Category Archives: Taxes

The Political Economy of the Gas Tax

Posted on April 23, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 5 Comments

I have long argued that the debate over the motor fuels tax shakes out over class lines. The gas is regressive, in that lower-income people pay a higher percentage of their income for the tax than wealthy people. Yet wealthy people place the greatest premium on their time stuck in traffic and are most agitated by the traffic congestion that higher gas taxes are meant to address. That’s why Virginia’s major business lobbies, which are populated by higher-income citizens, have consistently supported the idea of more taxes for roads.

Now comes data from an April 9-10 Gallup poll confirming at least part of my analysis. Gallup asked Americans whether they would support a hike in the gas tax in their state and broke down the numbers by annual household income. The first column in the chart below shows the % voting for a higher gas tax, the second the % voting against.


The results are as expected. The lowest-income Americans are less inclined to vote against gas taxes because they are less likely to own a car. Once you get into the lower-middle class, however, the cost of car ownership is a major concern and resistance to higher gas taxes is the most intense. Objections diminish with successfully higher income groups.

This data shows why so many politicians — especially Republicans, whose constituencies tend to be more rural, suburban and dependent upon automobiles for transportation — are so reluctant to raise the gas tax. Here in Virginia, increasing the sales tax by a fraction of a cent generated less opposition, even though it actually raises a lot more money.

For sure, raising gasoline taxes to finance new road construction is a political non-starter. But I persist in believing that people could accept gas tax increases if they knew that the revenue went to maintaining existing roads, rather than building some boondoggle highway for God-knows-who. Virginia should  dedicate the gas tax to maintenance only, and the tax should float with the rising or falling cost of the maintenance budget. If only Gallup would dig deeper into the issue…

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Taxes, Transportation

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How to Create 79,000 Jobs without Really Trying

Posted on April 23, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 5 Comments

Norfolk unemployment office. Photo credit: Virginian-Pilot.

by James A. Bacon

In the previous post I discussed Virginia’s sluggish economic performance and the power of institutional inertia to discourage fresh thinking about economic development. One exception is a recent report published by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (TJI).

Calling upon the resources of Chmura Economics & Analytics and the Beacon Hill Institute, TJI President Michael Thompson asked if it were possible to restructure Virginia’s tax code to spur private investment and job creation.

In “Tax Restructuring in Virginia: A Revenue Neutral Path for Improving Our Economy,” Thompson’s team explored nine scenarios for eliminating three hated business taxes — the Business Professional Occupation Licensing (BPOL) tax, the Machine and Tool (M&T) tax and the Merchants Capital (MC) tax — and replacing lost revenue by means of a restructured sales tax.

According to the report, the optimum scenario would increase employment by 79,000 jobs over the baseline projection, bolster investment by $287 million, and pump up real state Gross Domestic Product by $8.4 billion. The key features:

  • Eliminate the BPOL, M&T and MC taxes
  • Eliminate the lowest bracket in the personal income tax ($0 to $3,000), and cut other income tax brackets by 10%
  • Expand sales tax to cover all exempt sectors of the service economy, except health care.

We can debate the particulars. How good are Thompson’s data and how valid is his economic simulation model? Can the results be improved upon by considering other scenarios. And, my main concern, would we be creating problems for ourselves by taking state tax revenues (the sales and income taxes) to reimburse local governments for lost BPOL, M&T and MC revenues? Governor Jim Gilmore did something very similar in partially phasing out the car tax. How did that work out?

Those issues are all worthy of discussion. But let’s look at the big picture. What other initiatives can you name that (a) are tax neutral and (b) have the potential to create 79,000 jobs over the next five years? If TJI’s idea creates only half the jobs forecast by its economic model, this idea is well worth pursuing.

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Posted in 2013, Economic development, Economy, Taxes

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McAuliffe: Can a Schmoozer Transform?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 3 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

On Easter Sunday, I was driving in a cold rain to Charlottesville for a family event. My cell phone started beeping with messages from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe.

He said he was on his way to his own family brunch but wanted to tap me for $5. I got similar messages from two other staffers.

Why bother me at Easter? Political analyst Larry Sabato wondered the same thing. In a tweet that day he complained about finding “11 obnoxious messages for $$$. Now I know the answer to the age old Q; Is nothing sacred?”

