Bacon's Rebellion

  • Big Dreams at the GRTC

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    James A. Bacon

    Amy Biegelsen with Style Weekly has written a solid piece about the challenges facing John Lewis as he seeks to modernize the GRTC, the Richmond regional bus system. Lewis, who took on the CEO post two years ago, has big ambitions. Writes Biegelsen:

    Lewis dreams of turning GRTC into a bus rapid transit system such as those available in Cleveland or Los Angeles. Such systems basically try to offer riders the speed and psychological comforts of a rail system. … The buses come with electronic devices that prompt traffic lights to remain green as the bus approaches, greatly reducing commute times. “We can make a great-looking vehicle almost look like a rail line,” Lewis says, “but it’s still a bus so that you have a lot of flexibility.” By designing the buses to look more trainlike, he says, “you get away from the stigma of regular buses.” …

    Lewis is in the process of adding global positioning system (GPS) capacity to all city buses, giving GRTC the ability to tell its customers exactly where the buses are at all times. … Buses with GPS onboard can broadcast stops out loud for blind riders and flash them on display boards for the deaf. … With the full fleet beaming back information about their exact whereabouts to GRTC headquarters, it’s only a short jump for Lewis to be able to provide updated information to riders on their cell phones and BlackBerries. By next year, he expects the system to be capable of texting riders directly. For example, the system could alert a specific rider when the bus is five minutes from a stop close to his office, allowing him to orchestrate his schedule without having to block out waiting time.

    But the challenges are formidable. Despite its reputation as one of the best-run ransit systems in the country, GRTC takes in only 25 percent of its revenue through passenger fares. GRTC’s public ownership is a huge problem. Decision-making is hobbled by joint ownership by the City of Richmond and the counties of Henrico and Chesterfield, which often have conflicting agendas. Also, as a government entity, GRTC is strapped for cash and has limited latitude to experiment with new ideas to attract riders.

    The route structure is archaic. Says Lewis: “Our route system right now pretty much exactly follows the route systems of our old trolleys that were here 50 years ago. Basically, all we did was rip out the rails and put a bus on there. Well, traveling habits have changed. People’s living and commuting patterns have changed. We’ve got to change along with it.”

    Lewis would like to provide new kinds of services for affluent, Internet-savvy, Blackberry-carrying riders living in low-density suburbs. In one innovation, GRTC has launched a service ferrying Richmonders to Fredericksburg where they can connect with the Virginia Railway Express. It’s a sad commentary that connecting Richmonders with Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., is easier to accomplish than to connect them with suburban malls in Henrico and Chesterfield.

  • The Best Talent that Money Can Buy

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    James A. Bacon

    Dominion has bolstered its formidable lobbying team with another prize hire: Ann Loomis, chief of staff to U.S. Senator John Warner. Loomis, who had served as Warner’s legislative director for 18 years before taking on her current position, focusing on Warner’s work with the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.

    Loomis reached retirement age this year and decided to enter the private sector, reports John H. Arundel with the Rappahannock News.

    The Loomis hire comes as Dominion girds for battle to gain permission to build high-voltage electric transmission lines across Virginia’s northern piedmont. If the power company fails to get permission from the State Corporation Commission in the face of intense citizen resistance, its fallback position is to seek federal powers of eminent domain. Crucial to that effort is gaining approval for a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor across much of the Mid-Atlantic region, including a large chunk of Virginia. Loomis undoubtedly will play a key role in that effort.

    The Loomis recruitment follows the hire of William L. “Bill” Murray, legislative director for Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

  • I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP

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    James A. Bacon

    “Dear Fellow Citizen:”

    “I started this race with integrity, dignity and an honest pledge to run a positive campaign, and I intend to maintain that pledge to the end.

    “Honoring that commitment, I have avoided comment on my opponent’s 11 felony count indictment. ….”

    from full page 6 June ad in Fauquier Times-Democrat for Jill Holtzman Vogel titled “An Open Letter to the People of the 27th District.”

    EMR

  • Norfolk Southern Proposes $2 Billion in Rail Corridor Upgrades

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    James A. Bacon

    Norfolk Southern Corp. has proposed a $2 billion upgrade for a rail corridor between Louisiana and New Jersey that could divert as many as one million trucks per year from roads and highways, including Interstate 81 in Virginia.

