Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

  • UVA’s Board: Stacking the Deck for Another Year

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    When the University of Virginia Board of Visitors convened last week, 13 of 17 voting board members were selected by Governor Glenn Youngkin, marking the first time in his two-and-a-half-year tenure that his appointees comprised a majority. But to all outward appearances, it was business as usual in Charlottesville. None of the issues raised by critics, including some board members, appeared on the two-day docket.

    As always, the tightly scripted board meeting addressed only issues that the Ryan administration wanted to address and left no time for board members to ask probing questions.

    Every year, President Jim Ryan updates his list of priorities. He did so again Friday, and they are essentially unchanged. Recruit and retain top-flight faculty. Improve the student experience. Bring in more sponsored research. Engage with stakeholders. Promote free speech. The main new wrinkle this year is to build on the work of the religious diversity task force.

    There’s nothing wrong with that list. But it’s incomplete. Here are priorities that don’t make the cut: Chop administrative overhead. Lower tuition & fees. Roll back the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion bureaucracy. Reverse the relentless drift toward intellectual monoculture. Promote transparency into finances and decision making.

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  • Atlantic Park Part 8: Surf Park Muni Bonds Add to Project Risk

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    sherlockj

    Atlantic Park Part 8: Surf Park Muni Bonds Add to Project Risk

    By James C. Sherlock

    The surf park jumps right out at you. It is meant to.

    It will be the first surf pool in the mid-Atlantic region. The other components of Virginia Beach’s Atlantic Park will depend upon it to create buzz and draw visitors.

    A developer group led by Venture Realty Group initially planned to own it. In September of 2020, prior to formal design plans, the team met a deadline to prove it could secure the necessary financing.

    Costs rose with inflation in 2021 and 2022. Delivery dates were rescheduled with WaveGarden, the Spanish manufacturer of the wave-pool machinery, pushing production of the Virginia Beach equipment behind orders from other customers. Councilman Moss warned the council in public session that the project needed to be reconsidered in the face of inflation in commercial construction costs.

    By 2022, those inflated construction costs were known. Revenues and operations and maintenance costs were estimates. The Virginia Beach surf park is small by industry standards, and thus capacity constrained. Very high utilization rates will be required to pay the bills.

    The developer team missed a financing deadline because of the surf park. they gave the rights to a North Carolina 501(c)(3) to access tax exempt municipal bonds. They formed Venture Waves Surf LLC on September 13, 2022 to deal with the problem before government bond authorities.

    By the time the issue was officially referred to Virginia Beach, Venture Realty’s Mike Culpepper, lead developer spokesperson, already had testified before the Virginia Small Business Financing Authority in a successful attempt to get that public charity state municipal revenue bond financing.

    Mr. Culpepper later told the press that access to tax exempt bonds had been the strategy “for more than two years”.

    After the bond issue was unanimously approved by the state Authority’s board, the Virginia Beach Development Authority passed a resolution that gave city authorization to a state decision that had already been made. It helped satisfy SEC and IRS requirements for the bonds. Mr. Culpepper was there to answer questions.

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  • They’re Canceling Little Old Ladies Now

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    James A. Bacon

    by Audrey Carpenter

    A Town Hall meeting will be held Sept. 17 at Smart’s Mill Middle School, 850 North King Street in Leesburg, for the public to weigh in on the issue of renaming Francis Hazel Reid Elementary School. Email comments are also being accepted at: [email protected].

    This Town Hall will be the first of several after the Loudoun County School Board identified nine schools within the district that it says have names associated with slavery and racism.

    The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has been undergoing an expansive renaming effort in the last few years, most recently renaming Leesburg’s old Loudoun County Courthouse last Monday and also renaming a number of roads across the county that it considered to be a stain on the county.

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  • Is Virginia Ready for John Reid?

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    John Reid, the morning talk show host of Richmond’s WRVA radio, wants to run for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. He is an outspoken conservative on most issues that animate GOP activists — jobs, taxes, regulations, crime, discipline in schools, and wokeness in the universities. There’s just one catch for a guy seeking the Republican nomination. He’s gay.

    Some voters may be turned off by his personal background, but Reid is optimistic that most won’t. Constant Democratic accusations of homophobia to the contrary, Republicans have undergone a sea-change in attitudes toward gays.

