Bacon's Rebellion

  • Atlantic Park Part 7: The Quest for Surf Park Financing

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    sherlockj

    Atlantic Park Part 7: The Quest for Surf Park Financing

    Commentary by James C. Sherlock

    A last-minute search for surf park financing delayed project construction for a year. Neither bankers nor the City of Virginia Beach wanted any part of it. The developer missed a funding deadline. The city forgave it, but the pressure was on.

    So, with city backing:

    • The developers, organized in this case as Venture Waves Surf LLC, contacted 501(c)(3) P3 Foundation in North Carolina, which is in the business of participating in public private partnerships. It accepted the rights to the venue.
    • P3 and Venture Waves Surf contacted the Virginia Small Business Financing Authority, which is by policy a soft touch for non-profits. It agreed to issue tax exempt junk bonds. The yields were necessarily so high to attract buyers that the P&I debt load for that small surf park is $207 million. There is subsequently a significant risk recognized by the bond press (Bloomberg) that surf park operations and maintenance costs and debt payments together may prove more money than it will generate. They called it a speculative bet. If that happens, the surf park will be in default and put the whole project in financial jeopardy.
    • P3 Foundation established a Virginia 501(c)(3) subsidiary, P3 VB Holdings, to qualify as the borrower. It has no employees.
    • The subsidiary paid the developer to build the venue and will pay them to manage and operate it.

    The journey was so complex and wandering that it needs a graphic to explain it, so the author created one.

    Those players and their interactions will be discussed in following parts. Their participation both revealed and generated issues and actions that were not in the public interest.

    It never needed to happen.

    (more…)

  • UVA Med Faculty Have Been Seeking Redress Since 2021

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A group of University of Virginia medical-school faculty members aired their allegations against the University’s medical leadership only after two-and-a-half years of trying fruitlessly to work within the system, according to a new letter distributed by the 128 faculty members.

    In a letter addressed to the Board of Visitors Thursday, the anonymous group added details to complaints contained in a Sept. 5 letter calling for the Board to replace Health System CEO Craig Kent and School of Medicine Dean Melina Kibbe.

    The latest missive, published on the Parrhesiastes Substack account, responded to a Sept. 7 communication by UVA President Jim Ryan to the medical school faculty backing Kent and Kibbe. “Even though it is difficult to investigate generalized and anonymous claims of wrongdoing, without specific details or names to follow up with,” Ryan wrote, “we will do our best to investigate.”

    Writing to “dispel the notion there is no evidence to support the serious allegations,” the dissidents provided a “partial” timeline of meetings and communications between faculty and UVA senior leaders dating back to 2021.

    The distribution of the letter coincided with the UVA Board of Visitors session Thursday on Health System/Medical School matters. The Board took no action relating to the letter. It did meet in an extended closed session, but it is not known if the Parrhesiastes allegations were discussed.

    (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Virginia Climate Alarmist-In-Chief Making Summer Weather Scary

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Virginia’s most prolific climate alarmist is back at the keyboard trying to scare people with normal weather. Despite his working now for a dedicated climate propaganda outlet, our friends at the Virginia Public Access Project are treating his output like straight reporting and included his most recent effort in their “news” feed for the capital crowd. 

    “A Combination of Heat and Drought Walloped Virginia Vegetable Farmers,” reads the headline from Inside Climate News, which is certainly as opinionated on the issue of so-called climate change as the various outlets that challenge the narrative, including Bacon’s Rebellion. Our posts offering contrary data to undercut this Gospel will never get shared by VPAP’s news service. I am reconciled to the bias but every now and then it still riles. 

    Author Sean Sublette, who is professionally trained as a meteorologist, was producing his “end is nigh” messaging for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and I don’t know why he no longer is. Now it relies mostly on wire copy, and outlets like the Associated Press are as heavily infected with a single point of view as Inside Climate News. So are most local “newspapers.”

    The fact that Virginia rainfall for the year is running well ahead of the historical average, and even was for the months of May, July and August, fails to get noted in Sublette’s report. But June was extremely dry (making up for the wet spring) and by July parts of the state were showing up as in drought. By August those concerns were erased by rain in most of the localities, a recovery which he does report.

    But he bases his scary headline on a handful of farmers in the small region hit the hardest. He quotes one farmer saying, “What feels different is that it is every year: that overall temperatures are higher and that rain events are fewer and stronger.” When the alarmists are focusing on “what feels different,” that is a dead giveaway the data is not backing the narrative.

