Using a study done by the Heritage Foundation, they predict:

• A decline in Gross State Product of $3,812,700,000.
• Total Personal Income Loss of $5,683,580,000.
• Non-Farm Job losses of 42,414.

• Increase in Electricity Prices from 2012-2035 of $532 per household.
• Increase in Gas Prices from 2012-2035 of $0.64 per gallon.

Cap-and-trade could soon be added to a Senate climate bill introduced today by Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.

Of course,a neighbor had called 9-1-1 right away and a fire engine soon planted itself on the street. What the safety officers did for the next few hours, I can’t imagine, but I didn’t mind. That’s because the engine was evidence of a key service that our governments provide, and usually provide well.

Keeping our 9-1-1 call centers fully staffed should be a priority, but five dispatchers are getting the axe as Virginia State Police lose $22.5 million in funding. Dispatcher Michelle Armstrong explains:

Four are part-time call takers and one is a part-time dispatcher, but the loss, Armstrong says, will take the division’s staffing down to critical levels.

Call takers serve as an extra set of ears during busy hours, handling the steady flow of nonemergency calls that come through the office — flat tires, overheated engines, lost motorists.

Deborah Cox, a state police spokeswoman, says the staff cuts shouldn’t affect motorist safety but the funding cut as a whole can’t help but affect services.

But “you can’t cut $22.5 million and have it not have an effect on the level of services you provided,” Cox says. “It will have an effect.”

In the ongoing budget-crunch shell game, she says, the focus has been to maintain troopers on the street, though even they’ll be hit by a mandatory series of furlough days that have been announced for all state workers.

By the way, the best part about the explosion was two middle-aged women who emerged from their homes wearing surgical masks.

Not Larry Sabato

Blue Virginia

Virginia Tomorrow

The Right-Wing Liberal

Virginia Virtucon

Bearing Drift

AFP Virginia

Texting is fun, but from the beginning I decided it’s unacceptable while I’m driving–especially because I’m a one-track person who can’t talk and cook noodles at the same time. So it’s fine with me that Virginia wanted to let law enforcement fine people who have already been pulled over for breaking some other law.

But now Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood thinks we need a federal ban on texting and driving, even though 18 states have passed such laws and more are doubtless in the works all over the U.S. And even though we don’t have any federal seatbelt laws, every state but one requires them and usage is steadily increasing.

LaHood is scheduled to address the issue tomorrow:

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is opening a two-day meeting today involving researchers, automakers, safety advocates and lawmakers to find ways of preventing distracted driving from leading to deaths and injuries. LaHood said he plans to make recommendations Thursday on ways federal and state governments, as well as safety groups, can address the distractions, pointing to previous approaches for drunken driving and seat belts.

Ultimately, LaHood said, he wants the meeting to set “the stage for finding ways to eliminate texting while driving.”

The Governor’s Highway Safety Association now backs a federal ban and a bill was introduced in Congress in July that would require states to adopt bans. The Obama administration hasn’t taken a position yet.

It’s been done in Medford, Oregon, where a county raised $650,000 from selling a park to U.S. Cellular.

What do residents think? Channel 8 asks around:

But some Fairfax County residents who take great pride in the county’s 24,000 acres of parkland ask just how far it could go.

“If they started putting advertisements actually in the park, I might start to dislike it,” said Collin Brabarek, a Fairfax County resident.

“I believe a park should be a place of natural beauty and there should be no advertising,” added Desiree Matadial, a Fairfax County resident.

I have to say, it’s refreshing when T-A-X isn’t the first solution touted. On the other hand, would the county really be providing the services due its residents by plastering advertisements all over the natural habitat it’s supposed to be guarding?

Maybe Fairfax should find ways to trim the budget while keeping its parks fair in looks and fair to the taxpayers who’d rather not shop for cellular service on their evening strolls.

Things look better here in Virginia, where the average homeowner pays 0.69 percent the value of their home and taxes are lower than in 32 other states. Too bad the only property I own is a car, which I’ve learned is an unfortunate possession in this state due to that absurd fee known as the car tax.

For county-by-county stats and analysis, click here.

