Tag: Stephen D. Haner
-
Bacon Bits: Restored Licenses; Dominion’s Millstone Plant; RGGI
Wait. How many suspended licenses? Today’s Virginia Mercury has one of those stories that raises more questions than it answers, this one about the suspended driving license issue. My warning that there would be massive lines at DMV were groundless because, hey, these people still have their actual licenses. DMV never got them back or…
-
Dominion Projects Tied To Facebook Approved
Ratepayers of Dominion Energy Virginia will start in June to pay for construction and operation of two solar energy facilities in Surry County intended to meet Facebook’s renewable energy goals. The State Corporation Commission decided one issue created by the case in favor of consumers but punted on another that pit one group of customers…
-
Is Winter Coming For Virginia Pipeline Projects?
The building season is here, but for developers of Virginia’s two hotly-contested natural gas pipelines, activity is back in the government agencies and courthouses. The construction sites remain largely silent, delays running up the ultimate cost of the projects, including the cost of failure. Here is my (probably flawed) attempt at a status report. And…
-
Medicaid: Report The Taxes Along With The Growth
Virginia makes is easy to track the growth of Medicaid enrollment since the decision a year ago to expand coverage but tracking the tax dollars behind the scenes is another matter. The new enrollment expansion dashboard on the Department of Medical Assistance Services website is updated every couple of weeks, with the April 4 report…
-
Bacon Bits: I-81 Taxes, VCCS Shrinkage, Solar
The Numbers on Interstate 81: Tax First, Explain Later When you approve a major tax increase with amendments proposed just a few days before the General Assembly’s reconvened session, as happened last week, discussion is limited and there is almost no hard data on the financial impact available to the public. You tax first and…
-
Tuition Monster Tamed? Don’t Relax Just Yet.
It is premature to declare victory in the effort to restore sanity to tuition decisions at Virginia’s state colleges, but several factors seem to be coming together to give students and their families a break for the coming school term. Repeat: For the coming school term.
-
2019 Assembly Had No Bark, Bite On Ethics
It is always important to listen for the dogs that don’t bark, and the 2019 General Assembly showed neither bark nor bite on issues of money, politics and ethics. Everything in Virginia is just fine with the legislators themselves, apparently. So fine that the only significant bill involving the Virginia Conflict of Interests and Ethics…
-
Another Double Dip? That’s One Issue With Dominion’s Proposed Market-Based Rate
Dominion Energy Virginia’s proposed market-based pricing structure for large industrial customers has been criticized as a way for the utility to double collect, harking back to a key issue during the 2018 legislative push for its Grid Transformation and Security Act.
-
How Government Creates Poverty: Fines and Fees
Government is much better at creating poverty than at curing it. Yesterday the General Assembly voted to end the practice of suspending driving licenses for non-payment of fines or restitution or both and ordered Department of Motor Vehicles to restore driving privileges for hundreds of thousands of Virginians. If you need to do business at…
-
DEQ Pushes Back on RGGI Costs; Meeting Set
Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board will meet April 19 to consider the next regulatory step to limit CO2 emissions from Virginia electricity plants through membership in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The agenda packet for the meeting, on-line here, contains more than 330 pages on the complicated issue, probably the best point counterpoint discussion on…
-
Enough. This Partisan Bias Is Just Too Obvious.
Look, we conservatives understand that as far as the media is concerned, we are second-class citizens. But for giggles let’s just demonstrate the most recent case. When I write about the new hemp bill on Bacon’s Rebellion last month, it gets good readership for Bacon’s Rebellion but of course there is no reference to it…
-
Retailers Still Push To Escape Dominion Monopoly
The large retail establishments seeking to aggregate their electricity demand and take their business away from Dominion Energy Virginia have not been dissuaded by a February ruling that went against them. One of the petitioners in that case is seeking reconsideration, and the petitioner in another major case has sharpened its argument that the State…
-
A kWh Saved Costs Triple A kWh Used. You Pay.
Buying yourself a kilowatt hour of electricity costs about twelve cents. Persuading your next-door neighbor or the store at the corner to use less electricity is three times as expensive, costing about 35 cents per kilowatt hour.
-
On Energy Efficiency, Ratepayers Lose Again
Fellow electricity ratepayers, we just took it in the neck again. This morning’s Richmond Times-Dispatch brings the news that Dominion Energy Virginia will not seek to count lost revenue as one of the cost elements in the energy efficiency program it was ordered to undertake by the 2018 Ratepayer Bill Transformation Act. This follows an…
-
Sure, Give The Money To Everybody. Why Not?
The so-called Taxpayer Relief Fund to be created with the residual dollars from the 2019 state tax legislation has not seen the first dollar deposited and Governor Ralph Northam is already proposing to spend some of it, seeking to expand the refunds which were part of that bill to all Virginians.