( – promoted by lowkell)
3 October 2010
To: Concerned Virginians
From: Paul Goldman
Re: The Goldman DEM ABC privatization plan vs the McDonnell GOP ABC privatization plan
* It can generate upwards of $2 billion in new transportation funding, 400% more than Governor McDonnell’s proposal, WITHOUT RAISING TAXES.
* In the future, it can fund another $4 billion in transportation improvements. Under the McDonnell plan, after his proposed $500 million, there is no future transportation money.
*It protects the value of important state assets developed with taxpayer money over 76 years. The McDonnell sells these assets way under fair market value and we lose them forever.
*It eliminates the anti-rural, anti-small business bias in the McDonnell plan.
*It doesn’t require huge up front licenses fees, so average Virginians can have a fair opportunity to compete: under the McDonnell plan, these huge fees benefit a handful of big, powerful interests, indeed will eventually create an oligopoly at the
wholesale level.
*It eliminates the potential for political influence in the license awarding process with needed reforms: the McDonnell proposal does not.
*It allows the state to make key adjustments at the retail and wholesale levels if certain assumptions don’t pan out with experience: under the McDonnell plan, once those big up-front fees are paid, the state is very likely out of luck,
*It generates at least $82 million more than the McDonnell proposal, using the Governor’s own figures, WITHOUT RAISING TAXES
Governor McDonnell’s decision to abandon a campaign pledge has allowed me to develop a ABC privatization plan to help Democrats do what Governors Warner and Kaine tried but couldn’t do: provide a source of stable, reliable source of new funding for upwards of $2 billion in transportation improvements. Ironically, it was comments by three McDonnell plan supporters, his top ABC guy Eric Finkbeiner, and my friends Doug Wilder and George Allen, who popped the light bulb in my head on a new way to look at all the stuff being put out by the pro-McDonnell ABC supporters and his Malek Commission.
In that regard, some of my plan is based on what the Malek Commission is anticipated to be recommending when it meets tomorrow based on a statement by former Governor Wilder. There is a reasonable chance it’s recommendations will actually allow me to revive the transportation funding figure upwards, but we will have to wait and see.
Bottom line: Tomorrow, I will make available a long memo laying out the details, chapter and verse, it is close to 3000 words, 4 times the length of a newspaper OPED piece so let me apologize in advance.
In many circles, it will be controversial since this plan is not written to meet any Litmus Test except what was promised the voters by Mr. McDonnell in the campaign: thus, it is a revenue neutral approach to ABC privatization, rejecting the deficit approach which my friends Doug and George have apparently convinced the Governor to adopt.
With all due respect, as the Lynchburg paper said today, a deficit plan is not fiscally responsible at this juncture especially since, as I have shown, a revenue- neutral ABC privatization plan is possible WITHOUT RAISING TAXES and it can produce these results if reformers will look at the big picture.
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