...and long overdue.  But where's the "or else"?  Goals without consequences )or incentives) are a little bit toothless, aren't they?

Nice try, but it's not working. I'm very VERY happy about this.

Governors have lots of ways to enforce their orders, implicit in their authority over the department heads (see example below).  I expect of Kaine that he will give us a progress report in 6 or 12 months time.

As to implicit authority inherent in the executive -- here's an example of a federal environmental program that could have been a success with strong leadership.  One of the reasons our federal telecommuting program is a joke is the lack of leadership from the Bush-head.  Bush could have helped bring about extensive telecommuting by giving orders to OPM to set up a personnel enforcement mechanism, something as simple as "you don't show us a workable, explainable telecommuting program in six months and at a minimum you get a lousy performance rating; two in a row and you're gone."

Frank Wolfe can wave his arms all he wants -- if he can't get Bush's backing it means little.  As it is, we have thousands of workers traveling hours every day to sit in front of a computer, and attend an occasional meeting.  Government can be efficiently run.  But Bush is an incompetent leader, up and down the line.  He could have instituted this efficiency, and he failed.  He cannot get even the simple things right.

The professionals at the patent office pushed for, and got, extensive telecommuting built into their schedules.  It works.  It reduces traffic, and saves on building expenses. 

...but I'll bet you never see a price tag for this "compliance" until it's too late.  I probably deserved the "killjoy" label but I'm a 'devil's in the details" kinda guy and this just didn't give me a warm fuzzy.  Like I said, I'm a big supporter of this but, as a voter, need to know more.

Seems like Wolf can't get anybody's backing...didn't he fuss at the previous President for squishing telecommuting too?  (Hint: http://www.wolf.hous...)

Factoids need to have a historical context.  Just asked my wife, the telecommuter, who crunches numbers for a living, an unprefaced question.  She said she could not have telecommuted in 2000 because of lack of infrastructure, more primitive networking, etc.  Policy analysts would have been quite skeptical at that juncture.  (This was my impression before I asked her for a separate opinion.  I wasn't sold on telecommuting as a serious proposition until about 2003.)

Any reasonable person would agree that overall, Clinton's environmental record was quite a bit better than the brain dead shell we now have in the White House -- here's a rather even handed assessment by a joint Brookings-American Enterprise group: http://www.aei-brook...
Page 59 and on has the conclusions. 

Clinton was a hard nosed wonk, as well as someone with a heart.  Without looking at the details of Wolfe's original plan, but having worked with some of the people who were in the WH at the time, they probably found flaws in it and thought the government could not function efficiently.

Sorry, gotta move on. 

Good to see the gov taking a step in the right direction. If only other states would follow...

Gotta like the move to install energy-efficient light bulbs too. Saves taxpayer $ and good for the envirnment. Talk about the party of fiscal discipline...

"In order to meet this goal, agencies and institutions shall aggressively pursue i) all energy-savings activities whose costs are recoverable in one fiscal year, such as use of screw-in fluorescent and other high-efficiency lighting in place of incandescent bulbs and other less efficient lights"

http://www.governor....

Maybe someone will save me the research.  With the old fashioned fluorescent bulbs, turning them on and off frequently used more energy, no?

I know there are many pros and cons about these bulbs, though the pros seem to outweigh the cons.  We do have to be careful about using them correctly.  http://en.wikipedia....  (Our house has begun conversion.)  And we have to persuade GE to start converting its American plants to the new bulbs.

It is interesting that Wal-Mart executives have been big pushers of the new bulbs.
http://www.nytimes.c...  I won't comment on their underlying motives.  I do know they have been on a big waste reducing drive in packaging, telling their suppliers that they have to reduce packaging waste (which will save everyone money).