Category: Government Finance
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New Budget Woes
By Dick Hall-Sizemore The outlook for the state budget gets grimmer. The most immediate concern is the budget for the current year. The state collects about a third of its fiscal year revenue in the last quarter (April-June). Income tax filings and payments are usually due May 1. (This year the payments can be delayed…
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Is It the Death Knell For Dominion’s Pipeline?
By Peter Galuszka For more than a decade, hydraulic fracturing drilling for natural gas and oil has transformed the American energy picture, leading to big revivals in such energy fields such as Marcellus in West Virginia and Pennsylvania and the Bakken field in the Dakotas. It has prompted Dominion Energy and its utility partners to…
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A Capital Idea
By Dick Hall-Sizemore As a diversion from the coronavirus story, as well as an effort to give you a little more variety, the following is my previously promised summary of the General Assembly’s changes to the capital budget. (It was only a little over two weeks ago that the legislature adjourned, but it seems much…
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Help for the State Budget
In answer to some calls on this blog for immediate adjustments to the state budget, my response was: Don’t panic. There is a process already in place to deal with such a situation. Now, there is even less reason to panic. It is reported that the Commonwealth will receive at least $1.5 billion from the…
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Northam: Take the Bricks Off the Life Rafts
My first post in two weeks. What the heck, I should join the parade and give a bunch of advice to our beleaguered Governor which he is likely to ignore. This first appeared today in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. It has one of those annoying “take a survey” paywalls, but in this case asks a…
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COVID-19 Economic Impact Estimates
by James A. Bacon Thanks to its high share of federal government employment and a high percentage of jobs that can be performed remotely, Virginia is somewhat less vulnerable to job losses from COVID-19-related shutdowns of large sectors of the economy than other states, said Stephen Moret, CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VED)…
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A Look at Richmond and COVID-19
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in Agriculture & forestry, Business and Economy, Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Consumer Protection, Culture wars, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, Entrepreneurs and Innovation, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Housing, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Money in politics, Planning, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Resilience, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Telecommunications, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Here is a roundup story I wrote for Style Weekly that was published today that explains the effects of COVID-19 on the Richmond area. Hopefully, BR readers will find it of interest. It was a tough piece to report. The impacts of the deadly virus are very complicated and multi-faceted. An especially…
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Act Now to Bring State Budget in Line with Reality
by James A. Bacon About 18 months ago Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne conducted an analysis of state government finances to see how they would hold up under the stress of another recession of the magnitude of the Great Recession. Hardly anyone thought that a downturn was in the cards; the economy was chugging along…
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Damn the Coronavirus! Full Speed Ahead!
The budget forecasts underpinning Virginia’s General Fund budgets for FY 2021 and 2022 suggests that revenues will increase 4.5% next year and 3.7% the year after that. Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne released those numbers back in December, when COVID-19 was still an obscure disease incubating in a Wuhan wet market. But it’s a very…
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And This is How They Will Spend the Money
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Although the General Assembly, as usual, left most of the Governor’s budget bill untouched, it did leave its mark on it. Its top priority clearly was increasing compensation for state employees and teachers. It also toned down some of the Governor’s initiatives. The revised budget bill for the 2020-2022 biennium reflects an…
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How Virginia Would Fare Under President Biden, Part 1
By DJ Rippert And then there were two. Today, Elizabeth Warren announced that she will withdraw from the presidential race. That leaves Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard (yes, she’s still running) as the remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination. Given that Tulsi Gabbard has exactly one delegate (from American Samoa where she was…
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Will the Tuition Incentive Work a Second Time?
by James A. Bacon In a gambit to hold the line on the rising cost of college attendance, the General Assembly last year budgeted $52.5 in incentives to be distributed to higher-ed institutions that froze in-state tuition increases. It worked. Governing boards of every institution agreed to hold steady on tuition and mandatory fees. This…
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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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A Series of Hidden Tax Hikes In the Bag
By Steve Haner Politicians hate taxes that voters pay by check and love taxes that are buried deep on invoices or fully invisible. The 2020 General Assembly is raising taxes right and left (mostly left) but focused on that second method. These will be tax increases most people will never spot. Governor Ralph Northam’s record…
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Three Bad Bills
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Each session there are bills that are introduced probably with the best of intentions and approved for those reasons, but are basically bad policy and are likely to have unintended consequences. They are not “big” bills and do not generate headlines, but skate under the radar. I want to highlight three that…