And that may be McAuliffe’s biggest problem as he faces arch-conservative Ken Cuccinelli in the off-year governor’s race. In my profile of him in Style Weekly, I note that McAuliffe is trying to rein in an expansive personality that has made him a top political schmoozer and fundraiser for Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

A decades’ long political operative who has never been in elected office, he can be bombastic and smooth, as his recent dealings with GreenTech Automotive shows. He flirted with Virginia for a hybrid  car plant before going to Mississippi. He has been accused of somehow using the car plant to win special visas for foreign workers and maybe misleading the Virginia Economic Development Partnership about his intentions in the Old Dominion.

Meanwhile, he must overcome some of his misunderstandings of traditional Virginia thinking. However, it’s probably a good thing that he’s going to skip the Shad Planking in Wakefield tonight with its Confederate flags where Cuccinelli will be keynote speaker.

While polls are about 50-50 in the race, McAuliffe’s fundraising prowess has shown brightly. In the first quarter, he raised more than $5 million — more than double the take of Cuccinelli, who has hamstrung by not being allowed raise money during the General Assembly session because of his position as Attorney General. Read on…

(Also, here as a Q&A with McAuliffe)

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Federal, Finance, Gay rights, Governance reform, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Regulation, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, The Economy, Transportation

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The Evil These Proffers Do

Posted on April 13, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 32 Comments

by James A. Bacon

A few days ago I published a post about the effort of a Chesterfield County business group to rid the county of proffers. It was a bad idea, I suggested. As long as government is responsible for road, water, sewer, fire and rescue, etc., someone has to pay for it. Property owners, I argued, should pay proffers in proportion to the obligation they impose upon the county for the new infrastructure. (See “In Defense of Proffers.”)

That was then. This is now. Yesterday, I had a long chat with Peter Katz, a New Urbanism author and planner whom I had profiled in “The Fiscal Fix.” Currently living in the D.C. area, he was in Richmond to buy a new bicycle. We caught up at a restaurant where, sitting on the front patio, we looked upon a most un-New Urbanism setting of an expansive parking lot.

With some hyperbole, Katz refers to as “evil” the proffers, impact fees, community amenity charges and other payments that local governments exact on the recognition that suburban growth does not pay its way. He enumerated a number of reasons why they are counterproductive.

  • Proffers may pay the up-front costs of building new infrastructure but they don’t pay the full life-cycle costs. Local government still must tap general tax revenue for maintenance and replacement.
  • The “rational nexus” legal doctrine maintains that impact-fee revenues must be spent on infrastructure projects related to the development project paying the proffers. Local officials may have other ways to spend the money to greater effect, such as supporting mass transit, but their hands are tied.
  • Proffers have unintended consequences. To avoid paying proffers, developers sometimes hop, skip and jump to a locality that doesn’t charge them. Typically, such counties are farther from the urban core. People drive to job centers close to the core, stressing even more lane-miles of road than they would have otherwise and contributing nothing to upgrading them.

One possible alternative, Katz suggests, is a system used in some parts of Canada — “development charges.” These differ from proffers and impact fees in important ways. First, the charges cover full life-cycle costs. Second, the charges are determined with the benefit of intense input from a wide range of stakeholders. Third, they apply to everyone across the board; no one gets a sweetheart deal. Fourth, the charges are structured with the recognition that some locations require more infrastructure investment than others. In-fill development in a district already served by roads, water/sewer and public safety services, for example, would engender smaller charges in a district where the infrastructure had to be built from scratch.

On the other hand, Katz is also partial to the idea of simply paying for infrastructure with ordinary property tax revenues. The key is to approve only projects that fiscal analysis shows in advance will collect enough taxes to cover the life cycle costs and build up enough reserves to pay for new infrastructure when it’s required in 30 years or so down the road. As a practical matter, that means approving only projects with a small infrastructure imprint — with greater density.

I lean toward the old-fashioned property-tax approach for another reason. Local governments can either create economic value with well-chosen transportation investments or destroy value with ill-designed projects. The ability to soak developers for proffers and impact fees saves them the trouble of thinking very hard about whether they are creating value or destroying it, expanding the tax base or diminishing it.

