Author: Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take: The Case for Non-Partisan Redistricting in Va.

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column published on Tuesdays. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter Rousselot

While Virginia Democratic State Senator Henry Marsh was attending President Obama’s inauguration last month, Virginia Republican Senators ambushed their Democratic counterparts, and passed a far-reaching bill to redraw the lines of Virginia’s districts.

On Feb. 6, Republican House Speaker William Howell effectively killed this bill by ruling that the proposed massive Senate redistricting was not a germane amendment to the minor House redistricting bill to which it was attached. One can only imagine what concessions on other legislation were extracted from Virginia Democrats behind the scenes in exchange for Republicans “voluntarily” killing the Senate redistricting bill.

This 2013 Senate Republican redistricting ploy came only two years after Va. Senate Democrats and Va. House Republicans struck a deal in which Democrats allowed Republicans free rein to gerrymander the district lines in the House in exchange for allowing Democrats free rein to gerrymander the district lines in the Senate.

What all these deals have in common: hyper-partisanship by Republicans and Democrats, incumbent protection, and legislators choosing their voters—rather than the other way round. Other states have found better ways to do this, and Virginia should too.

John Miller, a Democratic Senator from Virginia’s 1st Senate District in Newport News, has proposed SB 742—a bill to create a bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Commission to draw the legislative district lines. Senator Miller’s bill certainly isn’t perfect—but it’s a big step up from the chaotic hyper-partisan system Virginia has now.

Even better would be legislation to create a non-partisan redistricting commission. Efforts to do that have been blocked repeatedly by Virginia Republican legislators, most recently when a House of Delegates subcommittee unanimously voted to table such a proposal by Democratic Delegate Betsy Carr of Richmond. Republican opponents of Carr’s proposal claimed there couldn’t be any such thing as a nonpartisan redistricting commission, conveniently ignoring that California and other states have one.

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Peter’s Take: Should Va. Elect a Science Denier As Governor?

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column published on Tuesdays. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotVirginia’s Republican Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, wants to be elected Governor of Virginia this year. So does his Democratic opponent, Northern Virginia businessman Terry McAuliffe.

This year’s campaign for Governor presents starkly different visions of the direction Virginia should take. There will be many opportunities to debate which vision makes more sense. And, there is still a chance that a third major candidate — Virginia’s current Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling — might jump in the race.

But only one of these candidates for Governor — Cuccinelli — has a track record of denying the conclusions of the scientific community.

To advance his cause as a climate science denier, Cuccinelli went so far as to sue the University of Virginia — our flagship university. Although Cuccinelli’s lawsuit was thrown out as frivolous by Virginia’s highest court, it had chilling reverberations within the scientific research community.

Regardless of what you think of Cuccinelli’s positions on any other issue, he should be disqualified from further consideration as Virginia’s Governor because of his record as a science denier. Why?

This is only a sampling of public policy issues facing Virginia’s next Governor:

  • Uranium mining
  • Rising tides
  • Offshore drilling
  • Transit technology choices
  • Tax incentives for green technologies

What to do about each of these issues depends on an understanding and respect for scientific findings.

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Peter’s Take: Has The Arlington Way Lost Its Way?

By Peter Rousselot

Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column published on Tuesdays. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.

Peter RousselotWhen County Board member Mary Hynes launched a new initiative called PLACE (Participation, Leadership and Civic Engagement), ARLnow posted a video and wrote a capsule story. In the video, various people were asked what they thought the term “Arlington Way” meant.  The capsule story asked and answered the question:

“What is the ‘Arlington Way’ exactly? It is essentially an open conversation between the local government and the people who live and work in Arlington. But the Arlington Way can mean different things to different people, as the video … seems to prove.”

Has the Arlington Way lost its way?

Arlington has created an elaborate system of advisory commissions, committees and task forces to tap the wealth of talent in our community This system was supplemented in 2012 with the PLACE initiative. And, in 2013, the County Board has added Walter Tejada’s Neighborhood Town Halls.

