Prison Space Arbitrage

Virginia's Department of Corrections has dreamed up a clever way to solve its financial problems: Take in 300 prisoners from Wyoming, charging roughly $85 per prisoner per day, while keeping state prisoners housed in local jail and paying only $14 per day. Pocket the profit of $71 per prisoner per day.

Three hundred prisoners adds up to real money -- about $21,000 per day, or more than $7.6 million a year!

Virginia Beach Sheriff Paul J. Lanteigne doesn't think it's such a good deal. He's on the receiving end, collecting only $14 per day for 67 inmates who are required by state law, he contends, to be housed in a state prison. Meanwhile, the jail's population is 1,479, but the jail is rated for only 889 inmates, reports Frank Green with the Times-Dispatch. "The jail is severely overcrowded," Lanteigne said in papers filed yesterday.

All told, there are 1,799 such "out-of-compliance" inmates in local and regional jails across the state, according to DOC. The Department hopes to import as many as 1,000 more inmates to offset more than $40 million in budget cuts over the next two years.

Tough call. I admire the ingenuity of the DOC for engaging what amounts to prisoner arbitrage. I'm wondering if someone could create a market that evens out the variations in supply, capacity and price between prison systems. I've got 200 New York prisoners here, costing $120 per day per head. South Carolina, your cost is $50 a head. I'll pay you $90, New York saves $20 and I pocket $10. I'll tell you what, for that price, I'll throw in free prisoner transport!

On the other hand, there is the problem of prison overcrowding in Virginia Beach and other municipalities. While I don't normally get all worked up over the living conditions of the criminal class, some local jails are atrocious. On this particular issue, call me conflicted.

(Image: Butch Cassidy, one of Wyoming's more celebrated prison inmates.)

Creative Thinking on Hampton Roads Transportation

It's amazing what happens when you deprive a region like Hampton Roads of the easy solution -- raising taxes -- for reducing transportation congestion. People come up with some pretty creative ideas. Not all of them will prove viable, but some of them will. And none of them would have surfaced if the General Assembly and local politicos had been allowed to continue unchallenged their tax-and-spendthrift ways.

The latest case in point: New Kent County, which lies between Richmond and Hampton Roads, is studying the feasibility of building a cargo-transfer facility to take trucks off Interstate 64 and spur business development, reports the Daily Press.

The idea under study is to ferry cargo containers from the ports in Norfolk and Portsmouth through the Chesapeake Bay, under the Coleman Bridge and then up the Pamunkey River to the proposed port property. The enterprise would take trucks off the most congested and costly-to-expand stretches of Interstate 64 in Hampton Roads.

The privately owned site, called Parham Landing, is a largely vacant parcel on the south bank of the Pamunkey, about four miles from Interstate 64. The cost of the transfer facility is estimated to be $36 million to $53 million. It's not clear at this stage whether private investors or a public entity would pay to build it. But one thing for sure would undermine the project: Opening up the spigots of taxpayer funding for Business As Usual transportation remedies.

Remember, traffic congestion creates business opportunities. The lure of profit calls forth creative ideas.

(Map credit: Jon Baliles. Blue marker shows location of Parham Landing. Click on image for larger, more legible version.)

The Worst Government -- Except All the Others

Virginians are Virginia's harshest critics. We have little good to say about our government or the people who run it. But all things are relative. When outsiders rate the states, as the Pew Center on the States has done, Virginia comes out on top, sharing the highest grade, A-, with Utah and Washington state. To mangle a Winston Churchill quote, Virginia has the worst government -- except all the others.

The Pew project, Grading the States 2008, rates the states on four broad criteria: fiscal systems, human resource systems, quality of infrastructure, and information technology. Virginia performed consistently well across the board, scoring the highest grade in the country for human resource systems.

Fiscal systems: A-
Human resources: A
Infrastructure: B+
Information technology: A

See the 50-state summary here. View details on Virginia here.

Look for the Superbus

Not long ago, I penned a column lamenting the innovation gap between the automobile industry and the mass transit industry. (See "The Innovation Gap.") If I were a wagering man, I'd still bet that the auto industry will outstrip mass transit in the pace at which it integrates new technology into its vehicles. But the mass transit sector may not be as slow and stodgy as I'd thought.

Writing in Governing magazine, Ellen Perlman describes "The Year of the Superbus." Commuter buses are getting decked out with closed-circuit television, Wi-Fi access, reclining seats, cupholders, and ruggage racks for laptops and briefcases. With GPS sensors embedded on buses, transit companies know exactly where their vehicles are, and they can notify passengers if a particular bus is running on time or late.

