Category: Government Finance
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There Will Never Be Enough
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Those of us at the state Department of Planning and Budget (DPB) who worked closely with the capital budget used to marvel at the submissions from higher ed institutions. It did not matter how much had been approved and funded in the recent past; each year there were more and bigger requests.…
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In Praise of Two Great Public Servants
by James A. Bacon Virginia has been blessed to have had many superb public servants over the years. They may not be remembered in the history books, which have a bias toward elected politicians, but we are reminded of the indispensable contributions of at least two of them in today’s news clippings. One is leaving…
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Infrastructure Vote? Oh No, That’s Their Bill
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There has long been a consensus that America needs to pay more attention to its infrastructure. Last week, the House of Representatives passed President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure package and sent it to the President for his signature. Of the total amount, $550 billion was new money; the remainder was funding normally…
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JLARC Agrees: VA Economy Lags National Growth
by Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. This makes if official: Even the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) has documented and highlighted how poorly Virginia’s economy is performing, how far our state is lagging national growth averages. The admission comes in the most recent summary…
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The State Tax Gravy Train Accelerates
by Steve Haner First published today by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Any claim that Virginia cannot reduce taxes on its citizens without damaging state programs has been further eroded by two recent announcements. The explosion of revenue from recent state tax increases is continuing into this new fiscal year, pointing to a…
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More Fun and Fraud with Numbers
by James A. Bacon Let me preface this post by stating unequivocally that eliminating Virginia’s personal income tax is a crazy idea — so crazy that no serious person has proposed it. The tax generates $16 billion a year in revenue, or 72.4% of Virginia’s General Fund expenditures. The loss of such a sum would…
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Of Course Tax Hikes Grew the State Surpluses
by Steve Haner At Tuesday night’s debate Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe dismissed the 2021 $2.6 billion general fund revenue surplus as entirely due to extra federal COVID relief funds, which is absurd on its face. By definition, every dollar is general fund state tax revenue. It came from some form of state tax. Why…
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McAuliffe Promises $8.3 Billion in New Spending
by Jesse Lynch As of August 2021, Terry McAuliffe has released over eighteen plans for his second term as Governor of Virginia. The policy proposals oscillate between highly specific and indefinitely vague. This report attempts to forecast five of these proposals: education, economics, entrepreneurship, COVID-19, and healthcare. The Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy has…
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The Goochland Revolution: Making Growth Pay for Itself
by James A. Bacon Ken Peterson, a leader of Goochland County’s turnaround from fiscal basket case to bearer of a AAA bond rating, thinks he has discovered the holy grail of fast-growth county governance: how to make development pay for itself. In previous posts I described how Peterson and his fellow fiscal conservatives swept into…
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Marijuana and Casino Legalization Linked to Increases in Mental Illness and Substance Abuse
by James C. Sherlock We know what is going to happen. Dr. Daniel Carey M.D., Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, will soon apply to the federal government for funding for substance abuse prevention grants. He knows. He plans to tell the federal government that additional people, mostly poor and Black, are going to…
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The Goochland Revolution: Fiscal Edition
by James A. Bacon In February Goochland County Supervisor Ken Peterson and top county officials met with New York bond raters in the hope of winning a coveted AAA bond rating for their small, exurban county west of Richmond. Only a hundred or so counties in the United States have AAA ratings. None of them…
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The Goochland Revolution
by James A. Bacon The “Goochland Revolution” might be the most under-appreciated political upheaval in recent Virginia history. In the early years of the Obama administration the Tea Party movement energized small-government conservatives against the big-government policies of President Obama. The populist surge petered out in Virginia, as it did elsewhere, and it had little…
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Northam Asks Good Questions About Amended Medicaid Budget
by James C. Sherlock Governor Ralph Northam has raised an important issue relative to the budget negotiations. He has asked that the final bill not include an extension of a 12.5% increase in rates for Medicaid home- and community-based services for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. The General Assembly put it in there anyway. …
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DMV Still Hiding Full Gas Tax Amounts
by Steve Haner The Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles is now hiding only 22% of the state’s existing motor fuels tax with misleading website data, not the 26% it was hiding when I wrote about this last year. In the chart you first find searching DMV on motor fuel tax rates, set out below, there…
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Coming to Virginia – a New State of Emergency?
by James C. Sherlock The Governor’s 15-month emergency powers expired June 30, and, God, does he miss them. From The Virginian-Pilot: “School districts that aren’t requiring masks, including several in Hampton Roads, are running afoul of state law, Gov. Ralph Northam said Thursday.” OK. The bigger questions are how long the governor will put up…