Category: Government Finance
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Major Actions to Reduce Corporate Overhead Offer Lessons and Opportunities to Virginia Government
by James C. Sherlock The chart above shows that management and administrative overhead growth has been a trend not limited to government. The difference is that corporations are making quick and decisive strides in reversing the trend. It is axiomatic that government should minimize overhead to maximize efficiency in delivery of services. And to lower…
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As U.S. Teeters On the Brink of Recession, Virginia Beach Hikes Taxes
by Kerry Dougherty Do you mind if I’m brutally honest for a minute? Good. Because there’s no stopping me today. Any member of the Virginia Beach City Council majority who voted Tuesday to approve an obscene $2.5 billion budget as the country teeters on the edge of a recession is a liar if they try…
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Is Stingy State Funding to Blame for UVa Tuition Increases?
by James A. Bacon In explaining the cause of rising tuition & fees at the University of Virginia, we described last week how the driving force over the past 20 years has been a relentless increase in spending. Expenditures in the academic division of the University of Virginia, fueled by an expansion in salaries, increased…
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RVA 5×5: Behind in the Count
by Jon Baliles Baseball season is in full swing and I have already been to three games to celebrate spring, sport, and sun. And because this is Richmond, I sometimes wonder how much longer I will be able to repeat this ritual in Aprils in the future. This week, the city announced it had reached…
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Tuition Showdown May Be Approaching
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Virginia colleges and universities are saying that they will have to raise tuition for the next school year unless the General Assembly gives them more money. This is going to be fascinating to watch. Governor Youngkin has been able to get appointments to the boards of visitors, but not yet enough to…
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Sens. Warner, Kaine Visit Roanoke To Tout New Bridge But City Council In The Dark About Scope of Project
by Scott Dreyer On a picture-perfect April 12 with a backdrop of the sparkling Roanoke River and dogwoods and redbuds in bloom, Virginia’s Senator Mark Warner (D) and Senator Tim Kaine (D) visited the Roanoke Greenway at Roanoke City’s Smith Park. The occasion was for the two senators to present a cardboard poster representing a…
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Dionysian Rites at a Spotsylvania County School Board Meeting
by James C. Sherlock The FY 2023 budget for Spotsylvania County was $341,355,792. In increasing the 2022 budget, the Supervisors transferred an additional $5.8 million to schools to “Address the Commitment to Educational Opportunities.” That brought the total transfer to schools to $138,081,416 including that $5.8 million (4.4%) increase. It was pointed out offhandedly in…
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Langley Looks to the Moon
by Robin Beres While mainstream media may be transfixed by the gutter politics going on in New York, exciting, uplifting events are happening in other parts of the nation — including in our very own little city of Hampton. Located on Hampton’s Langley Air Force Base just off the Chesapeake Bay, the Langley Research Center…
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Virginia Municipal Bond Issuers Face Higher Costs for Borrowing
by James C. Sherlock People learn — and relearn- – things over time about investing. One of the things they have learned over the past three years about investing in municipal bonds, as with all bonds, is that, having experienced the effects of inflation risk for the first time in decades, they will want a…
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Crime in Virginia — the Statistics of Race and their Causes
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in Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Corruption and Scandals, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Democracy and Western Civilization, Demographics, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Governance, Government Finance, Health Care, Housing, Land use & Development, Mental illness and substance abuse, Politics, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversightby James C. Sherlock Crime, especially violent crime, is a constant topic in private conversations and in public politics, and thus here on Bacon’s Rebellion. Comments on BR crime-related articles turn quickly to race, often without basis in fact. I will offer below the actual crime statistics by race from 2021, the latest available year,…
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RVA 5×5: RVA = DIY
by Jon Baliles Jack Jacobs at Richmond Biz Sense has an update about the ongoing fallout from the collapse of the Enrichmond Foundation last summer. All of the small organizations that used Enrichmond as a fiduciary lost access to their money (which may be gone for good; stay tuned) and other things like insurance coverage.…
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Public Hearing, Private Decision
by Joe Fitzgerald The Bluestone Town Center (BTC), according to council members who voted 3-2 to approve it, was decided in secret meetings between those council members and the applicants. At Tuesday’s open meeting in which they voted to approve BTC, those council members rather shamelessly admitted to those sessions. City staff and the city…
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Richmond’s Skinny Budget: Low Stakes Poker, High Stakes Rhetoric
by Shaun Kenney Virginia’s General Assembly managed to pass the Richmond equivalent of a continuing resolution to fund the government until Senate Democrats and House Republicans can hammer out a compromise on corporate tax breaks. One will have to pardon me for not getting terribly wound up about tax breaks for corporations while small businesses…
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General Assembly: Status of Selected Issues
by Dick Hall-Sizemore The General Assembly is scheduled to adjourn on Saturday, February 25. Time to check on the status of some issues that have been discussed on this blog. Budget bill. The budget bill contains not only the usual appropriations, but also all those tax cuts proposed by the Governor. There is activity behind…
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Latest Debt and Deficit Projections Warrant a Full-Scale Freakout
by James A. Bacon The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicate that, given continuation of current levels of taxation and programmatic spending, the U.S. budget deficit will be running at $2.3 trillion a year by 2033, driven in large part by a $1 trillion-a-year increase in interest payments on the national debt…