    The railroad company, reports the Roanoke Times, says it is prepared to “invest a lot in this corridor … up to an amount that provides us an acceptable return on our investment.” Beyond that amount, the Norfolk Southern expects the public sector to step in. Virginia has pledged $40 million towards upgrades in the portion of the 1,400-mile corridor that runs through the state.

    The idea is certainly worth examining. On the surface at least, it seems vastly preferable to the two grotesquely expensive public-private partnership proposals that have been submitted for I-81 in Virginia. But all expenditures must be scrutinized on a return-on-investment basis. Before Virginia commits to this project, we need to know how many trucks will we get off Virginia highways for that $40 million through this approach, and how does that compare to alternative investments of $40 million?

    Let’s see the numbers. If the numbers look good, then it’s full speed ahead!

  • 100 Worthless Ideas for the Future of Virginia?

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    James A. Bacon

    I feel churlish for making this post. With the best of intentions, Lieutentant Governor Bill Bolling is traversing the state, meeting with people in “town hall idea raisers” to generate new ideas for dealing with education, transportation, health care, the environment and other pressing issues. His goal is a worthy one: to make the Republican Party “the party of issues and ideas,” and to “offer a positive vision for the future of our state.” But, judging by the ideas highlighted in the Lt. Gov.’s snazzy new website, the future of the Virginia looks pretty dim.

    There are depressingly few new ideas in the bunch. A distressing number call for launching new government programs and spending new money. Not every idea calls for mo’ money, but most of those that don’t either have been around a long time and have gotten absolutely nowhere, or are so vague as to be meaningless.

    A sampling from just the ideas about education:

    • Higher academic standards – more opportunities for AP, IB and dual enrollment courses to better prepare college-bound students. Translation: Mo’ money.
    • Increase opportunities for vocational education. Translation: Mo’ money.
    • Raise teacher pay to the national average. Translation: Mo’ money.
    • More money for colleges and universities. The title says it all: Mo’ money.
    • Freeze tuition for in-state students. Translation: Mo’ money.

    Then there are the ideas that sound good but are actually meaningless or based on false premises.

    • Limit the number of out-of-state students. A false economy. Out-of-state students pay their own way through higher tuitions.
    • More accountability in higher ed. Demand performance standards and accountability in higher ed. Sounds good, but it’s vapid. What kinds of performance do we measure? What do we hold universities accountable for?

    In fairness, contributors did proffer some ideas for making schools work more effectively.

    • More money in the classroom/less in the central office. Only 60 percent of Virginia’s educational dollars end up in the classroom – raise the bar to 65 percent. At least we’re talking about spending existing dollars more efficiently.
    • Discipline in the classroom. Specific suggestions include removing disruptive students from the classroom, expanding alternative schools for students with recurrent disciplinary problems, requiring students to wear school uniforms, reinstituting corporal punishment, and increasing the number of “school resource officers.” Mostly good ideas, but let’s see how far they get before they’re shredded in the courts.
    • School Choice. Provide tax credits or vouchers for parents who send their kids to private schools. I’m a huge believer in creating a true educational marketplace. But let’s see the details. How do we overcome massive institutional resistance to this idea?
    • Competency testing for teachers and repeal of teacher tenure laws. Now we’re talking about real change — subjecting teachers to the same performance expectations as employees in the private sector. But just try to get this past the Virginia Education Association.

    Other than school choice and repeal of teacher tenure, most of these ideas would fine-tune the status quo. What they don’t acknowledge is that the public education system is an artifact of the 19th-century industrial era and needs to be reinvented for a 21st-century knowledge-based economy. We won’t achieve that aim by throwing more money at the system, and we won’t even achieve it by removing a handful of disruptive students, putting pupils in uniforms or moving a few thousand kids from public schools to private.

    Almost across topics covered, the ideas are mostly superficial, reflecting a superficial understanding of the nature of the problems we confront. Not one of the ideas about transportation touches upon the relationships between traffic congestion and land use. Not one of the ideas about health care acknowledges how state laws impede the efficient working of the medical marketplace. Instead of soliciting the same warmed-over ideas from an inadequately informed public, Bolling needs to study the issues himself, devise his own bold solutions, and then go out and sell them.

    Postscript: Has anyone heard a peep out of the Attorney General’s office regarding the initiative to cut government rules and regulations?