There are some innovations in Bus Rapid Transit as well. Traffic lights can be manipulated so that buses can run faster between stations, and the buses themselves are being redesigned to facilitate people boarding and getting off more quickly, like they do on the subway.

There seems to be no lack of ideas. There are loads of experiments across the United States. The problem, which isn't addressed in the article, is the speed at which government and quasi-government monopolies implement change. Automobiles, I predict, will be outfitted with the latest gee-whiz technology long before buses will.

The Right Vote for the Wrong Reasons

Republicans in the state Senate have spiked the so-called homestead exemption, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have enabled local governments to shift the property tax burden from homeowners to commercial property owners.

There are good reasons to oppose the legislation, as I've blogged in the past: It would hurt renters, who are disproportionately poor and working class, and it would provide the middle class only a temporary reprieve from steadily upward marching tax rates. If lawmakers really want to help taxpayers, quit with the gimmicks and address the rising cost of government.

Unfortunately, according to the Washington Post, the Republicans didn't cite those legitimate reasons for killing the bill. Aside from worrying about the higher tax on business, they told the Post, "It was a flawed bill that needed more scrutiny. In particular, they said, the language could be construed to let only certain neighborhoods receive the exemption."

They're objecting to the legislation on the basis of a technicality? If the language of the bill were corrected so that exemption applied to an entire locality and not just "certain neighborhoods," they might consider supporting the homestead exemption? C'mon.

The problem with the legislation is that it is structured as a win-lose proposition: For every person who benefits from tax relief, the tax burden gets shifted to someone else. It's inherently divisive. The only long-term solutions to the problem of overtaxation are productivity and efficiency. That means streamlining government administration. Encouraging the development of human settlement patterns that are less expensive to serve with roads, utilities and services. Squeezing the bureaucratic bloat out of K-12 education. Reforming a dysfunctional health care system that drives up Medicaid costs. Develop programs that rehabilitate prisoners and ease their re-entry into society. Anything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Curriculum VITA

Behind the scenes, a major backlash against the Virginia Information Technologies Agency seems to be underway. One bill favored by the Kaine administration, but since deep-sixed, sought to transfer power over the purchase of computer hardware and peripherals to the Department of General Services, which oversees procurement for everything else in state government. Meanwhile, Sen. Ken Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, has pushed a bill that would direct the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) to evaluate the cost, quality and value of services that VITA provides state agencies.

After I raised a number of issues in a recent post, VITA chief Lemuel Stewart offered to address them. He invited me to the Commonwealth Enterprise Solutions Center, the state's new IT nerve center south of Richmond, for a tour and interview. It was an offer I couldn't refuse.

Today's e-zine column, "Curriculum VITA," summarizes my findings from that visit. Let me make this very clear: This is just one side of the story, VITA's side. I did not have the time to solicit quotes from agency administrators, most of whom would have been politically constrained in any case from stating their true opinions. Even so, Stewart makes a strong case that VITA has racked up impressive achievements in overhauling an IT infrastructure that had operated inefficiently as some 90 disjointed, feudal-style entities across state government. Accomplishments include:

• Greater security from a catastrophic failure of the system due to a hurricane, hackers, saboteurs or some other external cause.
• A statewide IT system built on 2000s-era technology, a big upgrade from the '80s-era technology that served about 60 percent of the state bureaucracy.
• Leveraging the state's size to drive down the price of PCs and applications, saving tens of millions of dollars each year.
• Electricity savings from energy-efficient PCs, servers and other hardware -- the benefit for which shows up in agencies' electric bills, not their IT budgets.
• No IT project failures, in contrast to a track record of tens of millions of dollars in pre-VITA projects that crashed and burned.

Plus, there's one more benefit that I didn't get into the story: Construction of a back-up facility in Lebanon, in Southwest Virginia, by VITA partner Northrop Grumman, creating more than 400 quality, knowledge-economy jobs in an economically distressed region of the state.

Stewart attributes the dissatisfaction to three primary causes: (1) agency loss of authority over IT projects costing more than $100,000; (2) the migration of state government to the new system one agency at a time, delaying the benefits for some; and (3) changes in the formula that allocates IT costs between agencies, resulting in some winners and some losers. When the three-year transition phase winds up by the end of this year, he predicts, much of the unhappiness should dissipate.

To repeat, this is Stewart's side of the story. If you have other perspectives, please consider this blog a forum to air them.

RIGHT ON CUE

Jim Bacon did a find job of pointing out some of the problems with innovation in shared-vehicle systems in his lead column this week. "The Innovation Gap."