    “It’s very clear from my years on the show where I stand politically,” Reid says. “I’m fiscally conservative and socially responsible. And I’m willing to say what needs to be said.”

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  • Tackling Sexual Violence with Woke Bureaucracy

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    Every perceived problem in America today seems to require a bureaucratic response — either a new government program or, in the case of higher education, a new university program. Accordingly, Virginia Tech is addressing the challenge of sexual violence by creating a Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Office.

    Virginia Tech seeks to foster a campus culture “free from harassment, discrimination, and sexual violence,” states the Sexual Violence Prevention Initiative Strategic Plan Outline 2024. That’s a worthy ideal. I expect that 99.9% of the Virginia Tech community supports it.

    But the bureaucratic organism that is the Virginia Tech administration gravitates, as surely as Newton’s apple to the ground, toward a bureaucratic solution that entails more plans, more rules, more communication, more education, and more onanistic, self-gratifying activity that will accomplish nothing worthwhile.

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  • A Trainwreck of Misinformation

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    James A. Bacon

    by Saundra Davis

    The recent Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) School Board work session on the new Virginia accountability system could easily become a case study on misinformation in educational policy. FCPS staff and board members were startlingly misinformed on the difference between state accreditation vs. federal accountability, and FCPS staff could not accurately inform board members of benchmarks to other states.

    The discussion was primarily dominated by inaccuracies originating from a blog by 4 Public Education, a Virginia teachers union-supported group run by an FCPS activist who ironically claims expertise in “fake grassroots” and “dark money.” FCPS staff further exacerbated the situation through ignorance and deliberate spin, fueling partisan tensions rather than providing the board and the public with clear, factual information.

    The misinformation also has ties to Anne Holton, a Democratic member of the Virginia Board of Education (VBOE) and the spouse of Senator Tim Kaine. Holton, an advisor to 4 Public Education, could have intervened to correct the blog post. Her efforts to undermine the new accountability system appear driven by a desire to protect her legacy—she was on the 2017 VBOE that approved the current flawed system—regardless of how foolish it makes the FCPS School Board and other Democratic politicians look.

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  • Atlantic Park Part 7: The Quest for Surf Park Financing

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    sherlockj

    Atlantic Park Part 7: The Quest for Surf Park Financing

    Commentary by James C. Sherlock

    A last-minute search for surf park financing delayed project construction for a year. Neither bankers nor the City of Virginia Beach wanted any part of it. The developer missed a funding deadline. The city forgave it, but the pressure was on.

    So, with city backing:

    • The developers, organized in this case as Venture Waves Surf LLC, contacted 501(c)(3) P3 Foundation in North Carolina, which is in the business of participating in public private partnerships. It accepted the rights to the venue.
    • P3 and Venture Waves Surf contacted the Virginia Small Business Financing Authority, which is by policy a soft touch for non-profits. It agreed to issue tax exempt junk bonds. The yields were necessarily so high to attract buyers that the P&I debt load for that small surf park is $207 million. There is subsequently a significant risk recognized by the bond press (Bloomberg) that surf park operations and maintenance costs and debt payments together may prove more money than it will generate. They called it a speculative bet. If that happens, the surf park will be in default and put the whole project in financial jeopardy.
    • P3 Foundation established a Virginia 501(c)(3) subsidiary, P3 VB Holdings, to qualify as the borrower. It has no employees.
    • The subsidiary paid the developer to build the venue and will pay them to manage and operate it.

    The journey was so complex and wandering that it needs a graphic to explain it, so the author created one.

    Those players and their interactions will be discussed in following parts. Their participation both revealed and generated issues and actions that were not in the public interest.

    It never needed to happen.

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  • UVA Med Faculty Have Been Seeking Redress Since 2021

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    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    A group of University of Virginia medical-school faculty members aired their allegations against the University’s medical leadership only after two-and-a-half years of trying fruitlessly to work within the system, according to a new letter distributed by the 128 faculty members.

    In a letter addressed to the Board of Visitors Thursday, the anonymous group added details to complaints contained in a Sept. 5 letter calling for the Board to replace Health System CEO Craig Kent and School of Medicine Dean Melina Kibbe.

