Category: Government Transparency
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Virginia’s Ten-Year Pedestrian Death Toll: 865
Smart Growth America’s 2019 “Dangerous By Design” report compiles a Pedestrian Danger Index based on annual pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 people between 2008 and 2017. Among the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, the safest metro in the country for pedestrians is Provo, Utah. The most dangerous is Orlando, Fla. Washington-Arlington ranked 24th safest in the…
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Let’s Keep All the Big Boys Honest
Clean Virginia, the anti-Dominion group dedicated to “fighting monopoly utility corruption,” released a study Monday asserting that Virginians pay excess rates of $254 a year on average due to poor state oversight. That study was duly picked up by the Washington Post, which duly repeated its findings (along with Dominion’s rebuttal). As far as I’m…
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Limits to Transparency in Amazon Deal
The Commonwealth of Virginia has set new standards of transparency in disclosing the details of its agreement with Amazon, Inc., to build a massive new facility in Arlington and Alexandria with some $2.5 billion in public inducements. But there may be limits to that transparency. Benjamin Freed, technology editor of State Scoop, tweeted yesterday that the…
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Specific Updates: Lobbyists, Lottery, Tuition
A few updates, clearing the decks before I disappear next week (I’m not quite as dedicated as Bacon, although I will take the laptop to Duck.) My son who blogs on University of Virginia sports is going to give me some tips. (StLouisHoo or something like that…) Specifics on Who is Not Specific The Virginia…
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Somebody Must Think We’re Stupid
David Poole and his team at VPAP have provided another illustration of how the reporting requirements placed on lobbyists at the state Capitol are intentionally vague and useless. The chart above deals with the reports on lobbyist compensation. This is usually the figure at the heart of the occasional stories about the amount spent by…
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Lobbyist Forms Not Mentioned At Council Meeting
The state’s Conflicts of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council met Tuesday making no mention of my column published in July 21’s Richmond Times-Dispatch, pressing for specific bill numbers, budget item numbers and other details on the state’s lobbyist disclosure forms. I had been told in advance the issue wouldn’t be added to the agenda. In fact…
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“All Matters” Makes Lobbyist Reports Worthless
“With as much specificity as possible.” That is the instruction given to Virginia registered lobbyists about how they should list the various “executive and legislative actions and procurement transactions” they seek to influence on behalf of their principals. The instruction to be as specific as possible is routinely ignored and never enforced. Most of the…
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Public Meetings And Private Texts Don’t Mix
As a registered lobbyist I am prohibited from walking onto or sitting on the floor of either chamber of Virginia’s legislature while in session, and can get no closer than the desk at the front door or the benches in gallery. If I wish to speak to a member during session the custom is to…
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Behavior Has Changed But Within Limits
There are plenty of complaints these days that the legislative process is unduly influenced by money, but when the spotlight shines or a major scandal erupts, behavior can change. For example, Virginia legislators simply do not want to report that they have received gifts or attended lobbyist dinners, on public records which are available to…
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Not a Good Sign: Deadline Missed for Metro Safety Panel
Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., will miss a February deadline for setting up an independent Metro safety oversight group. A realistic time frame for the panel’s launch is another six months, according to Virginia’s Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne. As a result, the Federal Transit Administration has withheld $15.8 million from the two states and the…
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And That’s How You End Up with Donald Trump: Turnstile Jumping Edition
The Metropolitan Washington Area Transit Authority (MWATA) has a big revenue problem. Not only is ridership declining, but it appears that an increasing number of riders aren’t paying their fares. To recapture riders, Metro is asking billions of dollars from member states and localities to patch up everything from rail lines to escalators. And to…
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Woo Hoo! Stewart Promises Billions in Toll-Free Projects
Claiming the populist niche in the contest for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, Corey Stewart has given away a semi-automatic rifle as part of a fund-raising effort, defended monuments of Confederate generals, and bashed Dominion Energy for its coal-ash disposal plans. Now he’s added to his rabble-rousing resume by promising voters to meet Virginia’s transportation needs…
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Virginia Ethics Council’s Searchable Database a Dud
You can imagine my excitement to read this morning in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council has finally put lawmakers’ statements-of-economic-interest filings online. That information could prove invaluable to journalists and bloggers reporting on the inner workings of the General Assembly. The statements detail what gifts lawmakers receive, what companies…
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Fostering the TNC Revolution
It’s always refreshing when Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly play well together. We don’t hear about such instances very often — reporters are drawn to conflict — but I suspect they occur more frequently than we hear about. An illuminating instance is how legislators from the two parties collaborated to create what Sen. Jennifer McClellan,…
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Three Land Use Trends to Watch
Three articles today may help us divine the future of residential and commercial development in Virginia: Rebound of the exurbs? For many years, I was committed to the proposition that metropolitan development had reached a tipping point in which the forces favorable to urban re-development were stronger than the forces driving suburban sprawl. The exurbs —…