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byline: Bernie Niemeier

One-term governors and the coming IT meltdown

The headcount of the political class in Virginia is fairly small.  Start with 100 delegates and 40 senators, add one governor, a lieutenant governor and an attorney general, sprinkle in the leaders of a few dozen large corporations, a handful of powerful law firms, a few dozen more political lobbyists and career bureaucrats, and that’s basically it — maybe a couple hundred folks basically calling all the shots.

Of course, there also are voters, but many in this genteel class don’t run for office and those that do face little opposition.

Among the elected officials, only the governor is constitutionally prohibited from a second successive term in office.  Virginia is the last of the 50 states to deny gubernatorial succession.

A strange storm has been brewing, one that spans at least four governorships.  It has to do with the outsourcing of the commonwealth’s apparatus for information technology.  Left unchecked, this storm will be a major headache for Virginia’s next governor.

Elected in 2001, then-Gov. Mark Warner was faced with an aging and decentralized state technology infrastructure that was badly in need of replacement and modernization.  Because of his experience in business as a Northern Virginia technocrat, this project was well within Warner’s wheelhouse to understand and accomplish change.

During Warner’s last year as governor, the commonwealth selected Northrop Grumman Corp. for a 10-year contract valued at approximately $2 billion to transform, update and consolidate the state’s information technology infrastructure across 91 state agencies.

Hailed at the time as an innovative and groundbreaking model for other states to follow, this agreement outsourced nearly all of Virginia’s IT functions to a private contractor.

From a political standpoint, the deal came with big plusses — two new data centers, one near Richmond in conservative-leaning Chesterfield County and one in Southwest Virginia. Around the same time, CGI, a Canada-based technology company, decided to open another data center in Russell County.

Together, the centers supplied hundreds of new jobs, while helping both regions establish themselves as technology hubs.

With Warner’s four years as governor at its end, most of the implementation of the project took place under the administration of Gov. Tim Kaine.  State IT workers were offered the option of staying employed by the commonwealth or signing on with Northrop Grumman. That is not exactly the way that the private sector would carry out a re-engineering project, but along with new jobs in Southwest Virginia, it certainly was a politically popular approach.

By 2009, toward the end of  Kaine’s four-year term, problems began to surface.  Disputes occurred over deadlines, payments, cost overruns and service levels.

Up next, in 2010, Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration signed contract modifications designed to improve service while extending the Northrop Grumman contract for three additional years, keeping an annual payment cap of $236 million.

Fast forward to the current administration.  The Northrop Grumman contract, now swollen to almost $3 billion, is set to expire in mid-2019, 18 months after Gov. Terry McAuliffe leaves office.  After years of difficulty, Virginia now plans to move from a single-source to a multivendor solution with shorter contracts involving several companies.

Citing increased cyber security risks to the state and higher costs, Northrop Grumman has declined to participate in the new approach.  Winding down the agreement has led to disputes on a number of transition issues, such as unexpected increases in billing and the amount of information required to be shared during the new procurement process.

A mediated settlement between Northrop Grumman and the state failed to gain McAuliffe’s approval.  Now both parties are lawyered-up, with each accusing the other of breach of contract.  Northrop Grumman filed suit against the state in late May, seeking damages of more than $10.2 million. By all accounts this is headed to an ugly end.

Next November, the commonwealth will elect another governor, bringing to five the number of administrations seeking solutions to Virginia’s IT mess.

Information systems are mission critical to every business; they are also critical to the efficient functioning of state government.  Business leaders know that progress takes time and that big changes are inevitably accompanied by decisions that will be unpopular.  Political solutions to business problems are rarely successful.

Virginia’s one-term governors don’t have enough time to get much done.  Instead of passing the buck, it’s time to give them a chance at a second term and the time required to succeed.

Part II – It’s an even longer road back

I spent time last month in deep Southwestern Virginia.  About a year ago as you may recall, I wrote about the long road to Wise.  This year was no different, a roundtrip of 744 miles.  Many Virginians never realize just how far they can travel without leaving our state.

In the Southwest, there is always talk of what’s happened to coal and mining jobs, both there and elsewhere.  But looking at current events, our politicians have become the new miners — not for coal, but for votes.  After all, who wouldn’t trade a vote for a job?

Promises of work in coal country were plentiful during the election season.  But they since have been followed by announcements from Dominion Energy and Appalachian Electric Power that, regardless of whether the Clean Power Plan is scuttled, both companies will be lessening their dependence on coal.  It’s what their shareholders want, cleaner sources of fuel.  Utility companies must make decisions that will last for decades to come, and coal remains in the rearview mirror.

