Category: Infrastructure
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The Case Against the Meals Tax
by James A. Bacon Even to those who know him and love him, Sidney Gunst is a wild man. Friends never know what cause he will embrace next and pursue with his trademark (as in, monomaniacal) enthusiasm. Luckily for the taxpayers of Henrico County, he has embarked upon a crusade to block a proposal to…
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Everything’s Big in Texas, Including Spending and Borrowing
Texas has been stomping every other state, including Virginia, when it comes to job creation. Some of that’s due to the oil-and-gas boom, some to a favorable tax and regulatory structure. And some, no doubt, can be attributed to the splurge in state and local borrowing and spending. Writes Steven Malanga for City Journal: While…
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The Buried Treasure under our Noses
by James A. Bacon It is a truism that roads, highways, rail and other transportation assets are key determinants of real estate value. Less widely recognized is the fact that proximity to the “information superhighway” also affects real estate value. In 2010, Google spent $1.9 billion to buy a 2.9-million square foot building adjacent to…
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Dead End Thinking in the Richmond Region
by James A. Bacon Sometimes, I despair for the transportation future of the Richmond region. If there is a problem, the first instinct of our civic leaders is to raise taxes to subsidize initiatives of unknown economic viability. The latest case in point is a set of recommendations issued by a work panel to the…
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Has Washington Reached Escape Velocity?
by James A. Bacon It was long the conventional wisdom — which I shared, by the way — that the Washington regional economy was cruising for a bruising when the federal government encountered its inevitable reckoning with fiscal reality. Well, sequestration, a sort of semi-reckoning, has kicked in, and the Washington economy appears to be…
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Holy Pig Slop! Chinese to Buy Smithfield
By Peter Galuszka For eons, the name “Smithfield” has conjured up rich, salty Virginia ham slices that fit right on Christmas rolls or in crab dishes and with eggs for breakfast. The company that has produced such food for 80 or so years is based (of course) in Smithfield, a quaint Tidewater town the Pagan…
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How Good Is Chmura’s Economics Data?
By Peter Galuszka In the 40 months since Robert F. McDonnell has been in office, the launch of many of the governor’s policy initiatives seems to be accompanied by a press release touting the supportive findings of a small, Richmond-based research firm named Chmura Economics & Analytics. When McDonnell was pushing his transportation plan to…
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McAuliffe’s Offshore Drilling Flip-Flop
By Peter Galuszka Terry McAuliffe’s flip-flop on opposing offshore oil drilling in Virginia is unsettling given that the last time the Democrat ran for governor in 2009, he seemed skeptical of drilling for oil although he thought searching for natural gas might be beneficial. He apparently changed his position because he’s been with fresh legislation…
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The Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth
by James A. Bacon Compared to conventional suburban development, smart growth development can save 38% in up-front infrastructure costs and 10% of the cost of supporting police, ambulance, fire and other public services, according to a new report by Smart Growth America (SGA). At the same time, concludes “Building Better Budgets,” smart growth generates 10…
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The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team
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in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is. He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in…
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Role Reversal: Poverty Increasingly a Suburban Phenomenon
by James A. Bacon Mirroring national trends, poverty in Richmond region suburbs has grown far more rapidly since 2000 in suburban counties than in the City of Richmond, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reporting numbers published in a new book, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.” Writes the T-D’s Graham Moomaw: “From 2000 to 2011, the…
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Time to Get Real about Quality of Richmond’s Bicycle Infrastructure
The Richmond region has a long way to go before it can truly be considered a bicycle-friendly town. The entire region has only 18.25 miles of paved bike lanes — “sharrow” lanes marked with bicycle icons don’t count — and those lanes are fragmented, unconnected to a broader network. In 2015, hundreds of thousands of…
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Virginia: Pretty Darned Enterprising
by James A. Bacon For those who haven’t yet succumbed to state-ranking overload, here’s one more, this from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Its fourth annual Enterprising States report ranks states for the degree to which they are “best positioned to grow, create jobs and prosper in the coming five to ten years.” The Chamber…
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Congestion Tolls Coming to Hampton Roads?
by James A. Bacon Hampton Roads transportation planning officials are giving serious thought to putting tolls on the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel and the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel as a tool to reduce congestion during periods of peak demand. Under the conceptual plan presented Wednesday to the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB), the toll would be set…
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McAuliffe: Can a Schmoozer Transform?
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in Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, LGBQT, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, Taxes, TransportationBy Peter Galuszka On Easter Sunday, I was driving in a cold rain to Charlottesville for a family event. My cell phone started beeping with messages from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe. He said he was on his way to his own family brunch but wanted to tap me for $5. I got similar messages…