By Steve Haner Virginia’s motor fuel taxes rise again July 1, finally breaching 40 cents per gallon for gasoline.  Four years ago the tax was 16.2 cents per gallon, but former Governor Ralph Northam (D) signed 2020 legislation to both increase the tax and to begin automatic annual inflation adjustments. The tax becomes 40.4 cents per gallon.  The inflation adjustment this year will add 1.3 cents per gallon, or an extra $13.50 annually for a vehicle owner purchasing 20 gallons per week.  The same 1.3 cents is being added to the tax on diesel, which becomes 41.5 cents per gallon o ..read more

Thomas DePasquale by James A. Bacon Thomas A. DePasquale, an eight-year veteran of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, is very unhappy with board colleague Bert Ellis. A dogged defender of President Jim Ryan, he took it upon himself in April to write a missive to other board members criticizing Ellis, who has made no secret of his desire to change the way UVA does business. But before sending the letter, he shared various drafts with others, including Rector Robert Hardie, past rector Frank “Rusty” Conner, and Susan G. Harris, Secretary of the Board of Visitors. Harris, who has ser ..read more

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Type “UVA Board Visitors members” into the Bing search engine, and the information highlight appears atop the page. Just one problem. The UVA Board doesn’t have seven members, it has 17 members. For a source the text points to an article in UVA Today discussing board appointments by Governor Bob McDonnell in 2010. Admittedly, the info-box right below the one I show here did get the number right. But let this serve as a warning to one and all that AI has a long way to go. At the current exponential rate of improvement, we may be only a year or two away from a generation capable of generating r ..read more

Junk science by James A. Bacon When you examine every issue through a racial lens, everything looks like racism. It’s even easier to find racism everywhere when you resort to junk science (or social science, as the case may be). A case in point is a new study by Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia (Home), which purports to find that systemic bias in real estate appraisals results in under-valuation of properties in predominantly African-American neighborhoods in the City of Richmond. This bias harms African-American property owners, the report contends, despite the fact that if the ..read more

by James A. Bacon It’s hard to keep up with the twists and turns of what progressive deem to be racist these days. Once upon a time, gentrification was considered racist because the phenomenon of White people moving into a neighborhood increased local property values, which increased taxes on long-time African-American residents and pressured them to move out. But that’s old think. Now the problem isn’t that property values in gentrifying neighborhoods are too high. In the City of Richmond, property values in majority Black neighborhoods are too low! “An under-valued home limits the owner’s ab ..read more

A federal judge in Washington has declined to prevent Dominion Energy Virginia from constructing its offshore wind turbines, but presumably the underlying legal challenge to the federal permitting process will grind on through the court process.   Virginia Mercury reports the basics this morning. Installation of the first monopiles actually started while the judge was still pondering the petition for an injunction, but getting such an injunction before the actual trial process requires clearing a very high legal hurdle.  The plaintiffs claim the project will cause irreversible h ..read more

by Kerry Dougherty  Let’s just admit it. Those of us who thought Aaron Spence was a disaster as Virginia Beach School Superintendent are experiencing a shameless bout of schadenfreude. Yep, we’re enjoying the misfortune of others. Those “others” would be Loudoun County parents and taxpayers. Aaron Spence is their problem now. He left Virginia Beach last year for the greener pastures of Loudoun County, the richest in the U.S. According to excellent news reporting by tenacious ABC News7 reporter, Nick Minock, Spence has only been on the job for just nine months but has spent 30 days out of ..read more

Ken Davis by James A. Bacon Sometimes it takes grumpy old men to get things done. Ken Davis, retired from a career in the Attorney General’s Office, lived with his wife in the Willow Lawn area of Richmond for more than 40 years. They paid their property tax bills on time and without complaint. But in July 2023, thanks to late delivery by the U.S. Post Office, they missed their first payment. Davis went down to City Hall and dutifully paid the tax plus an $800 fine. But then he learned he wasn’t alone. More than 20 of his neighbors were late in receiving their bills, too. So, he filed an appe ..read more

by Jon Baliles The Virginia War Memorial sits solemnly upon the edge of Oregon Hill overlooking the city and the James River and honors the 12,000+ Virginia names of those who have fallen in service of our country since 1956. But in recent decades, it has become a place of education as well as of remembrance. In 2010, the memorial opened the E. Bruce Heilman Amphitheater overlooking the city and hosts annual Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies plus other events. That same year the memorial also opened Paul and Phyllis Galanti Education Center, named after the retired U.S. Navy Commander P ..read more