Right on cue, METRO demonstrated how right he is.

In today’s WaPo it is reported that METRO is considering running some Blue Line trains through the underutilized Yellow Line Potomac tunnel. We will not bother with the details, except to say it is a good idea.

It is such a good idea that over 25 years ago, while working to increase the capacity of the Orange line we suggested this very same move.

Most of the ideas that became the Backgrounder "It is Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO and Mobility in the National Capital Subregion" http://www.baconsrebellion.com/ surfaced in white papers by EMR and reports by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce Transportation Committee. (FCC of C Trans Comm was one of the seven large Enterprise-backed Organizations EMR chaired / served on from the mid 70s to the late 80s.)

The initial feedback from staff at METRO was positive on the ideas including the Turquoise Line. Later we learned that they were vetoed by senior staff. "We are going to complete the 101 mile system before we make any changes," and "it would cost too much to reprint all the maps" were the only specifics that we ever heard.

So Jim is right. To understand why he is right read Supercapitalism by Robert Reich.

The problem is now that the settlement pattern in most of the urbanized area within R=23 to R= 25 is not suitable for METRO-like shared-vehicle systems (aka, Heavy Rail). That means citzens must morph the settlement patterns and come up with new technology.

We focus on these critical issues in column after column on Rail to Dulles. See "Who Killed Rail-to-Dulles?" and "Why METRO-to-Tysons Is a Mess."

In a comment yesterday, Larry Gross noted interest in Personal Rapid Transit. For years the advocates of PRT including our friends who started the Advanced Transit Organization have said that PRT can better serve dispersed origins and destinations.

We have reservations. Those interested in PRT search "PRT" in the back columns at http://www.baconsrebellion.com/

Vocabulary is also an issue here as it is everywhere in the real world. As long as shared-vehicle systems are called "mass transit" few will be interested in the topic.

EMR

Quote of the Day. But First, Cue the Banjos

John Pierce, a Bristol resident and gun-rights activist, stepped into an elevator in the Capitol complex Monday and overheard a remark by Sen. Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, the senate majority leader. The Bristol Herald-Courier quotes Pierce as follows:

"He turns to his companion and says, ‘You can tell we’re debating a gun bill today. Half the cast of "Deliverance" is in town.’ "

According to Washingtonpost.com, Saslaw responded to questions with the remark, "How do they know I was referring to them and not the other side? ... Some of those people must have one hell of an inferiority complex."

Keep it up, Mr. Majority Leader, you're digging yourself a deeper hole. Lucky for you, the people of Southwest Virginia don't have a Rev. Al Sharpton to come down on you like he did on Don Imus. After a day or two of stories written by reporters who find the story more amusing than insulting, it'll all die down and you'll get a pass.

Two Americas: The World that Works, the World that Doesn't

Using Fed-Ex shipping and ATM machines as examples, Newt Gingrich contrasts "the world that works" with the "world that fails." This 3:20 minute clip is worth watching. Don't get sidetracked on his specific example -- the federal government's inability to track down illegal immigrants -- of the world that fails. This video is not about illegal immigration. Gingrich is making the larger point that, for all its massive power and resources, government just can't do many things well.

What are some of the other things that we shouldn't trust government with? I'd start with education. Government needs to ensure that every American gets an education. But why does government have to be in the business of running schools? Government ensures that people get food to eat by providing food stamps, a form of voucher -- not running the grocery stores. Why not use vouchers to ensure that people have sufficient buying power to educate their children?

Vision Impaired

Richmond media and bloggers have been experiencing paroxysms of wonkishness this month following the release of "Putting the Future Together," by Jim Crupi, a Dallas-based strategic leadership consultant. Some like his work, some don't. But Crupi's trenchant observations will assuredly set off a round of soul-searching, just as he did 15 years ago when he laid out the good, the bad and the ugly of Richmond for all to see. (John Sarvay provides a wrap-up of the coverage to date.)

While the Richmond region has made great strides in the past 15 years, Crupi says, it still has a lot of work to do. Race is the 800-pound gorilla in the room that nobody dares talk about. While race relations have demonstrably improved, they would benefit from a candid and open dialogue. But Crupi saved his most trenchant criticism for Richmond's political, civic and business leaders. While regional leaders excel at tactical excution, he observes, they fail at strategy. The region has no vision for the future that people can rally around.

I totally agree. Unfortunately, I don't think Crupi has the answers. He certainly generated a lot of ideas for his report -- high-speed rail to Northern Virginia, a presidential museum, a new airport, a deep-water report, just to name a few -- but he provided no strategic vision. Worse, he didn't even articulate the criteria for establishing a long-term vision.

