More on McDonnell’s invented $500M from ABC privatization.
Further to Bob McDonnell’s plan to fund transportation, given the Post’s discovery of some deeply misleading math, see if you can follow this logical jujitsu in McDonnell’s plan. Tracing back this bit of the plan to its origins, the Wilder Commission report concluded:
We estimate that the dollar amount that could accrue from these streamlinings, outsourcings and eliminations, including the privatization of ABC, could total more than $500 million.
So that’s a result of a top-to-bottom reconsideration of how state government works—the ABC is just a sliver of that, small enough that the report doesn’t specify how much it would come to. So McDonnell’s plan says of that:
The Wilder Commission estimated that proposals to streamline and eliminate state agencies, including the privatization of ABC, could total more than $500 million.
Well, OK, that makes sense. But the next sentence is where things go off the rails:
Looking at other states’ experience in privatizing the distribution and retail aspect of alcohol sales and ABC’s annual profits, we estimate that Virginia could receive at least $500 million in the near term.
Whoa. What just happened there? A fraction of $500M just got turned into $500M in a passage so weak that that it would result in a quick [citation needed] on Wikipedia, followed by a deletion a short time later. The only other evidence provided is in the final sentence on the topic:
A study conducted by the Reason Foundation for divesting Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board found that privatizing could result in approximately $1.7 billion dollars from the initial divestiture proceeds.
That’s nice for Pennsylvania. But what it has to do with Virginia, I don’t know, and McDonnell doesn’t say.
What McDonnell has done here is taken a study about a top-to-botom government overhaul, taken a lump number of $500M, claimed it applies to just one change in government, and then claimed that money could be used to pay for a big chunk of the state’s transportation bill that’s coming due. It’s some fancy footwork that’s rhetorically interesting, I’ll grant him that. But the financial equivalent of that is check kiting, and I’m pretty sure Virginia’s not going to get real far funding our roads like that.
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