Ken Plum: Shortchanging the education of our children
Last week I addressed the House of Delegates to express concern that Gov. McDonnell’s proposed budget short changes the education of our children (http://youtu.be/-VbOv_uJXOU).
While the governor is claiming to provide about 500 million new dollars for public education, school boards and superintendents around the Commonwealth are talking about the cuts in programs and teachers they will need to make because of the loss of state aid in his budget. Continue reading “Ken Plum: Shortchanging the education of our children” »
Ken Plum: Repeat of a sordid history
The Virginia General Assembly may be about to repeat an unfortunate chapter of its history by passing bills that will have the effect of suppressing voter participation. Although the bills are justified by the proponents as preventing voter fraud, no examples of voter wrongdoing have been shown.
At the turn of the 20th century Virginians were in the throes of fierce political upheaval. While the Civil War had ended decades before, fallout from Reconstruction and shifts in control of state government were still being felt. A new state constitution was intended to renew order to a state that had been accustomed to being governed by an aristocracy. That order was achieved by the imposition of a number of voter suppression measures that cut the state’s voter registration list in half and led to the state having one of the lowest rates of voter participation in the country. Continue reading “Ken Plum: Repeat of a sordid history” »
Poll: Virginians oppose ‘fox penning’
A new poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research shows that Virginia voters overwhelmingly oppose the abuse of animals in “fox penning” operations by a more than 8-to-1 margin—and a majority support legislation to prohibit the practice.
Fox pens are fenced enclosures where dogs are released in competitions to chase down and torment captive foxes, often killing them. In just three years, nearly 4,000 foxes were subjected to these unethical and inhumane events.
The statewide survey reveals that 67 percent of Virginia voters oppose the practice of fox penning and just 8 percent support it. The survey results were consistent in every political demographic, with every group and party affiliation opposed to penning. Voters statewide support legislation prohibiting the practice by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Continue reading “Poll: Virginians oppose ‘fox penning’” »
Ken Plum: Grand illusion in Richmond
Recently I performed a magic show for children at Barnes and Noble in Reston as part of a fundraiser for a local preschool. Part of the success of performing magic is dependent upon the ability of the magician to divert the attention of the audience from what is going on to the illusion of what seems to be happening.
A ballpoint pen seems to stick a hole in a dollar bill, although no hole is found when the pen is removed. The peanut butter jar and the jelly jar seem to mysteriously change places. A string of bright beads is produced from an empty container. Magic and illusion are great forms of entertainment.
Unfortunately the agenda shaping up for the 2012 General Assembly session in Richmond includes some sleight-of-hand to make the state legislature look good in the short run but could leave local governments on the losing end of the trick. The Governor’s Task Force for Local Government Mandate Review is proposing the elimination of a number of existing mandates. Continue reading “Ken Plum: Grand illusion in Richmond” »
Ken Plum: Virginia’s unsupervised tax giveaways
I am more than a little puzzled as to why a report issued by the highly respected Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) staff last month did not make front page news throughout the Commonwealth. In its “Review of the Effectiveness of Virginia Tax Preferences,” the independent, nonpartisan JLARC staff wrote that a “minority of public or tax policy preferences are subject to formal evaluation or reporting.” Of the 187 total categories of total tax preferences, or credits, examined for tax year 2008, the last year for which complete data are available, 131 different tax credits worth $11.3 billion have “no formal oversight.” Of the remaining number worth $1.2 billion, 36 are subject to reporting only and 20 are subject to reporting and evaluation. The number evaluated on effectiveness in meeting policy goals: zero! (http://jlarc.state.va.us)
The sheer volume of tax credits available in Virginia is itself astounding. They represented about $12.5 billion in reduced taxpayer’s liability in 2008 which is nearly 90 percent of the $14.3 billion of the state revenue collected from the tax systems reviewed. One organization that describes itself as “a broad-based coalition of business people, local elected officials, and nonprofit advocates and community leaders representing over 39 organizations from across the state” described the study as “detailing many of the myriad of often costly, inefficient, and ineffective loopholes, credits and breaks littered throughout the Virginia tax code.” (www.betterchoicesva.org)
The subject of tax preferences is particularly relevant at this time with the state facing a shortfall of about a billion dollars in revenue for the coming biennium. Federal stimulus monies that have made major contributions to balancing the state’s budget for the past couple of years are no longer available. The more than $600 million borrowed from the employees’ retirement fund must be paid back. Easy cuts to reducing the state’s budget were made years ago, and the already-made reduction of $7 billion has cut into the muscle and bone of state programs and services. In addition to simply making more spending reductions, should the state examine its tax code to see if the numerous “tax loopholes, credits and breaks” be examined for their appropriateness and effectiveness? Sounds like the same debate that is going on at the federal level.
