Richmond, VA – The New Dominion Project PAC today hosted a panel discussion on innovation, job creation, and growth in Virginia featuring Mike Signer, Chair, NDPPAC, Sen. Barbara Favola, Sen. John Edwards, and Dak Hardwick of the Harris Corporation at the General Assembly Building.

In a lively discussion that highlighted the power of fresh progressive ideas to overcome the gridlock and overreaching in Richmond today, the panelists and audience members, including leadership of major Virginia organizations such as Virginia 21 and the Business Council for Higher Education for Virginia, discussed a set of principles drawn from a new NDP Strategy Paper titled “The Engine for the Future: Taking Higher Ed to the Next Level in Virginia” that recommends five “Principles for Reform” (summarized below).

QUOTES FROM EVENT

Mike Signer, Chair, NDDPAC:

“It’s unsettling that all we’re hearing recently from Richmond is about transvaginal ultrasounds and lifting the one-gun-a-month gun ban.  We need to get back on track for our citizens.  Our institutions of higher education are Virginia’s crown jewels, but they’re at risk.  We need to be talking about big ideas, big principles, and big goals.  Our postsecondary system needs to remain the envy of the nation and we need to equip all our students for the challenges of the 21st century.”

Sen. Barbara Favola:

“There is no topic more worthy of our attentions here in the Legislature than education, but we have shortchanged public education in our budget….This year, I have introduced legislation that would expand educational grants for students who begin their higher education at community college and transfer to four-year schools. The grant is more generous for those who pursue studies in the science, math, technology, nursing and teaching disciplines. These career paths were chosen because Virginia has a worker shortage in these areas and they are areas where our economy has the potential to grow. Today’s students will find vibrant careers waiting for them tomorrow.”

Senator John Edwards:

“We must fully fund education from pre-K through university.  We must support universities and research in order to support the economy.  We cannot short-change research and innovation, because they are the future.  In the last six years, for example, the Commonwealth dropped from providing 60% to 30% per pupil funding at Virginia Tech.  Tuition has to make up the difference, burdening students.  This is part of a general trend in the Commonwealth to short-change education.”

Dak Hardwick, Harris Corporation:

“In 15 years, your first-grader will be our engineer.  But it’s too hard to find American engineers.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was the largest investment in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) skills in recent years, but it’s running out, so states like Virginia much now pick it up.   It’s often hard to find people with good vocational skills in the U.S.  Now companies like the Harris Corporation need to train them, raising the cost of doing business in the U.S.  ”

SUMMARY OF NDP STRATEGY PAPER

§  Principle #1: Core Curricula:  STEM, Liberal Arts, Civic Education, Entrepreneurship
o   These comprehensive curricular strategies will equip students to be strong, self-reliant, engaged citizens for the future.

§  Principle #2: Increase Central Skills
o   Jobs won’t only be created in high-tech industry such as biotech; industries such as infrastructure and manufacturing require training in these core skills.

§ Principle #3:  Innovate Education
o   We need to move beyond formal credit-hour requirements toward more useful skills and co-locate business incubators with community colleges and public colleges and universities.

§  Principle #4:  Strengthen Public Education
o   Government is the essential player in public education and we must protect public funding, fight for our fair share of federal research dollars, and fight unfair tuition increases.

§  Principle #5:  Enhance Regional Cooperation
o   We need to further connect the “Urban Crescent” and rural areas with a new “Sister Cities” approach, increase research partnerships, and finally create Southside University.

This past January, Gov. McDonnell released his K-12 education plan calling for an increase in funding of $438 million for K-12 schools throughout the Commonwealth. (Read my first post about it here.) Nevertheless, while on the surface the plan is laudable, only 22% of the proposed $438 million will go to the classroom while the remaining will head to the teacher pension system and other non-classroom needs. Furthermore, McDonnell’s refusal to peg education costs to inflation means less and less money for school districts and even worse, the Governor’s proposal to increase the percentage of the sales tax going towards transportation translates to a concomitant decrease in education funding.

This has, in turn, forced school districts, who must manage rising costs as well as similar budget cuts taken by their city councils, to adjust priorities and make changes across the board – all to the detriment of students, parents, and schools alike.

For evidence of this, look no further than the city of Virginia Beach’s recent proposed city-wide school budget cuts.

Included in Superintendent James Merrill’s  budget cuts for FY 2012-2013 are numerous measures that appear contrary to the Governor’s overall education goals and mission. For instance, Merrill wants to increase class sizes by .5 students per class, reduce staff and teacher professional development, decrease tuition reimbursement to ALL employees for college level and professional development courses, reduce both pay and time worked for administrative (including vice principals), custodial, and security staff, and most of all, disincentive attendance to the city’s magnet programs.