Note: I have modified this post to better reflect Peter Katz’ thinking.

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Posted in 2013, Land use & development, Taxes, Transportation

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Highway Robbery

Posted on April 12, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 7 Comments

The center-left Commonwealth Institute still has big reservations about the General Assembly’s transportation-funding package as outlined in a new white paper, “Destination Unknown: Navigating Virginia’ New Transportation Funding Package – and Potential Potholes.”

Some of the concerns are practical. One major funding component of the plan requires Congressional action, which may or may not be forthcoming, and the Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads funding pieces will face legal challenges.

But Michael Cassidy and Sarah Okos raise two intertwined issues of substance:

  • The tax increases would require low- and moderate-income Virginians to pay a bigger share of their earnings for transportation than wealthier households.
  • The legislation shifts the cost of paying for maintenance and highway improvements from drivers, who benefit from the roads, to the general population. According to CI’s calculations, less than 10% of the new revenues are driving-related.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul… Spending other peoples’ money… Describe it how you will, it astounds me that self-styled conservatives could vote for this wealth-transfer scheme. I guess it all depends upon which way the wealth transfer is flowing. Elephant Clan legislators must be able to swallow the plan because they’re soaking urban, Donkey Clan constituents, who tend not to drive as much, in order to benefit their Elephant Clan constituents, who are concentrated in rural areas and suburbs where residents drive more.

I don’t pretend to understand the Donkey Clan legislators at all. I guess they just never saw a tax increase they didn’t like — even if it clobbers their constituents.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Taxes, Transportation

The Case for Incentives Still Lacking

Posted on April 12, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 1 Comment

by James A. Bacon

Virginia approved nearly 3,400 economic development incentive grants totaling $718 million over the past 10 years, according to a new report, “Review of State Economic Development Incentive Grants,” published by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. The projects benefiting from those grants created more than 68,000 jobs.

“Incentive grants appear to have a positive but small impact on the site selection decisions of businesses relative to other considerations such as transportation and labor costs,” concludes the report. The economic literature suggests that economic-development grants are decisive in only 10% of site selection locations but not for the other 90%. The jobs and economic gains stemming from the latter projects cannot properly be attributed to the grants.

“However, several factors suggest that certain Virginia grant programs may sway the decisions of businesses to locate or expand in the State more frequently than is indicated in the research literature,” the report hedges. “Business representatives, site selection consultants, and State and local economic development staff indicated to JLARC staff that incentive grants are ‘expected,” and a common means for states to build and maintain a ‘business friendly’ reputation, which businesses value.”

Heh. Here’s another way Virginia could build and maintain a business-friendly reputation. Take that $718 million (averaging $72 million a year) and use it to LOWER THE FRIGGIN’ BUSINESS TAXES!

That idea did not seem to occur to JLARC. The authors did not ask what economic benefit might have accrued from scrapping the grants and returning a like sum to taxpayers — business taxpayers, if your goal is to make Virginia more “business friendly.”

Assuming state incentives went to projects creating 68,000 jobs but nine in ten jobs would have been created anyway, that’s a net gain of 6,800 jobs . Alternatively, had Virginia businesses been taxed $718 million less, how many jobs would they have created? That’s the question JLARC should have asked. Without an answer, the report is incomplete.

I’ll grant you this: Virginia does a better job than many states in administering economic-development grants, particularly in insisting that corporations meet investment and job-creation targets in order to qualify for the aid. And economic developers have been pretty good about spreading the wealth — only seven businesses have received awards greater than $20 million. (They were smart enough, too, to see through Terry McAuliffe’s ill-conceived green car venture.) On the other hand, economic-development incentives are a zero-sum game. Our gain is some other state’s loss. And their gain might well be our loss. The JLARC report notwithstanding, I still find incentives a dubious proposition.

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Posted in 2013, Economic development, Taxes

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Virginia Pension Shortfall Still Horrendous

Posted on April 11, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 7 Comments

by James A. Bacon

Last July I argued that, despite the significant pension reforms enacted in the 2012 session of the General Assembly, Virginia had only partially restored the actuarial integrity of state and local government pensions. (See”Virginia’s Pension Bomb Is Still Ticking.“) The debate at the time: whether the Virginia Retirement System should assume that it would generate an 8% annual rate of return, as preferred by Governor Bob McDonnell, or a 7% rate of return, as recommended by the VRS board. Though a single percentage point seems to be a small difference, it amounted to $540 million a year — not exactly chump change — that would have to be made up by state and local governments.