One thing the JLARC reports tell us is that Virginia, the best managed state in the union, has little information on tax preferences, “including which ones should be continued because they are effective, and which ones could be revised to improve their effectiveness or eliminated altogether.” Agencies and organizations receiving state monies are held to strict accountability standards. Should we expect anything less from those getting a tax break?
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: Voter suppression
The standard civics class lesson is that voting is a primary responsibility of citizenship. We are often reminded at patriotic events that our men and women in uniform protect our rights and freedoms including participating in our government by voting. Yet, with all the importance assigned to voting, voter participation rates in this country are among the lowest of democratic governments. More people stay home than go to the polls. For whatever their reasons for not voting, these people by their inaction affect the outcome of elections.
Unfortunately, some political operatives have recognized that keeping voter turnout low is a way to influence the election outcomes. Laws are on the books in Virginia and are being debated in other states to require an official identification document in order to vote. Elimination of voter fraud is given as the justification for such laws, although there have been few documented instances of voter fraud. The real effect is to add to the complexities of the voting process to discourage persons from voting. With an expected close presidential election coming up in 2012, it is likely that there will be more legislation introduced in the states affecting voter participation.
Virginia has historically had among the lowest voter participation rates of any state. Virginia once had a host of laws to limit voting and voter registration. A literacy test requiring certain information to be written on a blank sheet of paper kept many well-educated people from being able to register to vote. Supporters of the Byrd Machine could pass the test whether or not they could read or write; African-Americans could seldom pass the test. The poll tax of $1.50 kept many people from voting because they simply did not have the money. Beyond the amount of money the requirement that the poll tax had to be paid for three years in a row at least six months before the election kept even more people from voting. Desirable voters were reminded to pay their poll tax in May in order to be able to vote in November. Incidentally, the poll tax was the only tax on the books that was not enforced. If you did not pay it, nobody came to collect it. The tax was not about raising revenue but was about limiting the right of people to vote. The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated most of the voter suppression laws that existed in Virginia and in the South and other states.
There are few legal barriers to voting. We need to be vigilant to ensure that laws are not enacted that would have the effect of discouraging people to vote. If you are going to be away on Election Day, unable to go to the polls, or are away from home for more than eleven hours, apply for an absentee ballot or vote early in person. For details, go to www.fairfaxcounty.gov/ebor call 703.324.4706. Do not let anyone or anything suppress your vote.
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: Devolution all over again
In this column I made the assertion a couple of months ago that the Commonwealth of Virginia was shirking its responsibility in funding its share of public school K-12 budgets. I wrote that the state has a responsibility under the constitution to fund 55 percent of the cost of public schools but is providing only 41 percent of the costs. The Richmond Times Dispatch “PolitiFact” checker reviewed the “facts” behind my statement and by changing the word “responsibility” to “requirement” found the statement to be false. Their argument was a technical one that the state needed to fund only 55 percent of Standards of Quality (SOQ) related costs with which it had complied. They ignored my contention that SOQ costs are a small share of public school costs, and the SOQ standards are revised downward as the budget is reduced. All public schools find it necessary to exceed SOQ’s in order to successfully operate their schools.
In the most recent issue of Virginia Towns and Cities, the journal of the Virginia Municipal League (VML), the Executive Director of the VML, Mike Amyx, entered the debate between me and the Times Dispatch. Amyx found that “PolitiFact assessment of delegate’s K-12 funding statement is flawed.” As he wrote, “The point that Del. Plum correctly made is that the state does not recognize what it actually costs to educate students and to meet state accountability standards, such as the Standards of Learning…Prior to the recession the state devoted 35 percent of its general fund budget to public schools. Today, post-recession, the state’s general fund support has dropped to below 30 percent… the state’s 41 percent share of meeting K-12 education costs is woefully inadequate… if you rate Del. Plum’s statement against reality, it is absolutely true”
The devolution of state responsibility for funding an equal share of education costs with localities to the localities having to pick up a greater share of the costs is about to happen in another area of state responsibility if early discussion around the Capitol are to be believed. In a recent meeting of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, Secretary of Transportation Sean Connaughton observed that cities in the Tidewater and Central Virginia areas maintain their own streets. He raised a question as to whether or not all localities should be required to maintain their streets and secondary roads. Currently, cities and towns and the Counties of Henrico and Arlington receive urban street payments from the Department of Transportation to maintain their streets and highways. Since the Secretary’s comments came in the midst of a discussion of what the Governor intends to do to deliver on his promise to provide more monies for transportation, a feeling of concern was felt by those who know how the highway funding system works. If the responsibility for maintaining highways was simply shifted from the state to localities under the current urban street formula of funding, there would be no net gain in revenue for the state. Since the urban formula seems to be more generous than the secondary road system of funding, there could actually be a net loss to the state when the state Department of Transportation is already woefully short of funding.