The last proposed cut hurts the most. As a former student of the magnet programs in Virginia Beach, I believe I received the best public education in the state. I was challenged throughout and when I entered university, I was extremely well-prepared, even in comparison to my private school graduate peers. In fact, it is no secret that Virginia Beach’s magnet schools strengthen the city’s schools altogether. Yet by disincentivizing students to attend these programs by revoking transportation to them (these academies cater to the whole city and are dispersed throughout; accordingly, students need not reside in a particular school district to attend), we are setting our communities and states aback.

(Students and teachers alike have been protesting this measure. Many have posted messages and uploaded pictures to this Facebook page, which convincingly makes a case against cutting transportation to Virginia Beach’s magnet programs.)

As I wrote earlier, innovation and ingenuity stem from our K-12 schools and especially arise in magnet programs from across the state. Disincetivizing the reason to attend these schools by revoking transportation to them seems especially brutal. Not only does it make parents think twice about sending their child to these programs because of the new economic costs of providing transportation on a day-to-day basis, but it also restricts students’ opportunity to do research or participate in activities that their home school may not provide.

In a time where many believe that our socio-economic status or the neighborhood we live in should not restrict our opportunities to succeed, the City of Virginia Beach’s school cuts, jumpstarted by the new burden Gov. McDonnell’s education and budget plan has put, will be doing exactly this.

On the one hand, the Governor has stated a commitment to ensuring that our education system is strong and robust, yet on the other, he is forcing localities to re-prioritize their education objectives –  some of which work against the Governor’s goals of increasing the number of students in higher education or the number of students who pursue STEM careers. This is bad policy. It lacks forethought and collaboration.

While I understand the state’s goals are not necessarily the same as localities’, the Governor and city leaders should recognize and find common ground. Forcing municipalities to make harsh budget cuts is a detriment to our state and is poor public policy.

It’s a simple maxim that has been expressed ever since our nation’s founding. Our Founding Fathers reasoned that a government that keeps its citizens in the dark is amenable to corruption, vice, and greed.

Yet today, legislation now sitting in the General Assembly would restrict localities’ ability to publish public notices in newspapers.

HB 234, HB 623, HB 773, and HB 812, all currently awaiting vote in committee, intend to cloak the decisions of local government in secrecy. These bills propose to remove the requirement that public notices of government affairs and actions be printed in local newspapers. Rather, the legislators behind these bills (all Republican) would like such information to be found deep inside government websites.

While at first glance these proposals may be wise as they save localities money, the fact that it can diminish, if not extinguish, the public’s right to know is troublesome. If anything, it violates one of our nation’s most valued principles, one’s that regained a focus and importance after the Watergate Scandal, of open, unveiled, and transparent government.

And fortunately I am not alone in my disappointment at these proposals. The Virginia Press Association (VPA), comprised of newspapers and publishers from across the state, also believe this is a u-turn in the quest for transparent government. And they are correct.

Newspapers premise themselves on their duty to present facts to their readers (i.e., citizens). Hence, their inability, as a third-party source, to release the information, as opposed to the state doing so, is a crucially important point. It is frightening, on the one hand, that the state desires to remove public notices from newspapers or community publications, yet it is even more frightful that the government wishes to publish such notices themselves.

This scrapes any semblance of objectivity and undermines the public’s right to know matters of government without the possibility of state intervention in what the public receives.

In a time where we need to restore trust to our government, including our local boards and councils, this measure does more harm to the public trust than we should allow. Beyond the fear of state manipulation, the practical concerns of websites crashing, hacking, or most realistic, the fact that not everyone has (free) access to the internet, are things to worry about, too. If the above bills pass, public notices, at times the only form of communication between government and citizenry, will not reach everyone.

It’s good to make cuts in our budget and harness the power of the internet and technology, but at what cost? Keeping the light on our public notices is a public necessity. After all, we have a duty and commitment to know the truth.

The Beltway-run ALEC is trampling all around our beloved Commonwealth like a bull (or an elephant) in a china shop, and great advocacy like this goes a long way toward calling out the extremists in Richmond for what they are: reckless, out-of-touch, and fundamentally unconcerned with the problems of everyday folks around their kitchen tables.