Apparently, the VRS board carried the day. According to an August 2012 document published by the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, the VRS was assuming a 7.0% return. That was the most cautious assumption of almost any state retirement plan in the country — only the Indiana pensions assumed a lower (6.75%) rate of return.

Unfortunately, even the VRS assumption is likely way too optimistic.

Andy Kessler, a former hedge-fund manager and author of “Eat People,” lays out the case in the Wall Street Journal for assuming a 3% rate of return for the indefinite future. How bad is that? To make up the difference, Virginia state and local government would have to cough up an extra $2 billion a year! Good luck with that.

Kessler boils down the math as follows:

The right number is probably 3%. Fixed income has negative real rates right now and will be a drag on returns. The math is not this easy, but in general, the expected return for equities is the inflation rate plus productivity improvements plus the expansion of the price/earnings multiple. For the past 30 years, an 8.5% expected return was reasonable, given +3%-4% inflation, +2% productivity, and +3% multiple expansion as interest rates plummeted. But in our new environment, inflation is +2%, productivity is +2% and given that interest rates are zero, multiple expansion should be, and I’m being generous, -1%.

To some, that may sound unduly pessimistic. Hasn’t Kessler noticed — the stock market is hitting new highs almost every day!

Don’t count on the boom lasting. The United States has enjoyed a long-term bull market in bonds and other interest rate-bearing instruments since the early 1980s. Since 2000 the long-term composite for 10-year Treasuries, a key benchmark, has tumbled from 6.9% to 2.7% today.

The earnings multiples of stock, real estate and other assets move inversely with interest rates. When interest rates go down, price-earnings ratio (essentially, the value placed on a dollar of earnings) for alternate investments go up. Thus, the long, secular decline in interest rates has driven a significant portion of the generous return on pension investments over the past 20-30 years.

With interest rates near zero, however, it is impossible for them to fall any more… which means that it is very difficult to expand the earnings multiples of stocks and other investments. Indeed, if the Federal Reserve Board ever decides to end “quantitative easing” and interest rates return to historical norms,  earnings multiples will shrink, as Kessler suggests.

The current bull market is predicated on the belief that the Fed will maintain near-zero interest rates for years to come. If the economy remains weak and inflation stays quiescent, maybe they will. Perhaps Kessler is too pessimistic. Perhaps we won’t see a rise in interest rates and a consequent contraction of earnings multiples. Perhaps earnings multiples will remain stable. Perhaps pension funds will generate long-term returns of 4% annually, not 3%.

Gee, that would mean Virginia is under-funding its pensions by a mere $1.5 billion a year more than officially acknowledged.

Virginia has done more than most states to put its government pensions on a sound actuarial footing. But that’s more a comment upon the total ineptitude, cowardice and, in the case of Illinois, fraudulent misrepresentation of other state officials than a kudo for our own. We need to deal with this issue now. Every year of delay will make the final reckoning only harder.

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Posted in 2013, Budget, Government workers and pensions, Taxes

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In Defense of Proffers

Posted on April 9, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 29 Comments

by James A. Bacon

A new business-backed group in Chesterfield County has sprung up to fight the county’s cash proffer system for new houses, arguing that the fees make new houses more expensive, hinder development and hurt jobs. The group has hired Capital Results, a government affairs firm, and launched a website, Citizens Against Proffer Taxes.

As Bacon’s Rebellion readers know, I am a staunch believer in low taxes. But that does not make me a believer in zero taxes. As long as we live in a world in which local governments pay for infrastructure such as schools, roads, libraries, parks and public safety buildings, then we need to find a way to allocate equitably and efficiently the cost of building and maintaining that infrastructure.

According to Louis Llovio with the Times-Dispatch, Chesterfield sets the maximum cash proffer at $18,966 per house, the highest levy in the region. Thomas Winfree, CEO of Village Bank, blames the proffers for major losses to the bank over the past couple of years. The bank has had to foreclose on properties and take losses on loans because developers are unable to complete projects “in part due to proffers.”