    (more…)

  • Both Parties Threaten Free Trade Crucial to Virginia Economy

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    Steve Haner

    By Derrick Max

    One issue that is not getting enough attention in this election, especially for its impact on Virginia, is the growing “anti-trade” mentality of both major parties. In Tuesday’s debate, former President Donald Trump stated, “other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial…” Vice President Kamala Harris accurately responded that increased tariffs aren’t paid by foreign countries, but are really a sales tax on US consumers.   

    It is important to note, however, that Harris and the Biden administration have kept all of the increased tariffs from the first Trump administration in place. In May, they even raised tariffs on $18 billions of Chinese goods, including semiconductors and electric vehicles. The left remains committed to tariffs (sadly, often as a tool to force their green agenda) and the right is drifting against trade out of a misplaced “America First” mentality.   

    Even the Heritage Foundation, once a champion of free trade, in its much-mischaracterized Project 2025 manifesto is waffling on free trade. In fact, Project 2025 contains two contradictory chapters — one by Peter Navarro entitled, “The Case for Fair Trade” and one by Kent Lassman entitled, “the Case for Free Trade.” It is clear that Heritage’s new trade philosophy increasingly emphasizes the need for “reciprocity and fairness” in trade agreements over open markets and increased trade.    

    This shift is not just bad for America generally but is particularly bad for Virginia. International trade continues to play a vital role in Virginia’s economy, driving growth, supporting jobs, and enhancing competitiveness. According to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, in 2023, Virginia exported $22.4 billion worth of goods, with key markets including Canada, China, and India. The agricultural sector alone contributed $1.5 billion in exports, underscoring its importance to the state. Additionally, over 7,000 Virginia-based companies are engaged in exporting, 85% of which are small- and medium-sized enterprises. 

    (more…)

  • Bloat Watch

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    James A. Bacon

    Bloated whale carcass. Photo credit: CBC

    by James A. Bacon

    I have frequently observed (1) that the University of Virginia, for all its many fine qualities is subject to mission creep and administrative bloat; and (2) payroll expansion is the major driver of higher tuition & fees.

    Just how bad is administrative overhead? It’s difficult to say. Hard numbers are difficult to come by. Published statistics are slippery things. There are full-time employees and there are part-time employees. Some “employees” are interns or graduate students on fellowships. The criteria for classifying employees as faculty, administrative staff, or “other” are subject to change. Frankly, the size and scope of the administrative apparatus at UVA is a subject the Ryan administration studiously avoids.

    But a revealing statistic surfaced in a document, an update to the UVA Health Plan, shared Friday with the Board of Visitors. Here’s the bottom line: “UVA had 20,084 benefits-eligible employees [in FY 2023], a 9% increase over the prior year; 90% of the benefits-eligible workforce were enrolled in the health plan.“

    A 9% increase in benefits-eligible employees in a single year is more than “bloat” — it’s a dead whale carcass on the beach. Surely, one would think, someone on the Board of Visitors would have asked for an explanation. As we have become accustomed to observing, however, there was no opportunity for board members to ask the question even if they had been inclined to.

    (more…)

  • Louise Lucas, Do Better.

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Virginia, I give you Louise Lucas, your President Pro Tempore of the State Senate:

    Such eloquence! Such a command of the English language! Positively pithy!

    Doesn’t she make you proud?

    Consider: this is an 80-year-old grandmother. The boss of Portsmouth’s Democrat political machine. A former shipyard worker turned politician who hasn’t lost an election since her first victorious run for the state legislature in 1991.

    She’s always been a tough politician, a pit bull even. But the appearance of Donald Trump on the national stage and especially GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Virginia’s has turned her into a bitter, foul-mouthed swamp monster.

    Consider what this woman had to say when she began using a cane this summer due to a bum knee. Read the whole thing.

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Atlantic Park Part 6: Vote for Change

    Posted on

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    sherlockj

    Atlantic Park Part 6: Vote for Change

    by James C. Sherlock

    Updated Sept. 14 at 11:14 AM and September 18 at 4:40 PM

    If an infrastructure project is assessed to be a potential commercial success, that judgement is based on a business plan. 

    Inevitably, because they are very good at what they do, the developers of Atlantic Park had one that would have served as the basis for a proposal.

    If the numbers worked, private money would have designed and built it to maximize return on investment.  It turned out that the developer team may not have accurately estimated the cost/demand/pricing/revenue case for the surf park, but that would have been their problem.

    But the city owned the land, so developers needed city participation.