  • A New Look at TELs

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    James A. Bacon

    The Rockefeller Institute of Government has a new report on the effects of state-level tax and spending limit laws. It’s worth a read, considering the issue has been brought forth a couple of times in the General Assembly but, as with so many ideas, died a silent death in the Senate Finance committee.

    Here’s a sample:

    We also found that TELs may have different effects on different areas of spending. For instance, when the stringency and restrictiveness of state-level TELs are taken into account, state-level TELs have significant negative effects on the level of state and local public safety spending. Also, when the stringency and restrictiveness of state-level TELs are accounted for, state-level TELs have significant positive effects on the share of transportation spending in total spending (though not its actual level). Our study found no statistically significant impact of state-level TELs on spending in four other functional areas: education, health and hospitals, quality-of-life and amenities, and public welfare.

    The analyses also found that state-level TELs have different distributional effects across revenue sources. Not unexpectedly, after the adoption of state-level TELs, state and local governments become less dependent, in terms of revenue share, on property, individual income, and corporate income taxes. Interestingly, they become more dependent for their revenues on fees and charges, such as sewerage charges and lotteries. TELs do not appear to have a significant impact on sales taxes. Finally, they appear to reduce federal intergovernmental transfers to states, perhaps because states are less able to put up state matching funds in order to draw down additional federal dollars (as is the case for Medicaid).

    Interesting to note toward the end is the author’s statement that TELs shift revenue sources from the “progressive,” like income taxes, to the “regressive,” meaning fees.

    Fees, while they can be regressive for some, may be more rational for the whole, based on the idea of “users pay.” It is somewhat disturbing to see governments become more reliant upon lotteries for funds, as lotteries are perhaps the most regressive, though purely voluntary, forms of taxation (and here is an item on a legal case in North Carolina regarding whether lotteries are actually taxes).

    Virginia’s political class has been less than warm to the idea of a TEL in any form. But, as the authors of the study note, most TELs on the books were passed during fiscal downturns, though few have been adopted in recent years. If Virginia follows its pattern, a fiscal bust may happen sooner than people think. Will a Virginia TEL find new life, or any life at all, if that happens?

  • Will Anything Better Emerge? You Bet!

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    James A. Bacon

    A week ago John J. McGlennon, chairman of the James City County Board, summed up the attitude that many Hampton Roads residents take toward the proposed plan to create a regional transportation authority and empower it to raise roughly $170 million a year in new levies: “Everyone understands that this is pretty terrible legislation,” he told the Virginian-Pilot. “The real question is whether anything better will emerge if we reject it.”

    Jim Bowden and other bloggers have attacked the regional transportation authority for its lack of transparency and accountability to taxpayers. I share those concerns. But my problems with the transportation authority run even deeper: By raising revenues through a variety of sources, most of which have nothing to do with when or how far people drive, the funding mechanisms would sever the connection between those who pay for Hampton Roads transportation projects and those who use/benefit from them. Furthermore, there is nothing in the plan that acknowledges the connection between transportation and land use. It’s the same old tax-and-build policy that has gotten the region into its current predicament.

    There is no escaping the necessity of raising money from some source in order to build infrastructure for a growing population. There is no free lunch. But it matters very much how the money is raised and what it pays for. To answer McGlennon’s question, almost anything that emerges from a rejection of the transportation authority would be better than the plan now under consideration.

    Conceptually, the solution is simple: Devise a system where road users and beneficiaries (property owners whose land is made more valuable by transportation improvements) pay for the improvements. The more direct and transparent the connection between using the roads and paying for them, the better.

    Where would the money come from?

    1. Congestion tolls — user pays. Create transportation corridor authorities empowered to implement time-of-day pricing on the most congested bridges and thoroughfares. Tolls that vary according to the level of congestion would: (1) reduce reduce traffic to the level of optimal throughput, thus maximizing capacity; (2) allow the authorities to fund transportation improvements within the corridor such as adding extra lanes, setting up Bus Rapid Transit bus stations, synchronizing stop lights, or making micro-improvements to improve traffic flow; and (3) incentivize drivers to seek alternatives to the one-car-one-rider commute.
    2. Community Development Authorities — property owners pay. Encourage builders of large projects, such as Pat Robertson’s proposed 500-acre Blenheim development, to pay for Interstate interchanges and secondary road upgrades by creating CDAs and issuing bonds.
    3. Hampton Roads Foundation — community pays. Privatize the Ports of Virginia, an idea that has been raised recently, and use the proceeds, conceivably as much as $5 billion, to endow a regional foundation. The foundation could underwrite projects, such as the Third Crossing, an upgraded U.S. 460, or improved rail freight to the ports, that could not support themselves through a user-pays system but might have overriding public benefits such as economic development or hurricane evacuation.