But the Richmond establishment seems all geared up to use "Putting the Future Together" as the starting point for a round of discussions. Among other recommendations, Crupi calls for creating a 2015 Metro Future Task Force to get the ball rolling.

While Crupi makes some valid points and advances some intriguing ideas, I take issue with a key presupposition. "By all rights," he writes, "Richmond should be booming like Atlanta, Charlotte and other metro areas that have experienced growth over the last couple of decades. And yet -- it isn't." Apparently, that's a bad thing. The premise underlying the entire report is that Richmond should look like Atlanta and Charlotte, and here's what it takes to get there.

Needless to say, if I wanted to live in a place like Charlotte or Atlanta, I would move to Charlotte or Atlanta. I like Richmond because it's not Charlotte or Atlanta. I have huge problems with the philosophy of "growth for growth's sake." In my latest e-zine column, "Vision Impaired," I offer an alternative framework for developing a regional vision. Applying the logic of my "Economy 4.0" series, I contend that the ultimate goal should be to build a region that is prosperous, livable and sustainable" -- none of which requires "bigness." The region's four strategic priorities should be:

• Transforming human settlement patterns so that they can be more efficiently served by transportation, utilities and public services


• Transforming government institutions, squeezing out administrative costs and delivering services in more creative ways


• Building human capital (by improving schools, building knowledge-creating institutions, recruiting the creative class, and shaping communities that make smart people want to stay here)

The Richmond region does not need to squander scarce resources on building a tourism industry or in futile pursuit of becoming the capital of the military-industrial complex. We can't create a prosperous, livable and sustainable region with a handful of "transformational" projects that a few power brokers can agree upon and undwrite. We need to build on our existing strengths, and we need to build from the ground up, creating economic opportunity at all levels of society.

Update: Jon Baliles at River City Rapids offers his suggestions on how to improve the outcome of the visioning process: Listen to the kids!

THE PENDULUM SWINGS

Our next Backgrounder will examine why MainStream Media is doing such a bad job of providing the information citizens need to make intelligent decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth.

From time to time MainStream Media does do a very good job of documenting the results of citizens making bad decisions in the marketplace and in the voting booth.

A case in point is the series WaPo is running on "Harvesting Cash" – details of federal farm subsidy pork barrel / fraud. In another good example, WaPo recently ran a series on the disasters generated by federal pork barrel water projects about which the veto override made the news this week. Both are available in the archives at http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Of interest today is the Page One coverage by Steven Mufson: "Oil Price Rise Causes Global Shift in Wealth." The wealth transfer is stupendous, the graphic on the jump page with respect to the impact on the US of A is frightening.

The US of A is a wounded whale with a lame duck president and such dysfunctional settlement patterns that there is little hope of changing course without massive economic, social and physical pain.

Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns is the only possible course of action that will significantly reduce foreign oil dependency. It is the only way to substantially reduce the demand for Autonomobile use other transport waste that consums 70 percent of the oil imports.

Fundmental Change in settlement patterns is the only way citizens can be happy and safe, and not be hostage to rising oil prices.

WaPo tells us where citizens are going due to past errors in the marketplace and in the voting booth. They did not tell citizens that there were alternatives nor did they articulate the result of the current trajectory when the resources were available to make Fundamental Change without massive pain.

Enjoy to game.

EMR

Putting the Squeeze on State Travel Expenses

Good things are happening behind the scenes in state government. Operational review teams, chaired by members of the General Assembly and staffed by area experts in the Kaine administration, are focusing on ways to cut operational expenses of state government. These teams report to an Operational Review Oversight Committee comprised of Del. Christopher B. Saxman, R-Staunton, Sen. Emmett W. Hanger, Jr., R-Augusta, and Secretary of Finance Jody M. Wagner.

One of the committee's latest initiatives is scrutinizing state travel expenses (including those of state colleges and universities), which amounted to nearly $1 billion over the past four and a half years. After extensive consultation to review the practices of industry leaders, the travel team issued the following recommendations:

• Automate the travel reimbursement process
• Expand the use of computer-based training modules for state employees
• Increase the use of teleconferencing for training
• Establish stricter limits on conference travel
• Implement a statewide travel contract to leverage state buying power

Read the full report here.

What's encouraging about this approach is that it isn't arbitrary and capricious -- no 10-percent-across-the-board cuts, regardless of the consequences. The participants are looking for ways to do the business of government more efficiently. It's also nice to know that there is a limit to partisan politics. When it comes to efficiency in government at least, some Democrats and Republicans are willing to put the public interest first.

