We are working on an editorial for later this week re: the public hearings before the State Corporation Commission to take testimony on Appalachian Power Co.'s request to raise base rates.
The base rate covers operating costs and allows for the company to make a profit. At debate, should be what constitutes a "fair" profit in today's economic climate, in which the power company will make its at the expense of other businesses and residents.
Virginia schoolchildren can reach high academically and make great grades, do well on their SATs, show leadership and commitment to their schools and communities with extracurricular activities and volunteer work -- and still not get into one of the state's premier public universities. The recession has forced states, including Virginia, to cut deeper into already reduced public support for higher education, and schools that can are making up some of the lost revenue by accepting more out-of-state students, who pay much more to attend. The resulting shattered dreams of some of Virginia's finest young adults make for a tempting target for legislative intervention. Tuesday, we'll write that when lawmakers convene in January, they should resist the urge to ride to the rescue.
We're writing an editorial for Wednesday about national investment in a "smart" power grid. President Obama today announced $3.4 billion will go toward projects around the country that will save money and energy over the long-haul. The work has industry support, too. The private sector will invest billions more.
Virginia Tech is receiving a slice of the recovery act support for smart grids. The school will receive a $1.25 million grant to build a smart Grid Information Clearinghouse Web portal that encourages use of electricity in an environmentally responsible way.
Good news all around.
Dan Radmacher
Radmacher is editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.
The problem with prophets is it's so difficult to tell who the genuine ones are until after the fact. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., for instance, turned out to be a genuine prophet in an article he wrote back in 1994. The problem was that no one realized it until the global financial system teetered on the brink of collapse 14 years later.
In that 1994 article in Washington Monthly, Dorgan warned that the trading of new, complex financial instruments called derivatives could lead to a "real financial conflagration -- one that would make us nostalgic for the days of the $500 billion savings-and-loan collapse."
Tuesday, Old Dominion University's Regional Studies Institute issued its 10th annual State of the Region report for Hampton Roads. We're working on an editorial to run later on one of the issues addressed, the impact of global warming and climate change on the coastal metropolitan area. While the study's authors acknowledge the continuing dispute over the causes of global warming, they leave little room for doubt that it is occurring and causing sea levels to rise, to potentially devastating effect. The report urges a regional reduction in carbon emissions and a statewide increase in fuel taxes, to curb vehicle emissions, and it recommends Hampton Roads start planning "a system of dikes and levees unless we intend to forfeit huge portions of our land to the sea." That's a warning state and national policymakers should heed.
We're writing our Sunday NRV Current editorial today about events at Tuesday night's Christiansburg Town Council meeting. Boxley, a company based in Roanoke, wanted to open a concrete plant in the Chritiansburg Industrial Park. It's a permitted use, but the town manager at his discretion may pull an application for such a plant and ask the council to approve or deny it.
The council, on a 4-1 vote, told the plant to take a hike. Never mind that it is located in an industrial park specifically built to handle truck traffic and close to the highway. Never mind that Boxley is a local company that promised to keep its dust under control as it does at its Roanoke plant.
No, the council said no because it worried that Boxley would compete with the concrete company already in Christiansburg. It did not want a new plant to take business away from the existing one.
In our editorial, we will wonder whatever happened to the free market. It is not council's role to serve as guardian for existing businesses, turning away new jobs because they might affect old ones. Now Christiansburg is stuck with an artificial monopoly.
When Congress approved the federal stimulus package, the Obama administration promised Americans they would be able to monitor how it spent the $787 billion it contained. The new era of transparency never really took off as the recovery.gov Web site was, honestly, pathetic.
On Monday, the administration rebooted the site with a new interface and better access to information. I haven't had time to play with it too deeply, but it certainly appears to be an improvement, though perhaps not as much as I'd hoped. The interactive map, for example, is clunky beyond words. What have they got against embedding data in a google map?
Check it out and see where your children's and grandchildren's taxes are going.
Keith D. Cheatham
Cheatham is the vice president of government affairs for the Virginia Chamber of Commerce in Richmond.
As a spokesman for the Virginia business community, I wanted to respond to your Sept. 18 editorial piece "The price of intransigence," taking certain members of the Virginia General Assembly to task for doing exactly what the business community asked them to do.
Thursday, we'll argue that Virginia lawmakers should resist the urge to call another special session of the General Assembly, this time to reverse the governor's decision to close the Natural Bridge Juvenile Correctional Center. The closing is an unfortunate repercussion of the state's steep revenue shortfall, but the decision was the governor's to make in weighing cuts to a budget already slashed in earlier rounds of reductions that left few, in any, easy choices.
In an effort at transparency, the Obama administration ordered federal agencies to publicly report contacts with lobbyists for any of the $88 billion in stimulus money that will go to projects by way of competitive grants and loans. Yet fewer than 200 contacts have been reported since Congress passed the stimulus package in February. Tuesday, we'll write that lobbying subterfuges used by interest groups to seek funding while flying under the radar of open-government rules will add to Americans' cynicism about government. The administration needs to close loopholes as fast as K Street can find them.
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