Search results for: “layne”
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Yes, the General Assembly is Still in Special Session
by Dick Hall-Sizemore It is time to check in on the progress of the endless session of the General Assembly. It is apparent that it was a mistake for the House to meet virtually. If the Delegates had been required to stay in Richmond the whole time, rather than being able to “attend” committee meetings…
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Uh, Oh, Another Bad Year for VRS Investments
by James A. Bacon The Virginia Retirement System earned 1.4% on its $82 billion investment portfolio in fiscal year 2020, far below the long-term average of 6.75% the VRS Board of Trustees assumes that it will earn over the next 30 years, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. VRS investments have returned 5.2% over the past three…
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Pressure Builds on Northam to Crank up Spending
by James A. Bacon In many ways Governor Ralph Northam has governed as a leftist-progressive Democrat bearing little resemblance to the moderate he proclaimed himself to be when he ran for office. He has expanded Medicaid, mandated a 100% carbon-free electric grid within 30 years, and turned over Virginia’s schools to zealots far more dedicated…
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Northam Asks Legislators: Resist Urge to Spend
By Steve Haner Perhaps the most important point about Governor Ralph Northam’s latest Virginia state budget proposal is what he did not recommend. He did not recommend dipping into the state’s current cash reserves to restore spending items which had been frozen. No additional taxes are proposed. In fact, Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne told…
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Conservative Budgeting–Still the Virginia Way
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne is following in the classic conservative tradition established by his predecessors: under project your revenues and then look good when they come in higher than projected. In his case, he gets to bask, not in a bigger surplus than projected, but in a much lower shortfall than…
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Housing Grants Just a COVID Relief Rounding Error
By Steve Haner Will $50 million be enough? Will that get all the Virginians who have fallen behind due to COVID-19 square on their rent or mortgage payments? Or is that amount, in a relief program now fleshed out by the Northam Administration, merely a start? There is a hint on the program’s web page,…
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The Revenue Picture is Bad, But Not as Bad as Expected
By Dick Hall-Sizemore The state’s May revenue report has been released today. As one would have expected, the May 2020 general fund (GF) revenues were down significantly from May 2019 and the year-to-date GF revenues are running behind the annual forecast. However, on the somewhat bright side, the administration is now saying that it expects…
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Racism, COVID19 and Marijuana Legalization in Virginia
By DJ Rippert Unintended consequences. Newspapers, websites and Bacon’s Rebellion have been full of articles describing and debating the COVID-19 pandemic and the police killing of George Floyd with the attendant protests. First-order consequences of these events have been widely discussed. However, as we enter into the “new normal” a number of secondary and tertiary…
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Who Will Pay for Increased Nursing Home Testing?
by James A. Bacon The The Virginia Mercury has published a well-reported article today about the challenges of addressing the spread of COVID-19 in Virginia nursing homes, which account for 57% of all COVID deaths in the state. The Virginia Department of Health is gearing up for a massive expansion of testing at the nursing…
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“People Have Stopped Buying Automobiles”
By Dick Hall-Sizemore That is how Aubrey Layne, Secretary of Finance, summed up his explanation to the House Appropriations Committee of April’s 15% drop in transportation revenue All of the major components of the transportation revenue were down in April, but the biggest danger sign was in the motor vehicle sales and use tax. That…
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Juggling the Revenue
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Jim Bacon mentioned in an earlier post that the state’s revenues for April were $700 million less than in April of last year. I was surprised that there were no cries of outrage from readers and dire warnings of the state running a budget deficit. I was also surprised that I did…
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Who Sets the Protocols for COVID-19 Testing and Tracing – the State or Localities?
by James A. Bacon The Northam administration plans to dispatch $650 million of federal helicopter dollars directly to cities and counties to help cover the cost of responding to the COVID-19 epidemic. The state’s priorities for monies received under the federal CARES Act are expanding testing and hiring public health staff to conduct contact tracing,…
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Stop Gap Budget Amendments
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Not surprisingly, the Governor did not try to re-write the budget in the reconvened session. There is just not enough information available now regarding the extent to which state revenues will be affected by the economic downturn brought on by the novel coronavirus. Using the process set out in the Appropriation Act…
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Virginia’s Let-the-Good-Times-Roll Budget
by Kerry Dougherty We’re in a hell of a mess here in Virginia, folks. Oh, other states are in trouble too. But how many of them saw their state legislatures go on a wild spending spree less than a month ago, even while the coronavirus was spreading across the globe? How many of them have…
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Buying Time to Fix the Budget Hole
by Dick Hall-Sizemore To deal with the virus-created budget crisis in the short term, the Northam administration has announced sort of a “time out.” According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the plan will consist of two primary components: freezing all new spending and diverting planned deposits in the cash reserve to pay for essential services in…