The editorial is titled Drinking Games, because of McDonnell's proposal to sell Virginia's 334 state-operated liquor stores for what he claims will be a one-time windfall of half a billion dollars. The editorial's subtitle reads Robert F. McDonnell's transportation plan rests heavily on privatizing hard-liquor sales in Virginia. Is it sober?.
I was among those arguing that Deeds needed to address honestly how his plan would be paid for. He did in this op ed on Wednesday, about which I wrote here Tuesday Night. On Thursday the Post editorially praised the oped. It now seems evident the paper will strongly support Deeds.
After an intro paragraph that ends with the observation that the plan yields only disappointment, the Post absolutely eviscerates McDonnell and his plan:
Much of the plan relies on wildly optimistic assumptions, brazen exaggerations, gauzy projections and far-off scenarios: budget surpluses and revenue growth that may not materialize; interstate tolls that the federal government may not approve; royalties from offshore oil and gas wells that may not be drilled; borrowing that the state may not be able to afford anytime soon. Lump all that in a file called "Don't Hold Your Breath." Insert some of his other proposals -- such as diverting some sales tax revenue from schools, public safety and human services statewide to pay for Northern Virginia road improvements -- into a file called "Politically Dead on Arrival." Quite simply, much of what Mr. McDonnell has in mind would almost certainly not come to pass during his four-year term as governor, if ever.
The editorial goes point by point in dismantling what McDonnell has proposed. But first the editors do acknowledge that there is validity to getting the Commonwealth out of the liquor business. And they point at the alluring half billion, but then note:
The problem is, Mr. McDonnell's revenue estimates are invented or, worse, an intentional distortion.
an intentional distortion - gee, that almost sounds like Joe Wilson (whom incidentally the Republican Speaker of the House of Delegates is inviting to help in the Republican cause) - yelling "You Lie!" After all, saying the estimates are invented is not much better: the paper gives the reader a choice of choosing how to interpret the presentation of figures that have no reality.
The editorial notes a Wilder Commission proposal that included selling the state liquor stores, among it 16 proposals. The $500 million figure was the total savings to the Commonwealth in streamlining.
As the editorial notes, many of the state-operated stores are in rural areas with few customers. The most recent examples of states selling off similar operations did not come anywhere near half a million, and one of those states, Ohio, is substantial larger than is Virginia.
More importantly, as I and others have noted, the liquor stores provide money to the Commonwealth's general funds, $103 million in profits last year, on top of the taxes on alcohol. The editorial notes:
Much of those funds support programs in mental health, substance abuse and other human services. So, in effect, Mr. McDonnell is proposing to cut $103 million from those human service programs and divert it to transportation -- a political non-starter.
And he would need to find an additional $40 million to pay for oversight of the liquor industry, something now covered by pre-profit money from the liquor revenue.
The final paragraph begins by saying that McDonnell's plan, which is some 20 pages, has some "heft." That sentence, however, is completed with the final coup de grace of the editorial: after following the word "heft" with a semi-colon, the editors say of the plan
in fact, it crumbles under close scrutiny. Far from fixing the state's roads, Mr. McDonnell would leave them in the lurch -- and Virginia commuters along with them.
Transportation is the single most important issue in the Commonwealth. It is of critical importance in NoVA, and, as I noted when I wrote about the Post editorial in response to Deeds,
And it is not just NoVa. To get from Richmond to Hampton Roads, one travels via I-64. I have done this many times, usually on the way to Williamsburg, a relatively small location on the path to the Hampton Roads area, with Newport News, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Chesapeake, Portsmouth and more. For most of its way it is only 2-lanes in each direction. If you know the DC area, imagine if the Beltway were only 2 lanes on each loop, how restrictive that would be to the area, how bad the gridlock would be - which is pretty bad with 3-4-5 and 6 lanes at various points.
I suspect this editorial will give Deeds a real boost in NoVa. I will not at all be surprised to see its analysis picked up by other papers around the state.
McDonnell suffered some damage from his thesis. He is still somewhat on the defensive from that.
Meantime, he has continued to run advertisements in NoVa which seem to imply Post support of his transportation plan. Somehow I don't think those ads are going to fly.
The buzz in Virginia the past day has been about the Wilder non-endorsement and the way it worded - even though there is polling that seems to indicate that a Wilder endorsement can cost more than it delivers. Whatever the impact of that non-endorsement, it is dwarfed by the impact of this editorial.
In the eyes of the Post editorial board, the op ed by Deeds was critical in their drafting this evisceration - and Leaves on the Current suggested that word was appropriate - this evisceration of McDonnell's transportation plan. In the process, they may also have cutted his candidacy. We will see in the next few weeks.
Peace.