    Providing public land under those circumstances could have been a good deal. Under the original cost sharing concept, Atlantic Park likely would have returned taxes and fees over its lifetime that, as city manager Dave Hansen wrote in 2018, would “let us tell them it will pay for itself”.

    But neither the council nor the its development authority asked for a proposal to lease the land.  And at least a couple of them did not share the city manager’s vision on taxpayer value.

    The public private project got way out of hand early and everything about the process and its public funding was wrong.  Over the seven years of the process they chose, council and the development authority socialized costs and risks and privatized profits.

    The concert hall was not part of the developer’s original plan.  The city shoehorned it into the deal.  Since it was city requirement, the city should have paid for that and has.  The parking garages owned by the city in the resort area make that district function.  The ones at Atlantic Park are just two more.  So those reasonably are city assets in the deal.

    The cost to the city for what it owns should have been about $100 million in construction costs plus the land to which it still holds title.  

    Yet today total city commitments exceed $300 million plus the land. 

    The developer’s promised expenditures are down today about $125 million from the inflation-adjusted $282 million ($230 million in 2019) agreed to in the “final” agreement.

    That is a colossal obligation swap accomplished incrementally over five budget years.

    Budgets are adopted in May for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The budgets that moved the money were adopted in May of 2019 through May of 2023.

    Members in office for all of those votes annotated with the percentage of their total campaign donations that have come from real estate and construction interests were Barbara Henley (28%) Rosemary Wilson (46%), Sabrina Wooten (56%) and Mayor Bob Dyer (47%). That does not count contributions from real estate and land use lawyers and the bankers who lend to developers.

    That does not mean the money affected their votes, but it is not healthy in a representative body.

    (more…)

  • UVA Board Endorses Institutional Neutrality

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    James A. Bacon

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql80D7gYlUc

    by James A. Bacon

    The University of Virginia adopted a resolution Friday backing a statement of institutional neutrality on events taking place outside the University.

    “The University of Virginia should express no opinions about social and political questions except as those questions directly affect its mission or operations,” said the key paragraph of the statement, written by an 11-person group chaired by political science professor John Owen.

    Owen described the UVA statement as similar to the famous University of Chicago Kalven Report, released during the turmoil of the 1960s and adopted by some universities since, “but better.”

    Board members engaged in considerable dialogue over the resolution. The commentary was overwhelmingly positive.

    President Jim Ryan had appointed the statement committee after getting sucked into the polarized rhetoric that followed the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel. Ryan expressed sympathy for the victims, but he was criticized by some for showing insufficient remorse for the plight of the Palestinians that prompted the attacks.

    (more…)

  • What If They Gave a Sit-In and Nobody Came?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Militant groups at the University of Virginia tried to organize a “sit in” at the Board of Visitors meeting yesterday, but the event fizzled. A dozen or so local radicals showed up at the Rotunda, where the board meeting was held, but they were met by a strong force of uniformed University police. The entrances to the Rotunda were closed to the public, and visitors had to gain clearance to enter.

    The board meeting proceeded without disruption.

    Organizers announced their intentions on the Instagram page of the Dissenters, a member of the leftist student coalition protesting against UVA policy toward Israel and Palestine. Students have called for UVA to end relations with the U.S. “war machine” supplying weapons to Israel and also for the University to divest its $14 billion endowment of companies doing business with the Jewish state.

    (more…)

  • Atlantic Park Part 5: Economic Risks

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    sherlockj

    Atlantic Park Part 5: Economic Risks

    by James C. Sherlock

    In Bloomberg, author Allison Nicole Smith commented on the Atlantic Park bonds. She wrote:

    Muni deals funding tourist attractions have a checkered past. The list of defaulted bonds is a long one, including a water park in Edinburg, Texas, and an iron and steel manufacturing-themed park in Bessemer, Alabama.

    Like the development in Virginia Beach, those parks were speculative bets conceived to invigorate local economies. But many have gone under because success was reliant on enough people consistently showing up, year after year.

    The “speculative bet” part was never communicated to Virginia Beach taxpayers. Not In a hundred print and TV news reports over seven years. Not in press releases. Not in the records of public sessions of City Council or its development authority.

    Extensive risks are described buried deep in Atlantic Park bond documents prepared for investors because they are required to be there. The investor prospectus for the state’s surf park bonds is 616 pages long. The one for the city’s parking garage bonds issued on the same day is over 1,000 pages long. Each of those issues were revenue bonds, requiring listing of risks to revenue.

    Even those lists are incomplete.

