Category: Government Finance
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More Fun and Fraud with Numbers
by James A. Bacon Let me preface this post by stating unequivocally that eliminating Virginia’s personal income tax is a crazy idea — so crazy that no serious person has proposed it. The tax generates $16 billion a year in revenue, or 72.4% of Virginia’s General Fund expenditures. The loss of such a sum would…
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Of Course Tax Hikes Grew the State Surpluses
by Steve Haner At Tuesday night’s debate Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe dismissed the 2021 $2.6 billion general fund revenue surplus as entirely due to extra federal COVID relief funds, which is absurd on its face. By definition, every dollar is general fund state tax revenue. It came from some form of state tax. Why…
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McAuliffe Promises $8.3 Billion in New Spending
by Jesse Lynch As of August 2021, Terry McAuliffe has released over eighteen plans for his second term as Governor of Virginia. The policy proposals oscillate between highly specific and indefinitely vague. This report attempts to forecast five of these proposals: education, economics, entrepreneurship, COVID-19, and healthcare. The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy has…
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The Goochland Revolution: Making Growth Pay for Itself
by James A. Bacon Ken Peterson, a leader of Goochland County’s turnaround from fiscal basket case to bearer of a AAA bond rating, thinks he has discovered the holy grail of fast-growth county governance: how to make development pay for itself. In previous posts I described how Peterson and his fellow fiscal conservatives swept into…
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Marijuana and Casino Legalization Linked to Increases in Mental Illness and Substance Abuse
by James C. Sherlock We know what is going to happen. Dr. Daniel Carey M.D., Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, will soon apply to the federal government for funding for substance abuse prevention grants. He knows. He plans to tell the federal government that additional people, mostly poor and Black, are going to…
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The Goochland Revolution: Fiscal Edition
by James A. Bacon In February Goochland County Supervisor Ken Peterson and top county officials met with New York bond raters in the hope of winning a coveted AAA bond rating for their small, exurban county west of Richmond. Only a hundred or so counties in the United States have AAA ratings. None of them…
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The Goochland Revolution
by James A. Bacon The “Goochland Revolution” might be the most under-appreciated political upheaval in recent Virginia history. In the early years of the Obama administration the Tea Party movement energized small-government conservatives against the big-government policies of President Obama. The populist surge petered out in Virginia, as it did elsewhere, and it had little…
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Northam Asks Good Questions About Amended Medicaid Budget
by James C. Sherlock Governor Ralph Northam has raised an important issue relative to the budget negotiations. He has asked that the final bill not include an extension of a 12.5% increase in rates for Medicaid home- and community-based services for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. The General Assembly put it in there anyway. …
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DMV Still Hiding Full Gas Tax Amounts
by Steve Haner The Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles is now hiding only 22% of the state’s existing motor fuels tax with misleading website data, not the 26% it was hiding when I wrote about this last year. In the chart you first find searching DMV on motor fuel tax rates, set out below, there…
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Coming to Virginia – a New State of Emergency?
by James C. Sherlock The Governor’s 15-month emergency powers expired June 30, and, God, does he miss them. From The Virginian-Pilot: “School districts that aren’t requiring masks, including several in Hampton Roads, are running afoul of state law, Gov. Ralph Northam said Thursday.” OK. The bigger questions are how long the governor will put up…
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The Accelerating Scale of the Legislate-Regulate-Spend-and-Repeat Cycle Has Broken Government
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in Corruption and Scandals, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Long Term Care and Nursing Homes, Mental illness and substance abuse, Money in politics, Politics, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlementsby James C. Sherlock Virginians – the state and individual citizens – have received over $81 billion in COVID-related federal funding. That comes to $9,507 for every man, woman and child in the Commonwealth. Big money. That was Virginia’s share of $5.3 trillion in federal spending just on the pandemic (so far). A trillion dollars…
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Time for Amputation: NoVa Merging with “New D.C.”
D.C. Statehood. There has been a long running chorus of cries for D.C. residents to have full representation in Congress. From “Taxation Without Representation” slogans on D.C. license plates to the Biden Administration’s calls for DC to become the 51st state … this debate has gone on for a while. Most discussion devolves into pure…
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Vital COVID Issue: Paid Student Athletes?
by Steve Haner I warned everybody to watch for extraneous issues buried in the new budget bill pending at the special session which starts tomorrow. Who knew that regulating the potential income of student athletes was a vital COVID emergency issue that couldn’t wait for the regular General Assembly meetings in January? What follows should…
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What Fun! Spending $4.3 Billion in “Free” Money!
by James A. Bacon Before departing for the private sector, former Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne outlined his thinking for the disposition of $4.3 billion in federal COVID-helicopter money: The funds are a one-time windfall. Spend them on one-time projects. Do not use the money to fund programmatic expansions that will make an ongoing claim…
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If No Better Ideas Emerge, Go With These
By Steve Haner First published Tuesday by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. In 1972, a Virginia taxpayer needed a taxable income of $12,000 before the state’s maximum income tax rate kicked in. Adjusted for inflation, that threshold should be $78,000 today. There has been one adjustment since, to $17,000 in income before the…