Natural gas has become more plentiful and is also a lot cheaper than coal.  Even the Chinese, notorious carbon emission abusers, announced they’d like to begin importing more liquid natural gas to lessen their country’s dependence on coal.

It looks like politicians are becoming the only winners.  A new generation of locals has heard more promises of coal coming back than they’ve seen of the coal itself.  It’s gone; the jobs are gone; and they aren’t coming back, at least not those jobs.

There’s a hard truth in rural areas; it’s just as hard as the region is beautiful.  Many people don’t want to live here; it’s isolated, it can even be lonely, as lonely as it is friendly.  More people are in the cities, and there will always be more people in the cities.  By 2050, urban residents are expected to represent two-thirds of the population.

For decades, rural areas have always come up short in the struggle for workforce. The quality of life may be great in terms of scenery and the outdoors, but other amenities are in short supply.

The labor force participation rate in Southwest Virginia is about 50 percent. That means half of the population has aged out, gone on disability or simply given up looking.

Painkillers are plentiful, but they are just that — killers.  Opioids are treated as a social welfare problem, but they are shipped and prescribed in mass quantities because that’s one of the dysfunctional ways that health care fails in America today.

Reading the local news in the Coalfield Progress, I found an article about the national budget.  Despite election year promises of help for the coalfields, the president’s initial budget proposed deep cuts to agencies and programs that have long supported the people and local governments in Southwest Virginia.  Home weatherization and energy assistance, community development block grants, rural water and waste management programs were all on the chopping block.

Elimination of entire agencies, such as the Economic Development Administration and the Appalachian Regional Commission, and the closing of Job Corps centers were also in the president’s proposed budget.  These agencies have been providing assistance to rural areas for decades.

Only a last-minute compromise and a continuing spending resolution kept these proposed federal cuts from taking place until the end of September.  Afterward, who knows?

The reason I traveled to Wise was to attend the SWVA Economic Summit.  Listening to local delegates, there was some pride in having partially staved off big state budget cuts to local education based on declines in the student population.  Education is, after all, where economic development begins.

There was also some legitimate hope for GO Virginia and the recent reorganization at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.  However, aside from these recent reshufflings of deck chairs, what else does Virginia have to show for its commitment to rural areas?
Think back.  In 2007 Volkswagen Group of America chose Northern Virginia for its headquarters location.  Ten months later the company chose Chattanooga, Tenn., for a new assembly plant.  The plant created thousands of jobs that ostensibly could have gone to rural Virginia.

Despite the too-easy answer that Virginia is now ready for such an opportunity, how much has really changed over the last decade?  Do we have the infrastructure that Chattanooga had ready and waiting?  Do we have the competitive incentives needed to win? Volkswagen officials chose Chattanooga from three sites; the others were in Alabama and Michigan.  Apparently, Virginia didn’t make that list.

How much has really changed?

While anything is possible, only one thing is certain, it’s a long way back from Wise.

Compactness is in the eye of the beholder

“Fairly debatable” was the key phrase in Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant’s recent ruling in favor of the defendants in a redistricting lawsuit.  So it goes in the ongoing saga of court fights over Virginia’s voting districts.

“Compactness,” a mandatory criteria set by the Virginia Constitution, is apparently in the eye of the beholder when it comes to the shape of Virginia’s legislative districts, or so the testimony went before Marchant’s court in March.

A lawsuit — funded by One­­­­­­­­­Virginia2021, a group seeking redistricting reform — sought to overturn the boundaries of five House of Delegates and six state Senate districts set by the General Assembly in 2011. The suit asserts that the districts’ compactness was compromised by discretionary criteria considered by legislators in redrawing the lines.

In addition to being compact, the Virginia Constitution mandates that districts be close to equal in population and be composed of geographically contiguous parcels of land.

The redrawn maps also must comply with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. That law says districts cannot be drawn in a manner that dilutes minority voting power.

When it comes to non-mandatory redistricting criteria, factors that tend to maintain the status quo come into play. These include avoiding: shifts in the core population composition of each district, grouping two incumbents in the same district and splitting municipalities into more than one district.

As a group, these non-mandatory criteria often are considered helpful in maintaining a “community of interests” within districts.  On the whole, it seems that the idea of a community of interests is a functional surrogate for keeping incumbents in office.  In other words, a community of interests primarily means keeping the status quo intact.

All of this works pretty well for members of the General Assembly.  It is rare that more than half of Virginia’s 100 House seats face contested races. 

One of the arguments used to justify our current legislative districts is that they were passed with bipartisan support.  Perhaps minority party members feel it’s best to compromise and stay in office.

Gerrymandering is a tool that has been used by both parties.  When the Democrats controlled the House of Delegates and the Senate, they did their best to tilt district maps in favor of keeping control.  Now Republicans are doing the same.

