Category: Infrastructure
-
Why Not a Toll for Tysons?
by James A. Bacon Earlier this week the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors backed off from a proposal to set up a special tax district that would help pay for some $3 billion in public improvements in Tysons. News reports suggest that the reprieve may be only temporary. The board has not backtracked from its…
-
Rise of the Machines?
By Peter Galuszka Economic regions go through natural iterations of what makes money and creates jobs. But that “what” can be transitional if not ephemeral. Consider industries for Dutch tulips or New England ice. Ditto Virginia. It’s been through tobacco, apples, battleships, retailing, furniture, textiles and moonshine. A couple of decades ago, with proponents of…
-
Is It Time to Get Rid of the MWAA?
By Peter Galuszka Many years ago, I started my first journalism job at a daily newspaper in a small town in North Carolina. It was a pleasant, sleepy place where the dominant clans were the Alligoods and the Woolards. If they married, they were known as “Wooligoods.” When you looked at the lists of employees…
-
Is Offshore Wind Finally Twirling in Virginia?
By Peter Galuszka After years of hemming and hawing about offshore oil drilling, Virginia finally seems on track to develop wind energy off its coast. The U.S. Interior Department announced Nov. 30 that next year it would lease rights to 112,800 acres of ocean bed a little more than 23 miles off the southern part…
-
Has Road Privatization Gone Frankenstein?
By Peter Galuszka Since 1995, Virginia’s politicians have had a ready tool that they love to use as a ruse to build roads without raising taxes: the Public Privatization Transportation Act. Once considered a nation-beater and major step in the craze of putting private management methods and money in pubic transport projects, the PPTA was…
-
Making the Public-Health Case for Bicycles
Last month Bacon’s Rebellion hosted an “idea jam” on the topic of bicycles and public health. Our goal was to build a case for making the Richmond region more bicycle-friendly in terms that fiscally conservative political, business and civic leaders would find compelling. We decided to focus on two topics: public health and economic development.…
-
Uh, Oh, CTB Representatives Acting Feisty
by James A. Bacon It was a routine matter that came before the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) this morning: The Department of Rail and Public Transportation (DRPT) was asking the CTB to approve allocations from the state’s industrial rail access fund. The sums of money were small and the projects were uncontroversial — $450,000 to…
-
Will Virginia Participate in the “Open Urbanism” Revolution?
by James A. Bacon A global revolution in the design and management of cities is gaining momentum. The rapid evolution of sensors, analytics and automation technologies is creating once-in-a-generation opportunities to drive down the cost of infrastructure and public services at the very moment that state and local governments face the worse fiscal stress since…
-
Regulating Uranium Mining Would Be Huge Task
—
by
in Business and Economy, Consumer Protection, Courts and law, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Economic development, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Government workers and pensions, Health Care, Infrastructure, Land use & Development, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & healthBy Peter Galuszka Virginia appears to be reaching a critical mass regarding uranium mining and milling in Pittsylvania County. Today, the Uranium Working Group issued its report outlining what steps would be needed if Virginia were to lift its 30-year-old moratorium on uranium mining. Meanwhile, the powerful Virginia Farm Bureau joined a group of mining…
-
Va. Offshore Oil Back on the Front Burner
By Peter Galuszka Pressure is building to open up Atlantic seafloor off of Virginia for oil exploration. This time, according to a New York Times article, both of Virginia’s Democratic Senators are on board with Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and the state’s mostly GOP Congressional contingent to open up tracts off the coast for…
-
It’s Not Your Grandfather’s White Suburb Anymore
—
by
in Business and Economy, Demographics, Economic development, Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Government Finance, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Labor and Workforce, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Race and Race Relations, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Social Services and Entitlements, Transportation, Water-waste waterBy Peter Galuszka Virginia’s slow and steady color change from red to blue was underscored again in the Nov. 6 election with Barack Obama once again winning the Old Dominion. As Republicans lick their wounds, they may consider just how reliable GOP bastions of the state are changing and how that very neatly tracks trends…
-
Coal Firm Swears off Mountaintop Removal
By Peter Galuszka In what may become a widespread trend, a major American coal firm, Patriot Coal, has agreed in a court case to ween itself from mountaintop removal mining practices in the Central Appalachian region of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Bankrupt Patriot agreed to shut down a huge drag line at its…
-
More Business-As-Usual Proposals to Raise Your Taxes
James A. Bacon It looks like the 2013 session of the General Assembly will be consumed by one or more proposals to jack up taxes to pay for more transportation spending. Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, has advanced a complex package to raise an estimated $734 million for transportation, which he will unveil publicly at a…
-
Richmond’s Redskins Deal Gets Even Weirder
By Peter Galuszka The deal for the Washington Redskins to build a summer training facility gets richer, more one-sided and more questionable by the day. The latest wrinkle, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, is that the City of Richmond will use money from its school and jail budgets to pony up a $10 million…
-
Is Now the Time for a Carbon Tax?
By Peter Galuszka With the 2012 election decided, there seems to be some movement towards considering establishing a carbon tax to cut greenhouse gases and mitigate climate change. Despite the Kyoto Protocols of 1997, which the U.S. did not sign, and a slew of renewable energy projects in places such as Europe, there has been…