    Charging people the full cost of their transportation choices will have beneficial long-term effects. Hampton Roads would see more entrepreneurial approaches to shared ridership systems. Developers would devise communities with a better match between jobs, housing and amenities. Local governments would encourage more transportation-efficient patterns of development. The region would match its commitment to increasing transportation capacity with a commitment to reduce transportation demand.

  • Time for Golf Carts to Command Some Respect!

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    James A. Bacon

    Jerry Deem may be the only golf cart owner legally driving on public roads in Fairview Beach. That’s because, technically, his golf cart is not a golf cart. It’s defined under state law as a “low speed vehicle.” The critical differentiator: The golf cart abides by state safety requirements to be equipped with “head lights, brake lights, tail lights, reflex reflectors, an emergency brake, an externally mounted rearview mirror, an internally mounted rearview mirror, a windshield, one or more windshield wipers, a speedometer, an odometer, braking for each wheel, a safety belt system, and a vehicle identification number.”

    Like most golf carts, reports Phyllis Cook with the Journal Press, Deem’s four-seat vehicle is battery-operated. Recharged with household current, the vehicle can run about 30 miles — more than Deem needs to putter around Fairview Beach.

    All that safety equipment adds significant cost to golf carts, prices of which typically run between $2,000 and $7,000, depending on size and features. The safety requirements strike me as overkill for a vehicle with a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour. Shouldn’t it be state policy to encourage the use of low-polluting electric buggies for use on local roads?

    Some readers probably think I’m off my rocker for publishing so many posts on the topic of electric golf carts. I haven’t researched this yet, so I’m willing to stand open to correction, but I’ll wager that electric buggies are the fastest growing transportation mode in the country right now. They’re increasingly popular in resort areas like Fairview Beach, and it won’t be long before they enter the mainstream.

    I was chatting yesterday with Casey Sowers and Dave Anderson, developers of the proposed Roseland project in Chesterfield County. They would like to create a New Urbanism community where so many needs — jobs, housing, retail, services, amenities, etc. — are met within the bounds of the project that many families would feel comfortable trading in a regular car for an electric vehicle. So enamored are they with the idea of electric vehicles, that they’re playing with the idea of creating parking spaces with free electric recharge.

    Think of the advantages: Roseland residents would save money because buggies are cheaper than cars, giving them more disposable income. Buggies pollute less, and they require smaller parking spaces. And, darn it, they’re just more fun — they come in a mind-bending assortment of designs and color schemes. Just look at the custom paint job on the photo above!

    As golf carts/buggies take off in popularity, we’ll see major project developers designing communities from the ground up to accommodate them, just like pedestrians and bicycles. At some point, the Commonwealth of Virginia will have to take them seriously.
    (Photo credit: Lifted Golf Carts.)

  • Loudoun: Planning for the Creative Class, or Repelling It?

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    James A. Bacon

    Loudoun County’s economic success depends upon its ability to attract members of the so-called creative class, County Administrator Kirby Bowers said during his State of the County speech yesterday. Accordingly, the county needs to address quality-of-life issues that appeal to these knowledge workers. Writes Megan Kuhn in Leesburg2Day:

    Persuading knowledge workers to live in Loudoun is not just about the price of housing, Bowers said. It’s about, “Is Loudoun a cool place?” he said. The development of mixed-use centers with entertainment and nightlife is essential to attracting such coveted workers.

    There are “cool” places in Loudoun County, but they are very small communities — Leesburg, Middleburg, Waterford, Purcellville — and they can’t absorb the thousands of knowledge workers flocking to the county. Indeed, the urbanized newcomers threaten to swamp and destroy the village-scale coolness exists in the county. Meanwhile, new development takes the form of scattered, disconnected, low-density development that is the antithesis of “cool.”

    As creative-class guru Richard Florida explained it, creative workers value places with diversity and authenticity. Demographic monocultures — subdivisions of houses inhabited by nuclear families in the same income range and age range — do not provide diversity. Disconnected pods of houses and shopping centers, accessible only by car, do not lend themselves to the kind of spontaneous street art and personal interaction that Florida celebrates. Sterile office complexes set in isolated parks — what Florida labels “nerdistans” — are not the kinds of places where creative young people want to work.

