Author Archives: Steve Haner

New Northam Financial Directive Late, Clueless

Posted on April 4, 2020 | 23 comments

By Steve Haner

When I’m wrong, I should rush to admit it. The concerns expressed by others on this blog that the Northam Administration was failing to recognize the financial aspects to the COVID-19 pandemic were valid. The person exhibiting wishful thinking was me, with my assumption they were already acting.

That’s because they just acted, with an executive order to state agencies to freeze hiring, tighten spending and otherwise batten down the fiscal hatches for a storm. “We can expect to enter a recession soon,” Chief of Staff Clark Mercer writes in a four-page memo quoted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.   

Wrong. The economy has been in recession for a month. A month. The concern now is a depression.

Mercer said the state expects “significantly less revenue” than the most pessimistic forecast Northam’s economic and revenue advisory councils considered last fall and reduced cash balances at the end of this fiscal year that will carry into the next two-year budget and require cuts in spending.

“Our intention is not to cut the budget in the short term, but decisions will depend on how much revenue comes in,” he said.

Wrong again. The state will be slashing the budget as never before, and the Governor should have started the process weeks ago. One can only hope, and it may be a forlorn one, that agency financial managers saw the clouds and acted on their own. If the Governor’s people are only now getting serious about the amendments to the budget due in seven days, shame.  Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Budgets, General Assembly, Government workers and pensions

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Move 2020 Nomination Deadline To Late Summer

Posted on April 2, 2020 | 41 comments

By Steve Haner

A week after the March 3 Democratic presidential primary I was sick, probably with a cold but I had to wonder. No fever developed and patent medicines got me through. But it could have been COVID-19 after checking in hundreds of voters in the Maple Street Firehouse.

There is no way I’m repeating that activity on June 9. Thank you, Governor Ralph Northam, for saving me from having to abandon the other nice folks who work that precinct. Even if we are on the infection down slope, holding a primary that day is a risk we don’t need to impose on those volunteers.

Republican officials exploded when the stay at home directive was advanced to June 10. A statement released by the Republican Party of Virginia whined:

“… the timeline seems all too convenient,” said RPV Chairman Jack Wilson. “We ask that Governor Northam show us the data that led to his decision. It is not our opinion that the Governor is purposefully engaging in voter suppression, but an explanation would help to mitigate any concerns.”

Did my statement mitigate your concerns, Jack? I bet thousands of poll workers feel the same way.

Let’s drop the debate over which elected official or cabinet agency is more hapless and focus on some truly clueless people – this state’s all but dead Republican Party. Yesterday the state party certified three candidates to run June 9 seeking the nomination against Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia. Don’t look at the story yet, can you name one of them? I cannot. And I would love to see somebody give Warner a race. People forget how close Ed Gillespie came to beating Mark-not-John six years ago.  Continue reading →

41 Comments

Posted in Elections, Electoral process, Politics

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The Solution Nobody Will Mention: DNR

Posted on March 30, 2020 | 24 comments

By Steve Haner

This is how we solve the coming hospital bed crisis. This is how we stretch our ventilators supply. No politician is going to say this, neither Donald Trump nor Andrew Cuomo, and doctors won’t start this conversation. Lester Holt won’t bring it up on Nightly News.

It is called a “do not resuscitate” order. DNR. It can stand on its own or be part of package of advance medical directives and powers of attorney. If you don’t have one, sign one. If you are 40 and think yourself healthy, consider one anyway. Today.  Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Health Care, Individual rights, Public safety & health

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Opinions Shift as Swiftly as 9-11, 2008

Posted on March 29, 2020 | 20 comments

I’m not a huge fan of Newsmax, but I do have high regard for McLaughlin and Associates polling. John and Jim McLaughlin have posted results of a long survey of 1,000 “likely voters” taken during the middle of last week, as the crisis grew in this country. Here’s the full survey and the  Newsmax report.

Some highlights that jumped out to me:

  • “Based on our historic polling experience, this movement of national voter opinion is an equivalent to the effects of 9-11 and the 2008 economic crisis combined.” (Emphasis added.)
  • 44% saw the country as in recession. It would be easy to wonder how the other 56% can be so dense, but technically a recession is two full quarters of going backwards, not just one month.
  • More than one-third of voters (35%) cannot afford to go longer than a month without a paycheck, and many of them can’t hold out that long. The impact is harder on the younger respondents, Hispanics and African-Americans.
  • Despite that, 52% favored a full national shutdown, closing as many businesses as possible. The polling closed Thursday and it is easy to assume that sentiment will grow (as the effectiveness of the move fades).
  • And despite his resistance to that, President Trump was getting an approval bump out of this, especially in the battleground states.  This is where skeptics will point to McLaughlin’s GOP roots.

