Month: February 2013
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Legislators Cobble together Transportation Funding Compromise
House and Senate negotiators agreed upon a transportation funding package that will raise $860 million a year for roads, bridges, rail and mass transit when fully implemented. Governor Bob McDonnell hailed the agreement, implying that he would sign the legislation if approved by the both legislative bodies. The package includes the following key elements: Elimination…
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Virtuous Virginia?
In my never-ending quest for insight into social and economic differences between Virginia and other states, I stumbled across an unusually revealing data set. Blogger Jon Millward analyzed a database of 10,000 porn stars to build a profile of sex actors on a range of attributes from ethnicity to cup size. Among the data points…
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Visa Reform and Farmville’s Private Gulag
By Peter Galuszka Surrounded by coils of security wire, the cream-colored metal complex sits in a small valley just outside Farmville, 60 miles southwest of Richmond. On the ridges above the private Immigration Centers of America-Farmville detention facility, a row of signs warns: “No photos or filming.” Inside the facility’s entry, just before the airport-style…
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Land Use and Tax Revenue in Fairfax County
by James A. Bacon Last year I published research documenting the vast discrepancy in property tax revenue per acre between commercial development in low-density versus high-density settings in Sarasota, Fla. A mid-rise tower with retail on the ground floor and condominiums above could yield literally 100 times the property tax revenue per acre as a…
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Show Me the Money, Virginia. What You’re Doing Is Not Paying Off.
by James A. Bacon Virginians need to wake up and realize that scoring a No.1 or No. 2 ranking on Forbes Magazine‘s “Best States for Business” has very little correlation with actual economic performance. It’s a nice sobriquet but as Cuba Gooding Jr. said in the movie Jerry Maguire, “Show me the money.” When it…
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Another Step toward Smarter Highways
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has issued a $34 million contract to Pennsylvania-based TransCore to design and build an active traffic management system for Interstate 66. The contract will cover 34 miles of highway from Washington, D.C., to Gainesville, at the intersection of U.S. 29. Reports ITS International: The active traffic management system will…
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Pssst. PST Jobs are Growing in Virgina, Pass It Along.
by James A. Bacon The occupational cluster labeled “professional, scientific and technical services” (PS&T) has been one of the fastest growing job categories in the United States economy since 20o1, expanding some 15% in contrast to a roughly 20% decline in such noteworthy clusters as manufacturing, media and finance over the same period, writes Joel…
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An Alternate Vision for the Fifty States
For those of you who believe that the geographic boundaries of the 50 states are the arbitrary and illogical constructs of history, consider the map above, drawn by Artist Neil Freeman. Freeman’s boundaries have the virtue of creating states with near-equal populations of 6.2 million each. His goal was to solve address the injustice of…
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The Blessings of Old Housing Stock
by James A. Bacon Among the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Richmond and Washington have relatively large stocks of pre-1940 housing, while Hampton Roads has relatively little, according to data published by Wendell Cox at the NewGeography.org blog. As a rule, regions with the youngest housing stock are Sun Belt metros like Las Vegas, Phoenix…
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Tidying up the Tax Code
At last the General Assembly is doing useful, even if it’s not terribly consequential. The House of Delegates voted Wednesday to pass a bill that would strike 34 unclaimed tax credits from Virginia’s tax code. The bill, introduced by Sen. Walter Stosch, R-Glen Allen, would declare a tax credit obsolete if it hasn’t been claimed…
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So, What Would Happen If Richmond, Like, Got Hit by a Killer Asteroid?
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is expected to pass 17,200 miles from Planet Earth today. What would happen if a splinter, say the size of a school bus, broke off and plummeted to earth at 12 miles per second, striking downtown Richmond? You can get a glimmer from these videos on the Atlantic Cities blog of a…
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Reports of King Coal’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
By Peter Galuszka It seems such a short time ago. In the gnarled hills of Southwest Virginia’s coalfields, prominent Republicans Ken Cuccinelli, Robert F. McDonnell and others were on the stump for Mitt Romney. The key theme was how Barack Obama’s environmental rules were putting a stranglehold over the coal industry. A little farther north…
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Fixing Broken Streams and Broken Dreams
The Bellemeade Walkable Watershed project aims to reclaim a damaged creek, create a route for kids to walk to school, and boost community spirit in a gritty, inner-city Richmond neighborhood.
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One Less Obstacle for Prisoners Re-entering Productive Society
by James A. Bacon State prison inmates seeking to re-establish a productive life in society will find that task a little less intimidating thanks the efforts of Governor Bob McDonnell. A partnership between the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the Virginia Department of Corrections (DOC) has expanded into 12 correctional facilities and processed…
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State Budgets on Fiscal Crack
by James A. Bacon The 50 states of the republic are conducting a fascinating, real-world experiment in tax policy. The Democratic-dominated “blue states” are jacking up income taxes while some Republican-dominated “red states” are shifting the tax burden from income to consumption taxes. Which gambit will prove the most enduring path to prosperity? Joel Kotkin,…