Clik here to view.
Slow and Steady Wins the Budget Race
by James A. Bacon Thanks in part to a $797 million surplus in last year’s budget, Virginia will build up its budget reserves to $1.6 billion by the end of the 2020 fiscal year, and Governor Ralph...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Surplus? How About $455 Million Windfall Tax Hike
Income breakdown and average “windfall” tax in 2018 on the taxpayers who paid more. All averaged more than $220. Source: Secretary of Finance and Ernst & Young. Click to expand. by Steve Haner...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Medicaid Expansion Cost Still Off-Budget, Elusive
By Steve Haner All the signs point to trouble. The next state budget, a two-year plan to be proposed in December, adopted by March and implemented in July, may be caught between stagnant revenue and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tax-and-Spend Pressure Builds Inexorably
by James A. Bacon There are two items in the news today indicating that pressure for more spending and taxes will be remorseless in the 2019 General Assembly session: (1) The Virginia Retirement System...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Damn the Coronavirus! Full Speed Ahead!
Source: Department of Planning & Budget revenue forecast. Click for more readable image. The budget forecasts underpinning Virginia’s General Fund budgets for FY 2021 and 2022 suggests that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Act Now to Bring State Budget in Line with Reality
by James A. Bacon About 18 months ago Secretary of Finance Aubrey Layne conducted an analysis of state government finances to see how they would hold up under the stress of another recession of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
COVID-19 Economic Impact Estimates
by James A. Bacon Thanks to its high share of federal government employment and a high percentage of jobs that can be performed remotely, Virginia is somewhat less vulnerable to job losses from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Capital Idea
By Dick Hall-Sizemore As a diversion from the coronavirus story, as well as an effort to give you a little more variety, the following is my previously promised summary of the General Assembly’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
New Budget Woes
By Dick Hall-Sizemore The outlook for the state budget gets grimmer. The most immediate concern is the budget for the current year. The state collects about a third of its fiscal year revenue in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is Aubrey Layne Serious about a $2B “Hit” to Virginia’s Biennial General Fund...
By DJ Rippert Penny Layne. Aubrey Layne is Virginia’s Secretary of Finance under the Northam Administration. Previously, Layne served as Secretary of Transportation under the McAuliffe regime. Prior to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Boomergeddon Update: Back on Track to Self-Destruction!
by James A. Bacon It’s been ten years since I published my book, “Boomergeddon,” in which I advanced the argument that the fiscal/monetary system of the United States would collapse into chaos by the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Buying Time to Fix the Budget Hole
by Dick Hall-Sizemore To deal with the virus-created budget crisis in the short term, the Northam administration has announced sort of a “time out.” According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the plan...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Virginia’s Let-the-Good-Times-Roll Budget
Laissez les bon temps roulez! by Kerry Dougherty We’re in a hell of a mess here in Virginia, folks. Oh, other states are in trouble too. But how many of them saw their state legislatures go on a wild...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stop Gap Budget Amendments
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Not surprisingly, the Governor did not try to re-write the budget in the reconvened session. There is just not enough information available now regarding the extent to which state...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who Sets the Protocols for COVID-19 Testing and Tracing – the State or...
by James A. Bacon The Northam administration plans to dispatch $650 million of federal helicopter dollars directly to cities and counties to help cover the cost of responding to the COVID-19 epidemic....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Juggling the Revenue
By Dick Hall-Sizemore Jim Bacon mentioned in an earlier post that the state’s revenues for April were $700 million less than in April of last year. I was surprised that there were no cries of outrage...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“People Have Stopped Buying Automobiles”
By Dick Hall-Sizemore That is how Aubrey Layne, Secretary of Finance, summed up his explanation to the House Appropriations Committee of April’s 15% drop in transportation revenue All of the major...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who Will Pay for Increased Nursing Home Testing?
by James A. Bacon The The Virginia Mercury has published a well-reported article today about the challenges of addressing the spread of COVID-19 in Virginia nursing homes, which account for 57% of all...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Racism, COVID19 and Marijuana Legalization in Virginia
By DJ Rippert Unintended consequences. Newspapers, websites and Bacon’s Rebellion have been full of articles describing and debating the COVID-19 pandemic and the police killing of George Floyd with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Revenue Picture is Bad, But Not as Bad as Expected
By Dick Hall-Sizemore The state’s May revenue report has been released today. As one would have expected, the May 2020 general fund (GF) revenues were down significantly from May 2019 and the...
View Article
