Toward a prosperous Virginia

Stop strangling the goose

Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling visited the Virginia Farm Bureau headquarters in West Creek on Monday, September 21, to chat with a handful of local business leaders about the economy. William Quarles, Jr., District 2, was the only member of the county board of supervisors in attendance.

The meeting was part of Bolling’s Jobs for Virginia Tour. He’s traveling around the Commonwealth meeting to explain how he and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell plan get the Virginia economy moving.

“If the people of the Commonwealth elect us, I will become the chief jobs creation officer,” he told. “My job will be to do whatever it takes to get people back to work and get the economy moving again.”

Creating jobs, contended Bolling, is the key to turning the economy around and positioning Virginia to take full advantage of an economic recovery.

He outlined a commonsense array of policies (see billbolling.com for details) on everything from energy to education.

These include immediate pursuit of drilling for fossil fuels, mostly natural gas, off the Virginia Coast. This would create jobs, generate revenues and bring investment to the Commonwealth. Tax credits for creation of green jobs and investment in alternative fuel research are also included as are expansion of nuclear and clean coal energy sources.

Offshore drilling should be a no brainer for Virginia. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel and the technology to create natural gas powered cars exists.

The Republican education policy advocates an increase in the amount of money that goes into classrooms in the form of higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes while decreasing administrative funding. It also includes increasing opportunities for charter schools and vouchers, which, Bolling contended, echoes Obama administration initiatives.

Bolling believes that creation of appropriate educational opportunities for all students will ensure that graduate skill sets match the needs of the workforce.

How refreshing! There are way too many young people today with lots of degrees and few marketable skills while high paying technical jobs go begging. Not all students need to go to college, but every high school graduate should be well prepared to succeed as the next level of life be it college, the military or a job.

Bolling contended that the legislation coming out of Washington resembles a policy to destroy American business.

Goochland’s own Wayne Pryor, President of the Virginia Farm Bureau, which endorsed Bolling, concurred.

Pryor said that the proposed cap and trade legislation is a massive tax that will do little but drastically increase already punitively high fertilizer and fuel prices. Although not reflected at the grocery checkout, Pryor said that commodity prices have declined between 40 and 60 percent in the last year.


Unfunded mandates from clean water and other regulatory legislation hurts farmers. Congress assumes that the cost of implementing those measures would be covered by price increases, said Pryor, but that cannot be supported by prevailing market conditions.

Expanded Chesapeake Bay Act regulations, intended to clean up that body of water, have become an onerous burden on several fronts.

Pryor said that the current glut of milk in the marketplace has already cost Virginia 15 to 20 percent of its dairy farmers. The remainder cannot afford to comply with the Bay Act rules and stay in business.

New storm water runoff controls required by the latest iteration of the Chesapeake Bay regulations, for instance, would make existing retail and business centers that provide jobs and sales tax revenue economically unfeasible to build today, one businessman contended.

Another attendee observed that regulatory creep, the unintended consequence of good intentions, puts a serious damper on economic activity. Regulations expand, he believes, because bureaucrats need to justify their existence.

Bolling contended that the increasingly onerous Bay Act regulations are the result of resume building by Governor Tim Kaine rather than the original intent of the law’s sponsors.

He pledged to examine the entire state regulatory scheme to ensure a proper balance between citizen protection and economic activity. Regulatory reform, he said, is critical to position Virginia for economic growth so it can retain its position as a business friendly state and attract, rather than repel new investment and jobs.

Quarles brought up a subject dear to the heart of many Goochlanders— universally available broadband. Bolling did the usual tap dance stating that there is no money in the state budget for rural broadband, but there might be some federal stimulus money available.

That could be beneficial in the long run. It could well make more sense for the county to provide an atmosphere to entice private sector providers than spend tax dollars to make broadband a public utility.

Bolling’s plan to move the Commonwealth forward is straightforward and doable.

Business is the engine that powers America’s largesse. We’ve got to stop strangling the goose that lays the golden eggs or we’ll all go hungry. We also need to put those eggs in many baskets to lessen the impact of future economic contractions.

Virginians want to get back to work so they can pay their own way and determine their own destiny.