The Virginia General Assembly is maneuvering to raise its own pay after decades of inflation. To do so without showing similar considerations for the impact of inflation on Virginia taxpayers should be cause for a voter revolt. No tax code indexing, no pay raise. To its credit, the staff at the...
Virginia’s mandatory vehicle safety inspection program is less than a decade away from its centennial anniversary. Established in 1932, Virginia’s inspection program is the oldest continuous program in the country. In 1975, thirty-one states and the District of Columbia had mandatory safety inspection programs. Today, Virginia is one of just fifteen states...
Alexis de Tocqueville never met Nancy Slater White, but he would have liked her. Tocqueville, of course, is the observational author whose 1835 book, Democracy in America, is considered by many to be a seminal work in defining what made America and the American character unique among nations. White was...
Regulations, while usually well-intentioned, are often a drag on economic growth. They increase costs for businesses, stifle innovation, and can create barriers to entry for new entrepreneurs. With a runaway administrative state, simple laws passed by Congress or a state’s legislature can become complex and burdensome rules that require hordes...
While the U.S. Department of Education is only a small fraction of total education spending – accounting for less than 10 percent of education spending in the United States (9 percent in Virginia) – it has a huge impact on how states and localities spend their own money on schools,...
Once inaugurated, President-elect Donald Trump is expected to immediately mount a major effort to roll back the anti-hydrocarbon fuel agenda of the Biden-Harris years. The positive impact on Virginians will be limited because of our own similar anti-hydrocarbon laws at the state level. The centerpiece of Trump’s multiple energy campaign promises is...
It’s all too easy to conflate the roles of political parties with those of public policy “think tanks.” Both gravitate around policy ideas falling along conservative or progressive lines, and their supporters tend to divide along those same lines, as well. Advocacy of progressive ideas is usually driven by Democratic...
Was Senator Scott Surovell’s recent article in the Richmond Times Dispatch, “Helene sends a message: Virginia must rejoin RGGI,” an honest misunderstanding about hurricanes and about how the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) works (or doesn’t work) or was it a blatant use of a serious weather tragedy to score political...
With the release of its latest 15-year plan to expand energy generation in the Commonwealth, Dominion Energy Virginia has increased the projected cost of residential electricity in 2035 to almost $216 per 1,000 kilowatt hours, a 24% increase over the same projection in its 2023 planning document. If the $216 comes to...
When the Virginia State Board of Education approved a new state accountability system, it predictably drew attacks from the usual sources. The new system places greater emphasis on student mastery of subject information (50-65%) over student growth (20-25%). But while growth is critical and should be recognized, under the process...