    The latest missive, published on the Parrhesiastes Substack account, responded to a Sept. 7 communication by UVA President Jim Ryan to the medical school faculty backing Kent and Kibbe. “Even though it is difficult to investigate generalized and anonymous claims of wrongdoing, without specific details or names to follow up with,” Ryan wrote, “we will do our best to investigate.”

    Writing to “dispel the notion there is no evidence to support the serious allegations,” the dissidents provided a “partial” timeline of meetings and communications between faculty and UVA senior leaders dating back to 2021.

    The distribution of the letter coincided with the UVA Board of Visitors session Thursday on Health System/Medical School matters. The Board took no action relating to the letter. It did meet in an extended closed session, but it is not known if the Parrhesiastes allegations were discussed.

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  • Jeanine’s Memes

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    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Virginia Climate Alarmist-In-Chief Making Summer Weather Scary

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    Steve Haner

    By Steve Haner

    Virginia’s most prolific climate alarmist is back at the keyboard trying to scare people with normal weather. Despite his working now for a dedicated climate propaganda outlet, our friends at the Virginia Public Access Project are treating his output like straight reporting and included his most recent effort in their “news” feed for the capital crowd. 

    “A Combination of Heat and Drought Walloped Virginia Vegetable Farmers,” reads the headline from Inside Climate News, which is certainly as opinionated on the issue of so-called climate change as the various outlets that challenge the narrative, including Bacon’s Rebellion. Our posts offering contrary data to undercut this Gospel will never get shared by VPAP’s news service. I am reconciled to the bias but every now and then it still riles. 

    Author Sean Sublette, who is professionally trained as a meteorologist, was producing his “end is nigh” messaging for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and I don’t know why he no longer is. Now it relies mostly on wire copy, and outlets like the Associated Press are as heavily infected with a single point of view as Inside Climate News. So are most local “newspapers.”

    The fact that Virginia rainfall for the year is running well ahead of the historical average, and even was for the months of May, July and August, fails to get noted in Sublette’s report. But June was extremely dry (making up for the wet spring) and by July parts of the state were showing up as in drought. By August those concerns were erased by rain in most of the localities, a recovery which he does report.

    But he bases his scary headline on a handful of farmers in the small region hit the hardest. He quotes one farmer saying, “What feels different is that it is every year: that overall temperatures are higher and that rain events are fewer and stronger.” When the alarmists are focusing on “what feels different,” that is a dead giveaway the data is not backing the narrative.

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  • Both Parties Threaten Free Trade Crucial to Virginia Economy

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    Steve Haner

    By Derrick Max

    One issue that is not getting enough attention in this election, especially for its impact on Virginia, is the growing “anti-trade” mentality of both major parties. In Tuesday’s debate, former President Donald Trump stated, “other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we’ve done for the world, and the tariff will be substantial…” Vice President Kamala Harris accurately responded that increased tariffs aren’t paid by foreign countries, but are really a sales tax on US consumers.   

    It is important to note, however, that Harris and the Biden administration have kept all of the increased tariffs from the first Trump administration in place. In May, they even raised tariffs on $18 billions of Chinese goods, including semiconductors and electric vehicles. The left remains committed to tariffs (sadly, often as a tool to force their green agenda) and the right is drifting against trade out of a misplaced “America First” mentality.   

    Even the Heritage Foundation, once a champion of free trade, in its much-mischaracterized Project 2025 manifesto is waffling on free trade. In fact, Project 2025 contains two contradictory chapters — one by Peter Navarro entitled, “The Case for Fair Trade” and one by Kent Lassman entitled, “the Case for Free Trade.” It is clear that Heritage’s new trade philosophy increasingly emphasizes the need for “reciprocity and fairness” in trade agreements over open markets and increased trade.    

    This shift is not just bad for America generally but is particularly bad for Virginia. International trade continues to play a vital role in Virginia’s economy, driving growth, supporting jobs, and enhancing competitiveness. According to the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, in 2023, Virginia exported $22.4 billion worth of goods, with key markets including Canada, China, and India. The agricultural sector alone contributed $1.5 billion in exports, underscoring its importance to the state. Additionally, over 7,000 Virginia-based companies are engaged in exporting, 85% of which are small- and medium-sized enterprises. 