    (more…)

  • UVA May Resume Mandatory SATs

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    The University of Virginia is considering reinstituting mandatory submission of standardized test scores in admissions applications, Provost Ian Baucom told the Board of Visitors Thursday.

    Many elite universities scrapped the mandatory SAT and ACT scores during the COVID epidemic in favor of “wholistic” admissions criteria. Now some are re-evaluating the decision. Citing the recent actions of peer institutions regarding the tests, Baucom said, the University was engaging a group of economics-department faculty with research expertise in higher education to “advise us whether to return to standardized tests in admissions processes” while still considering a “broader set of factors.”

    The goal is to recruit and admit “extraordinary students who will flourish at the university,” Baucom said. The economists are gathering data right now, he added, and he promised to keep the board updated.

    Baucom gave no explanation of why the University was considering doing an about-face on its decision four years ago to make the SAT-score submissions voluntary — roughly half of applicants continued to provide them — nor did he elaborate upon what “broader set of factors” might be in store.

    (more…)

  • Advocates for the Energy Poor Want to Make Them Poorer

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    A national industry group that advocates for home energy efficiency contractors has produced another report on how energy costs squeeze the poor the hardest, with Richmond one of its examples. The data was then used as an excuse to call for (you guessed it) the return of an energy carbon tax which paid those same contractors to do energy home improvements.

    The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) is correct that the lowest income households struggle with basics like electricity, natural gas and other fuels, along with food, rent and clothing. It sucks to be poor. My big concern with the new report (full text here) is it doesn’t seem to account for the various government and private programs that provide hard cash to help with these bills, including the nascent Percentage of Income Payment Plan.  

    Richmond has a slightly deeper problem than the nation as a whole. Nationally 15% of low-income households face an “energy burden” because they spend more than 6% of their income on it, but in Richmond that exceeds 17%. The big disparity is among renters (13% nationally but 16% in Richmond.)

    The pitch of RGGI as the solution came Thursday morning in this from Virginia Mercury, which outlined the problem and then spent the final three paragraphs on the suspended Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. Mercury did a similar story back in April, based on a state report about energy assistance programs, and it also ended with a hard pitch for RGGI dollars to return. From the April report:

    ‘Since the first RGGI auction that Virginia participated in back in 2021, RGGI has provided nearly $400M for low-income energy-efficient housing,’ said Chelsea Harnish, executive director of the Energy Efficiency Council, a group that supports RGGI involvement and backed a bill this session that would increase transparency in energy efficiency program determinations. ‘There are no alternative funding options available at either the state or federal level for these programs in terms of program design nor funding levels.’

    (more…)

  • How Wise County Schools Excel

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    James A. Bacon

    From left to right: Matt Hurt, director of the CIP program; Hannah Perrigan, assistant principal at St. Paul’s Elementary School; Marcia Shortt, director of elementary and middle schools; Amber Boggs, director of federal programs and preschool; and Karen Dickenson, principal at St. Paul’s Elementary School.

    by Martin Davis
    Editor-in-Chief, FXBGAdvance

    Fat Boy’s restaurant in St. Paul, Virginia, is well-known — at least in Wise County — for the two BBQ items that sit atop its menu hanging behind the counter. The Heart Attack, and the Stroke.

    This 1930’s-era diner, marked by low-rent flooring, plain tables, and chairs that are best described as sturdy but hardly comfortable, proved a more-than-suitable place to sit down and reflect on a day seeing first-hand what makes one of the poorest places in Virginia one of its most academically successful, at least when the measuring stick is Standards of Learning scores.

    For the second year in a row, Wise County schools have had the third-best overall SOL pass rate in the state of Virginia. It hasn’t ranked lower than eighth since 2013.

    An impressive feat considering it spends less per student than Fredericksburg city, Spotsylvania County, or Stafford County public schools; is riddled with a meth epidemic that has led to a startlingly high incarceration rate of 721 per 100,000 people (Virginia’s rate is notoriously high at 679 per 100,000 people); and nearly 20% of its citizens live in poverty (more than 25% of children grow up in poverty).

    In the Richmond halls of the Virginia Department of Education, and among education policy wonks, the reason for the county’s success is captured in a simple acronym — CIP, which stands for “Comprehensive Instructional Program.”

    The program alone, however, doesn’t explain why Wise County, where CIP was born, has proven so successful.

    There are 65 Virginia school districts participating in the program, says CIP Director Matt Hurt, and “we have 10 years of data showing that some school districts adopting the program have great success, while in other districts CIP hardly moves the needle.”

    (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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