Category: Infrastructure
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Sprawl’s Hidden Subsidies
The answer to sprawl isn’t more regulation, says Pamela Blais, it’s fixing the endemic biases embedded in taxes, utility fees, municipal services and mortgages.
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An Ex-Coal Baron’s Strange Movie
By Peter Galuszka Almost four years after 29 miners employed by then Richmond-based Massey Energy were killed in a West Virginia mine explosion, its former chief executive under federal investigation for widespread safety violations has come forward with an apparently self-funded “documentary” proclaiming his innocence. Donald Blankenship released the film “Upper Big Branch, Never Again”…
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The Koch’s Bizarre Meddling in Chesterfield
By Peter Galuszka The Koch brothers are back in the bucolic suburban tracts of Chesterfield County. This time, their national group, Americans for Prosperity, has launched a robocall campaign to oppose a proposed real estate tax hike of 4.6 cents to help pay for $304 million renovations to schools or perhaps hire more teachers to…
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Sarles Makes Pitch for Metro Subsidies
by James A. Bacon Last Wednesday Richard Sarles, chief executive officer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), appeared in Richmond to brief the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) on the transit authority’s plans to meet the transportation needs of the fast-growing Washington region, including Northern Virginia, through 2025. Sarles did not provide a specific…
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Mark Warner: Let’s Out-Gas Putin
By Peter Galuszka One way to clip the wings of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his aggressive land grabs, says U.S. Sen. Mark Warner who is running for reelection, is to expedite permitting of the 20 or so proposals to export liquefied natural gas, including one by Richmond-based Dominion Resources. “Most of Europe and Ukraine…
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The Terrible Link Between Income and Longevity
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and EntitlementsBy Peter Galuszka Call it a tale of two Virginias. One is rich with military retirees, ample benefits and gated communities. The other is remote, poor and polluted, where the life expectancy for men is merely 64 years. The former is Fairfax County at the heart of NOVA, Virginia’s economic engine, the land of federal…
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McDonnell’s U.S. 460 Debacle
By Peter Galuszka Towards the end of his term, former Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his transportation chief, Sean Connaughton, bulldozed through a dubious project that would build a superhighway from Suffolk to Petersburg along the path of old U.S. 460 in southeastern Virginia. Few understood the urgency of such a project, which involved a…
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Modern Day Sharecroppers
By Peter Galuszka One book on my to-read list is Christopher Leonard’s “The Meat Racket” which looks at how food production in this country is being absorbed by large, vertically integrated companies that combine indirect federal government support with anti-free market policies to control much of the chicken, pork and beef we eat. The book,…
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The Surreal Tensions With Russia
By Peter Galuszka Back in the 1950s, when I was a little kid living in North Carolina or the Washington area, our family would take a semi-annual trip to visit my father’s relatives in western Massachusetts. My grandparents lived in a nice two-story house with an old-style brick barbecue in the back but that wasn’t…
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Roanoke Experiments with Paid Parking
by James A. Bacon In 1999 the City of Roanoke went socialist with its on-street parking downtown — it removed the last of its parking meters with the idea of making downtown more “hospitable” to visitors. Fifteen years later, city officials are planning to experiment with free markets and actually use price as a rationing…
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The Acid Test for Richmond BRT: Will Property Owners Tax Themselves?
by James A. Bacon Momentum is building in the Richmond region to build a 7.4-mile Bus Rapid Transit system along the Broad Street corridor. Transit lovers tout the many blessings that a BRT system would bring, and they discuss the projected costs, but there are two things you never hear them talk about: Risk and…
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Don’t Expect Increased Real Estate Assessments to Bail out Local Government
There’s bad news for local governments in Virginia that rely upon property tax revenues to support schools, public safety and other priorities. Property values for single-family homes, which account for a large majority of most jurisdictions’ total assessed value, will not increase much over the next few years, according to a new study by the…
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McAuliffe Peruses Tobacco Commission
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in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Economic development, Environment, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Planning, Politics, Public safety & health, Science & TechnologyBy Peter Galuszka What’s going on with the Tobacco Commission? Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants to know and is asking for a detailed accounting of its finances over the past five years. The Tobacco Indemnification and Revitalization Commission, created in 1999 with a $1 billion endowment from lawsuit settlements with four major tobacco companies, has been…
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The Risks of Building Highways on Spec
by James A. Bacon State governments take on major risks when they fund transportation mega-projects to stimulate economic development — not that they ever acknowledge those risks at the time. The U.S. 460 toll road between Petersburg and Suffolk is a classic case study. Last time I checked in, the Commonwealth of Virginia had committed…
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Setting Goals, Measuring Results
In its final section on building better transportation systems in an era of fiscal austerity, “The Innovative DOT” manual tackles the issue of how to improve internal DOT processes. The chapter makes a number of useful points but the one that stands out in a Virginia context is this: “Define acceptable and measurable goals, and…