When redrawn district maps were first presented to Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2011, he vetoed the Senate map on the basis that it was not as compact as required by law and favored Democrats who then held a slim majority in the Senate.  A slightly revised version of the map later was approved.

Legal challenges to redistricting are not uncommon.  When lawsuits challenging congressional districts are included along with those involving state legislative districts, nearly a dozen court cases have been filed contesting the 2011 reapportionment.  Some of these cases have gone to trial, and some have not.  In some cases, appeals are still pending.

Notably, a federal court case, Bethune-Hill v. Virginia State Board of Elections, is pending.  The plaintiffs in this case assert that too many minority voters were packed into a single legislative district to maintain the incumbents’ strength in surrounding districts.

Bethune-Hill made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The opinion, handed down in March, was more or less an exercise in judicial pingpong.  The case was affirmed in part, vacated in part and remanded to the lower court for further consideration.  And so it goes, in the ongoing saga of redistricting.

Partisan redistricting is a long-established practice. Democrats and Republicans alike have used it to solidify their control of our political process.  It’s time for this to come to an end.  Virginia needs a nonpartisan process.  The requirements of the state constitution should come first, rather than being subordinated to the interests of incumbents of either party.

Unfortunately self-interest by legislators predominates over the interest of the commonwealth. Voters understand this problem.  Unfortunately, the General Assembly is happy for it to remain “fairly debatable.”

Welcome to The Big Book – facts matter!

Suddenly it seems facts have become important; that’s a good thing.

This fifth annual issue of The Big Book is a compendium of facts about the commonwealth — who’s who, who’s influential and who’s, well — BIG — when it comes to business, economic development and the economy of Virginia.

At a time when increasing attention is being paid to the facts of economic development, this month’s main story package covers ongoing changes at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP).  It includes an interview with new CEO Stephen Moret, conducted by our Managing Editor Paula Squires, just days after he took the helm at VEDP.

A large cast of characters — the business community, the governor’s office, the General Assembly, even the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) — have played a role in the VEDP story.  Virginia Business has been covering this in print and online since last fall.

In addition to the big-picture statewide story, The Big Book features expanded regional economic development coverage, including each area’s major deals of the past year.  If you haven’t already noticed, we’ve increased our regional pages to cover a total of seven regions after concluding that the Roanoke/Blacksburg area deserves a section of its own. It previously was covered as a part of the Southwest Virginia region.

Facts are really at the core of what this month’s issue is all about.  Included are nearly 50 lists ranking everything from Virginia’s largest companies by industry sector, to its top 10 craft brewers and its biggest defense contracts.

Also included is our ever-popular list of Most Influential Virginians. These lists are an invaluable resource for anyone new to the commonwealth, as well as a great source of insight for anyone involved in sales, marketing or business development.

In addition to the Most Influential Virginians, you’ll find Power Couples and people On the Move.  These lists have some new faces, especially On the Move — keep watching! Stay tuned for more success.

Relatively new to The Big Book is a list of companies celebrating significant anniversaries (20 years or more since their founding).  We started compiling this list last year when Virginia Business celebrated its 30th anniversary.

We’ve profiled three organizations that are hitting significant milestones. Hampton’s NASA Langley Research Center is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Langley is the place where America’s manned spaceflight program began and is currently the subject of the movie “Hidden Figures.”

In Edinburg, Shenandoah Telecommunications started 115 years ago as a local telephone operator. Now it has become the nation’s sixth-largest provider of wireless services. And the Richmond-based firm Sands Anderson is celebrating its 175th year of practicing law in Virginia.

Another new list this year is Major Construction Projects.  Construction is back on the upswing.  Yes, indeed — facts are good things!

Another story takes readers to Regent University, this month’s higher education profile.  Based in Virginia Beach, Regent has shown strong growth and is piling up impressive national accolades for its undergraduate, graduate and more recently its online degree programs.

Founded nearly 40 years ago as CBN University, Regent offers a traditional curriculum, plus programs in education, business, law and most recently, cybersecurity. The university is ranked 15th nationally for the education of military veterans.

While it’s hard to say that there has ever been a time when facts didn’t matter, perhaps now we are gaining a new appreciation for their importance.  At Virginia Business our core values are leadership, integrity, balance, respect and success.  When it comes to facts, we stand behind what we report.  Our hope is that you will find value in this issue of The Big Book.  There is nothing we enjoy more than being a part of your success.

Virginia has a different set of problems than Dee Cee

Hello again.  It’s taken a couple of months after America’s long summer, fall and winter of political discontent for me to come back to filling this space.  Speechless is a pretty good description — speechless at best.

After all, those who delighted as public discourse shifted back in time to calling a spade a spade are perhaps now realizing that such regression may be truly unsettling, at least for the civilized world.

