Author: James A. Bacon
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In Defense of Proffers
by James A. Bacon A new business-backed group in Chesterfield County has sprung up to fight the county’s cash proffer system for new houses, arguing that the fees make new houses more expensive, hinder development and hurt jobs. The group has hired Capital Results, a government affairs firm, and launched a website, Citizens Against Proffer…
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Dealing with “Dead Bikes”
It’s one thing to say you want to create a bicycle-friendly community, it’s quite another to pull it off. In the abstract, it sounds pretty easy. The devil is in the details. A case in point: Richmond City Council is pondering an ordinance to authorize police to attach a bicycle, motorcycle or moped to a…
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Hens and Self Sufficiency
In a victory for urban chicken lovers everywhere, Richmond City Council adopted yesterday the final set of regulations that will make it permissible to own up to four hens in residential areas. In a setback for gender equality, however, the ban on roosters still applies. (See the Times-Dispatch article.) Just kidding about the gender-equality thing.…
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Virginia Traffic Congestion — Not as Bad as We Thought
by James A. Bacon One of the arguments driving the transportation-funding debate this spring was the factoid that Northern Virginia is one of the most congested regions of the country, if not the most congested region. The genesis of this claim came from the 2012 Urban Mobility Report published by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI),…
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What the Teaching of Tibetan Tells Us about UVa
by James A. Bacon Let’s face it, as much as Americans love the Dalai Lama, there’s a probably a limited appetite in the United States for learning the Tibetan language. As long as the dude speaks English, that’s good enough for most of us. Not surprisingly, according to the Modern Language Association, only 109 students…
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The North-South Divide
Battle lines are forming over the north-south transportation corridor in Northern Virginia. Backers say it would serve a growing population and stimulate economic development. Foes say the state has more urgent priorities for spending $1 billion or more.
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“Not about Doing Education on the Cheap”
by James A. Bacon About a year ago, Philip Zelikow, the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia, knew little more about online learning than the average man. But one day he found himself in an executive retreat at the Boar’s Head Inn with Meredith June-En Woo, dean of the College…
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Woo Wows Wahoo Alumni
The University of Virginia faces a talent crisis, says Meredith Jung-En Woo, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. The college expects to lose about 100 faculty members through retirement in the near future and 40 for other reasons. To meet expanding enrollment, the college needs to hire another 60, plus 30 more to…
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Sullivan’s Risky Bet on STEM
by Reed Fawell III Teresa Sullivan’s proposed four-year financial plan will forever alter the character and mission of the University of Virginia, undermining the financial model that has enabled the university to thrive. If adopted by the Board of Visitors, the plan will raise student tuition to fund the conversion of the University from a…
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What’s Your Government’s Growth Portfolio?
by James A. Bacon If local governments want to avoid Detroit-style insolvency and financial collapse, they need to be savvier about how they make capital investments, argues Charles Marohn on the Strong Towns blog. They need to ask themselves three questions: Will the capital investment generate a real rate of return (ROI)? Will that rate…
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A Light Rail Public-Private Partnership in Virginia Beach?
by James A. Bacon Philip Shucet, savior of the runaway train project that was Norfolk Light Rail, has submitted a proposal to to extend the rail line into Virginia Beach. Under the proposal, the Tide rail service would become operational in the Virginia Beach Town Center, nearly halfway to the Oceanfront, by November 2016 —…
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The Rise of Civic Tech
Call it digital cities, call it civic tech, call it what you will — information technology is transforming the way local governments deliver services. This brief video by Ben Hecht, CEO of Living Cities, gives a flavor. My favorite example he cites: The Boston Bump. Instead of dispatching engineers around the city to survey the…
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Virginia Fares Well in Small Business Survey, Hampton Roads Nails It
Virginia ranks as the 6th friendliest state to small business in a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation survey of 8,000 small businesses across the country. Hampton Roads scored No. 2 as the most small business-friendly metropolitan region. The survey revealed that small business also cared about a lot more than taxes. Summarizes Governing magazine: “Training and…
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State-Wrecked
Some chilling words from David A. Stockman in Saturday’s New York Times: With only brief interruptions, we’ve had eight decades of increasingly frenetic fiscal and monetary policy activism intended to counter the cyclical bumps and grinds of the free market and its purported tendency to underproduce jobs and economic output. The toll has been heavy.…
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Sullivan’s Plan Optimizes UVa’s Institutional Self Interest
by James A. Bacon As I argued in my previous blog post, perhaps the University of Virginia ought to go with the primal instincts of its faculty and administration by chucking its mission of providing an affordable, high-quality education to Virginians — what’s so special about them anyway? — and chasing the dream of rising…