Rain
Dance
The
myth making generated by Virginia politics isn't addressing our
dysfunctional development patterns. Perhaps it's time to arm citizens with
the data they need to make rational decisions on
their own.
Like
the marauding barbarians in that TV credit card
ad-- “Whot’s in yurrr wallet?”--the 2005
Virginia gubernatorial campaigns are descending
upon us. Fear, greed, ignorance, pandering and
two-bit moralizing will roam the Commonwealth at
will. Alas, there is no magic plastic card to stop
them. A few innocent souls may look for rational
discussion, somewhere, of public policy and its
effects, but they will seek it in vain. Bombast
and image-fabricating will crush any other form of
human communication that crosses their paths.
There will be no stopping them.
Political
scientists at our prestigious institutions of
higher learning will struggle bravely to find
something coherent to say about what transpires,
but the spectacle probably is better suited to
comparative anthropologists. Trained to observe
outlandish and power-centered rituals in hostile
environments, anthropologists could interpret the
noisy sham battles among the Elephant tribe, the
Donkey tribe, and the tributary clans that migrate
between them.
They could record and decipher the
tales the shamans of these primal groupings tell
their warriors. But any researchers so inclined
had better get moving. The warriors are gathering
already around their respective campfires and
waterholes. The eerie chant “Unmet Needs” is
already echoing from the shadows, as is the
counter-chant “No New Taxes.”
The
spectacle could be entertaining if one could
overlook the fact that $20 billion dollars a year
(just counting the state) and activities that
affect our daily lives (sometimes at great
personal cost) are at stake. Unfortunately, myths
and mythmaking are all we can expect from our
political discourse.
The
columns on myths and mythmaking by Jim Bacon and
Ed Risse in the December 13, 2004, edition of
Bacon’s Rebellion laid down a challenge. Because
the myths don’t work--“Hmm. We sacrificed
to Rain God, but it hasn’t rained….”--they
argue that it’s time to ground some of the
discussion of public policy in the world that we
actually live in. Their argument stands in such
sharp contrast to the policies the political
campaigns will propose that I repeat a short
version of it:
How
we build things and how we move among the things
we build have created dysfunctional settlements.
We have become dependent on more and longer
vehicle trips for every daily necessity. We are
cut off from readily accessible recreation, daily
shopping, worship services, and social
opportunities. This is becoming progressively more
expensive for us. The quality of life for all but
the quite rich is steadily degrading. And don’t
expect government to do anything about it, because
politics is fundamentally broken.
I
hasten to add: Don’t expect any political
figures to talk about this in public. Do expect
the campaigns to retail formulaic repetitions of
the myths that haven’t brought the rain.
This
is a truncated version of a much broader argument.
It is enough for now to point out that, as the
campaigns pick up momentum, all of us will be
targets of messages that tell us to believe the
myths, to expect government (in the hands of right
people) to do something other than what it’s
been doing.
Take
for example the “unmet needs” chant about
traffic congestion, basically an assertion that
more expressways should be built or expanded. In
the context of the poor-mouthing that marks most
discussion of state government and the actual fact
of the clogging of our roads, it might even sound
plausible. Someone might think “Gee whiz, maybe
we have been too tight-fisted on roads….” But
according to my only slightly out-of-date US
Statistical Abstract Virginia ranks 11th among the
50 states in miles of interstate, 13th in miles of
other expressways, and 14th in miles of arterial
roads. Not quite the bottom of the heap. On the
other hand, Virginia shows up in 27th place in
those roads counted as “collectors.”
Could
it be that we could use more attention to networks
of smaller roads? Take some of the pressure of
multiple local trips off facilities built for
through traffic by integrating local development
with local infrastructure? We’ll never know, at
least not from the campaigns. Or, for that matter,
from our functionally fossilized formal
governments; they’re completely absorbed in what
they are already doing.
Their
responsibilities are not necessarily simple or
easy. But the political class shouldn’t get too
much sympathy for overseeing routine tasks. And it’s
not just that they are already preoccupied.
