Author: James A. Bacon
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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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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,…
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An Ignorant Vote on a Good Bicycle Bill
What’s with General Assembly Republicans? They’re willing to raise taxes to fund automobile and mass-transit projects but they’re not willing to support a bill that would make bicycling safer without costing the state a dime. The House version of a bill submitted by Sen. Chap Peterson, D-Fairfax, was defeated yesterday in a tie vote in…
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Empowering College Students with Better Consumer Data
There is a big move afoot in Congress to make salary information of college graduates more readily available to the public. The idea is to give students a realistic idea of how much they can expect to earn when they apply to a school that will cost them $100,000 or up in tuition and fees.…
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More Evidence for the Decline in Automobility
by James A. Bacon NewGeography is the thinking man’s blog for people who don’t like “smart growth.” It is relentlessly skeptical of smart-growth prescriptions for urban renewal such as higher densities, mixed-use development, mass transit and the like. Its writers tend to be big fans of automobility and American suburbs. So, when a contributor to…
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Wealth-Destroying Streets
Dan Burden, executive director of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, looks like an aging hippie — long white hair, a broomstick of a moustache, a twinkle in his eye — and, for all I know, he is one. But his presentation Friday at the New Partners for Smarter Growth focused on wealth creation. No,…