Cost Cutting via Paper Cuts

Chris Saxman's latest email update contains a few recommendations for how the state can actually save money through -- of all things -- managing its printing and paper use more efficiently:

Printers, copiers, and paper are essential to government operations and while we all recognize that, sometimes we don't consider the cost. Consider that the state has a printer and copier inventory of more than 34,000. In FY06, the cost of these and related devices was $29,607,712. In FY06, the cost of paper was $7,499,837 and the cost of outside printing services was $37,702,417. The team offered the following recommendations:

Recommendation 1: Promote a printer, copier, and paper savings awareness campaign—promoting print efficiencies, cost-savings, and best practices.

Recommendation 2: Implement print management best practices

Recommendation 3: Move toward phasing out fax machines. Personal computers and multifunction machines now have the capability to fax documents. Significant cost reduction could be realized by eliminating fax machines and performing these functions on personal computers or multifunction machines.

Recommendation 4: Move toward or transition to the implementation of managed print services--as appropriate for meeting agency and department mission and goals. Managed print services (MPS) are services offered by an external provider to optimize or manage an organization’s document output. A MPS contract can include assessment services, asset management, output management services, and support services. The external service provider either owns or leases the hardware, with the customer paying a monthly or quarterly fee—based on a cost per page or cost per seat. Gartner suggests that candidates for MPS are midsize or large organizations with 100 or more employees. Agencies and departments should document their print needs and determine if the use of managed print services would reduce their print cost.

Recommendation 5: Encourage agencies use of high-volume print shops for large print jobs. Virginia Correctional Enterprises (VCE), a printing service within the state, continues to demonstrate its ability to produce quality and timely print for state agencies and departments—at a cost savings. In addition, state procurement regulation mandates that goods and services produced or manufactured by state correctional facilities be purchased by all departments, institutions, and agencies of the Commonwealth (there are some waivers to this regulation).

Saxman has a lot more in his note, but this list gives a fairly good look at some of the ways government can shave its operating costs and still provide the services people demand.

And with the threat of state budget cuts looming, any amount of economizing will be welcome.

Now if only Chris and his colleagues could find a way to rebate those savings to taxpayers...

Oh, the Pain, the Pain! Fifty State Employees (out of 119,000) Might Get Laid Off!

The Kaine administration may have to lay off state employees to help close an anticipated $640 million revenue shortfall. The total number of jobs to be eliminated could number "several hundred," according to the Washington Post. But Gov. Timothy M. Kaine hopes to accomplish most of the reductions through attrition and retirement. The number of lay-offs could be "fewer than 50," according to the Times-Dispatch.

Finding 50 employees to lay off shouldn't be too difficult in a workforce that numbered nearly 119,000 in June. That's up 8,300 since Kaine took office in January 2006.

In fairness to Gov. Kaine, 85 percent of that increase can be accounted for by a hiring spree at Virginia's institutions of higher education, which operate with considerable autonomy, not at state agencies under the governor's direct control. When you deduct higher ed from the state employee count, however, the number of employees still has increased more than 1,140. On the other hand, the Virginia Information Technologies Agency shows a 647-person reduction in employee count, which, I presume, reflects the outsourcing of jobs to Northrup Grumman. The jobs are still there, they're just accounted for differently. So, a fair number would be closer to 1,800.

The much-maligned Virginia Department of Transportation has been the productivity star of the Kaine administration, reducing its head count by 512. Big gainers have been the Indigent Defense Commission, the Department of Health, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control and the Virginia Port Authority -- the last two of which are business entities.

Question One: Where are the promised productivity benefits from handing over IT functions to the much-touted VITA? From the rumblings I've heard in the trenches, VITA has increased agency overhead costs without adding much value.

Question Two: What approach is the Kaine administration taking to its budget cuts? Is it applying the ol' 5-percent-across-the-board formula, which afflicts every agency equally? Are the Kaniacs making special dispensations for investments and reorganizations that would cut spending down the road, or are productivity-saving initiatives sharing the pain with everything else?

Question Three: I know student enrollments are up at state colleges and universities, but are they up enough to justify a 15 percent increase in the number of employees in the state higher ed system in less than two years?

For your viewing convenience, I have extracted, condensed and consolidated the data from Jan. 2006 and June 2007 so you can analyze the numbers yourself. Click here to see the Excel file. (Higher ed institutions are shaded in light yellow.)

0 for 6

There are six stories on the front page of Wapo today.