    Virtually everything that I’ve seen built in Loudoun County in recent years is calculated to repel the creative class. People may continue to move into the county because so little housing is being built anywhere else in the Washington metropolitan area, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t move somewhere else if they had half a chance.

  • Is This Where the Term “Railroaded” Comes From?

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    James A. Bacon

    The Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project looks like it is careening toward disaster. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote June 18 on committing to the first installment of the county’s $900 million share of the project — but it has yet to see a copy of the $2.65 billion construction contract! Worse, the price of the contract is good only through June 19, so the supervisors are under intense pressure not to delay their approval.

    A number of the supervisors have said they must see a copy of the contract negotiated between the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) and Dulles Transit Partners, the construction entity, before committing county funds. MWAA representatives insist that they will be able to share the contract before June 18. According to Examiner.com:

    “If you want this board to move, we’re going to have access to documents or we’re not going to move,” Connolly told Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority General Counsel Ed Faggen.

    But even if the MWAA courier delivers a copy this afternooon, Fairfax supervisors will have less than two weeks to read, digest and debate the merits of what assuredly will be a highly complex document.

    Especially outraged are supporters of the underground option: running the heavy rail underneath the Tysons Corner segment instead of down the median of Route 7 (Leesburg Pike), as envisioned in the MWAA contract. Tunnel backers believe an aerial route will destroy a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-develop Tysons into a walkable, transit-oriented mixed-use district. A June 18 decision would allow no time to reconsider.

    Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, attended a board hearing yesterday along with hundreds of other citizens to press their case. Said Schwartz: “I am astounded that Fairfax County’s elected officials have not seen the contract yet and that a gun is being held to their heads to vote on June 18th.”

    Toot! Toot! Can you hear the sound of citizens getting railroaded?

  • Like Broadband? Thank a Smoker.

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    James A. Bacon

    Southwest Virginia’s most important infrastructure project — a 200-mile, high-speed OC48 fiber-optic backbone — is nearly complete. Final connections are expected to be made late this summer. According to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, the line provides service to Bluefield, Wytheville, Abingdon, Lebanon, Claypool Hill, Richlands and points in between.

    A proposed third phase of the project would extend the broadband line from Vansant to Clintwood for an additional 47 miles. The project is being funded largely by the Virginia Tobacco Commission and Community Revitalization Commission, which gets its money from Virginia’s share of the national tobacco settlement negotiated nearly a decade ago.

    One of the best things that Virginia ever did for Southwest Virginia — and the Gilmore administration deserves credit for this — is to use the proceeds from the tobacco settlement to underwrite economic development initiatives for the tobacco-growing regions that would be hardest hit by the decline in tobacco cultivation. While some of the projects financed by the Commission are of dubious value, the decision to extend a fiber-optic trunk line into isolated counties ignored by the major telecommunications companies was indubitably a good one. High-speed Internet access is a prerequisite for almost every business today. No longer is the lack of such access a stumbling block for doing business in Southwest Virginia.

  • Mapping Crime in Vinton

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    James A. Bacon

    The town of Vinton in Roanoke County has become one of roughly 20 jurisdictions nationally to provide an interactive crime-mapping service for its citizens. The town takes computerized crime mapping data, which police use to identify hot spots and trouble areas, and puts it on the World Wide Web. Writes Joe Kendal with the Roanoke Times:

    Vinton residents can go online and access CrimeView Community, a Web tool that makes crime mapping a public resource. Users can specify which crimes to search for, set a date range and center in on a specific address or on landmarks throughout the town. The result is an interactive map displaying crime locations, dates and current status.

    Neighborhood watch programs use the Web map; landlords use it to monitor crime rates around their properties.

    Of all the jurisdictions using the Omega Group software, including San Francisco, Chicago, Memphis and Las Vegas, Vinton, with a population of 8,000, is the smallest.

  • In Praise of Granny Flats

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    James A. Bacon

    Northwest Lower Michigan is gaining population overall, but its numerous small towns are losing people as the average household size shrinks. Average household size in the 10-county region plunged from 3.28 people per dwelling in 1970 to 2.48 in 2000. About two-thirds of the region’s households consist of only one or two people.

