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Gary McCollum

Last month, Virginia lawmakers passed the most important transportation funding bill in nearly three decades. Since then, many of our forward-thinking legislators and Gov. Bob McDonnell have taken a fair amount of heat for the passage of this bill.

As the senior vice president and general manager of Cox Communications Virginia, I understand the powerful economic impact that a robust transportation network can have on the commonwealth – and I understand the negative impact that has come from a lack of proper funding over the past 27 years.

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McCollum is senior vice president and general manager of Cox Communications Virginia.

By Andy Schmookler

During the Cold War, American capitalism was a positive influence, both as an idea and as a political force. The alternative was communism. The relative virtues were obvious.

Compare Eastern Europe, under the sway of the Soviets, with Western Europe — the brightness of democracy contrasted with the grimness of dictatorship, the prosperity of the West contrasted with the deprivations of the East. In that context and in that time, Americans were justified in seeing our capitalist system as the good guy.

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Schmookler is a writer living in Shenandoah County.

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By Robert Victor

Virginia has been in the news a lot lately for trying to address our woeful transportation system. The new transportation bill is encouraging, yet it is only the first step in building a better Virginia.

The 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure notes that for the state of Virginia, driving on roads in need of repair costs Virginia motorists $1.344 billion a year in extra vehicle repairs and operating costs, or $254 per motorist. Likewise, prior to the new transportation bill, our state had the seventh lowest gas tax in the entire country — a tax whose sole purpose is to provide funding for maintenance of our state roadways. Our failure to invest in infrastructure and invest in the very foundation of Virginia’s economy impacts our time, our quality of life and our wallets.

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Victor lives in Fairfax and is chairman of the 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure Advisory Council.

Remember Richard Florida, economic development expert and author of “The Rise of the Creative Class”? He has served as guru to lots of cities that were losing population, first to the suburbs, then the exurbs, leaving an economically depressed urban core.

His theory that urban revival depends on cities attracting a young, well-educated, “creative class” of hipsters gained some currency in Roanoke over the last few years, inspiring a surge of downtown living.

Being hip, though, doesn’t necessarily translate into general prosperity. Joel Kotkin writes in a sobering assessment in The Daily Beast Wednesday, “Florida himself, in his role as an editor at The Atlantic, admitted last month what his critics, including myself, have said for a decade: that the benefits of appealing to the creative class accrue largely to its members — and do little to make anyone else any better off.”

One criticism is that when high-skilled, knowledge-based professionals move in, any wage increases that blue-collar and service workers might see is eaten up by higher housing costs.

Kotkin notes: “Perhaps the best that can be said about the creative-class idea is that it follows a real, if overhyped, phenomenon: the movement of young, largely single, childless and sometimes gay people into urban neighborhoods.” In most places, though,the divide between haves and have-nots just grows wider.

Cities, particularly in the Rust Belt, that depend on enclaves of “the creatives” to remake their economies can forget about it. Kotkin writes, “Investments in ‘cool’ districts may well appeal to some young professionals, particularly before they get married and have children. But overall, as Florida himself now admits, it has done little overall for the urban middle class, much less the working class or the poor.”

The cities that he and others look to are much bigger than Roanoke, of course. I’m not sure how much a parallel can be drawn between what’s happening in my hometown of St. Louis, say, and here. But some of the observations ring true.

I can’t quite believe, though, that a valley where a giant neon star has iconic status will ever be too hip to be real.

A heritage designation for the Virginia home of traditional mountain music had no land-use strings attached.

The same day Virginia’s Crooked Road abandoned its efforts to win a National Heritage Area designation as the birthplace of American bluegrass, the U.S. Census Bureau released 2012 estimates showing one-third of the nation’s counties are dying.

A story and map illustrating the trend appeared on Page 6 of The Roanoke Times on Friday; not surprisingly, colored squares designating dying counties across the country cut a bright trail through Appalachia, including the mountains of Virginia’s far Southwest.

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Chuck Rogol

The surpluses created by the Clinton administration helped to justify the Bush tax cuts passed by Congress in 2001. However, the Bush tax cuts were to be in force for 10 years, even during deficit years. Well-managed corporations and households would never plan with such conviction.

At that time, I thought it would be sensible to make the 10-year life of the tax cuts contingent on the continuing health of the economy.

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Rogol, of Blacksburg, is a retired business owner.

By Christina Nuckols

With the nation’s largest known undeveloped uranium deposit 100 miles from campus, it’s hard to blame Virginia Tech professors interested in energy research for beating a path to Pittsylvania County, home to an estimated 119 million pounds of the radioactive ore.

But Tech officials have opened themselves up to criticism by failing to fully explain the university’s complex relationship, particularly its financial connections, with Virginia Uranium Inc., the company seeking permission to mine the site.

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Nuckols is editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.

Goodlatte should use his committee chairmanship to help push through legislation allowing states to collect taxes due on out-of-state sales.

As new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte will be at the center of debate on some of the biggest, most contentious issues likely to come before Congress this year — immigration reform and gun control, to name two.

Before he goes there, Goodlatte should resolve a far more mundane issue: e-tail sales tax equity.

Allow states to require that online businesses collect whatever sales taxes are due them, just as brick-and-mortar businesses must. As the law stands, Internet retailers don’t have to unless they have a physical presence in a state.

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