Bacon's Rebellion

  • Hernandez Proposes Florida-Here-We-Come Bill

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    by Hans Bader

    Delegate Phil Hernandez, D-Norfolk, has introduced legislation to raise state income taxes on people making over $1 million per year. Their marginal tax rate would rise from 5.75% to 10%, under HB 2333. This tax increase won’t become law this year, but it might become law under a future Democratic governor.

    Virginia already has higher income taxes than most of its neighbors, unlike a decade ago. Back in 2015, Virginia had lower income tax rates than West Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Back then, the top marginal tax rate was 6.5% in West Virginia, 6% in Kentucky, and 5.8% in North Carolina, compared to 5.75% in Virginia. And the lowest tax rate (for low-income households) was 5.8% in North Carolina, 3% in West Virginia, and 2% in Kentucky, compared to 2% in Virginia (most taxpayers pay the top marginal tax rate in each state).

    But in the decade since, most of Virginia’s neighbors have cut tax rates, while Virginia has not. Kentucky now has a maximum tax rate of 4%, North Carolina now has a maximum tax rate of 4.25%, West Virginia now has a maximum tax rate of 4.82%, while Virginia still has a maximum tax rate of 5.75%. Tennessee has no state income tax. As a result, Virginia is now one of the ten-highest taxed states.

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  • Water-Gate Needs an Independent Investigation

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    James A. Bacon

    Video of the Pump Room Flooding Monday
    byu/sleevieb inrva

    by James A. Bacon

    Evidence continues to emerge of warning signs that the City of Richmond’s water-treatment and distribution system suffered from a failure to properly maintain, repair and upgrade its physical plant. WTVR-CBS reported yesterday that a 2022 Environmental Protection Agency alerted the city to corroded pipes and bacterial contamination. Today the Richmond Times-Dispatch cites a planning department document in which a utility-department engineering manager requested replacements for three outdated water pumps at the Byrd Park Pumping Station for which repair parts were no longer available.

    The Water-Gate fiasco presents Richmond’s new mayor Danny Avula with a challenge and opportunity. His immediate priority is to restore supplies of drinkable water to the city and neighboring counties, a task he has undertaken with energy and earnestness.

    The obvious follow-up is to determine exactly what went wrong and ensure that it never happens again. But the work doesn’t stop there. Any inquiry into the causes of Water-Gate must examine the managerial and budgetary contributors to the breakdown.

    Why were the warning signs ignored? Was it managerial incompetence in the department of public works? Was it managerial incompetence in the upper echelons of the city administration? Were maintenance projects delayed due to chronic underfunding? Was City Hall distracted by the bright shiny object of “equity”?

    These questions are not easily answered. I join Paul Goldman, aide to former Governor L. Douglas Wilder and periodic candidate for city office, in calling for an independent investigation. The need for such an inquiry should be uncontroversial. What’s crucial is how the scope of the project is defined. Will the broader questions be addressed or will they be ruled out from the get-go?

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  • Big Solar’s Proposed Zoning Override Bill Still Opposed

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    The 2025 General Assembly is expected to consider another proposal to create a state-level approval process for certain large renewable energy projects, overriding local zoning authority. Based on recent public debates about the proposal, it is facing severe headwinds.  

    Similar bills were proposed and failed in 2024. The legislative Commission on Electric Utility Regulation (CEUR), newly energized with a strong renewable energy bias, has spent a year on a stakeholder process seeking to calm complaints from local governments, agriculture and forestry industry representatives and green energy skeptics.  

    The push for the bill is coming from renewable industry representatives and environmental activists who complain that good projects are being rejected for what they deem “bad reasons” by local authorities.  

    The most recent version of the proposed legislation was discussed at a CEUR meeting January 6, one the few public meetings this week in the waterless Virginia Capitol. The idea seemed to be drawing just as much fire as it was a year ago.  In perhaps the clearest sign the bill starts with a fever, Speaker of the House Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) expressed firm opposition.  

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  • A Horrible Death in Colonial Heights – Part Two

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    sherlockj

    A Horrible Death in Colonial Heights – Part Two

    Nursing Facility Standards Enforcement

    Updated Jan 27 @ 1700

    by James C. Sherlock

    Part One of this series served as an introduction to the circumstances surrounding one of the worst deaths humanly imaginable. It shows what happens when standards are not enforced.

    Charges against staff. The government has alleged that the death was the result of criminal acts by facility staff at Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center (CHRNC) in Chesterfield County.

    It appears they may have a case. But it better be a strong one.

    The defense will plead that:

    • facility owners were at fault for systematically understaffing the facility to increase profits; and
    • the government was at fault for failing to oversee the facility and enforce federal law.

    Both of those claims will have the distinct advantage of being true.