Now is the time to let such chips fall from our collective shoulders and see what happens when they fall where they may.  Ouch!

As much as we’ve heard about government dysfunction in Dee Cee (Drain the swamp!), will effectiveness be restored?  With Republicans controlling the White House and both houses of Congress for the first time in a decade, are we at the cusp of a new era of reform?

No list could be long enough, but here are just a few of the items on our politicos’ promised to-do list: repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act; renegotiate NAFTA and other trade agreements; rejigger NATO, the United Nations and other foreign alliances; return coal jobs; rebuild infrastructure; fix immigration; conquer terrorism; reduce individual and corporate taxes; bring jobs back to America; reduce federal spending; increase defense spending; fix Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements — this list could go on and on.

Taken individually, each of these concerns is potentially worthy of a voter’s trust. Taken collectively, they are more than overwhelming — a big set of promises too good to be delivered.

In just a few words, the politicos in Dee Cee have their hands full.

What about Virginia?  The General Assembly is in the midst of its short session, just 45 days to deal with yet another massive state budget shortfall and then doing little else before adjourning to go into full campaign mode.

In just nine months, the commonwealth will not only select a new governor, but also vote on all 100 seats in the House of Delegates.

When the Virginia legislature is in session, elected officials are barred from fundraising, so don’t expect too much from this short session.  They’ve got to get back to their real work — raising money for re-election — so much for the good of the commonwealth.

Much like Dee Cee, Virginia’s politics of late are overwhelmingly driven by internecine bickering.  With Democrats in all three top statewide offices, a closely divided Senate and an overwhelming Republican majority in the House of Delegates, little gets done. It’s all partisan posturing in a tug of war for political gain.

Let’s think ahead a little bit.

With the Republicans likely poised to nominate a seasoned and credible candidate for governor — say Ed Gillespie, who came close to toppling Mark Warner in Virginia’s last U.S. Senate race — could the commonwealth also be on the cusp of a Republican trifecta, with the party holding the Executive Mansion as well as the Senate and House
of Delegates?

Would that do anything to change the partisan obstructionism, escalated by legislative gerrymandering, which has become the defining characteristic of our two-party system?

If so, what’s on the commonwealth’s not so short list of things that the legislature needs to do?  How about:

Stop playing political football with economic development.  Sorry, GO Virginia, but this isn’t an entirely regional game.  Virginia needs statewide marketing. Fix the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and finish the establishment of the Virginia International Trade Corp., while also providing competitive economic development incentive grant funding.  These are the commonwealth’s growth drivers, so give them budget priority.

Reverse declining higher education funding.  Don’t blame tuition hikes on the colleges and universities when they have borne the weight of continual state budget shortfalls.

Let’s have some real accomplishments in workforce and early childhood development.  Make them real priorities and not just sound bites.

Working to improve the entire educational spectrum isn’t just something nice to have.  It is a must-do to make Virginia competitive.

Attention to health care needs to be more than just, “Is your party for it or against it?”  Virginia has some of the nation’s lowest Medicaid reimbursement rates.  Hospitals in rural areas are having a hard time staying in business.  Dental care in Southwest Virginia is being delivered through a process akin to Doctors Without Borders.  Kudos to the volunteers providing this service, but it’s embarrassing to our system.

On transportation, remember that passing one funding bill in 1986 and a second one in 2013, does not come close to fully funding our growing infrastructure needs.

Oh, and then there is the tough stuff, help our cities by lifting the decades-old annexation moratorium, swallow the hard pill of nonpartisan redistricting, and give our governors a chance at making accomplishments by letting them run for a second term.

These are more than just opportunities for the 2017 short session; they should be electoral platform priorities for next November and delivered as quickly as possible.

The challenges faced by our commonwealth and our nation could not be more different.  Applying outdated partisan thinking to either one of them has failed.  It’s time for a better way and for better results.

Opposing stances on legal standing

As reading goes, it isn’t exactly an Ernest Hemingway novel.  Nevertheless, the Supreme Court of Virginia’s majority opinion and its dissents in the recent case of  Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell and Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment versus Gov. Terry McAuliffe is quite a page-turner.  Running 63 pages with detailed footnotes, it’s a well-documented historical drama of sorts — at least for political wonks.

For those who may not follow such news closely, this is the case challenging McAuliffe’s executive order restoring the voting rights of about  206,000 Virginians who had been convicted of felonies but had completed their terms of incarceration, probation and parole.

While the particulars vary widely, Virginia is among only six states that do not automatically restore voting rights to at least some felons, the others being Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Mississippi.

