Tag: Stephen D. Haner
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Most States Use Provider Tax for Medicaid
The pending proposed amendments to the stalled state budget bill, which almost broke the log jam earlier this week, did indeed include not one but two new provider assessments/fees/taxes (you pick the term) on Virginia private hospitals. When both chambers return next week with their “this time we’ll really do something” promises on the line,…
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Will Ghosts Haunt The Senate Today?
If you listen very, very carefully you can hear it: A double whirring sound. It is the sound of the late state Senators Ed Willey and Hunter Andrews spinning in their graves. Four decades ago as Finance Committee chairs they were responsible for establishing the independent authority of the Senate in the state budget process,…
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Behavior Has Changed But Within Limits
There are plenty of complaints these days that the legislative process is unduly influenced by money, but when the spotlight shines or a major scandal erupts, behavior can change. For example, Virginia legislators simply do not want to report that they have received gifts or attended lobbyist dinners, on public records which are available to…
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Medicaid Can Cost Taxpayers Less than ACA Plans
One of the interesting tidbits gleaned from a presentation last week on the Medicaid expansion debate was that with expansion perhaps 60,000 Virginians now enrolled in Affordable Care Act Public Exchange plans will qualify for and switch over to Medicaid. People who have low-enough incomes to qualify for Medicaid are also eligible for subsidies for…
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Grant Process Tightens at VEDP
Tomorrow Governor Ralph Northam travels to the coalfields for what is billed as a major economic development announcement, and steps have been taken so that four years from now he won’t cringe when shown the old photos. For the past year the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) has been doing additional due diligence on companies…
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Wait, A Second Hospital Tax?
For years a Virginia business policy group, the Thomas Jefferson Institute, has been pushing a Virginia tax reform proposal that would impose the sales and use tax on services. The sales and use tax covers tangible goods, not (with a few exceptions) services. Looking at the group’s 2015 report on the idea, imposing the sales…
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Wonk Corner: Briefing on Medicaid Expansion
You have to read the footnotes: The state estimates that should Virginia approve an expansion of Medicaid to an additional 300,000 low income persons, about 60,000 people now covered by individual ACA plans will revert to Medicaid. That snippet is buried in a presentation made yesterday to the Senate Finance Committee by its staff, which…
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Revenue Surge May Be Fake News
May 1 is the deadline for Virginia personal income tax returns, but more than 700 very high income Virginia taxpayers skipped the deadline. As long as they have paid enough tax to cover their liability, they can wait as late as November 1 to file an actual return. That is one the facts stressed by…
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Hospital Tax (No, Assessment!) Central to Budget Dispute At Special Session
I doubt many not directly involved in the ongoing struggle over Medicaid expansion in Virginia have actually read the budget language that is the heart of the argument. So I have set it out below in full. This is language included in the House version but previously rejected by the Senate, creating more than $300…
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Only A Brief Romance After All
The key to Dominion Energy’s successful efforts in the 2018 General Assembly was an alliance with the major environmental advocacy groups who saw several of their key goals achieved by the massive bill: promises of more wind and solar generation and massive spending of ratepayer funds on energy efficiency programs, coupled with weaker cost-benefit requirements…
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Development Grants Performance Data
About ten days ago during a discussion of Virginia economic development programs I posted a link to the annual report of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, but I knew there was a something out there with even more detailed performance data. In response to a legislative mandate pushed by a former legislator, Jimmie Massie of…
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Golden Goose to Emerald City: Drop Dead
By Stephen D. Haner The brief snippet on the telly that caught my attention showed a massive Seattle office building being developed by Amazon, and the report was that construction is slowing because the company might start reducing its footprint and headcount in the Emerald City of Oz due to yet another Occupy Wall Street-inspired…
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A Shocking Case of Lawful Behavior
by Stephen D. Haner Sometimes the problem is fake news and sometimes the problem is non-news, and in a shocking non-news story it was revealed that (gasp) politicians are raising money. Just as they have for every year I can remember, General Assembly incumbents are filling mail and email inboxes with invitations to their usual…
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Regarding Prince William’s Computer Tax…
by Stephen D. Haner The Prince William County Board of Supervisors yesterday voted to maintain a special tangible personal property tax rate on “programmable computer equipment” used in a business, providing a live and real-world example to continue our discussion on tax preferences and other incentives used to lure and keep businesses. The general personal…
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Fighting Child Abuse with Predictive Analytics
by Stephen D. Haner As a pediatric anesthesiologist in Texas, Dr. Dyann Daley saw far too many victims of child abuse in the OR. One horrible case in particular spurred her to move beyond treatment to thoughts of prevention, with a data-driven approach that should fascinate all Baconistas. Preventing child abuse is not as simple…