From Roanoke.com:

When Virginians make purchases from Amazon.com they are not paying sales tax on that item (unless the consumer reports it on their taxes).

The Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill to change that.

The bill clarifies the current law, which says that any retailer with a physical presence in Virginia must collect and remit the 5 percent sales tax. Amazon, which has two facilities in Virginia,  hasn’t done that.

Apparently a 2007 ruling from the state tax department said that Amazon isn’t required to collect and remit sales tax because its facilities in Virginia don’t handle sales.

To add to the story, it was announced last month that Amazon would receive more than $4.3 million in financial aid and other incentives from the state to build two fulfillment centers outside of Richmond. Those centers would bring 1,350 jobs to the area. Amazon is investing $135 million in the buildings.

The retail community has voiced its displeasure with the loophole.

A statement from the Virginia Retail Merchants Association said that it is unfair for Amazon to receive tax dollars as incentives unless the company agrees to collect sales tax.

“Every retailer should be playing by the same set of rules and let fair.

Ouch!  A bill making Amazon collect sales tax might very well alter many people’s spending habits.  How many people  shop for no taxes and no shipping?  I certainly do.  If you buy Amazon Prime, you can get most things without paying for shipping which makes purchases pretty much “what you see is what you get” when you first look at the item.  Many online stores charge tax and and shipping and handling.  Often these charges can really up the bill on high ticket items. 

I don’t have much sympathy for the retail community.  They are trying to dodge the bullet any way they can also.  Amazon was told they weren’t required to collect and remit sales tax and that should be the end of it.  Apparently someone  in the legislature is in the pocket of the retail merchants and is beating the drum on their behalf. 

How many people consider shipping and taxing when deciding on a purchase?  Should Amazon be allowed to continue or should legislators cave in to the Virginia Retail Merchant Association?

Richmond Times Dispatch:

A bill that would require voters who show up at the polls without identification to cast provisional ballots is headed to the House floor after being lambasted by Democrats in a committee hearing Friday.

I have to disagree with the Democrats on this one.  I see absolutely nothing wrong with requiring voter ID.  There are very few rights that an American citizen has to start with.  Legal residents pretty much have the same rights we do other than voting in state and federal elections.  What happens if if a provisional vote is cast?  According to Delegate Albo:

“I’m trying to understand what the controversy of the bill is,” said Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, noting that the provisional ballots are reviewed the day after the election by the local electoral board.

“If they are legit, they get counted,” Albo said. “If they’re not legit, they don’t get counted.”

On Friday afternoon, the ACLU decried the bill as a voter-suppression measure.

Anyone who lacks the proper ID should be able to get one without charge at DMV.  I am surprised that people can register to vote without some form of identification.   In this day and age, how does a person go anywhere or do anything without some form of ID?  Go Republicans!  This is one bill that makes sense in a sea of ones that don’t. 

According to the Washington Post:

McDonnell (R) wants to eliminate funding — $455,000 — for pregnancy prevention programs across the state that offer sex education and birth control to teenagers.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative funds programs at schools and clinics in seven health districts, including Alexandria, which have the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the state. 
McDonnell’s administration says that the money is being discontinued because the initiative has not worked — and that the localities continue to experience pregnancy rates above the state average.

Although Virginia’s teen pregnancy rate is below the national average, 28 cities and counties are above the national average. In 2010, 10,970 teen pregnancies were reported in Virginia.

“The elimination of this long-standing health program could have serious consequences for women and girls’ health,” said Katherine Greenier, director of the Patricia M. Arnold Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU of Virginia. “Teens need good information and services to make informed, healthy choices. To ensure a decline in teen pregnancy rates continue we must provide teens with the necessary information, education and resources.’’

The program worked with 4,642 teens in fiscal 2010, including those at the Teen Wellness Center at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, which serves youths 12 to 19.

Eliminating this program is penny wise and pound foolish.  One teen pregnancy can very well impact medicaid, the food stamp program, and other forms of social service  for many years.  Teen pregnancy often keeps both the mother and child in a cycle of poverty that is difficult to break. 

