Category: Government Finance
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Does Henrico Need a Meals Tax — or More Innovative Government?
From a column published in October edition of The Henrico Monthly: by James A. Bacon Before pulling the lever this November on the meals-tax referendum, Henrico citizens should ask themselves: Are they satisfied with county government that conducts business as usual, posing false choices between raising taxes or cutting services? Or would they prefer proactive…
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NoVa Localities In Good Shape to Ride out Federal Shutdown
Moody’s Investor Service expects the federal government shutdown to be short-lived. It could negatively impact state and local governments in the Washington metropolitan area if prolonged but most local governments should be able to ride out the storm. Says the current issue of “Moody’s Weekly Credit Outlook for Public Finance”: “The federal government shutdown … is…
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Think Henrico Government Has Cut Back? How about Henrico Citizens?
by James A. Bacon As Mark Twain famously said, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Anyone can slant an argument in his favor by cherry picking statistics. I try to avoid that. As proof, I will offer some numbers regarding Henrico County government expenditures over the past decade that make my opposition to the…
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What a Crock!
In doing some on-line research today, I tried to access the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) website. Here is the message I received: “Due to the lapse in government funding, www.bea.gov will be unavailable until further notice. … We sincerely regret this inconvenience.” A press release states that, “like all other U.S. government entities,” the…
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The GOP’s Idiotic Kamikaze Pilots
By Peter Galuszka On an otherwise lovely early autumn afternoon, we’re stuck waiting from depressing news from Washington about radical House Republicans holding the U.S. government and the debt ceiling hostage. In a pointless exercise, after midnight today, U.S. parks might close and some federal workers might not get paid. It could get even worse…
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Has College Enrollment Peaked?
The number of Americans enrolled in four-year colleges has increased fairly steadily since 1970 but it took a dive between 2011 and 2012. Nationally, according to the September 2013 edition of American Consumers Newsletter, enrollment at four-year colleges plunged by 580,000, or about 5.3%. Is that drop indicative of a long-term trend? Has enrollment peaked…
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The Debt Vise Tightens
by James A. Bacon Moody’s Investor Service may revise its rules for rating municipal bonds, and the news could be bad for states and local governments with large unfunded pension liabilities. The company is proposing to increase the weighting of pension liabilities and other long-term debts from 10% to 20% in its scorecards for General…
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Suspicious Trading In Gas Ethanol Credits
By Peter Galuszka On the busy Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake, some 33 squat petroleum tanks sit just across the water from the giant cranes of the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth. The tanks, along with 31 other ones just south of downtown Richmond, play a role in an intriguing and mysterious…
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Charlottesville’s Surprising Start-up Strength
By Peter Galuszka It may be a throwback to the glam years of the 1990s, but there’s always been an aura about bright minds getting ideas and having the fortitude and guts to push them to fruition without the warm womb of a big corporation or university to keep them nice and safe. Finally, after…
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Now You See It, Now You Don’t
by James A. Bacon Henrico County government officials, who have campaigned in support of a 4% meals tax referendum in every way conceivable short of actually saying, “Vote for the meals tax,” have released a list of “expenditure cuts, absorptions and efficiency savings” to document their claim that the county has “cut $115 million and…
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Stressed Out: Pensions
by James A. Bacon Governor Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly made a big splash in the spring of 2012 when they crafted a long-term fix for the $55 billion Virginia Retirement System. While the commonwealth did shore up pension funding for state and local employees, it also created big headaches for local governments. Just…
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Another Year Older and Deeper in Debt
Aggregate debt of the 50 state governments totaled $4.17 trillion in 2012, according to a new tally by State Budget Solutions, which includes bonded indebtedness, unemployment trust fund loans, budget gaps, pension liabilities and other unfunded retirement benefits. That compares to roughly $17 trillion owed by the federal government. But it does not include indebtedness…
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“The Missing Metric”
by James A. Bacon Here is must reading for anyone interested in the fiscal implications of Smart Growth: the August issue of Government Finance Review. In the lead article Peter Katz (profiled here) elaborates his thoughts on fiscal analytics and growth management. He starts with the argument, which I have embraced, that the fiscal impact…
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VRS Portfolio Up 12%
The Virginia Retirement System (VRS) achieved an 11.8% return on its investment portfolio in fiscal year 2013, ending the year with $58.3 billion in assets, the VRS reports. The news is not exactly unexpected. The the stock market reached record highs over the past year, allowing the VRS to generate an 18.6% return on its…