ALEC has written model legislation on a host of subjects dear to corporate and conservative interests, and supporting lawmakers have introduced these bills in dozens of states. A recent study of the group’s impact in Virginia showed that more than 50 of its bills were introduced there, many practically word for word. The study, by the liberal group ProgressVA, found that ALEC had been involved in writing bills that would:

¶Prohibit penalizing residents for failing to obtain health insurance, undermining the individual mandate in the reform law. The bill, which ALEC says has been introduced in 38 states, was signed into law and became the basis for Virginia’s legal challenge to heath care reform.

¶Require voters to show a form of identification. Versions of this bill passed both chambers this month.

¶Encourage school districts to contract with private virtual-education companies. (One such company was the corporate co-chair of ALEC’s education committee.) The bill was signed into law.

¶Call for a federal constitutional amendment to permit the repeal of any federal law on a two-thirds vote of state legislatures. The bill failed.

¶Legalize use of deadly force in defending one’s home. Bills to this effect, which recently passed both houses, have been backed by the National Rifle Association, a longtime member of ALEC.

ALEC’s influence in the Virginia statehouse is pervasive, the study showed. The House of Delegates speaker, William Howell, has been on the board since 2003 and was national chairman in 2009. He has sponsored or pushed many of the group’s bills, including several benefiting specific companies that support ALEC financially, like one that would reduce a single company’s asbestos liability. At least 115 other state legislators have ties to the group, including paying membership dues, attending meetings and sponsoring bills. The state has spent more than $230,000 sending lawmakers to ALEC conferences since 2001.

Kudos to ProgressVA for this achievement.

“Republicans are so focused on divisive policies that they are hindering our efforts at progress, putting our kids’ education at risk, and leaving them less prepared for the future.  In the last four weeks, Senate and House Republicans have introduced hundreds of bills that target the poor, women, and immigrants, make it harder to vote, and discriminate against gays and lesbians. It’s time for Republicans to put divisive ideology and raw partisanship aside.

See more here.  Ideology and partisanship never got Virginia anywhere, and Virginians know it.  Why else did Mark Warner, the most popular governor in recent times, theme his gubernatorial campaign “One Virginia”?

They’re taking advantage of their power in Richmond to ram through the long-planned schemes of the ultra-right-wing group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  See more at this research report from Progress Virginia, detailing, among other things, the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars that have gone into supporting this non-Virginia extremist special interest.

Virginia is too great, too exceptional, to be a puppet on anyone’s string.

Kudos to the Democratic caucuses for staying on offense.

I have an op-ed out in today’s Richmond Times-Dispatch drawing on some of my experience in national security as well as some of the facts about the President’s proposed new Pentagon budget to argue that it’s critics like Mitt Romney who really ought to be playing defense on defense.  Here are  a few grafs from the article — you can check out the full version here.

There’s a great scene in Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” where a novice gunfighter loudly proclaims his toughness. “I’m a killer myself,” he boasts to the grizzled old bounty hunter Eastwood portrays. Eastwood’s character takes a long, slow look at the braggart. It later turns out that the man hadn’t killed anyone at all, and when he does, he falls to pieces.

I was reminded of this scene recently when I watched Mitt Romney’s victory speech in Tampa. He didn’t wait long to launch a political bomb at President Barack Obama. “He is intent on shrinking our military!” Romney shouted to a cheering crowd. He then accused the president of “appeasement” with our enemies.

When I ran for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 2009, I was blessed with the support of retired general and flag officers from all four services, as well as veterans of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These brave men and woman abhor politics for politics’ sake. They are often more critical of waste in the military than civilians. In other words, they believe that our national security requires more cattle and less hat. But Romney’s words are the equivalent of a hundred-gallon Stetson. Should he become the Republican nominee, Virginia’s voters should treat him accordingly this November.

They expect their leaders to work as hard as they do.  But extremists in Richmond are ignoring things like job creation and education.  Instead, they’re just rehashing the played-out “God, guns, and gays” playbook.

I’m with the folks at the kitchen table.  At NDP, we’ve spent the last year fighting for the New Dominion.  We’ve promoted innovators in the Valley and Northern Virginia, social justice reformers in Richmond and Southwest, and education reformers in Hampton Roads and Southside.

Now we’re turning our focus to fresh ideas on public education.  As a Virginia public school and UVA Law graduate, a small businessman, and an educator at Virginia Tech, I firmly believe in the power of public education to build Virginia’s future — and give progressives an edge at the kitchen table.  Here’s what we’re delivering in the coming weeks:

• On February 11th at the Jefferson-Jackson Day in Richmond, we’re holding an NDP Coffee Break called “Fresh Ideas for the Future”: an open discussion about two new NDP Strategy Papers on K-12 and higher ed.  Time/place: 2:30 – 3:30 p.m., Starbucks, Richmond Marriott, 500 E. Broad St., Richmond.

