Category: Government Finance
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Could U.Va. Lose Its Accreditation?
By Peter Galuszka Talk about your existential crisis. The University of Virginia is under fire from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission to show cause why it should not face sanctions or even lose its accreditation because of the inane attempted firing of President Teresa Sullivan this summer. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch,…
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Va. Defense Spending: Hypocrisy As Usual
By Peter Galuszka You have to love Virginia politicians. One minute they are bashing the federal government and spending. The next, they’re screaming about cutbacks in defense spending. Talk about wanting it both ways. One of the most profound contradictions is the perpetual clash between the idea of skinflint budgets with that of keeping the…
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Revisiting Transportation’s Black Hole
by James A. Bacon Earlier this week, I published data compiled by the Richmond Regional Metropolitan Planning Organization illuminating the vast disparities in regional transportation funding — not just in absolute dollars, but on a dollars-per capita basis. In FY 2012 and FY 2013, Northern Virginia got the lion’s share of state transportation spending, putting…
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The Problem Privatizing Virginia Ports Won’t Solve
By Peter Galuszka Many years ago – 37 years to be precise – I stood in the fancy dining room of a blocky-looking Japanese cargo ship and drank a toast to the captain with his Suntory scotch. The ship was docked at Portsmouth Marine Terminals, part of the Virginia Port Authority, and it was an…
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Virginia Ports “Financially Unsustainable”
If you wonder why the McDonnell administration official are giving serious consideration selling the Virginia Port Authority to private interests, there may be more to their thinking than a fetish for privatization. As Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton the Virginia House Appropriations Committee yesterday, port operations are “financially unsustainable” under its current setup. The commonwealth is…
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Re-Thinking the Black Hole of Richmond
by James A. Bacon Is your region of the state getting its fair share of transportation dollars? Lots of people would respond with a resounding, “No!” If they were all right, it would mean that there are no winners in the transportation sweepstakes, only losers, and that the Virginia transportation budget is the biggest black…
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A Rising Tide Raises… Questions. Lots of Questions.
A new William & Mary Law School clinic will address prickly legal and policy questions arising from endemic flooding in Virginia’s vulnerable Tidewater lowlands. by James A. Bacon No one knows how fast the sea level off Virginia’s coast will rise by the end of the century. It could be more than a foot, if…
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How Fiscally Conservative Is McDonnell, Really?
Does Governor Bob McDonnell deserve his reputation as a fiscal conservative? The libertarian-leaning Cato Institute is dubious. McDonnell “hasn’t taken any major actions to shrink the Virginia government,” writes Chris Edwards, author of “Fiscal Report Card on America’s Governors 2012.” Indeed McDonnell and Virginia rated a “C” for fiscal policy, as measured by seven indicators…
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What Massey Energy? What Mine Disaster?
By Peter Galuszka A follow up on the “Governor’s Conference on Energy” in Richmond this week. Yesterday, I attended a session titled “Coal: Rhetoric Versus Reality.” As expected, the “rhetoric” was that of environmentalists and the “reality” was what was presented by two coal company executives and a lobbyist from the American Coalition for Clean…
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Boomergeddon Watch: The Ring of Fire
Bill Gross, the head of PIMCO, the world’s largest bond manager, has published a jeremiad that makes my “Boomergeddon” thesis look Pollyanna-ish by comparison. To avoid an economic meltdown, says the money mogul, the United States needs to close its fiscal gap by $1.6 trillion, equivalent to 11% of the GDP. In my book, I…
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More On Coal and Utility Money Ties to Va. Politicians
By Peter Galuszka This isn’t exactly breaking news, but coal companies and utilities pay to be a dominant force in Virginia politics, a trio of environmental groups charges as The Governor’s Conference on Energy opens in Richmond today. The three groups – Appalachian Voices, Sierra Club Virginia and Chesapeake Climate Action Network – note that…
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Taxpayers against the Bypass
In a new report, “Sliding Past Sequestration,” Taxpayers for Common Sense have outlined a program to cut $2 trillion in federal spending over the next 10 years without touching entitlements. Among the many ideas are proposals to delete low Return on Investment transportation projects. Along with the likes of the Upper Mississippi River Navigation Locks…
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Out of Money, Out of Ideas
by James A. Bacon I have come to a reluctant conclusion: Virginia’s business leaders are intellectually bankrupt when it comes to solving the most pressing public policy issues facing Virginia. They have nothing to contribute beyond the same tired nostrums that have proven unworkable for a decade or more. Nowhere is this lassitude of mind…
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Scary Stuff Out of New Kent’s Tea Party
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (K-12), Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka If you read some bloggers on this site, you come away with the idea that conservatives are one, big happy tent where everyone is welcome. They are the new inclusivity; open to “ethnics” such as Hispanics, African-Americans, Indian-Americans and others. As they become educated, earn more money and move up the food…
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Did McDonnell Help Quash Pittsylvania Uranium Mining Resolution?
By Peter Galuszka For months, Pittsylvania County has been a hotbed of controversy as Virginia Uranium tries to get a decades-old moratorium on uranium mining lifted so it can mine and refine a rich, 119-million pound deposit of the radioactive material near Chatham. The latest intrigue involves a Board of Supervisors meeting in early September…