Category: Infrastructure
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Staying Within the Debt Capacity
I am following up on an earlier post discussing the capital budget recommendations of the Governor and the Commonwealth’s debt capacity. Jim Bacon’s recent post discussing Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne’s worries about increasing debt also dealt with this general issue. Guided by Secretary Layne, the Governor’s introduced budget was relatively conservative in its capital…
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Want More Affordable Housing? Try Free Markets.
Exclusionary regulation at the local level is the root cause of unaffordable housing, and a rollback of exclusionary regulation is the best long-term solution, argue Salim Furth and Emily Hamilton, research fellows at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. “Contemporary American land use law embodies the bad idea that private land ought to be publicly planned.…
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Of Trash and Truckers
by Bill Tracy Trouble, trouble, trouble. We got trouble in River City. “River City” in this case denotes certain municipalities in Northern Virginia, Georgia, and Colorado serviced for trash disposal by Manassas-based American Disposal Services (ADS). After years of exemplary service, ADS has seemingly lost the ability to pick up trash on a reliable basis.…
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Extreme Weather Event, Extreme Weather Event, Go Away…
Now, we’re told, we have a new reason to fear climate change: Record rainfalls are straining the capacity of combined-sewer overflow (CSO) systems in Richmond, Lynchburg and Alexandria. In heavy rains, the antiquated systems, which combine stormwater runoff and wastewater, release untreated wastewater into the river. “We’re on the frontlines dealing with climate change,” Grace…
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Bacon Bits: Highs and Lows
Digital gold rush. How lucrative are data centers for Loudoun County? The prosperous Northern Virginia county expects to collect $200 million in fiscal 2020 from the property tax on computer equipment, up 35% over 2019, according to the Washington Business Journal. Last week, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors adopted a $3.2 billion operating budget that…
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Loudoun Data Centers Drive Electricity Demand
Dominion Energy has filed an application to build two new electric substations in Loudoun County to serve a growing population and the boom in data centers…. mostly the data centers. A typical data center consumes about the same amount of power as 7,500 residential households. There are more than 100 data centers operating in Loudoun…
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Amazon in Northern Virginia: 5 Positives
1-The Future. In 2011 Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal titled, “Why Software is Eating the World.” The eight years since Andreessen’s essay was published have served to vindicate, validate and verify the accuracy of his thesis. Yet while software eats the world, it doesn’t necessarily dine in the…
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Sow the Wind and Reap the Whirlwind
Environmentalists have created a monster. They have engendered a climate of hysteria by hyping risks for everything from global warming to coal ash, water quality to environmental racism. They have mastered the art of throwing every conceivable objection against the wall to see what sticks. They have perfected the strategy of question, question, delay, delay,…
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Why Does King William Need a $11 Million Cash Reserve?
by Bob Shannon We often listen to Pols cite the “gouging” we poor rubes are being subjected to. Members of Congress & our state legislative bodies –even local Pols get in on the game — tell us that big banks, big insurance companies, big brokerage firms, big pharmaceutical companies, big this or that are gouging…
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Bacon Bits: Scandal, Scandal, Scandal… and Dental Care
The Old Dominion is looking a lot like the Ante-Bellum Dominion. So, how are Virginia’s political scandals playing out nationally? Not very well. Headline from the New York Post: “Virginia is for Losers.” Lead story in the Wall Street Journal: “Virginia Faces Leadership Crisis as Attorney General Apologizes for Using Blackface.” The PC police strike…
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The Art of Streetscaping
Naples, Fla., a city of some 20,000 inhabitants, is one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. Reputedly, the jurisdiction has the second highest proportion of millionaires. Modest lots within walking distance of the beach sell for a couple million dollars, and tear-downs are common. The landscaping in residential neighborhoods is as manicured as…
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Virginia’s If-You-Don’t-Build-It-They-Won’t-Come Economic Development Strategy
The City of Emporia, one of Virginia’s poorest cities, has poured $25 million into the 1,600-acre Mid-Atlantic Advanced Manufacturing Center. To date the industrial park has yet to attract a tenant. Over the past decade, Virginians have sunk more than $100 million into land acquisition and development for industrial “megasites” in the hope of luring…
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Hey, Let’s Ban New Fossil Fuel Projects
This is what you get when the General Assembly usurps the State Corporation Commission and starts dictating energy policy. HB1635 by Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, would impose a moratorium on “any new electric generating facility that generates fossil fuel energy through the combustion of any fossil fuel resources,” along with any fossil-fuel pipeline or export facility.…
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I-66 Rush-Hour Travel Speeds Up 12%
Did the implementation of tolls on Interstate 66 inside the Beltway hurt or harm rush-hour travel times? I addressed that issue yesterday based on data from a Washington Post article. Now I supplement that post with data direct from Deputy Secretary Transportation Nick Donohue. The tolls have been widely criticized by commuters, many of whom recoil…
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Transportation Revenue Focus of Concern Again
In the middle of a booming economy, with many state revenue sources surging, flat transportation revenues were the focus of warnings Monday in presentations by Virginia Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne and Secretary of Transportation Shannon Valentine. “I think we are heading for a cliff,” Layne told the House Appropriations Committee. “For the first time…