Part II of a Two-Part Series In the world of Richmond media, Jim Bacon occupies a unique place. A former publisher of Virginia Business, the Media General publication that chronicles developments in the Commonwealth’s economy, Bacon launched an online magazine called Bacon’s Rebellion in 2002. That publication’s tagline is “The Op-Ed page for Virginia’s New…

The theme of the House of Delegates legislative package for the transportation special session is “transforming the delivery of transportation services in Virginia.” The reforms enumerated in the House Speaker’s press release yesterday would live up to that billing. At the top of the list of 10 proposals is the following: “Integrate performance measures, specifically…

House Speaker William J. Howell has released the House leadership’s 10-point legislative package for the upcoming transportation session. There is some very good stuff in here, though it falls fall short of the systemic reforms that are needed. You can view the press release here. In addition to this package, we can anticipate plans from…

In a news conference yesterday, leaders of 21 Northern Virginia business groups made the case that traffic congestion will undermine the area’s prosperity and harm residents’ quality of life if additional money is not found to build roads. They backed a plan by Delegates Thomas Davis Rust and David B. Albo, both Fairfax County Republicans,…

The state of Maryland has just set aside $18.6 million to upgrade two Baltimore sewage treatment plants that are major polluters of the Chesapeake Bay. The source of funds: a “flush tax” — $2.50 a month added to household sewer bills — that is expected to raise $60 million to $70 million per year. In…

I’m a little late getting to this but don’t take my tardiness as apathy. I’m delighted to pass on the news that Will Vehrs, suspended from his state job for 10 days for participating in a blog caption contest during office hours, has been reimbursed for lost pay. Commonwealth Conservative broke the story here. Vehrs…

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has signed an executive order creating an Office of Telework Promotion and Broadband Assistance within the Office of the Secretary of Technology. The Office will encourage and promote telework activities for public and private employers, and work to advance innovative models that expedite the deployment of “last-mile” broadband technologies throughout the…

Part I of a Two-Part Series Greg Pearson does not particularly care for the Richmond Times-Dispatch or NBC-12. Actually, Pearson is not a big fan of Media General or many of the corporate media conglomerates. The publisher and editor of the Chesterfield Observer, one of two community newsweeklies covering Virginia’s fourth-largest locality, Pearson believes that…

From Alec MacGillis with the Washington Post: WestGroup, the biggest landowner at Tysons Corner, has urged Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) to reconsider his rejection of an underground rail route through Tysons, saying a tunnel should be explored further at the same time as plans for an elevated track proceed. In a letter to Kaine,…

Hampton Roads’ “Third Crossing” is back in play. A majority of Hampton Roads legislators have reached an informal agreement that the bridge-tunnel linking Norfolk and Newports News does need to be built, quelling speculation that the massive project was unaffordable, given the limited funding mechanisms available. (Read the Virginian-Pilot story here.) What remained unresolved was…

A Richmond Times-Dispatch poll shows a strong majority of Virginia favoring the proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Fifty-four percent of the respondents said they will vote for the Nov. 7 measure, while 40 percent were opposed and six percent undecided. The results did not change significantly from a poll in July. I sympathise with…

The Daily Press (School’s religions policy revisited, Sep 12, 2006) reports that York County School Board revisited its 1988 policy “after members of the public complained in March that schools were going too far in distancing themselves from religion, removing references to religious holidays from school activities.” Not quite. I was at the meeting last…

A few weeks back, the Richmond Times-Dispatch was the subject of several unflattering portrayals at the hands of Richmond leading alternative weekly paper, Style Weekly (owned by Media General Competitor Landmark Communications). Sensing blood in the water, opponents of the venerable daily gleefully jumped upon the anti-RTD bandwagon. Though it contained some intriguing insights, especially…

The latest data point regarding the widespread re-evaluation of transportation policy is a column in today’s Virginian-Pilot, whose editorial writers for years had steadfastly defined the traffic congestion crisis as a lack of funding. The Pilot’s pundits have awakened to the critical importance of land use! Blow me away — I wouldn’t have believed it…

I’ll never keep up with BlogNetNews.com and Virginia Political Blogs in tracking political blogs, but I do try to bring new blogs (often “new” only in the sense that I have stumbled across them) to the attention of Bacon’s Rebellion readers. Here are the latest: Vivian J. Paige, a blog maintained by Norfolk resident Vivian…