Category: Economic development
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Small Business Suffers More from Bad Policies
by Chris Saxman Small business costs and Virginia’s competitiveness in CNBC’s Top States for Business Small businesses are central to Virginia’s economic dynamism, job creation, and regional resilience. However, higher taxes, expanding labor mandates, regulatory complexity, and litigation exposure impose disproportionate costs on small firms compared to large employers. These pressures directly affect Virginia’s performance…
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Virginia CNBC Ranking Legislative Analysis – Structural Decline
by Chris Saxman Over the weekend, I was asked by a Virginia business leader how the first week of the General Assembly Session was going. This is my reply. At the outset of EVERY Session, there are bills that are dropped in that, to say the least, grab headlines. With social media these days, it’s…
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Youngkin’s Term Made Virginia Stronger, More Prosperous
by Derrick A. Max Governor Glenn Youngkin’s final State of the Commonwealth address last night offered more than a farewell. It served as an empirical rebuttal to the claim that conservative, pro-growth governance, like those supported by the Thomas Jefferson Institute, cannot deliver tangible results. By every meaningful metric — jobs, investment, education outcomes, revenue…
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How Community Development Supports Economic Development
by Alex Dadok With Virginia’s election behind us, there’s a sense among some of wanting to find common ground. Those from all political persuasions share an interest in creating additional jobs and economic development for Virginia’s communities. Community development — such as quality childcare, housing, healthcare, education, parks and amenities, transportation, and more — can…
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Domestic Migration: Virginia’s Lost Decade
by James A. Bacon Virginia lost a net of 120,000 residents through domestic migration (excluding foreign immigration and emigration) over the decade between tax years 2011-12 and 2021-22, according to the Unleash Prosperity “Vote with your feet” database. That was the 9th worst performance among the 50 states. That out-migration translated into a loss of…
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Spanberger’s Nothing Burger
by James A. Bacon Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate for governor, has released her “Growing Virginia Plan” for economic development. I’ll save you the trouble of reading it and boil it down for you: Do more of what Virginia is already doing. The only new thought reflected in this compendium of business-as-usual practices is to…
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Tech Van Winkle Awakes
Northern Virginia’s business community rises from its slumber to address challenges of the AI revolution. by James A. Bacon Like the legendary Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep for 20 years and woke up to a whole new world, Northern Virginia’s business community has emerged from its lengthy snooze to realize that it needs to…
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Heck No to Data Centers? Really?
by James A. Bacon Rural Virginia localities enjoy a historic opportunity to augment declining tax bases by courting solar farms and data centers. Remarkably, some local leaders regard the opportunity as a threat. They have convinced themselves that the critical infrastructure for the AI age threatens their rural quality of life. I can understand peoples’…
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Nothing in the Water
by Kerry Dougherty Looks like the Virginia Beach City Council grew a pair. Finally. After months of being played by the organizers of Pharrell Williams’ illusive Something In The Water Festival, the city is pulling the plug on the 2025 weekend event that was never going to happen. The history of the hip hop festival…
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Who’s the Biggest Electricity Importer in the Country? Not California
by James A. Bacon Virginia is the biggest importer of electricity in the United States, according to a U.S. Energy Information Administration report released last month. The Old Dominion has surpassed California as the biggest consumer of electricity from other states. Imports into the Land of Nuts and Fruits declined due to heavy investment in…
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Don’t California Our Virginia
by Kerry Dougherty Scenes from Los Angeles are apocalyptic. Thousands of homes and buildings destroyed in a massive, uncontained conflagration. So many lives disrupted and lives lost. Chunks of a city reduced to ashes. Is there anything good that can come out of such widespread devastation? I believe there is. Virginians can look at the…
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Details, Please, About the New Nuke
by James A. Bacon Has fusion power finally arrived? Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a Massachusetts-based developer of high-temperature, superconducting magnets used to jam hydrogen molecules together and release massive amounts of energy, has announced that it will invest “several billion dollars” to build the world’s first grid-scale, commercial fusion power plant. “This is an historic…
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Youngkin Tackles Housing Shortage
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin is rightly concerned about the housing shortage in Virginia, which drives up living costs and throttles economic growth. Yesterday he announced a plan to spend $75 million over five years to catalyze investment of $750 million and build 5,000 units to accommodate a growing workforce. But he acknowledges…
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Tough Talk On SITW
by Kerry Daugherty Back in 2019 I was an enthusiastic cheerleader for Pharrell Williams’ inaugural “Something In the Water” music festival. For years Virginia Beach had struggled with April’s annual “Beach College Weekend” which drew thousands of kids from historically black colleges and universities to the Beach. Unfortunately, the event also drew local dirtbags and…
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Atlantic Park Part 11, Epilogue: Costs, Real Costs and Lessons Learned
Presentation to the Virginia Beach City Council May 28, 2024