Category: Regulations, Gov’t Oversight
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Does Virginia Want to Be a Wireless Friendly State?
States and regions that want to stay in the vanguard of economic growth need to expand their broadband infrastructure. Mobile data traffic will increase 13-fold between 2012 and 2017 by some estimates. To accommodate that growth, the wireless industry will have to build new cell towers, distributed antenna systems (DAS) and other infrastructure. However, permitting and regulation…
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Waiting for Uber
by James A. Bacon The Richmond metropolitan area has a modest but growing taxi fleet. The Henrico County Police Division, which manages the bulk of taxi regulation in the region, issued 834 tax permits last year. Unlike some cities, which restrict the issuance of taxi permits — in New York City, taxi medallions can cost upwards…
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McAuliffe Hits Private IT Outsourcing
By Peter Galuszka Just a decade ago, privatizing and out-sourcing traditionally government work was all the rage. Virginia’s Democrats and Republicans alike saw a philosophical advantage in fending off Information Technology, road maintenance and other work to for-profit, private companies who supposedly – if you believed the hype then –could always do things better, faster…
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The Great U.S. 460 Swamp
VDOT had loads of warning that wetlands could kill the U.S. 460 project but the state charged ahead with a design-build contract that everyone knew could explode.
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Some Answers, More Questions about the 460 Fiasco
by James A. Bacon If you’re new to the U.S. 460 Connector controversy and need a primer to bring you up to speed, I’d recommend you read the new Virginia Business cover story written by Paula Squires. She provides an digestible overview of a complex story and advances public understanding with some fresh reporting. In particular,…
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Public-Private Partnerships and the Allocation of Risk
by James A. Bacon It’s easy to whack Virginia’s public-private partnership law for failing to meet expectations for transparency and public involvement. (I have done so repeatedly.) There are important issues that the legislature needs to deal with, as the controversy over the U.S. 460 Connector has made abundantly clear. But there are virtues to public-private partnerships…
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Finally, Some Sense on Climate Change
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in Consumer Protection, Demographics, Disasters and Disaster Preparedness, Energy, Environment, Federal issues, Health Care, Infrastructure, Insurance, Land use & Development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Property rights, Public safety & health, Regulations, Gov’t Oversight, Science & Technology, Social Services and Entitlements, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Pulling the state’s head out of the sand, Gov. Terry McAuliffe has reversed his predecessor’s policy on addressing climate change. He has reestablished a 35-member panel to see what the state can do to deal with what many scientists believe is an impending crisis. McAuliffe revived the panel first created by Democratic…
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Virginia Is Right to Stand up to Uber and Lyft
By Robbie Werth The proliferation of so-called “ridesharing” companies has spread to over 130 cities across the world. In each city, the story is the same. Uber and Lyft force themselves on cities by doing two things: ignoring existing transportation laws and instilling fear among government and elected officials. The fear that these companies attempt…
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The First to Join the Luddite Parade
by James A. Bacon Upstart transportation companies Uber and Lyft, which link drivers and passengers by means of a smart phone, have run into resistance from taxicab companies and municipal regulators around the country. But Virginia is the first state to crack down on the two companies, contends Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general, in a Sunday…
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Two UMW Daughters of the ’60s
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in Business and Economy, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Economic development, Education (higher ed), Environment, Federal issues, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, 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, UncategorizedBy Peter Galuszka Just a few days ago, Elena Siddall, a Mathews County Republican activist and Tea Party Patriot, posted her account on the Rebellion of being a social worker in New York in the 1960s and the wrong-headedness of Saul Alinsky, a leftist organizer who had had a lot of influence back in the…
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Virginia Transportation in the Slow Lane
by James A. Bacon Alvin and Heidi Toffler once wrote about the mismatch in speeds at which private corporations and governments evolve in response to social, economic and technological change. Nowhere is that differential more obvious than the automobile sector. The automobile industry is a Ferrari blazing down the Interstate at 120 miles per hour while government is…
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McAuliffe: Time for Some Real Ethics Reform
Peter Galuszka One can hardly blame Gov. Terry McAuliffe for ditching the General Assembly’s absurdly weak ethics panel along with deep-sixing the line items in the budget that restrict him from expanding Medicaid. Obviously, the nice-guy, bipartisan approach he had advocated simply isn’t possible with the likes of Tommy Norment and Bill Howell in the…
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Menu Items on the Free Lunch Smorgasbord
Last week I published “Lean Urbanism and the Bureaucratic State,” a post that described a New Urbanist project to rectify the baleful effects of excess regulation upon urban re-development efforts. Questions arose in the comments regarding this initiative. What were these terrible regulations? Were the New Urbanists exaggerating the costs they imposed? Reader Richard N.…
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Must Read of the Day: Complex Cities
As former Bacon’s Rebellion contributor EM Risse likes to say, urban planning isn’t rocket science — it’s a lot more complex. Ed’s quip came to mind when reading the latest post by Charles Marohn on the Strong Towns blog. The thrust of Chuck’s post is that local government leaders act as if towns, cities and counties…
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Heroin: New Scourge of Suburbs
By Peter Galuszka Heroin always seemed to be the drug of fast-living artists or the inner city poor. Not any more, thanks to a shortage of prescription drugs such as oxycodone. Not only is heroin making a comeback in its tradition haunts, it is moving into the affluent suburbs. That was the case on May…