Virginia lags behind nearly every state in putting the federal stimulus money to work on highway, public transit and clean water projects.

By the end of July, only 3 percent of the state’s $834 million allotment was being used on projects already underway and just 10 percent of the funds had been contracted, according to a Sept. 2 report by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Of the 15 projects underway, just one had been completed.

On average, states had begun projects comprising 32 percent of their funding and put 40 percent under contract. Wyoming ranked first, with 95 percent of its dollars invested in projects underway, while only Hawaii came in behind Virginia.

In response to the report, Virginia Secretary of Transportation Pierce Homer said the state has contracted $155 million for transportation projects as of Sept. 28.

This is the type of reporting that is crucial for citizens to hear, say transparency advocates who are tracking where the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds are going and how they’re being used.

“What we want to do is demonstrate to government that transparency is good for everyone,” says Jerry Brito, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University. “Citizens can’t hold government accountable until they know what it’s doing.”

There’s plenty for citizens to hold accountable based on the promises President Barack Obama has made about the effects of the stimulus. The White House has promised that 93,000 jobs will be created in Virginia in the next two years.

So far, the state’s transportation and water projects have created 1,200 jobs, according to the House report. The governor’s office hasn’t compiled any other data on jobs created, but says that each agency will give reports next month when states issue their first report to the federal government.

Meanwhile, non-profits are taking a look at Virginia’s level of transparency and giving citizens more chances to weigh in on how their tax dollars will be spent.

Like in the House report, Virginia gets another low ranking in the area of transportation in a study done by Good Jobs First—a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that has ranked how well each state presents its stimulus spending online.

Good Jobs First graded each Website on its main page and on its highway project tracking, basing each score on 10 criteria. While it ranked Virginia 15^th in the nation for its overall Website (stimulus.virginia.org), the state came in 35th for reporting on highway projects.

Virginia’s site does show how much money is going to each county and program. It also shows the broad breakdowns of its $4.8 billion federal allocation: $1.9 billion to Health and Human Resources, $1.5 billion to education, $812 million to transportation, $367 million to Commerce and Trade and $219 million to Finance, $86 million to Natural Resources, $45 million to Public Safety.

But it doesn’t include maps of where projects will take place, contracts awarded, timelines or how many jobs could be created. The site also fails to compare each county’s award to its need, which can be done by looking at unemployment, foreclosure or poverty rates.

Whatever Virginia’s stimulus Web site may lack, the state was the first in the nation to collect from the public recommendations on how to use the money. From Feb. 10 to March 5, citizens, groups and localities proposed more than 9,000 projects via an online form.

Gov. Tim Kaine appointed a 15-member stimulus working group of senior administration officials to send the proposals to agency heads, who reviewed them and are in turn submitting suggestions back to the governor. The Web site says more specific information will be added as project decisions are made.

“Detailed information on those projects that are chosen will be made available as the Governor completes his selection decisions,” according to the site.

Jerry Brito and his colleagues at the Mercatus Center have made their own contribution to transparency by setting up a Website (virginiastimulus.org) that shows the list of projects proposed by the public.

The projects are organized by location, type, cost and shovel-readiness and visitors may vote on whether a project is critical, edit its description and post comments. The site allows those at the ground-level to offer their first-hand advice on whether a project is worth undertaking, Brito says.

The site is intended to promote government openness about the stimulus bill, which Republicans and Democrats have criticized for sending too much money to frivolous projects and not enough to projects that will stimulate the economy. It’s essential that taxpayers are able to track exactly how the money is spent, Brito says.

But he warns that citizens won’t necessarily discover misuse of funding if states don’t provide tracking services beyond what the federal government requires.

That’s because states are only required to report funding down two levels. So while citizens will be able to see how much money goes to agencies and their programs, it may be difficult if not impossible to see how that money is actually used, Brito said.

“Let’s say California gets a grant, gives it to San Francisco school district and they give it to John F. Kennedy High School,” Brito said. “At that point, it stops.”

The problem can be mitigated if states step in and create transparent and user-friendly Web sites that allow citizens to view documentation on specific projects, Brito says.

“The states can have a role to play in supplementing that information,” he said.

