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On paper, P3s are a win-win solution. They relieve a burden from state and local governments, curtail imposing higher taxes, promote commerce, and strengthen core infrastructure networks. And fortunately, Virginia, in many ways, is the P3 leader nationwide.... Yet while P3s can be adopted to most projects, from its most common utilization – transportation – to less common, such as water maintenance, Virginia should be vigilant to ensure to avoid letting P3s become an ideology -- in other words, we need to know exactly how they operate and whether they're serving the public good, rather than preconceived and inflexible notions.

Governor Bob McDonnell is on the record as saying that “Virginia has long been a state marked by honest, transparent and ethical governing by both parties.” To an extent, he may be right. With the exception of a few ethical scandals over the past decade, Virginia has maintained a habit of clean, open politics.However, in a new report from the Center for Public Integrity, Virginia received a failing grade (an F!) on standards of transparency, accountability, and anti-corruption measures in place across the state.

Last week the Virginia General Assembly adjourned without passing a budget and had to be called back into special session, the third time in the last decade that this has occurred. When the legislature returns for a special session next week, one can only hope that the budget that is passed reflects the right values and proper long-term priorities that will keep Virginia moving forward. One area where this is especially critical is transportation.

The German government subsidizes jobs for its youth. In the Rhineland, the government takes students out of the university route at age 16 and trains them in industrial skills, akin to an apprenticeship. At the same time, these students study for a technical degree in their future field of expertise and are paid a subsidized salary while doing so (ostensibly to incentivize retention). Most of all, “labor experts single out [this] German apprenticeship system as a major competitive advantage,” and a large reason for Germany’s economic stability. This German system may be a wise alternative in the United States because youth unemployment, even among those who have graduated from college, is (becoming) a significant issue. As mentioned above, the youth unemployment rate in the U.S. is 23%. Further, in the U.S., the unemployment rate of black youths is more than 33%. Meanwhile, our most in-demand careers are technical jobs. However, these jobs go unmet because a lack of labor supply. Our country needs machinists, craftsmen, and technicians and it appears adopting the German system can both meet this need as well as relieve unemployment nationwide.

Our current discourse on higher education focuses almost exclusively on access and affordability. How can we ensure that more students enter tertiary education and how can we guarantee students choose majors that can make our state and nation competitive are both questions that presently dominate higher education roundtables. Indeed, Governor McDonnell’s Commission on Higher Education Reform focused specifically on the question of access.

The cup of adjectives runneth over to describe Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's sloppy, wasteful, elitist, self-indulgent, and special interest-driven fishing expedition against a UVA professor whose research Cuccinelli personally disagreed with. With last week's decision by the Supreme Court of Virginia to strike down Cuccinelli's subpoena once and for all, the question now is how Cuccinelli can reckon with the fact that he forced a great public university to spent $600,000 defending itself against his blundering ego machine.

At at time when government itself is under attack by a host of extremists in places like Richmond, it's even clearer that improving public education goes to the very core of the Democratic mission. Education is the most critical, sympathetic interaction many regular folks have with government. It's a key example of a core service. And history shows that Virginia Democrats win when they stay on the offense on education, whether Chuck Robb, Doug Wilder, or Mark Warner. But Virginia's K-12 system is falling short for too many of our students, particularly those in socioeconomically vulnerable categories and areas. NDPPAC took on this critical topic recently with a new Strategy Paper on K-12 reform titled "The Urgency of Excellence: Opportunity and Equity in Virginia's K-12 System." We recently released this Strategy Paper in conjunction with a powerful panel of Virginia experts discussing these ideas. The event was co-sponsored by the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Across the nation, over 30 states have privatized their formerly state-owned, state-run prisons. Some research shows that private prisons themselves save money in comparison to their state-run counterparts, but they also put pressure on the public prison system in such a way that they thwart the escalation of costs. This would seem to be a win-win for legislators in Richmond, especially when state taxpayers pay $29,000 per year, per inmate. But, wait! Not so fast! Every policy deserves due diligence. The privatization of prisons, while on the surface appears to be an attractive, affordable, and cost-saving proposition, on closer looks becomes far more problematic.

Given the trouble Democrats have had in recent decades on the politics of national security, I'm incredibly happy to see how strongly President Obama is performing on security -- both in his results (from Osama bin Laden to Al Qaeda to Libya), and in the perceptions among the public of those results. And I believe that his successes on this front are going to prove key to his victory in Virginia this November -- a critical swing state with a large population of sophisticated voters on national security, foreign policy, and veterans issues. That's why I joined a press call this afternoon sponsored by the Truman National Security Project (on whose (c)(3) Board I sit) with two accomplished Virginia veterans -- retired Army captains (and my good friends) Jim Morin and Terron Sims.

There is more than one reason to invest in public higher education. Public higher education is, as the name suggests, a public good. It should receive appropriate, if not full, public funding. But there's a new, equally important reason why our public schools need to be funded. In a new study out of the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, John Aubrey Douglass has found a compelling, unique reason why public education requires a renewed focus: the rise of and state support of for-profit higher education institutions. (See NDPPAC's recent Strategy Paper, "The Engine of the Future," which laid out as a fundamental principle the need to strength public education and reinforce government as "the essential player in higher education.")