Category: Government Finance
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ALEC, the Tea Party and the Feral GOP
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in Business and Economy, Children and Families, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Gun rights, Immigration, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Virginia’s conservatives have gone through a spasm of controversy as they struggle to find their message. They desperately need to balance their ideas of fiscal discipline and limited government with a wide spectrum of unrelated hard-right social issues. The clearest evidence yet of the quandary for their soul involves the American Legislative…
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Rail-to-Dulles Controversy Goes Statewide
The debate over Rail-to-Dulles has taken a fascinating new twist. For years the controversy over the heavy rail project and its concomitant financing through Dulles Toll Road revenues has been a purely Northern Virginia issue. It received zero coverage in the Rest of Virginia (RoVa). Ninety-nine percent of downstate residents were ignorant of it, and…
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Skirting the Maelstrom
by James A. Bacon It’s Business As Usual in Virginia as the political class grapples over budget issues seemingly oblivious to what’s happening in other parts of the world. Politicians of varied political stripes seem to think it’s a perfectly good idea to borrow another $300 million, over and above $150 million already set aside,…
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Corey Stewart’s Racist Baggage
By Peter Galuszka Corey A. Stewart, the scourge of “illegal” immigrants and standard-holder of good old fashioned American values, is now running for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket in 2013. News reports of his recent announcement were predictably bland – comments in the right-wing blogosphere even more so – despite the fact that Stewart…
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Dulles Rail: “Good Night, John Boy”
By Peter Galuszka The convoluted schemes of Virginia state politicians to avoid paying for rail service to Dulles International Airport are as frustrating as they are self-defeating and unfair. Just a few days ago, it seemed that the General Assembly would consider adding $300 million to extend Metrorail to Dulles on the Silver Line when…
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Rail-to-Dulles and the Debt Dilemma
by James A. Bacon General Assembly Democrats fought McDonnell administration proposals in the 2012 session to divert funds from the General Fund to transportation programs on the grounds that the transfer would short-change education, health care and other core programs. They don’t appear to be applying the same principle, however, to the issuance of state debt. A…
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The Latest Twist in Rail-to-Dulles Politics
Sen. Charles J. Colgan, D-Manassas, signed off Friday on a state budget compromise that omits $300 million for the Rail-to-Dulles project, reports the Washington Post. Colgan said that his agreement in Senate-House budget conferee deliberations does not commit him to actually voting for the compromise budget when the Senate must ratify it. But his decision…
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Down the Transportation Rabbit Hole
by James A. Bacon Senate and House of Delegates conferees have nearly nailed down a compromise over the state budget. The main obstacle: some $700 million in additional debt to offset the costs of tolls in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Jim Noland with the Times-Dispatch has the story. The absence of funding to pay…
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Expanding U.S. 460 and the Chinese Connection
By Peter Galuszka In the past day or so, there’s been a bit of buzz about a decades-old plan to expand the northwest to southeast route U.S. 460 takes through Virginia’s peanut country on its way to Tidewater. This latest bit of boosterism posits that giant ships inbound to Virginia via the widened Panama Canal…
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Five Ways Virginia Sucks
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in Blogs and Blog Administration, Children and Families, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Government Finance, Gun rights, LGBQT, Money in politics, Science & Technology, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka An alternative blogger is listing five ways Virginia may be the worst state in the union, a.k.a. “Bob Land.” Tara Lohan of AlterNet notes that generally, watching the news these days is like going through a time warp when it comes to debates about birth control or teaching science in the classroom.…
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What Baconauts Won’t Discuss
By Peter Galuszka Reading the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog always displays breathtaking contradictions. Chief among them is the huge contradiction between pushing “smart growth” and shunning any form of increasing gasoline taxation. The crux is that we have lots of horrendous sprawl in the state such as all of Northern Virginia, Route 3 in Fredericksburg and…
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Pencil Whipping Mass Transit
In my previous post, I objected to the Virginia state Senate voting to pump an additional $300 million into the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project without demanding more accountability from the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA), the entity in charge of overseeing design and construction. Now, let’s stop to think what happens when construction is complete and the…
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Kissing the Pig — Wrapped up in a Bow
by James A. Bacon When push comes to shove, are Virginia’s Republicans fiscal conservatives first or culture warriors first? We found out yesterday when the Senate Republicans and Democrats reached agreement to pass a state budget. Republicans succeeded in batting down a $3 million Democrat-inspired provision for the state to pay for ultrasounds required of…
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Kissing the Pig
by James A. Bacon The good news for Virginians from late last week is that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee broke their deadlock over the state budget. The bad news is… Senate Republicans and Democrats broke their deadlock. The only way to paper over the divide between the two parties, of course,…
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Collapse of the Blue State Governance Model: New York Update
Yeah, Virginia legislators do a lot of stupid stuff, I can’t deny that. Without question, the commonwealth’s governance model is critically flawed. But, to tweak Winston Churchill’s immortal words about democracy, Virginia’s government is the worst in the world — except most of the others. The situation is worse in New York — a lot…