder used to say (and still does), “The people are always ahead of the politicians,” and that is never more accurate than with the SEA report presented by the Auditor in February 2022. It received virtually zero attention, but that’s usually what happens with bad news. You try and bury it, label it fake news, or quickly move on to something else.

SEA reports include questions like: Are you satisfied with the overall direction of the City? What is your opinion of the value of services for the taxes paid to Richmond? Does the City do a good job informing residents about issues facing the community? Is the City open and transparent with the public?

The reason this 2022 report is relevant 11 months after it was issued is that tonight, Mayor Levar Stoney will deliver his penultimate State of the City speech that will undoubtedly be an upbeat recitation of his accomplishments and how great the City is doing — in his eyes. His office put out this four-minute video a few weeks ago to tee-up the talking points and set the stage for his speech (and perhaps his next campaign). Continue reading