With devolution as being discussed, localities may pick up a greater responsibility for funding roads but without the funds to meet their costs. Would the state dump the responsibility for maintaining secondary roads on localities without providing the necessary money? The experience with school funding suggests yes. By altering school standards to meet budget dollars, the state claims it meets its obligation but does not provide adequate monies in reality to meet actual costs. Localities get left holding the bag. The same could cleaarly happen with roads. Looks like devolution all over again!
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: Mixed messages for education
I was at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in the District of Columbia last week when President Barack Obama delivered his third annual back-to-school speech to students at Banneker and by video to students throughout the country. For many students his pep talk to work hard, stay in school, and be successful was appropriate, but for students at Banneker with its 100 percent graduation rate and its 100 percent college acceptance numbers the speech was probably more memorable for having the President at their school than for any advice he may have given them.
For a President who is known for delivering great speeches, his speech at Banneker was average. I made the trip to the school to hear his speech first-hand at the invitation of the White House because I love to hear the President speak. I suppose it is difficult to make a rah-rah, back-to-school speech very interesting. He did share that he was not a very good student in middle and high school, but a course in ethics he had to take in eighth grade and did not like very much still has an impact on him today.
I also went to hear his speech because I am interested in any new policy directions that might be undertaken at the federal level that might impact public education. There were of course no such announcements to his student audience. There were, however, a continuation of the mixed messages that politicians and policy makers have been giving about education since the great school reform efforts of the 1960s got underway and until today. The President implored the students to “take risks…test things out…expand your horizons…” But most students throughout American will leave the speech and return to classrooms that are governed by programs like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and Standards of Learning that put a much greater emphasis on the acquisition of bits of knowledge than on exploration, a high-risk standardized testing program that discourages risk taking, and an ever more closely defined curriculum that limits the ability to expand one’s horizons. Every segment of society wants its piece of the curriculum: STEM to prepare students for jobs that are not yet defined in the future (and the schools get the blame if they do not correctly guess what the future knowledge and skill needs will be); physical education in response to an obesity crisis that schools are now expected to end; financial education proposed by the bankers and others in the financial community who seem to suggest that consumer behavior caused the current financial disaster and not their institutions and questionable management; and there are many others.
The teacher in the classroom is left in the middle of these mixed messages. They need to inspire, encourage, and promote learning, but by the way do not forget the standardized testing that all students must pass as though they are all at the same place in their learning. The President got it right when he said that teachers may be working harder than just about anyone these days. The mixed messages they get on education from every level of society does not make their job any easier.
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: Accessing state government
In my earliest years of service as a member of the House of Delegates there was no guide or directory of state programs and services. Each constituent request that was different from previous ones resulted in an investigation to determine who was responsible for what in the area in which the constituent needed assistance. Sometimes it took several long distance telephone calls to get to the right agency or the right person. There was no Internet and no search engines. State government was not all that friendly, and there were few “800″ numbers to encourage calls from Northern Virginia and other parts of the state into Richmond.
Each successful investigation led to the completion of an index card with individual names, agency names, addresses, and telephone numbers that were eventually expanded to include facsimile telephone numbers to accommodate the new technology. The shoebox that was more than half-full of index cards became an invaluable tool in responding to constituent inquiries.
If it was invaluable to my office, it would clearly be useful to others. From that realization came the idea to print all the information from those index cards in a booklet that would be a citizens handbook. Our first edition was in great demand from citizens, businesses, agencies, and others. It clearly filled a void; it clearly met a need.
Last week I sent out the eleventh edition of my citizens handbook that has now been combined with my constituent guide. It is published every two years. The document is quite different from the first edition. Now users of the handbook are referred to the right website where all the details that were once printed in the guide can be found. It has gone from 24 pages to 8 pages as a result. But with the expansion of the websites the guide opens state government to voters and constituents more than the original print-only version ever could. I organized and chaired the original Joint Commission on Technology and Science (JCOTS) where we placed an emphasis on state government expanding its use of technology and making its programs and services more accessible through the Internet. We have been wonderfully accessible. Virginia state government has received many favorable recognitions for its website.