Every one of them is a human settlement pattern issue or has a human settlement pattern aspect and there is not one word about the human settlement patterns in any of the stories.

Let us start with "As Dulles Rail Staggers, Players Share in Blame." Lots of talk about blame but not one word about how station-area settlement patterns would solve the "tunnel" issue or the "cost" issue. If there was a clear understanding of what is needed in the Dulles corridor (See "Rail to Dulles Realities," 4 Jan 2004, "Rethinking METRO," 18 Oct 2004 and "All Aboard," 16 April 2007) then the Virginia Governor / Sec of Transportation, FTA and No-Bid Contract problems would be gone as well.

"METRO Blames Mechanical Failures" spotlights the need for system wide Balance between capacity and demand. With an understanding of this reality, demand would be down (due to station area Balance) and support would be up allowing for rational investment in infrastructure. See Backgrounder "Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO" recent post "It Will Take More Than Lint."

"Japan’s Warp-speed Ride to Internet Future" highlights "the last mile problem" that is a direct result of dysfunctional settlement patterns. While the Internet will not assure a sustainable trajectory for civilization, good access would help a lot. Instead of focusing on Japan, take a look at Sweden (nine times the average US of A speed) and Canada (four times the average US of A speed). Search for Shape of the Future use of the settlement patterns in both these nation-states as examples of how US of A settlement patterns could improve with a better understanding of what democracy and a free market require to flourish.

"Bush Wants $50 Billion More for the Iraq War" is another paving stone on the road to entropy that is the result of dependence on Large, Private vehicles for Mobility and Access. See our recent post "Three Questions Encore" and the "Whale on the Beach," 28 August 2006 column and "The Problem With Cars," coming soon.

The front page color picture adds another dimension to the settlement pattern issue: Opening the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge a week early will help commuters. The only real assistance available for commuters is to help them become non-commuters by evolving functional human settlement patterns. (See Balance under METRO story above.)

How do the stories about the VA Tech shootings and the Elephant Clan senator from Idaho relate to human settlement patterns? Those who need to ask, have not been reading The Shape of the Future very carefully. We hope to make these connection more clear in TRILO-G.

Have a Nice Day.

EMR

Boondoggle Projects and Decaying Infrastructure

As New Orleans reinvents itself after Hurricane Katrina, political and civic leaders plan to cultivate tourism and "culture-based" industry. The big new idea, writes urbanologist Joel Kotkin, is a publicly subsidized, $1 billion Riverfront development catering to the "creative class." While the city morphs into a "mildly raucous, hipper Disney World," the long-term migration of the once-vibrant energy sector to Houston continues unabated. The new New Orleans may be a great place for saxaphone players to make a living, but it won't offer much for traditional blue-collar and white-collar workers.

The whole "creative class" thing has gotten out of control, Kotkin argues in an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal. American's state and local governments are over-investing in glitzy arts and entertainment complexes, sports stadiums, luxury hotels, convention centers and light-rail lines, and under-investing in the maintenance of its mundane roads, bridges, water-sewer facilities and electric power lines.

"Public capital spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually," Kotkin writes. "Nationwide, 44 new or expanded centers are in planning or under construction." By contrast, he adds, "The American Society of Civil Engineers says that $1.6 trillion must be spent over the next five years to prevent further deterioration. Only $900 billion is now earmarked."

Starving critical infrastructure in order to fund money-losing boondoggles like sports stadiums and convention centers is not a long-term path to prosperity, Kotkin contends. Until politicians adopt a coherent, back-to-basics strategy that funds real needs instead of pork-barrel projects, "we can look forward to more natural disasters, bridge collapses, subway malfunctions and power shortages."

What Kotkin doesn't say, but I would add, is this: Many politicians have hijacked the rhetoric of Richard Florida's "creative class" theory to justify their spending on the glitzy, "urban renewal" projects that Kotkin criticizes. The irony is that sports stadiums, convention centers and performing arts complexes are not what the creative class is looking for. Florida, the creatuve-class guru, regards them as largely a waste of money. He contends that the culturally, entrepreneurially and scientifically creative elements of society are lured to cities characterized by openness and tolerance. They also seek "authenticity" and street-level culture. None of those are attributes that are attainable through Business As Usual, pork barrel politics.

Bottom line, we're getting the worst of both worlds: We're not funding our infrastructure needs, and we're not even creating the kinds of communities that the creative class wants to live in. We're just keeping the politicians in power.

A QUICK RESPONSE TO LYLE

On the IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN LINT

At 3:19 PM, Lyle said...