I hate to sound unsympathetic, but whose fault is that? It’s not as if Chesterfield had imposed the proffers after the fact, adding a burden that the developer and bank had not anticipated when they decided to move forward with a development. They embarked upon the project knowing full well what the proffers would cost but misjudged market conditions. Things didn’t work out. I’m sorry. I feel bad for you. I wish you’d made a lot of money. If you had, I would not have castigated you as a greedy rich person or advocated raising your income tax rates. But your business losses are your problem, not the taxpayers’ problem.

Rare among local government reporters, Llovio made an astute observation. “Citizens Against Proffer Taxes,” he writes, “does not recommend how the county should replace the lost revenue.”

That gets to the philosophical nub of the issue. The money must come from somewhere. The question is, who pays? Mr. Winfree apparently believes that the taxpayers of Chesterfield County should pay. And where would that money come from? Presumably from property taxes, which are the main source of revenue for local governments in Virginia. Thus, under Mr. Winfree’s logic, people who previously purchased houses whose prices incorporate the costs of proffers now should help pay a second time for the infrastructure that Mr. Winfree doesn’t want his developer clients to pay for.

Here’s the underlying philosophical principle that every local government should hew to: People should pay the location-variable infrastructure costs associated with the purchase of a new house. Failure to do so imposes an obligation upon someone else to pay instead. It also amounts to a subsidy that encourages developers to build houses in locations that are costly to serve.

Yes, proffers might add 5% to 10% to the cost of a new housing unit — a cost that can be amortized over the 30-year life of a mortgage. Proffers might mean that people have to satisfy themselves with marginally smaller, cheaper houses, or houses on marginally smaller, cheaper lots. Is that a cruel, insensitive thing for me to say? Then what do you say to the people who have to pay a higher property tax for a benefit they never receive?

The main problem I have with the proffer system is that it charges a flat fee that applies to every house, no matter how location-efficient its location. Virginians should adopt a practice that is common in Canada of varying the development fee, depending upon how expensive it is to serve. Thus, if a developer builds houses in an area where schools and roads are under-utilized, they should pay a smaller fee. Virginia’s proffer system definitely needs work, but it would be folly — and unjust — to do away with it entirely.

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Posted in 2013, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Property rights, Taxes, Transportation

A Light Rail Public-Private Partnership in Virginia Beach?

Posted on April 3, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 4 Comments

The Tide heads to rail station at Norfolk State University. Photo credit: Virginian-Pilot.

by James A. Bacon

Philip Shucet, savior of the runaway train project that was Norfolk Light Rail, has submitted a proposal to to extend the rail line into Virginia Beach. Under the proposal, the Tide rail service would become operational in the Virginia Beach Town Center, nearly halfway to the Oceanfront, by November 2016 — at least four years earlier than under current projections. Moreover, the project would require no federal funding.

Shucet took over as CEO of the Tide after gross mismanagement during its construction phase, staunching losses and launching the project to great acclaim. He resigned a year ago to pursue private business interests. In his latest incarnation, he heads a group that includes Skanska, Truland Transportation, Jacobs engineering and AECOM, all of which were involved with the original Tide project.

City staff will review the proposal and report back to City Council, reports the Virginian-Pilot. Neither Shucet nor city officials revealed details of how the group planned to carry out the plan. However, Shucet has built up an impressive track record for bringing in projects on time and on budget, beginning with his tenure under Governor Mark Warner as chief of the Virginia Department of Transportation, again as a key player in the Jordan Bridge project in Chesapeake, and again as CEO of the Tide.

A consultant has produced a preliminary estimate of $807 million to extend light rail to the Oceanfront, or $254 million to stop the line at Town Center. The cost for the 12.1-mile route includes the construction of five bridges, the Pilot reports. The route would follow an existing rail bed.

Bacon’s bottom line: I am eager to see the project details. To date, Virginia Beach officials have assumed that it would be impossible to finance the project without federal participation. The Federal Transit Administration pays up to 80% of the capital costs of light rail projects. However, the regulations, red tape and a lengthy approval process can add years to the time-line and millions of dollars to the cost. By foregoing federal funding, the private group could accelerate the schedule and slash costs dramatically.