You should have received the Citizens Handbook and Constituent Guide, Eleventh Edition, last week in the mail. If you did not, call my office weekday mornings at 703.758.9733 or email me at kenplum@aol.com. If you need more copies for your family or business, just let us know the number you need, and we will be glad to provide them. They are not printed at taxpayer expense. They are paid for by my campaign committee.
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: Government in the sunshine
A dark cloud passed in front of Virginia’s sunshine law when it was discovered that the Governor’s Commission on Government Reform had been meeting in small groups in secret with the Democratic members of the Commission left out of all the meetings. The flimsy excuse offered by the Governor’s staff that the small groups were really work groups of the Governor and the open-meeting rules did not apply did not pass the laughter test and was abandoned in a couple of days. The most recent response from the Governor’s office is that the meeting dates and locations will be publicized. There was no indication of whether the Democrats on the Commission are going to be included or whether periods for public comment will be scheduled.
The precedent last year of the Commission taking a reform proposal written by the distillery interests to sell the ABC stores and endorsing it without adequate independent assessment or public comment resulted in what I believe has to be the most embarrassing situation I have ever seen for a Virginia governor. No one in his own political party that controls the House of Delegates would introduce his bill. A Democrat introduced it and the Republicans refused to even consider it. Special interests working behind the scene created this situation that could have been avoided.
Every governor has a reform commission. It is an expected routine of governance. This commission is much more important than the ones in the past because reducing the size of government is one way to balance the budget. For appointed commission members who are all fine individuals with for the most part limited experience in government to make decisions behind closed doors or at the last minute is not in the best interest of good government. To leave out the individuals on the Commission with the most experience because they are Democrats is Washington-style operating that we cannot allow to invade Richmond
The importance of the current effort is emphasized when terms such as right-sizing and core-services are applied. Clearly there will be an effort to redefine the role of government. Such a debate would be worthwhile to honestly identify the shrinking role of state government with responsibilities being shifted to local government. Everyone, however, needs to know the agenda and the consequences. An open, bipartisan process will permit independent evaluations of proposed changes.
I am proud of the steps that have been taken in Richmond in the years I have been there to open government to public scrutiny, full accountability and disclosure, and public participation. It was not that way under the Democrats who controlled all branches of government when I was first elected. We cannot go back to those days for any reason and certainly not in the guise of government reform. Government must be conducted in the sunshine regardless of how gloomy it might be outside or in the halls of government.
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: Protecting the health of women
Virginia is in the process of adopting 26 pages of new regulations for health clinics that perform first-term abortions. The General Assembly in a bill that I voted against mandated the regulations be issued without public comment as emergency regulations to become effective January 1, 2012. Currently the 22 clinics that are now regulated as out-patient centers will under the new Health Department rules be regulated as hospitals. The necessity of the emergency regulations according to the proponents is to protect the health of women. Proponents include the Family Foundation and the Catholic Church, both of whom oppose any abortions. No evidence of the harm that has come to women who used the clinics in the past was offered. Opponents say the regulations are likely to close all the clinics in Virginia because none will be able to afford to meet the hospital standards which they say is the real intent of the regulations. Opponents include Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
Ironically the individuals who are supporting the regulation of health clinics are for the most part opponents of government regulations. They are advocates of less government. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its wide ranging authority to issue regulations for clean air and water and environmental protection is often the subject of their wrath. At the same time that regulations to ensure that your water is safe to drink and that air pollution be cleaned up are being challenged as being anti-business and government intrusion, stiff regulations to protect women from unspecified health damages while reducing their access to a legal medical procedure are being advanced.
Governor McDonnell who signed the bill requiring the regulations will review them before they become effective, but he is not expected to change them in any way to reduce their impact. Emergency regulations are effective for one year while new regulations are written. Given the appointees by Governor McDonnell to the State Board of Health, the more permanent regulations are not likely to be less stringent. Adoption of permanent regulations will provide a required opportunity for public comment. The public will have an opportunity to weigh in on whether this expansion of the regulatory authority of big, anti-business government is necessary to protect the health of women, or will the regulations result as many fear in more women’s health being put in jeopardy as they face the most difficult personal decision they will ever have to make.
Ken Plum is a member of the Virginia House of Delegates.
Ken Plum: The other bills
Posted by afp on February 15, 2012 · Leave a Comment
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with ken plum, virginia education, voter rights virginia