    Charges against ownership? We do not know if indictments are pending against the owners of CHRNC. But that case may prove easier to make than the cases against staff.  

    The data on staffing related to enforcement of federal law are incredibly granular to the level of hours of specific job codes on the payroll every day of every quarter. The data are submitted by the owners themselves, are auditable against payroll systems the coding of which is mandated by CMS, and are available going back to Q1 of 2017.

    Because they control patient census, the owners will have limited options for defense to the charge of understaffing as a business model if the case is proven with their own data.

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  • State Money for Private Schools

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    University of Richmond

    The state of Virginia spends more than $100 million annually for Virginia students to attend private colleges and universities in the state.

    The program is the Tuition Assistance Grant program, commonly known as TAG, authorized in Sec. 23.1-628 through 23.1-635 of the Code of Virginia. There is no need or merit requirement. The student only needs to be a Virginia resident attending a Virginia accredited, private, nonprofit school. The program is available to undergraduate and graduate students.

    The amount available per student is set out in the Appropriation Act. For the current biennium, the basic annual grant is $5,125 the first year and $5,250 the second year. The amount for graduate and medical students is $5,000 for both the first year and second year. Totally on-line students receive half of those amounts; students attending a Historically Black College and University can receive $7,500 annually.

    The school that received the most, by far, was Liberty University, with $11.5 million distributed in the fall of 2024. Next was Virginia Union University in Richmond, at $5.7 million, followed by Shenandoah University in Winchester, with $4.2 million. The full list, provided by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, which administers the program, can be found here.

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  • Hodges Bill Would Require Universities to Archive Board Video

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Delegate Keith Hodges, R-Urbanna, has submitted a bill that would promote transparency in higher-ed governance. HB2452 would require public four-year institutions to record, archive, and make Boards of Visitors meetings available to the public for five years.

    Boards already live-stream their open-session meetings, as required by state law. But no requirement exists to make video accessible after the fact. I can’t speak for what other universities do, but the University of Virginia does not archive its meetings.

    An employee of the board’s secretary told me that UVA did not archive video of its meetings for reasons of economy. The law requires such recordings to be ADA accessible, meaning that they must have closed captioning… which would be prohibitively expensive to add.

    That might have been true at one time, but it no longer is. AI-powered closed captioning software has made the cost insignificant. Otter.ai, to pick one vendor, costs business clients $240 per year. UVA is a $5 billion-a-year organization. The university spends more money on doughnuts for board members than it would on closed captioning.

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  • A Horrible Death in Colonial Heights – Part One

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    sherlockj

    A Horrible Death in Colonial Heights – Part One

    by James C. Sherlock

    On 29 October of 2024 a woman died under tragic circumstances in Virginia.  Her death was preceded by suffering that mercifully we cannot fully imagine.

    The government alleges that she died as a result of neglect at Innovative Healthcare Management’s (IHM) Colonial Heights Rehabilitation and Nursing Center (CHRNC) in Chesterfield County.

    The best summary report of her case that I have seen to date is here. The article, available to nurse.org’s >1.5 million monthly readers, discusses key details of the case and broader implications for nurses and elder care. The case has created an online firestorm among nurses.

    I will summarize it below. Quotations are from the article.

    Summary of events. The circumstances leading to the woman’s death are being investigated by Colonial Heights Police in coordination with Attorney General Miyares’ Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (investigates elder abuse in Virginia), the Virginia Department of Health and the Chesterfield Commonwealth Attorney’s office.

    On December 18, investigators arrested five individuals and issued warrants for 13 others, all CHRNC staff.

    Charges so far include seven counts of felony abuse and neglect of a vulnerable adult, two counts of misdemeanor abuse and neglect of a vulnerable adult, two counts of obstruction, and 27 counts of falsifying patient records.

    On December 19, 2024 Noelle Nochisaki, a prosecutor representing the Commonwealth Attorney, alleged in Chesterfield General District Court that a 74-year-old woman with cerebral palsy and diabetes:

    • was left in her bed in CHNRC for days in her own urine and feces, not turned or changed, resulting in severe flesh wounds;
    • the wounds were so severe that they caused sepsis.
    • she was admitted to the hospital, where the infection resulted in her death.

    She continued:
    … the victim’s foot was broken at some point, and she was given incorrect medicine that “poisoned” her, and instead of reporting the incident and having her transported to the hospital, staff just observed her.

    The prosecutor then told Judge James O’Connell:

    … her wounds from the poor care were so bad that Adult Protective Services originally thought she may have been the victim of a sexual assault. That was not the case, though the flesh wounds to the patient’s genital region were so bad, they were described as necrotic.

    Underscoring the seriousness of the allegations, at least two supervisors were initially denied bail.