After McAuliffe’s order, Howell and Norment petitioned the court to overturn the action as being in violation of the Virginia Constitution. They also asked the court to prohibit the governor from issuing future executive orders restoring political rights to felons as a group rather than on an individual basis.

The court’s widely reported ruling was a split decision, 4-3, in favor of the legislators.

In general, access to the court system requires that the petitioners demonstrate they have standing in a case.  For business interests, this is where things get interesting.  Standing essentially means a person has a legal interest in the case because he or she has been harmed by someone else’s actions.

Among Virginia’s many virtues as a business-friendly state is the fact that its courts typically take a pretty strict view of standing. They do not allow frivolous lawsuits by plaintiffs who simply disagree with a law or the actions of another party.  This helps Virginia businesses avoid unnecessary legal costs.

Howell and Norment petitioned the court saying that, as qualified Virginia voters, their votes would be diluted by the addition of 206,000 people to the rolls of those legally qualified to cast ballots. Norment further contended that his plans to seek re-election to the Virginia Senate in 2019 would be harmed by an “invalidly constituted electorate.”

The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Donald W. Lemons, is a sweeping tale of history, particularly the origins of constitutional law.  Despite writing that, “Virginia law, not federal law governs every aspect of our decision,” the chief justice cites numerous legal precedents reaching back as far as Britain’s Glorious Revolution in 1688 and its Bill of Rights in 1689.  Most of the oldest precedents focus upon historic distrust of executive power.

The chief justice also notes that none of Virginia’s previous 71 governors attempted to restore political or other rights to an “entire class of unnamed felons.” Instead, they addressed the issue on an individual basis.

On a textual basis, the Virginia Constitution is pretty clear.  Article II, Section 1 states, “No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote unless his civil rights have been restored by the Governor or other appropriate authority.”

Article V, Section 12 of the Constitution states that the governor shall have the power to grant pardons and remove political disabilities, going on to say, “He shall communicate to the General Assembly, at each regular session, particulars of every case of fine or penalty remitted, of reprieve or pardon granted, and of punishment commuted, with his reasons for remitting, granting, or commuting the same.”  The latter part is notably silent on reporting on the removal of “political disabilities.”

The dissenting opinions in the case were only slightly less lengthy than the majority opinion.

The first dissent, by Justice William C. Mims, largely focuses on the issue of standing.  Mims disagrees that Howell and Norment have shown a “particularized injury” that was separate and distinct from the public at large.

Mims further writes that, “Among other reasons we require litigants to demonstrate a ‘particularized injury’ to a recognized personal or property right [is] to prevent this Court from becoming embroiled in political disputes.”  Thus, Mims’ opinion not only avoids the political issue, it protects the erosion of the concept of legal standing that is important to business.

The second dissent, written by Justice Cleo E. Powell and joined by Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn, also disagrees with the majority opinion on standing, as well as the constitutionality of the executive order.  It includes this very telling historical anecdote not mentioned in the majority opinion:

“A more complete consideration of that history indicated that, despite Virginia’s historical distrust of executive power, its citizens purposefully granted the Governor textually unrestricted constitutional authority to remove political disabilities consequent upon conviction, perhaps in consideration of the potential disenfranchisement and exclusion from government of former Confederates.”

It is with some degree of irony that Virginia is perhaps once again finding itself on the wrong side of history.

Work and play, is there a difference?

We are all familiar with the phrase, “Work hard — play hard!” Often it’s a rallying cry for another round of cocktails with your team in the lobby bar or soaking up late-night drinks in a hospitality suite while “networking.”  The laughs may be big, though not terribly productive; hopefully fewer problems were created than solved.  There’s nothing wrong with esprit de corps, but that’s not what I’m thinking of right now.

What I am thinking of is the relationship between our success at work and what we learned about life, playing and competing in childhood.  Did these experiences make you better later in life and is competitiveness really the same thing as success?

I grew up in the Neolithic pre-electronics era, so my earliest memories of play have to do with climbing trees and trying to roller skate. My earliest experience with competition involved racing homemade toy boats on Richmond’s Reedy Creek. Some boats had sails and others were powered by  rubber-band engines.  I always felt accomplished as a tree climber but was less successful with roller skates.  My toy boats did pretty well.  Overall, these are pleasant memories.

My first experience with organized sports came with Pee Wee football.  The league had a 100-pound weight limit.  In seventh grade, I topped the scales on weigh-in day at 98 pounds. That was a good weight for being an offensive lineman or a linebacker but, at that age, was maybe too much for a ball-handling position. That was something I always wanted to do — be one of the cool kids, scoring points for the team.  Nuts!

