Author: James A. Bacon
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Congestion Tolls Coming to Hampton Roads?
by James A. Bacon Hampton Roads transportation planning officials are giving serious thought to putting tolls on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel as a tool to reduce congestion during periods of peak demand. Under the conceptual plan presented Wednesday to the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB), the toll would be set…
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Sunnier Skies for Virginia Solar
Thanks to a new law making it easier for non-utilities to sell solar electricity, backers of solar power are viewing the future with cautious optimism. By Andrew Jenner Virginia gets enough sunshine, relative to other states, to give it better-than-average potential for solar energy development. A 2012 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated…
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IG of the Day: How Virginia Education Stacks up Internationally
We know Virginia students score better than average nationally in educational achievement, and we know that United States students garner mediocre scores by international measures. What we really need to know, in a globally competitive knowledge economy, is how well Virginia students rank in international comparisons. According to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 18th-edition “Report…
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Higher Ed Bubble? What Higher Ed Bubble?
So much for new fireworks between University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan and the Board of Visitors. It appears that the administration and board have come to an agreement on how much to raise tuition next year. The good news: The administration has abandoned its proposal to jack up the tuition for third- and fourth-year…
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Virginia Beach, Richmond Well Positioned for Foreign Investment
Virginia Beach and Richmond both scored in the Top 10 of Foreign Direct Investment magazine’s ranking of “best mid-sized American cities” for attracting foreign investment. By “American” cities, the magazine refers to cities in both North and South America. Canadian cities totally pwned the mid-sized city rankings, with London, Hamilton, Quebec City, Surrey and Brampton…
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Under-Funding Street Repair in Richmond
I’ve been ragging recently about how Virginia state and local governments are doing a poor job of taking full life-cycle costs into account when making infrastructure-investment decisions, and how some are doing an equally poor job of setting side money to replace their assets when they wear out. A perfect example of such blinkered thinking…
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Kotkin Swings… He Misses.
by James A. Bacon Joel Kotkin is at it again. The urban geographer whose life mission seems to be debunking smart growth and creative-class worship, makes many well-founded observations… and manages to totally miss the point. In a column just published in The Daily Beast, Kotkin argues that the economic trend-setters of the United States…
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The Evil These Proffers Do
by James A. Bacon A few days ago I published a post about the effort of a Chesterfield County business group to rid the county of proffers. It was a bad idea, I suggested. As long as government is responsible for road, water, sewer, fire and rescue, etc., someone has to pay for it. Property…
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Highway Robbery
The center-left Commonwealth Institute still has big reservations about the General Assembly’s transportation-funding package as outlined in a new white paper, “Destination Unknown: Navigating Virginia’ New Transportation Funding Package – and Potential Potholes.” Some of the concerns are practical. One major funding component of the plan requires Congressional action, which may or may not be…
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The Case for Incentives Still Lacking
by James A. Bacon Virginia approved nearly 3,400 economic development incentive grants totaling $718 million over the past 10 years, according to a new report, “Review of State Economic Development Incentive Grants,” published by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The projects benefiting from those grants created more than 68,000 jobs. “Incentive grants appear…
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Don’t Get Cocky, Kid, You’re Small Potatoes
It is a truism that in today’s globally competitive economy the critical unit of economic growth and development is the metropolitan region. The industry profile and workforce characteristics of a region exert as much influence, if not more, on its prosperity than national economic policies. With that in mind, it is interesting to compare how…
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Virginia Pension Shortfall Still Horrendous
by James A. Bacon Last July I argued that, despite the significant pension reforms enacted in the 2012 session of the General Assembly, Virginia had only partially restored the actuarial integrity of state and local government pensions. (See”Virginia’s Pension Bomb Is Still Ticking.“) The debate at the time: whether the Virginia Retirement System should assume…
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Life Cycle Blues
by James A. Bacon Beneath the surface, the Washington Post informs us, the Capital Beltway is crumbling. Writes Ashley Halsey III: Under the surface of all but some recently restored segments, fissures are spreading, cracks are widening and the once-solid road bed that carries about a quarter-million cars a day is turning to mush. ……
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IG of the Day: Race Distribution in Virginia
I give the demographers at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service a hard time for their long-range population projections, but I also must credit them for doing some really interesting work. A case in point is the map shown above, which uses 2010 U.S. Census data to show Virginia’s population distribution visually in a…
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Re-engineering Criminal Justice in Richmond
by James A. Bacon The average cost for housing an inmate in Virginia’s jails and prisons runs roughly $25,000 a year. Add to that the fact that some jails are antiquated, overcrowded and need replacing. The Richmond City Jail, for instance, designed in the 1960s to hold 856 inmates, is routinely crammed with a number…