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  • Democrats And Their Undying Love of Criminals

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Yesterday I spoke to a Republican women’s group in Virginia Beach and during the Q and A someone mentioned that State Sen. Aaron Rouse of Virginia Beach was sponsoring a bill that would give tax credits to employers who hire convicted felons.

    What would we do without Democrats and their relentless love of law breakers?

    When I got to my computer I checked out the information. I found this on X:

    My first reaction: Just what we need, people convicted of violent felonies working construction around our houses unbeknownst to us, driving for Uber, working in our homes for exterminating companies.

    Unsettling, to say the least. Continue reading.

  • How About a Regional Solution to Richmond’s Water Woes? No Thanks.

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In a myriad of small ways, the City of Richmond’s water woes have spilled into neighboring Henrico County where I live. The County is on water-boil alert, making cooking meals a hassle. One of my favorite restaurants, which is normally half full on Wednesday nights, was so jammed with diners when I stopped by to pick up a pizza that nary a spare table was seen. With no water service in their city apartments, my son and his girlfriend dropped by last evening for hot showers. (It’s always good to see them, so I’m not complaining.)

    Needless to say, in the city itself, where service last night had been restored to a mere trickle, the water shutdown is not a minor inconvenience, it’s an all-consuming preoccupation. As city officials inch closer to getting taps and toilets flowing, people are looking beyond the immediate crisis and asking how to make sure a shutdown never happens again.

    One line of thought, advanced by the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial board yesterday and by RTD columnist Michael Paul Williams today, is to seek a regional solution.

    “Nothing works without water. Simply put, this cannot happen again,” writes Williams. “Once we move from crisis mode to assessment mode, there needs to be honest dialogue on what went wrong, how to prevent it, and whether our current water setup makes sense if it doesn’t protect the entire region from an unforeseen catastrophe. Rather than our patchwork network, how about a truly regional framework for water delivery?”

    Let’s unpack this. It is true, the failure of the City of Richmond’s water system had regional consequences because Henrico and Hanover Counties depend in part on Richmond for their water supplies. But as a Henrico resident, I have a very different reaction than Williams.

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  • Democrats Demand Massive Tax Hike on Virginians

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    by

    James A. Bacon

    Meanwhile, Republicans plan to return a $1.2 billion surplus back to taxpayers.

    by Victoria Manning

    Virginia Democrats are wasting no time proposing a huge tax increase on Virginians by slapping a 5 percent tax on virtually every service in the commonwealth—despite the state’s budget surplus. The massive increase, proposed by longtime Democrat Vivian Watts, would land squarely on small businesses and tradesmen such as plumbers, electricians, landscapers, and barbers.

    If HB 1755 passes, Virginians will be required to pay more for dry cleaning, vehicle repair, sporting events, nutrition services, animal boarding, digital services, and much more.

    Virginia is already ranked an abysmal 28th on the State Tax Competitiveness Index, which sorts states’ taxation competitiveness in different areas such as income tax, property tax, and sales tax. If Democrats get their way, Virginia will certainly decline further in the rankings. The state income tax is one of the worst in the nation and Virginia is one of the few states that taxes its citizens through a personal property tax on vehicle ownership.

    Restoration News spoke to Tim Anderson, a former Virginia Delegate who is running for reelection in Virginia’s 97th House District. He weighed in on HB 1755, saying, “Services have never been taxed in Virginia and despite Virginia having record surpluses each of the past 3 years, Democrats have the audacity to try to take more money from Virginians to fund progressive causes such as the electric vehicle mandate.” Anderson also shared his concerns regarding the impact a tax increase would have, “with inflation crushing Virginians pocketbooks at the grocery store, out of touch Democrats think the best thing to do is take more of your money.” Continue reading.

  • Richmond’s Water-Gate Scandal

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    What an embarrassment. The City of Richmond’s water system shut down Monday, just as the General Assembly was scheduled to convene in the state Capitol. With no working toilets, legislators decided to delay deliberations until next week. As the city struggled to restore service, restaurants closed, a waterless VCU Medical Center turned away ambulances, and citizens were put on a boil-water advisory. Mere days after assuming office, Mayor Danny Avula found himself scrambling to get the water flowing again.

    City officials were able to provide only sketchy details about how a two- to four-inch snowfall knocked out the city’s water system. Media reports suggest a cascading effect involving a snow-related interruption in power to the century-old water-treatment facility, a malfunctioning component that caused flooding, and electrical devices shorting out and rendering pumps inoperable.

    How could this have happened? Avula undoubtedly will launch a probe to explain what went wrong. The inevitable post mortem assuredly will lay out the proximate causes of the fiasco from an engineering perspective. Whether the investigation explores underlying fiscal and management issues depends upon how Avula frames the scope of the inquiry.