Our football team made it all the way to the city championships, played at Richmond’s City Stadium.  We were the Westover Devils, a Parks and Rec team from the city’s South Side, ironically pitted against the St. Christopher’s Saints, a private school team from across the James River.  While there may not be a lesson — theological, social, economic or otherwise — in the Saints winning 7-0, I’ll always remember that score.

In high school, things were a bit different.  Gym class was pretty competitive.   A boy named Harold wasn’t the tallest guy in the class, but he was certainly the fastest.  I remember watching Harold run the quarter-mile on the track and wishing I could be that fast.

Another day while playing baseball, a classmate jumped in front of me in the batting line. He threatened me with the bat when I tried to assert that it really was my turn — so much for fairness!

We all probably learned some life lessons in early play and participation in sports, some helpful, others perhaps less so.

Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, has researched the impact of play on cognitive development.  Brown’s work shows that, much like sleep and dreams, play is an essential activity.  Time spent at play helps with the development of important skills for humans and animals.  This is true for both children and adults.

Brown asserts that thinking back to early experiences with play — or the lack thereof — can provide insights into adult behavior.

When it comes to competing in sports, some people are highly motivated by the joy of winning; others are motivated by a fear of losing.  In the workplace, these different experience-based play styles suggest that varying management styles can be helpful.

It’s doubtful that competitiveness is the same as success.  This is especially true with regard to individual rather than team-based competitiveness.  No doubt many of us can recall scenarios where personal ambition was destructive to company results.

To a large degree, collaboration has gained standing versus competition in today’s business culture. Yes, teams must still be competitive, but individuals are more often collaborative in achieving success.

Leaders of companies consistently recognized as best places to work (see last February’s Virginia Business) often lament that too much emphasis is put on office perks.  Creating a great place to work is a lot more difficult than just putting a pingpong table and yoga mats in the break room.  Yes, employees need fun, but they also need to have fun together.

The Gallup organization has led a multi-year study of workplace culture.  Interestingly, one of its key questions concerns agreement with this statement: “I have a best friend at work.”  Companies with employees scoring high on this statement have higher employee retention, productivity, customer satisfaction and profitability.  Importantly, it’s not just any friend at work — it’s a best friend.

When you think back to your earliest memories of play, more than likely they involved a best friend, maybe a neighbor, a sibling or a parent.  What was learned in those early experiences may have had a profound impact on how you are working today.

So here we are mid-summer.  I hope you are getting in some time for play.   It is easy to be impatient for success, but it is never too late to learn.  Go have some fun!

Who’s the real Trojan horse?

Imagine a most imaginary conversation that could have taken place shortly before the unpleasantness of the 2016 presidential campaign began:
“Bill, this is The Donald returning your call.  Hope you’re doing super.”

“Well, gosh, um, that’s just it. I need your help.  You’re such a great supporter, and you know, this next presidential race — it’s really Hill’s time.  And me, I just can’t wait to be back in the Lincoln bedroom.”

“Yes, that’s gonna be great, that’s gonna be fantastic, terrific!  How much?  You and I both know it takes somebody else’s money.”

“Well, this time it’s more than money and a few appearances.  Here’s the problem; it’s this Bush thing, this whole Bush-Clinton dynasty thing.  Our family legacy is on the line.  If it comes down to a choice between stupid and crooked, we’re just not sure who America will pick to win.”

“Yeah Bill, I get that. People are so unpredictable.  You’ve got a legacy; it’s huge; it’s huge, terrific!  You know I love winning.”

“Right Big D, and that’s just it — gosh, you’re so big, sooo popular; people just love you!  The whole ‘Apprentice’ thing, just masterful!  And Obama, that whole birther thing, ridiculous, brilliant!  You’ve really got it all dialed in.

“Here’s the catch: we need more of this.  We need you to go under deep cover and run for president as a Republican.  You’re great under the covers, right? It will totally annihilate their party. We both love winning.  It will be fabulous, fabulous for your ratings.  We’ll both win! Super!

“How about it, Donald?  You can’t say no.  Remember, the Lincoln Bedroom?  It’s yours or mine; it’s ours either way!  Win-win!  You’ll be big, really big!  Too good to be true, you can’t say no!”

“Bill, gotcha, super, super idea, let me think, you know me, that doesn’t take long.  Just between the two of us, right?  Let’s get together soon on one of my many, many courses, we’ll have to put the kibosh on golfing together for a while after this goes live.  This is gonna be wonderful, wonderful…”

Okay, so much for the hypothetical.  Maybe this isn’t exactly how these campaigns started, but fast-forwarding to the spring of 2016, the primaries have unfolded with the same result.

Following his loss to Ted Cruz in the Wisconsin primary, Donald Trump called Cruz a “Trojan horse for GOP bosses.”  But, who’s the real Trojan horse? The Trump candidacy has splintered the Republican Party, repeatedly foreshadowing an independent run in the general election, which would eliminate the possibility of a Republican majority.

