I am pleased to announce that Richard W. “Dick” Hall-Sizemore has joined the stable of semi-regular contributors to Bacon’s Rebellion. Dick has haunted the halls of Capitol Square for some 40 years, first as a legislative aide, then as a local government lobbyist, and in the past 25 years as a policy analyst with the Department of Planning and Budget. His knowledge of Virginia’s public policy issues has few parallels. He knows where the bodies — bodies of data, that is — are buried within the Labyrinth of Virginia’s state bureaucracy, and he has keen analytical abilities, which were on display in guest columns on this blog.

Dick shares Bacon’s Rebellion’s passion for probing deeper than the sound bites that dominate our political discourse and for engaging in a civil dialogue. Although his views are more centrist than other prominent voices on this blog (well, mine anyway), we welcome reasoned perspectives different from ours, and we look forward to hearing what he has to say.

Dick has a special expertise in the Department of Criminal Justice Services. Virginia’s prison system has the lowest recidivism of any state correctional system in the country — an achievement that has warranted little attention in our mainstream press. Dick and I have discussed how a tremendous opportunity exists in Virginia to transcend partisan politics by exploring what Virginia’s Department of Corrections is doing right, and what the state and localities can do to build on their success. Whether you are a skin-flint fiscal conservative griping about the expenditure of tax dollars or a bleeding-heart liberal wringing your hands over the number of minorities in prison, we can all agree that it is in everyone’s best interest to help prison inmates transition back into the workforce and become productive members of society.

I urge Dick to devote some of his energies to that cause, and I hope Bacon’s Rebellion readers will take the occasion in the comments section of this blog to do the same. Whatever he chooses to write about, we welcome his contribution.