Governmental activities are tightly defined by law
and tradition. Functions that are intimately
connected on a mutual cause-effect basis in the
world that we live in can be separated in the
world of government by level of government, by
politics, and by legal authority and finance. In a
word, they can be “stove-piped,” and they are.
For
example, land use and transportation are
intimately related in the real world, but in the
legal-historical world of Virginia governance and
the perpetual campaign world of Virginia politics,
they are separated, linked only by those who know
how to play the gap between them and have the
incentive to do so. The public, of course, is left
out of this. If you are persistent and informed,
you can go to a VDOT hearing, though the final
decision-makers likely won’t be in the room. You
can go to a zoning hearing, and if it is the one
that is before the municipal governing body, the
decision-makers will actually be in the room. But
you can’t go to a hearing where there is any
chance that the land use decision makers and the
transportation decision makers are in the same
room, because no such meetings exist.
So,
what’s a body to do? It is not the American way
to roll over and play dead. The answer must lie in
figuring out how to deal for ourselves with the
effects of the mess, if not the mess itself.
And
we do have a stake in it. For most of us, our
house is our biggest single investment. But much
of the “information” about real estate comes
from the real estate industry, which is dominated
by guys for whom their principal dwellings are not
their biggest single investment. We need
information geared to the millions of property
owners in the state that will help them make the
best decisions possible. To that end, a small
group of dissenters proposes to launch a
research/information dissemination group
tentatively called Property Dynamics.
We
would like to develop a Web-accessible database of
information that is not readily available at
present. One broad set of concerns revolves around
identifying information that would help homeowners
make better decisions in purchasing real
estate--more specifically, to calculate the
various costs and benefits associated with
particular locations. Would it help homeowners to
know the real estate assessments on a given parcel
over a number of years? How about information
about other property values? What is the trend in
value for the functional (not legal-historical)
setting of the property? How about crime and
health data? Should potential purchasers have the
tools to compute the transportation costs
associated with a given location? What should a
potential purchaser make of representations from
government about traffic congestion?
Another
set of concerns entails making better use of
existing development and infrastructure. What
information could make it more attractive to
improve existing housing (for which the necessary
infrastructure is already in place) so that
homeowners create value in their own property? How
could do-it-yourselfers get reliable information
on design options, identify reliable contractors,
navigate zoning bureaucracy, get financing, and
cope with the other problems of redoing existing
housing?
The
third of the three spheres of information and
tools centers on the data and processes citizens
need to evaluate proposals for change in their
dooryards, cluster, neighborhoods, villages,
communities, regions and across the Commonwealth.
These include not just draft changes in public
plans, land use controls and incentives but
proposals for new development projects and the
demolition of existing elements of the landscape,
both natural and man-made.
Answers
to questions like these, as well as more involving
the rational assessment of policy alternatives,
will not be simple to generate. They require sets
of data that are not gathered at the relevant
levels. They will require fresh thinking about
what information can actually be used. They
require putting together what is separated by
governmental stove piping and artificial local
government boundaries. They involve finding ways
for more effective public participation in crucial
governmental decisions that affect property
values. They will require some sympathy and skill
in presenting information to non-specialists.
Therefore,
our small, dispersed group is looking for
potential myth busters, particularly from those
with the skills and interest to participate in
research that will have to withstand critical
scrutiny (and probably public abuse). Of course,
it would help to find those who can financially
support myth busting, as well. The very broad
context of the work is outlined in Ed Risse’s
columns which have appeared here regularly. Check
"A Summing
Up," December 13, 2004, for a
summary update on his work. (His treatment of
regional metrics indicates, for example, where an
industrious mathematician is needed.)
So,
dear reader, if you are interested and can do
something to help, contact me at josephfreeman@
msn.com.
Be sure to put “Bacon’s Rebellion” or “Property
Dynamics” in title box of the e-mail and tell me
what you can do. This effort is very much in the
fledgling stage, so you should be prepared to be
patient. But then it generally does take time to
bring a little light to a dark age.
--
January 4, 2005
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