Who, then, would pay? Private investors could try issuing bonds but it’s hard to see how they would generate enough revenue from rail operations to pay back the interest and principal — light rail typically operates at a loss and requires ongoing subsidies from state and local government.

It’s possible that Shucet is banking upon state participation in the project, which is feasible given the likelihood that transportation tax restructuring will be enacted this year. The tax package devotes considerably more money to mass transit, and the McDonnell administration is very comfortable negotiating public-private partnerships.

There is one other theoretical possibility, although I have seen no indication that Shucet intends to pursue it. The ideal way to finance rail projects is through “value capture” — capturing a portion of the increased real estate values created by the transportation improvement. For example, Virginia Beach Town Center has been reinventing itself as the city’s center for walkable urbanism — compact, higher-density development, mixed uses, and pedestrian-friendly street design. Building a rail stop there on an line anchored by downtown Norfolk at one end and the Virginia Beach Oceanfront on the other would create a windfall for property owners.

A value-capture approach would create a special tax district around the rail stop, generating revenue to support, say, $50 million to $100 million in bonds. In theory, the higher taxes would be more than offset by higher leases and rents collected by property owners. Virginia Beach could sweeten the pot, as needed, by granting higher density rights to property owners in the tax district. Constructed properly, such an approach could be a win-win situation for property owners, taxpayers and commuters.

Bacon’s fantasy scenario: By eliminating federal red tape, I fantasize, Shucet has figured out a way to bring down the cost of the $800 million project to $600 million or less. The rail line, which has 10 stops in Norfolk, adds 10 more in Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach City Council establishes appropriate zoning around the 10 stops, transforming whatever is there now into transit-oriented development. The city establishes special tax districts at each stop, generating dedicated tax revenues to support bond payments equivalent to $60 million per stop. (The stops at Town Center and the Oceanfront could support more while the other, less-developed stops would support less.) Voila, 100% of the capital cost is covered by the public-private partnership!

How likely is such a scenario? Not very. Even if the numbers worked out, there is zero chance that the financing and zoning, not to mention the politics, behind such a strategy could be put into place in time for Shucet’s group to then complete design and construction by 2016.

But, hey, it doesn’t hurt to dream.

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Posted in 2013, Federal, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Regulation, Taxes, Transportation

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Virginia Fares Well in Small Business Survey, Hampton Roads Nails It

Posted on April 2, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 2 Comments

Click on map for more legible image.

Virginia ranks as the 6th friendliest state to small business in a Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation survey of 8,000 small businesses across the country. Hampton Roads scored No. 2 as the most small business-friendly metropolitan region.

The survey revealed that small business also cared about a lot more than taxes.  Summarizes Governing magazine: “Training and networking programs were found to be the best predictor of overall scores, followed by a state’s economy and licensing requirements. Professional licensing — a source of frustration for many business owners — was 30 percent more important than tax codes in determining business-friendliness.”

When entrepreneurs go into business, they typically set up shop in the regions where they already live. For that reason, taxes typically are not their chief concern initially. As businesses grow, however, the report found, taxes increasingly become a preoccupation.

The survey incorporated the following criteria: Ease of starting a business, ease of hiring, training and networking programs, and a slew of regulatory categories, including health & safety; employment, labor & hiring; tax code; licensing; environmental; and zoning. As a state, Virginia scored A or A- in every category.

Here is the breakdown for the three major MSAs:

Hampton Roads: The “Virginia Beach” Metropolitan Statistical Area scored A+ in the Kauffman Foundation rating, doing the best (A+) in ease of starting a business and worst (B-) in training and network programs.

Richmond: The Richmond MSA earned B+ overall, scoring best (A+) for licensing and worst (D) for ease of hiring.

Washington, D.C.: Washington (the survey results apparently refer to the district, not the entire Washington MSA) tallied B overall, scoring best (A+) for ease of hiring and worst (C) for ease of starting a business.

Ten states did not provide enough survey  responses to generate statistically meaningful results.

– JAB

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Posted in 2013, Economic development, Economy, Regulation, Taxes

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