That has your interest. Go to the full text. Hat tip: Chris Braunlich. If you find other interesting polls from respected pollsters, add them in the comments.

20 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

This is the Green New Deal Economy. Enjoy.

Posted on March 27, 2020 | 23 comments

Source: Energy Information Agency.  Click for larger view. LCOE, LACE and Value-Cost Ratio explained below.

By Steve Haner

If all else fails in achieving your green energy dreams, you can always hope for a depression.

In Italy, the COVID-19 depression has already dropped electricity demand by about 18-21%, as reported recently by Utility Dive. The regional transmission organizations around the United States are seeing declines, as well, and I’ve been told (no data, but a reliable source) that PJM’s load is approaching a 10% drop.  Past recessions have included electricity usage declines.  Continue reading →

23 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation

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Northam: Take the Bricks Off the Life Rafts

Posted on March 26, 2020 | 11 comments

My first post in two weeks. What the heck, I should join the parade and give a bunch of advice to our beleaguered Governor which he is likely to ignore.  This first appeared today in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star. It has one of those annoying “take a survey” paywalls, but in this case asks a question we should all answer. Try it.    

By Steve Haner

The assumptions underlying the most contentious debates of the 2020 General Assembly session are gone. Sixty days ago, activists were arguing that this was a rising economy and state government should mandate raising workers to a higher level.

This is a now sinking economy, and the General Assembly’s actions have piled bricks on the life rafts that workers in the commonwealth will need to survive.

The priority now is containing the spread of this respiratory virus, but soon it becomes reviving an economy that has come to a near stop. Nobody knows when or where unemployment will peak, but this is starting to look more like 1929 than 2009.

Gov. Ralph Northam’s lasting legacy will not be his response to the virus, but the speed of the following recovery.  Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Finance (government), General Assembly, Taxes

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Sweet 16 (Tax Bills) Will Cost Virginians Billions

Posted on March 11, 2020 | 36 comments

By Steve Haner

What will this year’s General Assembly cost you in taxes? Here are at least 16 bills approved by the 2020 General Assembly that create or raise taxes on Virginians or authorize a local government to do so. No one told Virginians at the start of session that major tax increases were coming, and there is little recognition of what has now happened. It is time to tally the bill.

If anybody would or could run the fiscal projections on these 16 tax bills, they might combine into a major tax hike comparable to those in 2004 and 2013. Over several years this will cost families or businesses billions of dollars, but most will be collected by wholesalers (cigarettes and fuel) or too deeply buried on receipts to see.  Assessments on business eventually get passed down to the customer: you.  Continue reading →

36 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Taxes, Transportation

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Electric Yellow School Buses? Pure Green Grease

Posted on March 8, 2020 | 47 comments

By Steve Haner

Having voted to give Dominion Energy Virginia a blank check to spend billions of your money on offshore wind turbines, the Virginia House of Delegates will vote today to provide hundreds of millions more from your pockets for electric school buses.

Last week the House defeated a similar bill, twice. It received only 35 votes the first time and 44 votes the second. The response from the utility and the Senate patron was to introduce a new bill “Thursday,” after she received unanimous consent from her fellow senators.  Continue reading →

47 Comments

Posted in Energy, General Assembly, Regulation, Taxes, Transportation

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Incredible Bills in Conference List Remains

Posted on March 7, 2020 | 8 comments

The Virginia House and Senate convene at noon today, and today is actually today finally.  The General Assembly recognizes this as March 7, having had a two-day March 5.  March 6 will never exist in the records.  Stopping the clock for an entire 24 hours allowed legislators to continue to put disputed bills into conference, and they did so until right before “Thursday” adjournment at 5:45 p.m. Friday.

Being March 7, the Assembly is scheduled to adjourn.  Some of the more contentious issues remain on this unresolved bill list.  Some do have conference reports voted on by one chamber or the other, or printed ready for action.  Many have no agreement.  Either the session goes into overtime or some of these just fail.  A budget vote sometime next week also seems inevitable, unless they want to vote first and read it later.

The list:

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Governance

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Energy Updates: Signs of Resistance After All

Posted on March 6, 2020 | 15 comments

The Main Clean Energy Bill. Both General Assembly chambers have now approved a single substitute version of the omnibus clean energy bill, on largely (but not totally) party line votes. In a further compromise on their plan to save the world, proponents decided not to force closure of a Southwest Virginia coal-burning plant and were rewarded with the votes of one Southwest Virginia Republican: Del. Terry Kilgore. (Correction: The initial post incorrectly reported Sen. Ben Chafin as having voted aye. It was Republican Sen. Jill Vogel.)