Less attention has been focused on divisions among Democrats.  Who knows what kind of negotiations between Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren resulted in Warren rejecting the idea of a run this year.

Still, almost inevitably, Bernie Sanders has risen as a standard bearer for disaffected Democrats — coming across as the kind of crazy grandfather that every kid finds hilarious — and also irresistible.  Sanders may not be a Trojan horse, but he’s certainly gotten the camel’s nose into the tent.

The elite Republicans and Democrats alike have proven themselves Washington-centric. They’ve completely lost touch with their respective voter bases, which are shrinking demographically and shrinking away from both parties’ worn-out electoral platforms.

For example, it’s well documented that church attendance has been shrinking for decades, yet evangelicals still cling to the idea of a majority, even a white majority.

On the policy front, trickle-down economics, popularized during the Reagan era, have never performed as promised.  If anything, they’ve contributed to economic inequality.   The wealthiest Republican loyalists have reaped rewards.  The less-well-to-do have waited three decades for the party’s populist promises to materialize.  Their patience has served their party well, but it’s now past the breaking point.

On the Democratic front, clinging to a monochromatic black and white worldview for votes in the South, as well as a labor-centric paradigm for votes in the Northeast and Upper Midwest also is increasingly outdated.

Decades-old, civil rights-driven loyalty is much to be admired.  But how ironic to see the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement during the final term of the country’s first African-American president.  Ongoing growth of Latino and Asian voters is dramatically and permanently altering the politics of race.

Much like shrinking church attendance, labor unions have been on the decline for decades.  Today, even Michigan is a right-to-work state.  Policy-wise, protectionism is just as much a broken populist promise as it is a failed economic one.

Traditional thinking on independent voters is that they ultimately side with one party or the other.  That may no longer hold true.  The number of so-called independents is on the rise; increasing extremism in both major parties has alienated voters.

Late July will bring the political conventions.  The Republicans will convene in Cleveland, followed a few days later by the Democrats in Philadelphia.  Imagine this very imaginary scenario:  A brokered Republican Convention leads to a third-party candidacy.  The following week, Democratic dysfunction pops loose a fourth candidate.  The camel’s nose comes out of the tent.  Now who’s the real Trojan horse?

What we need is a governing coalition

With each passing election, government seems to become a little more dysfunctional.  Instead of the basic blocking and tackling of lawmaking, what we’re mostly getting is politicians blocking the opposition, but not tackling the issues.  Despite a plentitude of campaign-trail promises, meaningful legislation is grinding to a halt.

'Depending on your perspective, you might think this refers either to national politics or to Virginia politics.  It applies to both.  Virginia’s statehouse has become a microcosm of Dee Cee.  What happens in Dee Cee stays in Dee Cee because nothing is ever really accomplished there.  Likewise in Richmond, it’s all blocking and no tackling, with progress grinding to a halt.

Still both parties cling to a belief that having a majority will make things different.  Let’s see: Republicans hold the majority in the U.S. House and Senate, as well as both houses of Virginia’s General Assembly.  Still, it’s apparent that having a nominal majority is not enough to enact most legislation.  Maybe that’s because the Republican majority really isn’t in agreement with itself, much less with the Democrats.

On the national scene, the ideological gulf between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seems a lot less wide than the ocean-size chasm between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.

Likewise in Virginia, the difference between state Sen. Dick Black (R-Loudoun) and, say, former state Sen. Walter Stosch (R-Henrico) is a lot greater than just about any two Democrats in the General Assembly.  Stosch, along with state Sen. John Watkins, retired in 2015, making it harder to find moderate Republicans in the Senate.  When it comes to the House of Delegates, it’s arguable that moderate Republicans have long since left the building.

Contrast this with statewide elections, where Democrats have been victorious in all statewide or national elections since Republican Bob McDonnell was elected governor in 2009.  Count them:  Barack Obama (second term), Tim Kaine, Terry McAuliffe, Mark Herring, Ralph Northam and Mark Warner.  Unable to win on the larger playing field, Virginia’s Republicans have been reduced to being a legislative party.

What’s at work here?  At the very least, this is an unintended consequence of gerrymandering.  The Republicans win in narrowly crafted districts that discourage local opposition.  Incumbents are more afraid of losing in primaries than in general elections.  These same districts are irrelevant in statewide races.

What else? Certainly urban versus rural dynamics come into play.  The urban areas of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads are packed with Democratic voters and have the population power to determine the outcome of statewide races, while the Republican base resides in less populous, rural areas.