Ed, let me express the foundation for my optimism on your two concerns.

1: A number of excellent ideas are brewing, being tested, and implemented. Congestion pricing is one of them, but there are many, many more such as local food systems, cradle to cradle design, green public revenue shifts (which includes congestion pricing), cutting inefficient subsidies, and improving civic participation with publicly financed elections, proportional representation, instant runoff voting, choice voting, citizen councils, and so on.

YOU ARE VERY RIGHT, THESE ARE GOOD IDEAS. ALL THESE AND MORE HAVE BEEN ON THE TABLE SINCE THE EARLY 90S WHEN WE FIRST FOCUSED ON THE NEED TO ACHIEVE A SUSTAINABLE TRAJECTORY FOR CIVILIZATION

In desperation, our politicians and business leaders will look for easy solutions and pick those that can best be implemented. Onward the slapdash evolution of our society goes, in constant fear of Fundamental Change, but constant struggle towards it.

THERE IN LIES THE PROBLEM. SO FAR WE GET ABUSER FEES, ADVICE TO GO SHOPPING IN THE FACE OF TERRORIST ATTACKS AND A FAILURE TO ENFORCE LAWS OR REBUILD INTELLIGENTLY AFTER NATURAL DISASTERS.

UNLESS THERE IS AN OVERARCHING CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK SUCH AS FUNCTIONAL HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS – OR SOME OTHER THAT YOU OR OTHERS ARTICULATE IN DETAIL – THE LEADERSHIP OF BUSINESS-AS-USUAL WILL CHERRY PICK THIS AND THAT.

THUS OUR CONCERN FOR AN AGENDA FOR FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE AND OUR CONCERN THAT THERE WILL NO RESOURCES LEFT TO ACHIEVE THAT CHANGE WHEN IT BECOME OBVIOUS THAT THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE.

AS I TELL MY OPTIMIST FRIEND JAMES A BACON: EVERY GOOD IDEA IS SEEN AS "SOLUTION" THAT GIVES BUSINESS-AS-USUAL AND EXCUSE TO DELAY FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE

2: We use a tiny percentage of the solar energy that reaches this planet.

VERY TRUE BUT READ WITH CARE OUR DISCUSSION OF THE "THICK / THIN" PROBLEM OF SOLAR (AND ALL "RENEWABLE" ENERGY SOURCES) IN OUR COLUMN "THE CONSERVATION IMPERATIVE" OF 19 JUNE 2007.

We use a tiny percentage of the potential wind energy.

THAT IS TRUE TOO AND THE SAME LIMITATIONS APPLY TO SOLAR, WIND AND EVERY "NATURAL / RENEWABLE" SOURCE VIS A VIS CREATING FUNCTIONAL HUMAN SETTLEMENTS FOR A TECHNOLOGY DEPENDENT URBAN SOCIETY.

NATURAL SOURCE STRATEGIES ARE GREAT. THEY ARE THE ONES THAT REA SHOULD HAVE DEVELOPED FOR NONURBAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS INSTEAD OF STRINGING WIRES. THE NONURBAN POPULATION IS 5 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL.

INTERREGIONAL BIG GRIDS, INCLUDING NONURBAN DISTRIBUTION, WASTE MORE ENERGY IN GENERATION, TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION THAN THEY DELIVER TO END USERS.

We still have a hundred years or so of coal,

BUT DO WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY TO USE IN WAYS THAT DO NOT CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS? ARE YOU PLANNING TO GO TO BEIJING FOR THE OLYMPICS?

and several decades at least of oil.

NOT ONLY THAT BUT WE HAVE SYNTHETICS TO REPLACE OIL BUT AT WHAT COST? WHO WILL BE ABLE TO PAY FOR THESE "SOLUTIONS?" NOT ENOUGH WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD THEM TO ELECT A STABLE GOVERNMENT.

Thin film solar promises to revolutionize that industry, and I fully expect other innovations in other areas.

I EXPECT YOU ARE RIGHT BUT AT WHAT COST AND WILL THESE NEW INNOVATIONS PROVIDE EQUIVALENT PROPERTIES TO THOSE PROVIDED BY THE NATURAL CAPITAL WE ARE BURNING UP? FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT WILL POWER LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES WHICH ARE IMPERATIVE TO ACHIEVE MOBILITY AND ACCESS? MORE ON THIS IN "THE PROBLEM WITH CARS."

Most urgently, we have vast expanses of government subsidized waste to tap, should we require the juice.

