Roaonke DFA Democrats

Kookinelli in Action

How did Virginians elect such a Yahoo as Ken Cuccinelli for attorney general? This man was known as a far-right nuttie before the election, yet he carried all of northern Virginia with the exception of Fairfax. Statewide, he garnered 58% of the vote. What were people thinking?

In just a couple of months in office, he has shown why he is a disaster. The latest target for his bigotry are college students. He has sent a letter to state colleges and universities inviting them to discriminate against students based on sexual orientation.

Cuccinelli asked the schools to rescind policies that ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, arguing in a letter sent to each school that their boards of visitors have no legal authority to adopt such statements.

In the letter, Republican Cuccinelli wrote that only the General Assembly can extend legal protections to gay citizens. At the same time, we have seen the Republican-controlled House of delegates kill a bill that passed the State Senate that would have banned such discrimination in state hiring or in state institutions.

"It is my advice that the law and public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia prohibit a college or university from including 'sexual orientation,' 'gender identity,' 'gender expression,' or like classification as a protected class within its non-discrimination policy absent specific authorization from the General Assembly," he wrote.

Note well that no college or university asked for an opinion from Cuccinelli's office. He took it upon himself to undertake this assault on the rights of one class of state residents.

Colleges that have included non-discrimination language in their policies - which include all of Virginia's leading schools - have done so "without proper authority" and should "take appropriate actions to bring their policies in conformance with the law and public policy of Virginia," Cuccinelli wrote.

I suppose to "Cooch" that means that they should discriminate and that such discrimination is an "appropriate action."

Bob McDonnell, when he was attorney general also held that only the General Assembly could name new classes for legal protections. However, he never specifically targeted university policies that seemingly contradicted his position.

The opinion is guaranteed to spark outrage with many students and faculty at Virginia schools.

"What he's saying is reprehensible," said Vince Callahan, a former Republican member of the House of Delegates who serves on the Board of Visitors of George Mason University. "I don't know what he's doing, opening up this can of worms." Callahan served for forty years in the House of Delegates and retired as the longest- serving Republican in the legislature.

According to the Virginian-Pilot, Carl Pucci, the president of the student body at Old Dominion University, said Cuccinelli's letter is likely to stir a strong response on campuses. "It's going to be a mess. There's no doubt about that," he said. "Our generation is really open-minded. The concept of discrimination, we're just not interested in that...I think you're going to see the whole gamut, from angry letters to protests."

It seems that the only person defending Cuccinelli's homophobic fears is the Family Foundation, which argues that laws protecting employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are unnecessary. I think they also believe that God talks directly to them.

I will repeat once more my firm belief that the people who are so fearful about who other people decide to love are extremely uncertain about their own sexuality. That goes for you, too, Mr. Cuccinelli.

At the very least Cuccinelli, who calles himself a "libertarian," believes in a theocratic state where his brand of religion takes away the liberties of others.

The Buck Passes to Local Government

We all know that Bob McDonnell and his fellow Republicans have painted themselves into a "no new taxes" corner in order to satisfy their base. Now, others will have to suffer for that.

There is one week to go before the end of the General Assembly session, but no budget agreement appears on the horizon. Even so, one thing is sure about this budget. It will put pressure on local government officials to either raise revenue - increase property taxes - or be the face of the cuts in services that will be deeply felt in Virginia's cities, towns, and counties.

We can look at public education as an example of how the state passes the fiscal buck for their own demands on localities. The state, even in these bad times, requires schools to maintain 21-to-1 student-teacher ratios, provide free textbooks and transportation and offer programs for at-risk students and free and reduced-price breakfasts in any school where at least one-fourth of students qualify for them.

The federal No Child Left Behind law mandates frequent testing, which carries a high price tag while delivering dubious data. It also mandates a certain level of improvement per year in educational outcomes and remedial instruction for those who fail to meet the minimum standards.

I haven't even scratched the surface of the mandates for education.

So, what does Bob McDonnell have to say about the state passing mandates on to the localities without sufficient state revenue to fund them? "They'll be innovative, they'll be creative, and they'll find a way to manage better," he said.

No, they won't. Virginia's localities can't be "innovative;" they can't "manage" better. McDonnell and the rest of the "don't tax me" crowd have identified the problem facing us right now the wrong way.

We aren't suffering from a recession and declining state revenues because of waste and mismanagement in local government. We have a toxic economic environment caused, for the most part, by the unfettered "free market" that McDonnell and the Republican Party worship.

Let's look at the results of their blind insistence that "waste" by government is the place where solutions to insufficient funds for the services government provides can be found.

Martinsville, which already has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state, is looking at cutting 10 percent of its school employees. These people are not "waste."

According to the Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk is expecting to cut 410 education jobs, including 135 teachers, closing a school for teen mothers, ending all field trips, and making school employees pay a portion of their health insurance, effectively cutting their pay 12.5%. Asking the public servants who teach our children to take a pay cut after a couple of years of getting no raises is not "innovative."

In Gloucester, the options include a four-day school week, a price tag for participation in athletics and closing one of two middle schools. Parents have said a tax increase is preferable to those cuts, but the governor that the county helped elect says otherwise.