Compared to every other community anywhere near its size, the variety of opportunities that Arlington affords for citizen engagement and participation is admirable.

But, the Arlington Way is losing its way because of a combination of:

  • whether, when and how the County Board frames the issues for community discussion
  • what the County Board does with the advice it gets

Example: the PPTA guidelines.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) issued a report last fall warning that the Public Private Transportation Act (PPTA) lacked adequate safeguards, often enabling private firms to negotiate sweetheart deals that earn them high profits while placing most or all of the risk on the public.

The County Board has at least 3 citizen advisory groups that should have been asked to meet, review the proposed PPTA guidelines, and report back to the community: the Transit Advisory Committee, the Transportation Commission, and the Fiscal Affairs Advisory Commission. The County Board never requested such meetings or reports. Why not? What was the rush to enact such far-reaching guidelines without the input of these advisory groups?

Other examples:

  • The County Board’s recent decision on what to do with its fiscal year closeout funds, totaling many millions of dollars, included no opportunity for significant community engagement.
  • The entire structure of County Board decision making is a question too:  an item can appear once on an agenda and be voted on the same night.  Compare this with the School Board’s process of an item appearing first for information, with an opportunity for public comment, and then not being voted on until the next meeting – two weeks later. For major decisions, the School Board has even more time between public notice and action (like what to do with its fiscal year closeout funds).

We are losing our way. We have created many commissions, PLACE, and Neighborhood Town Halls so it looks like there is a lot of input, and there may be on many decisions. But, too many of the big, important decisions are reached without following the process we have created.

When we do use the process, the County Board too often disregards the input.  Of course, it is naïve to believe that the Board should always follow the recommendations, but when at midnight Board members are making changes to staff proposals and voting that same night – that does not inspire sufficient confidence in the Board’s decisions.

Peter Rousselot is a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee.

Peter’s Take: Why McDonnell Failed as Governor

By Peter Rousselot

Peter RousselotHe’s still got one more year in office, but we already know that Bob McDonnell has failed as Virginia’s Governor. He never proposed a real plan to solve the major problem facing Virginia: how to generate enough public revenue to pay for our transportation systems.

We should have known.

We should have known when McDonnell said he could solve our transportation problems with a flawed proposal to sell off Virginia’s publicly-owned liquor stores. He campaigned on this idea in 2009, and spent his first year in office trying to get his flawed plan enacted.  Those were two wasted years.

We should have known when McDonnell said he could solve our transportation problems using Virginia’s Public-Private Transportation Act (PPTA).  In practice, the PPTA has produced tremendous distortions in risk allocation, allowing private sector companies unjustly to enrich themselves while forcing the public sector into wasting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars on ill-conceived projects.

In 2013, Bob McDonnell is giving transportation funding one last try. He won’t succeed. How do we know? Because he’s already proved that he lacks a strategic plan to generate sufficient public revenue for transportation. What’s missing from all his plans: sufficient new tax increases to generate the necessary funds.

The higher taxes we need to fund Virginia’s transportation systems have to be enough higher to solve the problem. McDonnell’s latest plan does involve an increase in the state sales tax, but that increase is way too little to generate the necessary funds. And, McDonnell is also proposing to eliminate the main current source of funding for transportation: the gas tax. Finally, the sales tax is used to fund many other vital programs, like education and mental health services, which also need more revenue, but will lose revenue to help try to pay for transportation.

Excusing past failures by saying a real solution will be DOA in the Virginia legislature is not an excuse.

Governor McDonnell: take a stand, propose a real solution and fight for it. Maybe you’ll get your plan enacted, maybe you won’t. Why not try?

Wouldn’t it be better in the end to propose a real solution and fall short rather than an inadequate solution and fall shorter?

Peter Rousselot is a member of the Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia and former chair of the Arlington County Democratic Committee. Peter’s Take is a weekly opinion column published on Tuesdays. The views and opinions expressed in the column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ARLnow.com.