Kilgore’s vote mattered as the House had only 51 aye’s. The House roll calls are not posted yet, just the vote totals.  Senate Bill 851  is now on its way to Governor Ralph Northam. Odds are further changes will be coming and another vote will be taken at the Reconvened Session on April 22. The House version was heading for a conference committee which is now not needed.  Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation

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Sine Die Tomorrow? Bills in Conference

Posted on March 6, 2020 | 13 comments

A Peek Inside the Process

Somehow I don’t think this is done by Saturday…From the Legislative Information System (LIS) this morning, here are the bills still in conference committees.  Some are known to have resolutions, but still must come to the floor:

Continue reading →

13 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Governance

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Dominion’s Base Rates Like Cable You Can’t Cancel

Posted on March 4, 2020 | 15 comments

By Steve Haner

The 2020 effort to bring Dominion Energy Virginia back under full State Corporation Commission regulation failed because too many of the loudest advocates are two-faced hypocrites. If they truly cared about ratepayers and the proper balance in utility regulation, they wouldn’t be pushing that other bill, the one that further guts the SCC and adds substantial customer costs in the name of green virtue.

During the hearing Monday night State Sen. Steve Newman, R-Bedford, was quite open in chastising the various environmental advocates for talking out of both sides of their mouths, worrying about the ratepayer in one discussion but not the other. He was right. If you want Virginia energy regulation done correctly, it needs to be done correctly in all instances.  Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly

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The Ohio Energy Bill Subsidy Virginia Would Copy

Posted on February 29, 2020 | 30 comments

Three of the six electric utilities charging customers to provide others with Ohio PIPP subsidies. Per 1,000 kWh the surcharge to customers is $3.19 for Toledo Edison, $3.34 for Ohio Edison and $2.37 for The Illuminating Company.

by Steve Haner

Both the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate have voted to increase the price of electricity to most Virginians in order to subsidize the bills of low-income utility customers. How much? They have no idea. But the program in Ohio being copied adds from $1 to $3.66 to the price of 1,000 kilowatt hours for those not subsidized.

The Virginia version is even borrowing the name and acronym from Ohio, the Percentage of Income Payment Program (PIPP). The charge in both is called a “universal service fee.” In 2020, the Ohio program will cost ratepayers $301 million to subsidize the power bills of about 275,000 low-income households. The Public Utility Commission of Ohio (PUCO) sets the amount charged in each utility’s service territory and the Ohio Development Services Area transfers the necessary funds to the various electricity providers.

The largest electricity provider in that state of 11.7 million people, Ohio Power, has the highest “adder” on its rates, $3.66 per 1,000 kilowatt hours used. That works out to $44 per year for a residential customer using exactly that amount monthly. A large industrial or commercial user would pay the same rate until monthly consumption hit 833,000 kilowatt hours, when a reduced rate kicks in on additional consumption. The first 833,000 kilowatt hours of usage in Ohio Power’s territory is hit with a $3,050 monthly surcharge.  Continue reading →

30 Comments

Posted in Energy, Entitlements, General Assembly, Poverty & income gap

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Virginia’s Top Employment Cop Adds Enforcers

Posted on February 28, 2020 | 16 comments

Virginia’s Powerful Top Employment Cop, Attorney General Mark R. Herring

By Steve Haner

The final state budget is still in negotiation, but it could add as many as five new enforcement staff to the Office of the Attorney General to seek out and prosecute discrimination in Virginia’s workplaces, using old and new definitions of what is prohibited. The price tag looks to be about $600,000 per year.

The Virginia Senate proposed budget amendments to that agency’s budget for three new people to enforce two pending Senate bills. The House of Delegates budget added five new lawyers and staff, based on its versions of those same two bills plus two additional bills granting the Attorney General new tasks and powers.

Some of the bills have been discussed previously on Bacon’s Rebellion. Both the House and Senate are passing versions of the Virginia Values Act (such as House Bill 1663 ) and both have bills to prohibit and punish discrimination against pregnant workers (see House Bill 827). That bill has not been discussed, but it creates the same opportunities for the aggrieved to sue in court for actual and punitive damages.  Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Courts and law, General Assembly, Labor & workforce, Regulation

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SCC Raises Estimate of Clean Energy Bill Costs

Posted on February 26, 2020 | 4 comments

By Steve Haner

The State Corporation Commission staff popped up in a House of Delegates Committee Tuesday to provide another unwelcome lecture, with revised estimates on the likely cost to Dominion Energy Virginia customers of the pending omnibus clean energy legislation.

The numbers it provided to the House Labor and Commerce Committee Tuesday afternoon were higher than the estimate it provided in a Senate Committee two weeks before. That first document provided a range of from $23 to $31 per month more on 1,000 kilowatt hours of residential use. Now the SCC is saying the range is $28 to $36 per month, or $334 to $432 per year. Here’s the sheet, which looks much like the prior one. The big addition is an estimate of $4-6 per month for future energy storage.  Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Energy, Environment, General Assembly, Regulation

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