By Peter Galuszka
In the 40 months since Robert F. McDonnell has been in office, the launch of many of the governor’s policy initiatives seems to be accompanied by a press release touting the supportive findings of a small, Richmond-based research firm named Chmura Economics & Analytics.
When McDonnell was pushing his transportation plan to come up with $3.4 billion road funding by eliminating the gasoline tax and increasing the sales tax, the Chmura firm was hired to research the impacts. The results were glowing: McDonnell’s signature plan would eventual result in 13,058 new jobs and $9.5 billion investment.
When McDonnell and his Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton wanted a $1.4 billion toll road linking Petersburg with Suffolk near U.S. 460 that not many other officials seemed too keen about, Chmura served up a report saying it would create 14,000 jobs, including more than 8,000 jobs from advanced manufacturing or automotive firms that would locate by the end of the decade at two “megasites” in Isle of Wight and Sussex counties. A little problem: the Isle of Wight site is just gearing up and the one in Sussex hasn’t been built yet.
There are other examples of questionable data in Chmura reports involving the Redskins moving its summer training center from Ashburn to Richmond and in the capital pitching a 2015 international bicycle race. The former involved considerable monetary incentives to the rather wealthy Redskins NFL club.
The economics firm is headed by Christine Chmura, an economics Ph.D. with impeccable credentials at a Richmond bank and the Federal Reserve. Fourteen years ago, she founded her firm and built it up in this state and in her native Ohio. She is a popular speaker on the economics and policy circuit. (Full disclosure, when I edited a business magazine about 10 years ago, I hired Chris several times for economic analysis and was pleased with the results).
There does seem to be something wrong and when I wrote a cover this week for Style Weekly, I detail some of the issues. Style filed Freedom of Information Act requests and we reviewed some of the Chmura contracts. The Virginia Department of Transportation some her firm’s payments, including one for the new toll road, under “advertising/public relations.”
Read more here.