BUT HOW DOES ONE TAP THAT WASTE WITH THE EXISTING GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE? HOW DO YOU CHASE AWAY ALL THOSE WHO ARE FEEDING AT THE TROUGH. WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE WHO ARE CHANTING: WHAT? ME WORRY?

If we decide to act within the next decade,

A DECADE IS THE RIGHT TIME FRAME BUT IN THAT PERIOD CITIZENS AND THEIR ORGANIZATIONS MUST BE TAKING DECISIVE ACTION, NOT JUST DECIDING TO DO "SOMETHING."
AND THUS OUR TWO CONCERNS:

1) LACK OF AN OVERARCHING STRATEGY

2) TAKING INTELLIGENT ACTION BEFORE THERE ARE NO RESOURCES LEFT

we have fabulous resources to do so. Still, I do agree that urgency is appropriate.

Thank you for your good work and inspiration.

YOU ARE WELCOME, THAT IS OUR JOB

EMR

FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN GOVERNANCE

A number of good comments in the IT WILL TAKE A LOT MORE THAT LINT string. I (and others who have contacted me off line) will be posting some responses there later but first:

Groveton, as he has done frequently, added real substance from a perspective that is lacking in many discussions of "shaping the future."

That makes it doubly important to support his efforts on governance evolution and the IPoV.

An article in today’s WaPo reminded me that I have intended to place a draft survey stake (a tentative marker) out on what Fundamental Change in Governance means.

The story is "White House Manual Details How to Deal With Protesters." Read it and weep. This is a democracy with a president is in office due to less than 30% of those who could qualify to vote in two elections? The shielding the Commander-in-Chief’s eyes from protest sounds like something out of the decline of the Roman Empire or one of the teen kings of France (XIII to XVI). No wonder the mission to spread democracy by this administration is seen as an international joke.

So here is the survey stake:

Following Fundamental Change in Governance Structure to preserve democracy and free markets in an educated and technologically sophisticated society:

1. The most important governance practitioner for any citizen or Household would be their Dooryard representative on the Cluster Board. Not one in a million even know they live in a Dooryard -- but their genes do because that is where they evolved. While perhaps five percent of the population live in places that are, or could be, called Beta Clusters, none are functional parts of the existing governance structure.

2. The most well known governance practitioner for the citizens of any New Urban Region would be the elected head of the administrative branch of the Regional governance structure. There is not yet one functional Regional governance structure outside the European Union so far as we know. Toronto comes closest.

3. The powers of the President would be more like those of the Rotating Presidency of the European Union than that of a Roman Emperor.

We outline how this structure might evolve from the Dooryard up in The Shape of the Future and how the regional governance structure might evolve in our column "The Shape Richmond’s Future" from 16 February 2004.

EMR

A Report on Privatization

The Reason Foundation's annual report on privatization is now online, covering topics from transportation to education and more.

There's an interesting section on emerging issues -- privatizing state lotteries and government transparency. Strangely, they omit some private attempts at the latter, especially in Virginia through the Waldo-created Richmond Sunlight. Maybe next year.

Bravely Confronting the Commercial Transport of Companion Animals

We're beginning to see results from Attorney General Bob McDonnell's "Government & Regulatory Reform Task Force". The task force has issued 63 recommendations in the realms of agriculture, health care and small business. While the effort is noble in intent, the fruits of the task force's labor are less than breathtaking. Indeed, most recommendations are so obscure that my reaction is: If that's all they've come up with so far, state regulations really may not be a problem.

According to a press release, McDonnell directed the Task Force "to move forward with work to codify public participation guidelines for state agencies in an effort to increase the public’s opportunity for input. He also endorsed a proposal to simplify the manner by which small and minority-owned businesses are registered with the state."

Nothing objectionable there, but nothing to quicken the pulse either.

You can access the recommendations on the AG's website. Here's the kind of stuff you'll find:

• Remove regulations in VDACS, Chapter 150 which governs the commercial transport of companion animals that are redundant with other sections of the Chapter. Recommend deleting Sections 120, 130, 140, 150, 160 and 170.
• Update citations in the state code. A section pertaining to the Board of Opticians refers to the Department of Labor and Industry, "Division of Apprenticeship Training." The proper name is "Division of Registered Apprenticeship."
• In 12VAC30-100-150, update the referenced methodology of the "Virginia Aid to Families with Dependent Children Program" to "Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF)".

It's just dandy that someone is going through the state code with such a fine eye to detail. It can't hurt (unless someone's brain explodes from reading all the fine print.) But let's be honest: This is not shaping up as the kind of "reinventing government" initiative that will significantly reduce spending or relieve the regulatory burden on the private sector.