Montgomery and Roanoke counties are looking at 20 percent cuts to most departments of county government.

Cumberland County, which just five years ago dealt with failing schools and worked hard to get all its schools to meet state standards, expects now to return its education budget to 2005 funding levels - or enact a tax increase of more than 40 percent, in addition to a 12 percent hike in real estate assessments.

I haven't even touched upon institutions of higher education in Virginia, which have endured years of cuts and neglect that threaten the quality of their programs.

There are two ways to accomplish the Republican agenda of refusing to tax at a level to cover the services the state mandates:

It can eliminate mandates, most of which were put into place to improve services to the state's population...or...it can refuse to fund its own mandates and force local governments to raise taxes. Put in different words, Virginia can allow itself to become a place with a less-educated populace, fewer cultural attractions, a lousy transportation system, etc., or it can become like New Jersey and California, where property taxes reached a level where people rebelled against them.

Neither of those situations can help the self-described "Jobs Governor" attract business to the Commonwealth. I'm afraid we will all have to endure in varying degrees the result of this economic disaster brought on by the greed of the people who enriched themselves at the expense of the rest of us. As usually happens, those most hurt will be the most vulnerable in our society.

Money Talks in Richmond

As if I needed further proof of just how bad governance in America has become at every level. I opened my newspaper early this week and read once again about the power of money to purchase political outcomes in a story that first appeared in the Virginian-Pilot.

(An aside: That paper just might be the best in the state in investigative reporting.)

Here's the gist of what went on in Richmond.

State Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple, a Democrat, thought she had found a way to get even the most recalcitrant Republicans to go along with a "revenue enhancement" that would add $33 million to state coffers this year, granted a drop in a $4 billion bucket, but better than nothing.

As things stand now, if a person books a hotel room through online sites like Orbitz or Expedia, the site that has booked the room at its discount pays hotel and sales taxes on that discounted amount, not the higher price that they actually charge the buyer.

In other words, those sites get to remit a lower tax than the rest of us

Whipple's bill, which was well on its way to enactment, having passed the State Senate 40-0 and a House of Delegates subcommittee 10-0, became the political football in a game of lobbying played by a veteran of that game in Richmond.

Guess who won that one? Do you even have to ask?

Between the time that the bill, SB432, sailed through the Senate and the House subcommittee and its scheduled hearing before the House Finance Committee, the money started its work.

On a Friday last, the Interactive Travel Services Association, the online booking companies' trade group got wind of the bill and hired Benson Dendy, a veteran Richmond lobbyist. Dendy started working the phones and calling legislators he had lobbied for years.

In the 1980's Dendy was responsible for lobbying the Governor's bills in the General Assembly, for both Chuck Robb and Gerald Baliles. In 2002 he was appointed by Gov. Mark Warner to the Council on the Southern Community of the Southern Growth Policies Board. Now, he works for a lobbying outfit called The Vectre Corp.

On its website the Vectre Corp. says that its "hands-on approach is essential to the development of a comprehensive and effective lobbying effort. We identify and arrange introductions and meetings with important elected officials and key decision-makers, develop position papers and committee presentations, regularly testify before committees on behalf of our clients, and lobby legislators."

In order to pretend that pressure is coming from the "grassroots," Vectre also will organize "letter-writing campaigns and phone contacts directed to elected officials, letters-to-the-editor, newsletters, and mass mailings."

Vectre was hired on a Friday afternoon. The following Monday morning, industry representatives were lined up to testify against the bill at the Finance Committee's last scheduled meeting of the legislative session.

When asked to explain why she had introduced the bill, Whipple said, "It is not a new tax. The question is, what amount is it levied on? It's not complicated. It's a tax on the retail value of the room. Virginia is losing tons and tons of money because of this loophole."

Del. Harry "Bob" Purkey (R-Virginia Beach), the committee chairman, said it seemed the bill might have "unintended consequences." He scheduled an extra meeting for the next day to consider it further.

At that meeting, Purkey said: "My phone's ringing off the hook." He had heard from hoteliers, real estate companies and travel agents, he said, all expressing "grave concern" about the bill. I guess that's the "grassroots" campaign that Vectre brags about

Committee members appeared taken aback by the sudden onslaught of opposition to the measure.

Del. Ben Cline (R-Rockbridge County), chairman of the subcommittee that unanimously passed the bill, said it had received a full hearing there and should go forward. "I think we need to respect the work of the subcommittee," he said.

However, money and influence talk in Richmond. Reversing the subcommittee's unanimous recommendation, the committee voted 12-8 to carry the bill over to the 2011 session.

The Arlington treasurwr, Francis O'Leary, has suggested the bill to Whipple. He estimated that the committee's action - or non-action - will cost Virginia and its localities some $33 million in lost taxes this year.

"This stinks," O'Leary told the Virginian-Pilot. "These people are stealing our money, and then when we try to get it back, they hire high-priced lobbyists to fight us."

Whipple said she'll be back next year to try to resurrect her bill. "It's a fairness issue," she said. "It's just not right for them to pocket that money."