    Some local officials are trying to revive the local tradition of “granny flats,” “carriage houses,” or “mortgage helpers,” in which homeowners rented out small backyard or upstairs units. Common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the practice offered significant benefits to the homeowner, who earned a supplementary source of income, and to the renter, who paid a modest rent to live in a neighborhood he otherwise could not afford.

    As Carolyn Kelly observes in an article published by the Michigan Land Use Institute, however, special interests agitated against the granny flats. In Traverse City:

    Some residents, landlords, and realtors — including several with an interest in keeping rental markets tight — raise fears about crime and blight to make their case. Some say that granny flats will bring more renters into their neighborhoods; others that the flats will change the character of the community, lead to all sorts of parking problems, and bring more single people to neighborhoods that are zoned for single families.

    But the accessory building units are enjoying a revival. The logic is compelling:

    Cities and towns have a shortage of quality, right-sized housing for people who live alone or in pairs. With America’s average household size falling, more singles and couples are forced to move into homes that have too much room. This not only wastes some of their rent or mortgage money, it also leaves lots of unused bedroom space, which effectively pushes down that community’s population.

    Virginia, too, once had a strong tradition of granny flats, carriage houses and basement apartments. Those types of rentals are much rarer now, and almost unknown in the suburbs. I’m not sure exactly why, but I suspect it has a lot to do with zoning codes and subdivision covenants. Virginians need to revisit the idea. Households are shrinking in size her as well, and there is a paucity of economical dwelling space for many.

    Aside from addressing the Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, a major plus, permitting more flexibility in residential rentals would help build stronger, tighter-knit communities. A revival of granny flats would help dissolve the demographic monocultures in suburban areas that segregate households by age, income and family type. Finally, I would add a moral/ethical argument: As long as they’re not inconveniencing their neighbors, people should have the right to share their houses with whomever they want, under whatever economic arrangement they want.

  • Private Sector to the Rescue

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    James A. Bacon

    The United States needs to invest between $132 billion and $155.5 billion a year to improve transportation conditions, contends BusinessWeek magazine, but motorists pay only $54 billion a year for road repairs and maintenance. Another $11 billion a year will be needed over the next 20 years to replace aging water treatment facilities and comply with safe-drinking-water regulations; federal funding is less than 10 percent of the total national requirement. Tens of billions of dollars more are needed to repair dams, wastewater treatment plants and waterways.

    Who’s going to pay for it all? It looks like the private sector will play a major role. Private investment companies are raising hundreds of billions of dollars to take over aging infrastructure. The good news is, government won’ t have to raise taxes. The bad news is, the private sector will have to raise tolls and fees.

    That raises a great debate: What latitude should private investors be given in raising tolls and fees? What return on investment is reasonable? Could government do the job better for less money? BusinessWeek explores the issues here.

    My criteria for Virginia are very simple:

    (1) Pay now or pay later — pay much more later. The more government delays maintenance of infrastructure, the more it will cost to fix it down the road. Whether state government, local government or a private operator is in charge, hewing to higher maintenance standards generally pays off.

    (2) User/beneficiary pays. Politicians will resort to all sorts of trickery to disguise who’s paying the taxes, levies, penalties and fees that fund infrastructure maintenance and improvemetns. Infrastructure should be paid for by those who use the infrastructure, or those, such as landowners whose property gains value, who benefit from it. Furthermore, the payments should be totally transparent so people can seek alternatives. (Virginia’s recent transportation legislation is a case study in indirect subsidy and opacity. We need to go back and fix it.)

    (Hat tip to Jonathan Mallard for pointing me to the article.)

  • $172 Million in Historic Rehabilitation Projects

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    James A. Bacon

    The National Park Service has ranked Virginia second among the 50 states for a second consecutive year in the use of federal tax incentives to rehabilitate historic buildings. The National Park Service’s annual report on fiscal year 2006 lists Virginia with 114 proposed federal tax-credit projects, second only to Missouri, and 109 completed projects, behind Ohio.

    Total private investment in Virginia leveraged through rehabilitation projects completed and certified by the Park Service during fiscal year 2006 was more than $172 million. That is $43 million more than the previous year, and places Virginia fifth in the nation among states for dollars leveraged, according to a statement released by the Governor’s office.

    Said Kathleen S. Kilpatrick, Director of the Department of Historic Resources: “Reusing historic buildings is good preservation, good economic opportunity.”

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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