Category: Economic development
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Minimum Wage and Medical Insurance
Question of the Day: If Virginia enacts a minimum wage increase, how many employers will respond by cutting fringe benefits like medical insurance? Kennon Morris, president of the Virginia Forest Products Association, raises the concern in a Free Lance-Star op-ed today. Here’s his prediction of what would happen in rural Virginia: The minimum wage “would…
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Bacon Bits: From Feel-Good to Feel-Bad
Feel-good story of the day. Musical superstar Pharrell Williams, a Virginia Beach native, is collaborating with the city’s Convention & Visitors Bureau to create two 60-second commercials, featuring his soon-to-be-released song “Virginia,” promoting Virginia Beach as a city open to tourists. Pharrell contacted city officials after the mass-shooting last year, asking how he could help…
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Non-Union Construction Workers Need Not Apply
by Ben Brubeck Democratic leadership in control of the General Assembly for the first time since 1993 is close to sending legislation to Gov. Ralph Northam’s desk that would raise the cost of construction and maintenance of schools, affordable housing, roads, transportation and other infrastructure projects critical to keeping Virginia economically competitive. Taxpayers should take…
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Bacon Bits: Antifa Hoax, Goose Sauce, Selling Nova Bike Trails
Hate crime hoaxes not just for minorities anymore. According to Willfred Reilly, the expert on hate crime hoaxes, the fastest-rising category of hoaxes is perpetrated by whites, as white groups take a lesson from the Left’s grievance-and-victimhood playbook. The latest instance involves a Civil War reenactor by the name of Gerald Leonard Drake, reports the…
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Right-to-Work Repeal Would Cost “Thousands” of Jobs, Says VEDP
by James A. Bacon The repeal of Virginia’s Right-to-Work law would result in the loss of dozens of economic development projects, “thousands” of manufacturing and supply-chain jobs, and $9 million to $25 million per year in annual General Fund revenue just from the state’s current project prospect pipeline, reports the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP)…
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Private Nonprofit Colleges Need to Adapt or Die
by James A. Bacon With the college-age population expected to drop 15% between 2025 and 2029, Virginia’s 28 private liberal arts colleges are facing hard times ahead. And Governor Ralph Northam’s proposal to make community college free for lower-income students won’t help. The tuition gulf between private colleges and publicly supported colleges will get only…
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Legislative Updates: Minimum Wage
by Hans Bader On January 28, a subcommittee in Virginia’s House of Delegates apparently voted 5-to-3 to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15, and to eliminate some longstanding exemptions to the minimum wage. The vote was along party lines. The House’s bill is harsher on employers than the companion bill in the state Senate.…
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Senate Committee Votes to Raise Minimum Wage
by Hans Bader The Virginia Senate’s Commerce and Labor Committee has voted to raise Virginia’s minimum wage. As NPR notes, “business groups maintain that Virginia will lose jobs — and its business-friendly reputation” — as a result. The Virginia chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business estimates that the increase would slash 130,000 jobs in Virginia over 10 years.…
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NoVa Kicked Maryland Butt in Job Growth Last Year
by James A. Bacon Northern Virginia dominated job creation in the Washington metropolitan area in 2019 and, as Amazon makes its presence increasingly felt, likely will continue to do so, reports the Washington Post. In the first 10 months of 2019, Northern Virginia gained roughly 19,500 jobs compared to a year earlier, compared to 5,700…
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Farewell to Virginia’s Lost Decade
by James A. Bacon As we close out the decade of the 2010s, Virginians’ collective response could well be, “Good riddance.” For all of the state’s assets, economic growth in the Old Dominion consistently lagged that of the nation between 2010 and 2018, according to data published by the 2019 State of the Commonwealth report.…
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Virginia’s Economic Performance Ticks Higher
by James A. Bacon After years of markedly under-performing the rate of U.S. economic growth, Virginia’s economy appears to be approaching national parity, according to data published by Old Dominion University’s “2019 State of the Commonwealth Report.” Indeed, as the U.S. economy slows somewhat this year, the authors expect Virginia to exceed the national rate…
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The Future of Agriculture — in a Danville Industrial Park
by James A. Bacon Newark, N.J.-based AeroFarms will invest $42 million to build its largest, most sophisticated indoor vertical farm to date in a joint Danville-Pittsylvania County industrial park. The project will create 92 new jobs. Virginia competed with North Carolina for the project. Subsidies include a $200,000 grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund, a…
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Northam Proposes Reorganization of Tech Programs
by James A. Bacon I’m so old that I remember when the Center for Innovative Technology, created to catalyze high-tech development in Virginia, was in charge of allocating state funds for university-based R&D. After commanding center stage in Virginia’s conversations about technology development during the 1990s and 2000s, CIT underwent successive downsizings to the point…
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VEDP Chief Urges More Funds for Site Readiness
by James A. Bacon The paucity of developable sites and buildings resulted in Virginia communities being eliminated from consideration for at least 65 projects totaling 19,000 jobs and $5 billion in capital investment over the past three years, according to Virginia Economic Development Partnership President Stephen Moret. Of the 466 large suites available for development…
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In Failure, the GOP Has an Opportunity to Reinvent Itself
by James A. Bacon So, the Republicans have wrapped up their annual “Advance” — a retreat at the Omni Homestead resort in Bath County. And if reports of the two newspapers that covered the event are to be believed — one from the Washington Post and one from the Roanoke Times — GOP leaders have…