Year: 2012
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Is Offshore Wind Finally Twirling in Virginia?
By Peter Galuszka After years of hemming and hawing about offshore oil drilling, Virginia finally seems on track to develop wind energy off its coast. The U.S. Interior Department announced Nov. 30 that next year it would lease rights to 112,800 acres of ocean bed a little more than 23 miles off the southern part…
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Food Insecurity in Virginia
When you sit down for your big family meal on Christmas Eve (or other religious holiday of your choice), your table groaning with turkey, potatoes, green beans, salads, ham biscuits, gravy boats, cranberries, apple pie and that ossifying fruitcake that Aunt Mable gave you three years ago, you can chow down with a clear conscience.…
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Another Fiscal Pothole
In its 2012 session the General Assembly contended with the looming liabilities of the state employee pension plan. In the 2013 session, it may have to confront the looming liabilities of $900 million-a-year state employee health care program. Unless immediate steps are taken, reports Jeff Schapiro with the Times-Dispatch, the State Employees Health Insurance Fund…
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Is Virginia’s Violent Crime Rate Down or Not?
The murder rate is down across the country, and Americans can be forgiven for relishing this rare bit of good news amid the dirges for layoffs, deficits and fiscal cliffs. Now the Wall Street Journal has gone and spoiled it all for us. While the number of murders has declined the past decade, it’s not…
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Has Road Privatization Gone Frankenstein?
By Peter Galuszka Since 1995, Virginia’s politicians have had a ready tool that they love to use as a ruse to build roads without raising taxes: the Public Privatization Transportation Act. Once considered a nation-beater and major step in the craze of putting private management methods and money in pubic transport projects, the PPTA was…
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Countering the Cow Menace
by James A. Bacon Once upon a time, industrial discharges and municipal sewage treatment plants were the biggest sources of pollution for the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. But these “point source” polluters have significantly cleaned up their act, and further gains could cost tens of millions of dollars per facility. Whom do we target…
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Making the Public-Health Case for Bicycles
Last month Bacon’s Rebellion hosted an “idea jam” on the topic of bicycles and public health. Our goal was to build a case for making the Richmond region more bicycle-friendly in terms that fiscally conservative political, business and civic leaders would find compelling. We decided to focus on two topics: public health and economic development.…
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NoVa Transit Study Now Online
The McDonnell administration has released its “Transit/TDM Vision Plan” for Northern Virginia. The document projects population, employment and traffic trends for the region through 2040 and recommends investments in transit-oriented and TDM (transportation demand management) to accommodate the changes. I’ve got a lot on my plate right now, so I don’t know if I’ll get…
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Dissecting the Decline in Domestic Migration
In the early 1990s, about three percent of all Americans moved between states each year. That frequency has fallen steadily to half the percentage today. Some observers worry that this trend might be a bad thing, reflecting an ossifying of labor markets that in the past made it possible for households to move from regions…
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CTB Errata…
Odds and ends from this morning’s meeting of the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB): Sequestration is a non-event… for transportation. Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton told CTB members that federal transportation payments to Virginia should be insulated from sequestration should Congress fail to reach a budget compromise by January 1. Federal transportation dollars are allocated by formula,…
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Uh, Oh, CTB Representatives Acting Feisty
by James A. Bacon It was a routine matter that came before the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) this morning: The Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) was asking the CTB to approve allocations from the state’s industrial rail access fund. The sums of money were small and the projects were uncontroversial — $450,000 to…
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McDonnell to Propose $500 Million in New Transportation Revenue
Governor Bob McDonnell announced today that his administration is working on a plan to raise $500 million yearly by 2019 in new transportation revenues to fund roads, bridges, transit and passenger rail. He provided no specifics in his keynote address to the 2012 Governor’s Transportation Conference in Tysons Corner but said details would be announced…
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No Reason Left to Oppose Shift to a VMT Tax
by James A. Bacon While politicians dither about the need to replace the motor fuels tax with a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax, usually on the grounds that tracking a car’s activity would create privacy issues, the private insurance industry has marched leap-years ahead. Major insurers such as Allstate, State Farm and Progressive are offering…
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Laughing in the Face of the Fiscal Cliff
Jim Bacon chats with Scott Lee about the “fiscal cliff” on Bearingdrift’s Score Radio Network. Cheer up, things could always be worse. Iran could get nuclear weapons. Space aliens could invade California. Madonna could announce another world tour. But that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else that would exceed the fiscal cliff for…
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Regional Variations in Disability Insurance
In 1960 the percentage of Americans receiving disability Social Security disability payments amounted to 0.65 of the 18-to-64-year-old population. In the intervening half century, work has become more automated and less strenuous. The quality of healthcare has improved. Yet the percentage of the working-age population on disability had grown to 5.6% — nearly nine times.…