• On February 21st, we’ll release NDP’s first Strategy Paper, titled “Opportunity, Innovation, Investment: Bringing Higher Ed into the Future” at a panel including Senator Barbara Favola (D-Arlington), Senator John Edwards (D-Roanoke), Dr. Kendra Hamilton, former Mayor of Charlottesville, and Dak Hardwick of the Harris Corporation.  Time/place: 9:00 – 10:00 a.m., Room 3E, General Assembly Building, 1000 Bank St., Richmond

• On March 7, we’ll release another NDP Strategy Paper, titled “Excellence, Equity, Opportunity: K-12 Education Reform” in a panel including Abby Raphael, Chair of the Arlington County School Board, Andy Rotherham, Time Magazine columnist and Partner, Bellwether Education Partners, and Dmitri Mehlhorn, COO of Students First.  Time/place: 7:00 p.m., Arlington County Democratic Committee, NRECA Building, 4301 Wilson Blvd., Arlington.

Fresh ideas like these will help take Virginia to the next level, and we’d love your feedback and support.  Please send suggestions and RSVPs to newdominionproject@gmail.com.

This is a crucial question not only for theoretical debates in the academy but about public policy affecting thousands of Virginia students and families.  If higher ed is is a public good, the state’s role in funding higher education is clearly established. The state has a clear obligation to ensure that students can attend higher education since the product of that education benefits state and society alike. Meanwhile, if it’s a private good, it follows that the costs of education should fall entirely onto the student, since it’s the student who enjoys the fruits of his education.

In economic terms, a public good is characterized by two prominent principles:

1)    Non-excludability – it is not possible to exclude non-payers from consuming the good, and

2)    Non-rivalry – more people consuming the good than was intended does not diminish the good’s value or benefit to others.

The classic example of a pure public good, amply demonstrating both of these principles, is national defense. National defense is non-excludable because it is not possible to exclude non-payers (i.e., free riders) from consuming the good. My neighbor, who fails to pay his taxes which funds our national defense, still benefits from that same system which I fund and profit from. Likewise, national defense is non-rival since an increase in the population of our society is independent of our armed forces’ ability to protect it.

Yet, as with most things in reality, very few things fit the mold perfectly. In other words, with the exception of national defense and a few other examples, nothing is a pure public good. Usually, they fit one criterion, but not the other.

Case and point: higher education

In higher education, it is obvious that people who cannot pay, cannot attend. Thus, the good is excludable – it is possible to exclude non-payers from consuming the good. In contrast, the more people who receive a higher education degree does not diminish the good’s value onto society at-large. So, it is a non-rival good.

Society benefits when more people go to college. People with a college degree, for example, earn more than others. These same people are drivers of inventions and new modalities for production, cooperation and management. In sum, people with college degrees are better citizens. They add greater marginal value to society compared to a high school dropout or even graduate.

Therefore, if the benefits of higher education stand to benefit others, including those without a higher education degree, as well as the state (in the form of an increased tax base), it follows that the costs of such an education should be shared, too.

But, according to Gov. Bob McDonnell’s higher education budget plan, now before the General Assembly, such is not the case. While his post-secondary schools budget does increase funding for higher education overall, the plan simultaneously puts a cap on the amount of revenue used for financial aid derived from tuition and fees. Put differently, Gov. McDonnell wants to limit the amount of money students, particularly low and middle-income students, receive to pay for school.

In a time when student debt continues to rise and burdens students after they finish school, when the cost of school is becoming a larger factor in the decision to attend higher education to begin with, and in a time when, as Peter Blake, director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, puts it student need is on the rise largely because of the weak economy, limiting the source of financial aid is dangerous and disastrous.

Not only does it prevent a more socio-economic diverse set of students from attending and benefiting from our institutions but it likewise puts a heavier burden on our schools to find funding sources. Moreover, not mentioned is the cost this can put onto society. If students cannot strive for higher education, a non-rival good, because of the lack of a school to provide adequate financial aid, then society loses out. As I wrote in a previous post, the cost comes out to approximately $582,000 per person if that person does not proceed to higher ed.