Both of these are good explanations, but other changes are less obvious.  It wasn’t that long ago that our nation saw the rise of the tea party.  What is less obvious is that the tea party’s most effective route to power wasn’t through launching a third party, but instead through a calculated, systematic takeover and makeover of the Republican Party.  Out with the centrists and in with the extremists.

Take, for example, the defeat of Rep. Eric Cantor, then the House majority leader, by Dave Brat in the 2014 Republican primary.  Brat’s ideology is more libertarian than tea party, but third-party and independent candidates rarely win.  Brat defeated Cantor by challenging the powerful incumbent in his own party.

The electoral system proscribed by the U.S. Constitution promotes a two-party system.  Our system of winner-take-all elections grants power only to the winning party; any second-place party must have the support of close to half of the population to have any chance of winning.  This puts any third party at a significant disadvantage.  The U.S. system is unlike proportional representation systems used in Britain and many other countries to ensure representation of minority viewpoints.

More than half of the world’s top 25 economies have multiparty systems that necessitate coalitions between two or more parties to create a legislative majority.  The cooperating parties agree to disagree on some things while working to agree on others.  This is lacking in Washington.  It is also lacking in Virginia.  Let’s face it, the all-or-none approach just isn’t working.

Early on, the tea party established itself as a marketable brand, but it had to take its political power through the two-party system.  The Republican Party — with its combination of evangelicals, social conservatives, gun rights activists, immigration hawks and fiscal conservatives — was the logical choice.  Not with a bang, but a whimper, came the end of moderate Republicans.  This bifurcation is preventing an effective majority.

The business community abhors uncertainty, but it also hates a lack of progress.  We are currently seeing little change or investment.  We have continual increases in health-care costs and entitlements, largely borne by the business community.

Regardless of what you favor, campaign promises from both Republicans and Democrats are largely going undelivered.  Citizens aren’t getting what they’ve voted for.
Maybe what we need is a governing coalition.

Making business more attractive

Welcome to Virginia Business.  Our first issue of 2016 launches a new design.  We’ve given the magazine’s cover a new look and opened up more space inside our pages for photos and graphics.  We’re expanding coverage in real estate, higher education and tourism. Notably, our content is always about business in Virginia.  Coming in March, we’ll publish our 361st issue — celebrating 30 years as Virginia’s source for business intelligence.

Making business more attractive is a lofty goal, but it’s important. Most of us spend at least a third of our lives at work — probably more than we spend with family or, for that matter, more than the time we spend sleeping!

For all the hours put in at the office, you’d think business must be mighty attractive.  Still, many think of work as a necessary evil.  Let’s face it; the business community has a branding problem.  Don’t like politics?  Blame it on money donated by business.  Concerned about the environment? Blame it on pollution caused by business.  Don’t like the media? Blame it on the business interests of newspapers and television.  Don’t like your boss?  Blame it on business — his business.

Let’s see if we can rescript this narrative.  Business interests engage our politicians in creating a more robust economy.  Businesses plant more trees than they harvest.  The media keeps us informed, an essential ingredient for democracy.  Don’t like your boss?  Maybe he or she was just having a bad day.

Nevertheless, changing a glass-half-empty narrative to glass-half-full falls a little short on the complex emotions that people associate with business.  Emotional connections, positive and negative, are the stuff that brands are made of.  The bigger the business, the more likely there is to be a negative emotional bias — monolithic institutions are rarely seen as warm and cuddly.  Smaller businesses generally have more favorable perceptions.

When it comes to business and politics working together to create a more robust economy, this relationship seems to have become a bit unhinged lately.  So much more money is flowing into politics from super-PACS and other special interest groups, that candidates may no longer see business interests as important.  For example, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce supported Marketplace Virginia, a private-sector, managed-care approach to Medicaid expansion, but the proposal was defeated in  highly partisan voting.

As a whole, the business community is working to forge some large alliances around economic growth.  In addition to supporting Marketplace Virginia, the state chamber has crafted Blueprint Virginia, a wide-ranging set of suggested reforms. Topics include workforce development, education, transportation, economic development, manufacturing, energy and health care.

A second initiative, called GO Virginia (GO stands for growth and opportunity) has been launched by the Virginia Business Higher Education Council and the Council on Virginia’s Future.  The intent of GO Virginia is to foster private-sector growth, job creation and career readiness.

When the General Assembly convenes this month, it would do well to incorporate ideas from both of these groups into the state’s budget.  After all, the business of government is to move our state forward.  It has been widely noted that Virginia has slipped considerably in its ranking as a top state for business. Regaining economic competitiveness should be a top legislative priority.

The business community does much to make a good life better, providing jobs and a safe working environment where people and their families can grow and prosper.  When you think of it that way, the brand called business is actually pretty attractive.  Let’s keep it that way.