Category: Government Finance
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Petersburg Now Has a Plan. Does It Have the Will?
The Robert Bobb Group, a consulting firm hired to straighten out the city of Petersburg’s finances, has outlined a five-year plan to keep the city on the fiscal straight and narrow. Among the 15 recommendations is creation of a Financial Advisory Board tasked to make monthly reports on the budget and ensure that financial policies…
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Are Virginia Colleges Deferring Maintenance?
According to calculations of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), the replacement value of the buildings and grounds of Virginia’s public colleges and universities totals $12.2 billion. And according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), institutions should plan for an annual reinvestment rate of between 1.5% and…
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Thank You, GASB, for Bringing Tax-Break Transparency to Local Government
Every year, local governments across Virginia publish a voluminous document called a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) that describes their fiscal condition, detailing revenues, expenditures, debt, and growth in the tax base. This year, CAFRs should include a new data point: revenue foregone due to business tax incentives. Few localities have bothered to compile and…
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Uh, Oh, Look Who’s “City B”
The city of Richmond is “City B,” the unnamed locality, which, along with Petersburg, Bristol and two unnamed counties, was noted by the Auditor of Public Accounts as in severe fiscal stress, reports the Richmond Free Press. While State Auditor Martha S. Mavredes has not identified Richmond publicly, the city’s name is included in a…
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A Better Model for Lending to the Poor
It’s time to introduce into the public lexicon a distinction between “social justice warriors” and “social justice entrepreneurs.” Social justice warriors (or SJWs, as they are known short-hand on some conservative blogs) seek to remedy the conditions of the poor and downtrodden through political action, typically calling upon government to wield its power and money…
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Bacon Bits: The Latest in Government Ineptitude and Short-Sighted Thinking
It’s Hard to Teach without Teachers. With a week to go before the start of the new school year, the Richmond Public Schools still has about 90 teacher openings, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Why the shortage, which seems to be a chronic issue? Perhaps the school conditions are so terrible that no one wants…
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Bacon Bits: Bristol, Big Ships, and Blue on Blue
Petersburg, Meet Bristol. The City of Bristol has been identified as “City A” in the recent report by the state Auditor of Public Accounts that scored even lower than Petersburg in a rating of fiscal stress, reports the Bristol Herald-Courier. Bristol hasn’t experienced the dramatic budget deficits of its fiscally challenged counterpart on the Appomattox…
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Five Localities under Severe Fiscal Stress
Petersburg isn’t the only Virginia locality with serious fiscal problems, according to an analysis prepared by the Auditor of Public Accounts. But Auditor Martha S. Mavredes isn’t willing yet to publicly identify the other two cities and two counties that appear to be in bad shape, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The fiscal assessment, conducted…
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McAuliffe: Build up Budgetary Reserves
I have to agree with Governor Terry McAuliffe on this one: The General Assembly should put $121.5 million from the FY 2017 budget surplus into a newly created financial reserve. Moreover, I find his logic impeccable: “Given the level of federal and economic uncertainty, I would suggest to each or you that any effort to…
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Boomergeddon Watch: U.S. Virgin Islands
The borrowing window has slammed shut on the U.S. Virgin Islands, reports Reuters. With about 100,000 inhabitants, the U.S. protectorate, acquired from Denmark during World War I, owes more than $2 billion to bondholders and creditors — the biggest per capita debt load, about $19,000, for every man woman and child, in the country. And…
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What Virginia Needs Is a Good Local-Government Report Card
Speaking of government report cards for states (see previous post), Virginia could use a good system for rating its local governments. As it happens, the Virginia Tea Party Federation is mobilizing to grade Virginia local governments on the basis of 20 to 30 key performance indicators on fiscal health and quality of government services. The…
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We’re No. 18! We’re No. 18!
Virginia has the 18th strongest fiscal condition of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., according to the 2017 edition of the Mercatus Center’s “Ranking of the State by Fiscal Condition.” The ranking is based on 13 measures of fiscal solvency, ranging from cash on hand to unfunded pension liabilities. The overall ranking integrates measures for…
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$150 Million a Year More for WMATA? Good Luck with That!
Downstate Virginia legislators are inclined to block increased capital funding for Washington’s dysfunctional heavy-rail commuter system unless the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) undertakes serious structural reforms. WMATA officials say they need about $15.5 billion for capital spending over the next 10 years to work through a massive backlog of deferred maintenance. Virginia’s state-government…
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Standard & Poor’s Rains on Candidate Parades
When you run for governor in Virginia, you have to make promises, and when you make promises, the only ones that cut through the media clutter are vows to cut taxes or launch expansive new spending programs. Thus, this year, Republican candidate Ed Gillespie has rolled out a plan to cut taxes by $1.25 billion…
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Trump Budget Bullet Barely Grazes NoVa
President Trump’s proposed budget would cost the Washington metropolitan region up to 24,600 jobs and billions in lost salaries and procurement spending, according to a new analysis by regional economist Stephen Fuller. But Washington’s Virginia suburbs would get off easier than Maryland and the District of Columbia, reports the Washington Business Journal. The district would lose 14,000 to 15,000 jobs and…