From beast to beauty. I have issues with Virginia Commonwealth University’s exploitation of its student population but I will say this: The university has done wonders for downtown Richmond. The latest case-in-point is the restoration of the old Broad Street trolley station from its hideous previous incarnation as the Richmond Glass Shop into space for the university’s renowned art department. Not only will the $7 million project house gallery space to showcase student artwork, a soundstage and a 6,000-square-foot research lab with prototype building machines, including laser scanners and plasma cutters, it will transform an eyesore into a thing of beauty. The transformation of downtown Richmond continues apace. Richmond BizSense has the story here.
Investing in public safety. The great recession battered city and county budgets, including spending on police, fire and rescue. Nerdwallet set out to find which cities did the best job of preserving spending on public safety. No surprise, Washington, D.C., the imperial city waxing fat on population growth and economic growth, led the country. Improved public safety no doubt helps explain the perception that the city is worth investing and living in. D.C. has 4,332 police staff per 100,000 residents, or one per 68.5 residents. Also ranked was Richmond with 940 police staff, or one per 45.24 residents. Nerdwallet did not consider the possibility that Washington, Richmond and other cities maintain large police departments because they need them more.
Transparent… but could be better. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) has released a report ranking states by the transparency of their public spending based on criteria such as user-friendly websites, searchable databases and downloadable reports, and the availability of information on state contracts and economic development studies. Indiana won the top score, and seven others rated A-. Virginia rated a B+. Frankly, I’m surprised it did that well. The open-data movement is making inroads across North America and Europe but I never hear it discussed here. Virginians need to hop on the bandwagon — opening up government data to the public will inspire all matter of creative applications that governments themselves could never imagine.
Boomergeddon, anyone? Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut hedge fund, has warned that public pensions are likely to generate investment returns of only 4% annually on their assets in future years — not the 7% to 8% widely assumed. Public pensions have only $3 trillion in assets to cover retirement liabilities of $10 trillion; annual returns averaging 9% are needed to make up the difference without massive infusions of tax dollars. Bridgewater set up a sophisticated model to simulate many of the possible market environments to see how they would affect public pension resources. “In 20% of those scenarios, public pensions run out of money in 20 years. And in 80% of the scenarios, public pensions run out of money within 50 years,” reports America’s Markets.
If Bridgewater is even close to being right, state and local governments will be fiscally stressed for decades.
— JAB