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  • Bloat Watch

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    James A. Bacon

    Bloated whale carcass. Photo credit: CBC

    by James A. Bacon

    I have frequently observed (1) that the University of Virginia, for all its many fine qualities is subject to mission creep and administrative bloat; and (2) payroll expansion is the major driver of higher tuition & fees.

    Just how bad is administrative overhead? It’s difficult to say. Hard numbers are difficult to come by. Published statistics are slippery things. There are full-time employees and there are part-time employees. Some “employees” are interns or graduate students on fellowships. The criteria for classifying employees as faculty, administrative staff, or “other” are subject to change. Frankly, the size and scope of the administrative apparatus at UVA is a subject the Ryan administration studiously avoids.

    But a revealing statistic surfaced in a document, an update to the UVA Health Plan, shared Friday with the Board of Visitors. Here’s the bottom line: “UVA had 20,084 benefits-eligible employees [in FY 2023], a 9% increase over the prior year; 90% of the benefits-eligible workforce were enrolled in the health plan.“

    A 9% increase in benefits-eligible employees in a single year is more than “bloat” — it’s a dead whale carcass on the beach. Surely, one would think, someone on the Board of Visitors would have asked for an explanation. As we have become accustomed to observing, however, there was no opportunity for board members to ask the question even if they had been inclined to.

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  • Louise Lucas, Do Better.

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    James A. Bacon

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Virginia, I give you Louise Lucas, your President Pro Tempore of the State Senate:

    Such eloquence! Such a command of the English language! Positively pithy!

    Doesn’t she make you proud?

    Consider: this is an 80-year-old grandmother. The boss of Portsmouth’s Democrat political machine. A former shipyard worker turned politician who hasn’t lost an election since her first victorious run for the state legislature in 1991.

    She’s always been a tough politician, a pit bull even. But the appearance of Donald Trump on the national stage and especially GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Virginia’s has turned her into a bitter, foul-mouthed swamp monster.

    Consider what this woman had to say when she began using a cane this summer due to a bum knee. Read the whole thing.

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

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    James A. Bacon

  • Atlantic Park Part 6: Vote for Change

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    sherlockj

    Atlantic Park Part 6: Vote for Change

    by James C. Sherlock

    Updated Sept. 14 at 11:14 AM

    If an infrastructure project is assessed to be a potential commercial success, that judgement is based on a business plan. 

    Inevitably, because they are very good at what they do, the developers of Atlantic Park had one that would have served as the basis for a proposal.

    If the numbers worked, private money would have designed and built it to maximize return on investment.  It turned out that the developer team may not have accurately estimated the cost/demand/pricing/revenue case for the surf park, but that would have been their problem.

    But the city owned the land, so developers needed city participation.

    Providing public land under those circumstances could have been a good deal. Under the original cost sharing concept, Atlantic Park likely would have returned taxes and fees over its lifetime that, as city manager Dave Hansen wrote in 2018, would “let us tell them it will pay for itself”.

    But neither the council nor the its development authority asked for a proposal to lease the land.  And at least a couple of them did not share the city manager’s vision on taxpayer value.

    The public private project got way out of hand early and everything about the process and its public funding was wrong.  Over the seven years of the process they chose, council and the development authority socialized costs and risks and privatized profits.

    The concert hall was not part of the developer’s original plan.  The city shoehorned it into the deal.  Since it was city requirement, the city should have paid for that and has.  The parking garages owned by the city in the resort area make that district function.  The ones at Atlantic Park are just two more.  So those reasonably are city assets in the deal.

    The cost to the city for what it owns should have been about $100 million in construction costs plus the land to which it still holds title.  

    Yet today total city investments exceed $200 million plus the land. 

    The developer’s promised expenditures are down today about $125 million from the inflation-adjusted $282 million ($230 million in 2019) agreed to in the “final” agreement.

    So, in very round numbers, call it a $100 million dollar obligation swap accomplished incrementally over five budget years.

    Budgets are adopted in May for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The budgets that moved the money were adopted in May of 2019 through May of 2023.

    Members in office for all of those votes annotated with the percentage of their total campaign donations that have come from real estate and construction interests were Barbara Henley (28%) Rosemary Wilson (46%), Sabrina Wooten (56%) and Mayor Bob Dyer (47%). That does not count contributions from real estate and land use lawyers and the bankers who lend to developers.

    That does not mean the money affected their votes, but it is not healthy in a representative body.

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