April 16 started as a moving day for Jack Weaver, but ended in an eminent domain battle with his town.

Nine months earlier, Weaver had informed the town of Rural Retreat that he planned to move an old train depot he’s owned for 20 years to his farm two miles away. He wants the depot to sit on land he actually owns, instead of leasing the land on which it currently sits from Norfolk Southern Railroad.

He’d paid $15,000 to prepare the new site and another $20,000 to a moving company, when a member of the Wythe County Sheriff’s department showed up on his doorstep with a court order.

Weaver had to call off the move and prepare to fight a legal battle, in which he’s already racked up $12,000 in fees.

“The thing about the law I think is so bad is that if indeed a town or county or state or federal government files eminent domain on you, the property immediately transfers to them,” Weaver said.

It’s a story that is familiar to other Virginia property owners, although recent eminent domain reforms have put more defensive weapons into their hands. The Virginia Department of Transportation acquired 859 parcels of land in fiscal year 2009 and 894 parcels in the previous 12 months.

State lawmakers in 2007 jumped on a wave of eminent domain reforms across the country, prohibiting governments from seizing private property for private financial gain, an increase in tax revenues or an increase in jobs. The reforms arose in response to the Supreme Court Kelo ruling, which said governments may seize property for public “purpose” instead of for public “use.”

There’s at least one more hole in Virginia’s eminent domain law, according to experts. It’s too easy for governments to declare properties “blighted,” says Ilya Somin, assistant professor of law at George Mason University.

“They still do allow condemnation that really isn’t in very bad condition,” Somin said. “The problem is that usually people who live in these areas are relatively poor people and don’t have political power. Usually the government will condemn the land and transfer the property to well-connected developers.”

Blight is an issue in an eminent domain lawsuit filed by the Roanoke Housing Authority to obtain two properties owned by B&B Holdings LLC for the purposed of turning them into a medical research park. Brad Allen, owner of a business housed by the properties in question, formed the Virginia Property Rights Coalition when the authority first declared interest in the property back in 1999.

While proud of the recent reforms, Allen said the coalition will advocate in the upcoming legislative session for tightening the definition of “blight” and also changing the law so that property owners who win eminent domain lawsuits are recouped their court costs.

Allen knows that the costs are huge. He says B&B Holdings has paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars” so far to fight for property that they could no longer sell if they wanted to, now that the housing authority has declared it blighted. In addition to court costs, the company had to pay for an appraisal.

“They can blight a brand new building if it doesn’t fit into the new redevelopment plan that’s been planned by the condemning authority,” Allen said.

While the recent reforms have elevated Virginia’s eminent domain protections to some of the strongest in the nation, Joe Waldo, attorney for B&B and a specialist in eminent domain cases, says the state is near the bottom when it comes to compensation for property-owners.

At a judge’s discretion, owners can only be repaid for their costs if they win the case and are awarded more than 30 percent of the amount they were originally offered.

More and more, eminent domain cases are filed on behalf of communication companies, who have the right to condemn property.

“It’s not like 50 years ago, where one telephone company did the service and that was it,” Waldo said. “Now you have so many companies competing.”

In the case of Jack Weaver, the town of Rural Retreat wants to seize the train depot for “historical purposes,” according to court documents. But there is no specific plan given for how the depot would be used, and town officials have given varying answers to that question.

While Mayor Timothy Litz called the depot an “eyesore,” the town council originally wanted to use the depot as a museum, according to City Manager Raymond Matney. But he says no specific plans have yet been made.

That’s not enough to win the case, according to Weaver’s attorney, Ann Bishop. She’s arguing that authorites can’t use eminent domain to take property simply for historical interest. Court documents also state that the town has failed to show exactly how it plans to use the depot.

Weaver says he expects a decision in early October, after the case was heard in the Wythe County circuit court on August 25.

But, like most his colleagues, Warner’s net worth fell 20 percent between 2007 and 2008. And in the 1990′s it was reportedly higher than $100 million.

Speaking of income, Loudoun and Arlington counties house more wealthy young people than anywhere else in the nation. The two counties along with 14 others in the D.C. area made it onto the list of top 50 counties where 25-34 year-olds make more than $100,000 a year.