The debate over whether higher education is a public or private good is part and parcel of our discussion about how we ought to fund our public institutions and how that funding is distributed. Given that the state benefits, economically and socially, from more college graduates, there is an obvious interest to concomitantly invest heavily in public higher education and ensure all students, from diverse backgrounds, can attend. Gov. McDonnell’s proposal to limit the percentage of tuition and fees directed for financial aid ensures the opposite outcome. If anything, his view borders on characterizing public higher education as a private good, one that each must pay for on their own since, in time, they stand to benefit the most from it.

This view is fundamentally wrong. After all, we cannot have a strong commitment to our state without a even stronger commitment to our higher education institutions.

As a veteran of seven Virginia Democratic election protection programs and founder of the New Electoral Reform Alliance of Virginia, I’m familiar with the provisional ballot system we have.  I fear the intentional chaos that will be unleashed under this new system.  I’ve counseled many frustrated voters through the process of casting provisional ballots and have advised them on how to ensure they get counted — usually, by taking a day off work to show up to the registrar’s office the next day.  (Virginia’s system is already unusual in that the “canvass” of votes starts the day after voting — in some states, the canvass starts a few days later, giving more time to a voter to arrange to travel).

In Virginia currently, if you don’t have an ID, you simply have to sign an affidavit, swearing — under legally-binding oath — that you are who you say you are and are registered to vote.  We allow affidavits almost everywhere else, and they have legal effect.  And supporters of the bill cannot point to any examples of voter fraud — or indeed any problems at all — in the current system in Virginia.

The proposed new system would change all of this.  If you are forced to use a provisional ballot, there is no guarantee that your vote will be counted.  To the contrary — the Electoral Board and Registrar meet the very next day to count these ballots, and unless you are present to argue your case, it’s quite possible that they would reject the ballots of voters they suspect to be Democrats (as happened in Florida, when local boards’ decisions on whether to count ballots usually broke along party lines).  For an ordinary voter to be required to show up at the Registrar’s office the very next morning is burdensome, unrealistic, and, in many cases, discriminatory.

Imagine a retired, 65 year old voter from a rural community who wants to vote, has registered to vote with the help of a neighbor, but does not have a car or a driver’s license.  Further imagine she is only able to get to the poll (which is several miles away) after a neighbor gets off his shift and gives her a ride at 6:30 p.m.  Because she doesn’t have a government ID, she is now forced to use a provisional ballot – and if she wants to make absolutely sure it’s counted, she’s told she’ll have to come to the Registrar’s office the very next morning, usually by 10 a.m.

For her, this just proves impossibly burdensome.  She can’t find a ride.  There are no taxis in her community.  She can’t walk to the poll.

These bills would restrict the ability of this voter, and thousands of voters like her, to vote, with a special impact on members of underserved communities–folks less likely to undertake the expense and difficulty of traveling to a government office to get a government-issued ID.

It seems clear that, in a presidential year, with Virginia as a critical swing state, that there’s a political goal behind these attempts.

This is regrettable and must be stopped — particularly in Virginia, where we are slowly but surely moving beyond the legacy of Jim Crow and massive resistance.  We are the birthplace of American democracy, and so it’s fitting that we have also been a laboratory for all the steps — forward and backward — for American democracy.  Just as James Madison advanced the freedom of religion here in the 18th century, we suffered Reconstruction in the 19th, and the Byrd machine cracked down on African-Americans’ civil rights in the 20th.  Yet we are also the Commonwealth that elected an African-American governor, and that provided the decisive electoral votes for an African-American president.

Today, we are at a turning point.  Supporters of these bills are clearly following marching orders — ideological and political.  Yesterday’s rally showed the forces of progress in the Commonwealth.  Let’s hope that the Senate will turn back this bill — and that, if they make their way to the Governor’s desk, he will do the right thing and veto them.

They are supporting bills to prevent the thousands of Virginians who don’t have a government ID from voting with regular ballots on election day.  They want to make absentee voting more difficult by requiring five days after registering and voting.  They also want to criminalize anyone who helps more than two people fill out an absentee ballot application in the same election year.

It’s all part of a troubling new national trend to try and manage the electorate in a conservative direction, which we’ve previously written about at NDP here.  Citizen action will protect citizen’s ability to act.  So please make your voices heard on these unsettling efforts.

Tomorrow, the Democratic Party of Virginia and the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus are sponsoring a “Protect Our Vote Rally” at the Bell Tower on the grounds of the Virginia Capitol in Richmond.  The event features a special guest, the civil rights hero Dr. Benjamin Chavis.  Click here for details.

You can also take a minute to sign a petition opposing these anti-voter bills.

Democracy is only as strong as its weakest link–and so we need to stand up for the right of everyone to be counted.