Year: 2012
-
Virginia Docs Ramp up Quality Initiative
An initiative backed by HCA Virginia hopes to improve patient care by getting physicians to open up their medical decisions and practices to the scrutiny of other doctors. The Virginia Quality Care Partnership will identify best practices and measure physicians performance against those standards. The collaboration started with about 30 doctors and is expected to…
-
Beware Hedge Fund Traders Bearing Gifts
By Peter Galuszka As noted in previous postings, I have always been curious as to the role in the Teresa Sullivan flap of big money hedge fund traders who are University of Virginia alumni and live in a world beyond most of us. Of special curiosity is the role allegedly played by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones…
-
Boomergeddon in Virginia: Medicaid Spending
Budget analysts have warned for years that state Medicaid spending eventually would grow so big that it would crowd out other budget priorities such as K-12 education. They don’t need to sound the warning anymore. That day is here. Unfortunately, the crowding out will get worse. As the authors of the “Report of the State…
-
Boomgergeddon in Virginia: Our Eroding Tax Base
by James A. Bacon While the federal government is hurtling towards a Boomergeddon melt-down, the prospects of state and local governments don’t look much better. According to the “Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force,” states’ major revenue sources are eroding and increasingly volatile. Despite its AAA bond rating, Virginia is no exception to…
-
Boomergeddon in Virginia: the Volker Analysis
In case you took heart from Virginia’s paltry budget surplus from FY 2012, a new study, “Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force,” should dispel the delusion that Virginia state and local governments face anything but years of grinding austerity ahead. “The ability of the states to meet their obligations to public employees, to…
-
Why Tricycle Gardens Rocks
by James A. Bacon Everyone has heard the Chinese proverb, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” With a little tweaking, the aphorism could well be adapted to the philosophy of Tricycle Gardens, the urban farming nonprofit that…
-
Oasis in the Food Desert
Tricycle Gardens wants to bring health food to Richmond’s inner city. It’s a tall order changing ingrained dietary habits. Engaging people in growing their own food is the key.
-
Beyond Beautification
The Capital Trees project in dowtown Richmond shows how public and private investment in urban canopy can advance strategic community goals like reducing storm water runoff and cleaning up the James River.
-
Equal Opportunity Cronyism
From Liz Essley in yesterday’s Washington Examiner: The day after Mame Reiley resigned for health reasons from the airports authority overseeing the $6 billion Dulles Rail project, the authority quietly created a full-time job for her as a “senior adviser” to authority CEO Jack Potter and agreed to pay her $180,000 a year. … Reiley,…
-
Full Throttle for I-95 Expressway Project
The McDonnell administration has entered into a comprehensive agreement with 95 Express Lanes LLC to build roughly 29 miles of express lanes on Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia. Construction will begin early next month and is scheduled for completion in late 2014. The I-95 express lanes will tie into the Capital Beltway express lanes already…
-
Virginia Ekes Out Budget Surplus
Virginia eked out a $129 million surplus for its $41 billion budget in Fiscal Year 2o12, Governor Bob McDonnell reported in a press release this afternoon. It’s the third straight year with a surplus, although the sum is smaller than the $228 million recorded in FY 2010 and $403 million in FY 2011. There won’t…
-
Density and Creativity
In Virginia, discussions about the density of growth and development tends to focus on the fiscal dimension. Is there an optimum level of density to maximize revenues versus costs for local governments? (See “The Fiscal Fix” for a discussion of these issues.) But there is another angle that may be just as important. What is…
-
Don’t Tax You, Don’t Tax Me. Tax that Fellow Behind the Tree.
by James A. Bacon Congressman Randy Forbes, R-4th, whose district runs from Chesterfield to Chesapeake, has asked Gov. Bob McDonnell to scrap his proposal to place tolls on Interstate 95 near Emporia. The tolls will “disproportionately burden” residents of a rural region already suffering major economic challenges, he wrote in a letter to the governor.…
-
VUU: Canary in the Higher Ed Coal Mine?
by James A. Bacon Virginia Union University (VUU), a historically black university tracing its founding to the end of the Civil War, has been publicly sanctioned by its accrediting agency for non-compliance with financial and financial-aid standards. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges (SACS), cited deficiencies in control over financial resources…
-
Virginia’s Pension Bomb Is Still Ticking
by James A. Bacon Back in February the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) and Gov. Bob McDonnell were disputing what rate of return to assume on the VRS’s $54 billion in assets –8% as McDonnell wanted, or 7%, as the more conservative VRS board preferred. By assuming that the VRS will make more money on its…