Here are some great stories today that I just won’t have time to do justice to:
UVa Board of Visitors lead the way in state political giving
The Daily Progress
Highlight: Current board members at Virginia’s 10 largest public, four-year institutions have shelled out about $9.5 million in state political contributions over the last 20 years. Altogether, UVa board members contributed $729,529 to McDonnell, for his gubernatorial campaign, inaugural committee and related political action committees.
Bottom line: No wonder the UVa administration wants to “professionalize” the BoV. Trouble is, the only thing worse than a politically appointed board is a board accountable to only itself!
There’s a (Parking) Place for Us
D.C. Streets Blog
Alan Durning explores how “performance pricing” strategies for parking are working out in San Francisco, Seattle and Portland.
Highlight: “Existing programs are piecemeal and rudimentary,” he concludes, but they are getting us closer to the ideal “in which we pay to store our cars on public streets in rough proportion to the market value of that storage. … The upsides are huge: an end to cruising for parking; better allocation of parking spaces to car-poolers, shoppers, and diners; and the gradual shift of the gargantuan cost of parking from everyone else to the people choosing to use that parking.”
Bottom line: I love it when liberals see the value of market principles. Now, if only we can get so-called conservatives to see the value, too.
New State Residents Statistics, Demographic Data
Governing
Cool new database of U.S. Census Bureau data on who is moving into each of the 50 states. Data is broken down by domestic/foreign migrants, education, income and age.
Highlight: Virginia ranks 13th out of the 50 states for in-migrants as share of the population, 6th for in-migrants’ educational attainment, and 4th for their median income.
Bottom line: We’re not getting massive numbers but we’re getting the cream of the crop. That’s probably the best of all worlds.
— JAB
