Search results for: “amazon”
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Medicaid Is The Story With State Budget
The General Assembly’s key money committees gathered in their annual end-of-year financial retreats last week to talk about Medicaid. Sure, the state’s multi-billion-dollar budget delves into plenty of other areas that were mentioned, and the Amazon location announcement grabbed headlines, but the meetings were about Medicaid. The explosive and uncontrolled growth of Medicaid is all…
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Just Give It Back and Here’s How
A joke making the rounds Wednesday had Governor Ralph Northam agreeing that Virginians did deserve a return of the windfall tax increase flowing to the state due to conformity, but we’d have to take it as Amazon Prime memberships. Don’t expect laughter if the 2019 General Assembly votes out a massive multi-year incentive package for…
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Decriminalizing Metro Fare Jumping
Wow. Just as a white knight in the form of Amazon, Inc., rides in to help salvage the floundering Washington Metro mass transit system, Washington, D.C., City Council pulls a bone-headed move that could undo everything. Amazon HQ2 will plop down a massive activity center near the Crystal City and Potomac Yard Metro stations, catalyze the development…
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Nailed It (with the Help of $$2.5 Billion in Incentives)!
The suspense is over. Amazon, Inc., has officially announced that it will invest $2.5 billion to establish a new headquarters in Northern Virginia. The facility will be located in the Pentagon City and Crystal City area of Arlington County and the Potomac Yard in the City of Alexandria. In addition to the 22,000 jobs…
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Yes, Virginia High School Grads Did Out-Perform on their SATS
Here we go again. The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) has released SAT college-readiness test scores for Virginia high school graduates. And just as Virginia’s young people clobbered their peers nationally in the ACT college-readiness test scores, so they did in the SATs. As can be seen in the table above, Virginia scores for public…
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Virginia Needs to Up its Game When Talking about “Rural” Development
Despite the creation of 4,500 jobs in the “rural” portions of Virginia since he took office in January, Governor Ralph Northam told the Virginia Rural Summit yesterday that Virginia needs to do more to stimulate employment in rural areas. Sounding familiar themes, Northam stressed STEM education, broadband access, and transportation. Twenty-first century jobs such as cyber-security…
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Taxes, Innovation and Virginia’s Lost Mojo
In 1940 In 1940, technological innovation in the United States was concentrated overwhelmingly in the Great Lakes states, the Northeast, and California. The powerful economic force known as agglomeration — in which geographic proximity boosts the productivity of inventors and researchers — acted to perpetuate those states’ lead. Yet over the following six decades, the…
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Legalized Medical and Recreational Marijuana Use Appear to Hurt Alcohol Sales
High times. In a recent Bacon’s Rebellion column … Will Virginia Legalize Recreational Marijuana Use … I noted that well over 20% of Americans now live in states that have legalized the recreational use of marijuana. In the column I wondered whether our General Assembly’s reluctance to address the question in a meaningful way might…
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Steps Virginia Must Take to Tax Internet Sales
Conformity to recent federal income tax changes is not the only challenge (or opportunity, depending on your point of view) facing the 2019 Virginia General Assembly. It may also be asked to amend Virginia’s sales and use tax rules, so the tax can be demanded from out-of-state sellers. A recent review from the Tax Foundation…
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Micron Incentives Were Behind Layne Warnings
One mystery solved: Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne was probably talking about Micron Technology in Manassas on August 17 when he warned the General Assembly about some very expensive economic development incentive package not yet announced or accounted for in the Commonwealth’s budget. Layne repeated that warning during a discussion of tax policy yesterday with…
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Weak Growth Makes Conformity Revenue Tempting
I called it correctly back in June: Conformity to federal tax reform produces a major boost in state revenue which the state’s leadership on both side of the aisle is strongly tempted to keep because the state remains strapped for cash. The signs of economic stress are all over Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne’s August…
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More HQ2 Madness
Amazon has listed a job posting online for an economic development manager to locate in the Washington metropolitan area, spurring a new round of speculation that the technology giant may locate its second headquarters facility in the region. According to Inside NOVA, job responsibilities include “working directly with state and community economic development, workforce and…
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The Underground Saga Continues: I-66
The saga of expensive underground transmission continues: Now comes the Dominion Energy Virginia 230-KV line along I-66 which is needed for an Amazon facility and the growing data center industry. The State Corporation Commission has signed off and reports in the order a cost of $170 million or more to build it. Every step in…
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Boost Virginia Film Incentives? Bad Idea.
The state of Georgia is throwing $500 million a year down a film-subsidies rat hole. Virginia throws only $14.3 million down its own film-subsidies rat hole. If we want to stay competitive with Georgia, we need to up our game and flush even more cash down our rat hole. Essentially, that is the argument of…
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“Pterodactyl Tim” Kaine Watch: Lying about SCOTUS Nominee
The Age of Innocence. Tim Kaine was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, but grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. All that folksy Midwestern-ness seemed to imbue Kaine with a decency and honesty that people noticed. One imagines a young man so innocent and naive that he would sneak behind the barn and do nothing. Kaine…