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  • Maybe Another Subsidy Will Finally Boost EVs?

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    by

    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Delegate Irene Shin, D-Herndon

    Yet another effort will be made in 2025 to get Virginia’s two major electric utilities deeper into the business of building and maintaining charging stations for electric vehicles, with their ratepayers – even those who have no interest in such vehicles – having to pay the tab. Given they are supposed to be the no-brainer wave of the future, electric vehicles sure need a whole lot of expensive subsidies and legislative boosting.

    This version of the idea comes in a bill from Delegate Irene Shin, D-Fairfax, who is a member of the House Labor and Commerce Committee, which is likely to first hear the bill. 

    It would repeal a 2021 statute that prohibited the utilities from building out such a network and creating a rate adjustment clause, or RAC, to raise the capital from their customers. Such rate “adders” hitting all customers have become the go-to method for funding most other utility investments, from new power plants and transmission lines to a subsidy program for low-income customers.

    If the utilities seek to develop their own charging network, the bill requires they be barred from building the stations too close to existing private chargers. The State Corporation Commission would be tasked with developing the exclusion zone. But even if utilities build none of their own stations, other elements of the bill guarantee higher costs for their customers to subsidize electrified transportation.

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  • Three Major Proposed Constitutional Amendments

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    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The 2025 General Assembly will be taking up constitutional amendments on three hot button issues—abortion, voting rights of felons, and same-sex marriage.

    In Virginia, to amend the state constitution, the General Assembly must agree to the proposed amendment twice, with an intervening election for the House of Delegates. If the proposal is approved the second time, it is then submitted to the voters for approval. A majority vote in the referendum is needed for the change to become effective. The Governor has no veto power over proposed constitutional amendments.

    HJR 1—Abortion. The proposal would add a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” to Virginia’s Bill of Rights. “Reproductive freedom” is defined as including the “ability to make and carry out decisions relating to one’s own prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, postpartum care, contraception, abortion care, miscarriage management, and fertility care.”
    The amendment prohibits one’s reproductive freedom from being “directly, or indirectly, denied, burdened, or infringed upon unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” The amendment defines a state interest as being compelling “only if it is for the limited purpose of maintaining or improving the health of an individual seeking care, consistent with accepted clinical standards of care and evidence-based medicine, and does not infringe on that individual’s autonomous decision making.”

    The amendment does allow the state to regulate abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy, but it may not prohibit an abortion in the trimester which, in the professional judgment of a doctor, is needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the mother or when a physician deems the fetus is not viable.

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  • Use AI to Smite AI-Induced Energy Demand

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Image credit: ChatGPT

    by Felix Garcia

    The Virginia General Assembly convenes tomorrow for its 2025 session among the usual laments that bipartisan solutions to the Commonwealth’s biggest challenges are not possible nowadays.

    But there should be one big issue upon which members of both parties in both houses can agree: Virginia uses more electricity than it creates. With more data centers coming on-line, with more to follow, the situation is only going to get worse. And businesses and consumers are the ones who’ll be paying the bill for the imported electricity required to run them.

    Fixing this problem is no longer just a “challenge” but has become a business imperative for the Commonwealth of Virginia if we are to maintain our position as the best state in the nation for business.

    Energy policy is at a crossroads. We can no longer wait for more studies and study commissions. We must identify solutions that will reduce the amount of expensive electricity that must be imported from other states, and we must do it now.

    To do that, Artificial Intelligence is our friend!

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  • VanValkenburg Tackles Affordable Housing

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Broadly speaking, there are two types of strategies for making housing more affordable: demand-side strategies and supply-side strategies.

    The demand-side approach makes it easier for people to buy houses — lower down-payments, interest-rate subsidies, outright grants. Such tactics might help the lucky individual households that qualify, but only by allowing Homeowner A to outbid Homeowner B, effectively displacing Homeowner B. There’s no net gain in the housing stock, thus no net gain for the population as a whole.

    Supply-side strategies address the root cause of unaffordability: regulations that drive up the cost of construction and restrict the number of new lots. In a market economy, building more housing doesn’t benefit just those moving into the newly constructed dwelling units, it benefits all potential homeowners by altering the supply-demand calculus that determines housing prices.

    Typically, Democrats go for demand-side solutions, aiming to boost the buying power of lower-income households. It hasn’t worked out very well. One would think that Republicans would have leaped into the breach with supply-side solutions, but they haven’t been very imaginative in crafting new legislation.

    But there’s hope in the 2025 General Assembly session. State Senator Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, is introducing a set of supply-side bills that could do more to move the needle on housing than anything else I’ve seen in Virginia.

    (more…)

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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