It makes no sense.  Why does this administration want to take us backwards?  Historically, saying “don’t do it”  doesn’t work. Obviously programs like this endangered one don’t stop all pregnancy.  They reduce the instance and help those who are pregnant.  In other words, it is a comprehensive program.  Sadly, eliminating programs like this one often causes a higher abortion rate. 

Governor McDonnell is simply wrong on this issue.  Frankly, I don’t want to have to pay for his mistake.  This is the same gang who wants to defund Planned Parenthood.  They can’t stamp out sex for others, regardless of how much effort goes into it.    McDonnell and his merry band of conservatives are sticking their heads in the sand if they think that eliminating the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Intiative is going to save the state money or reduce the number of teen pregnancies.  What is he gaging ‘it doesn’t work’ on?  If it reduces teen pregnancy by 10% it is ‘working’ in terms of quality of life issues and in terms of state financial obligation down the road.   A penny saved is a penny earned. 

If this is the best men can do in logic, perhaps McDonnell just needs to sit down and shut the hell up.

According to hamptonroads.com:

Gov. Bob McDonnell’s announcements this week that he intends to pour $2.2 billion into the state pension system and boost spending for higher education by $200 million over the next two years are remarkable in two respects.

First, each implicitly acknowledges what nearly everyone in Virginia has long known but pretended isn’t true: The state’s failure to keep up with its obligations has reached a tipping point.

That much has been clear on any number of issues, perhaps none more than on transportation, which McDonnell has begun addressing through debt and public-private partnerships that ensure costly tolls on primary routes in South Hampton Roads.

But a study released earlier this week by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission underscored the bleak future of the Virginia Retirement System and the thousands of state workers counting on it.

The report explained the pension system’s condition as a consequence of multiple factors: the state’s pattern of contributing less each year than recommended, the economic downturn, increasing numbers of retirees and fewer workers taking their place. Analysts have calculated VRS is underfunded by nearly $20 billion.

Even factoring in Social Security payments, the JLARC study showed, most state retirees are barely able to count on 80 percent of their working pay, as financial planners recommend.

Making matters worse, the General Assembly has consistently ignored calculations by the Virginia Retirement System Board of Trustees. Lawmakers have made rosy assumptions that the fund would earn 8 percent on investments, while the board has recommended 7.5 percent. The actual 10-year return, through Sept. 30, was 5.8 percent.

It’s not just at the end of adulthood that the state has failed its citizens.

Tuition at Virginia’s public universities has more than doubled in the past decade, largely because the state’s contributions have dwindled. This year, the state allocated to public colleges and universities $245 million less than its own recommendations.

At public two-year colleges, tuition rose nearly 95 percent in the decade ending in 2009, while median household income rose just 6 percent, according to a report this year from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

If those schools are to have a substantial role in the governor’s vision of increasing the number of undergraduate degrees by 100,000 over 15 years, that tuition spiral will have to stop. Which means the state will have to pay up. McDonnell’s announcement represents a down-payment on that.

Second, it underscores that the funding proposals begin to make good on McDonnell’s pledge to set priorities for government spending. That makes where the money is going as important as where it’s not – and where it’s coming from.

The share of state funds devoted to VRS, education and Medicaid expenses has increased enormously in recent years, a trend projected to continue. The state’s expenses are expected to outpace projected revenue by $1 billion or more over the next two years.

McDonnell has noted in recent weeks that he’ll propose more funding for K-12 education – in and out of the classroom – when he unveils his biennial budget proposal Monday.

Some of that money will undoubtedly help school divisions deal with the added burden of higher contributions for teachers’ pensions, since nearly half of the $2.2 billion VRS contribution announced by McDonnell will come from localities.

Those cities and counties are already facing increasing expenses and declining property tax revenue. The loss of federal stimulus funds, in addition to the state’s transfer of obligations onto localities, will further strain municipal budgets.

Virginia state jobs barely keep up with the private sector now.  If Virginia state workers are asked to contribute more to their retirement program, then the state will be unable to attract and retain workers.  There is quite a quandary over what to do.  Good for Governor McDonnell to doggedly stay on this problem.  He acknowledges  Virginia’s promises to workers and realizes the importance of taking care of this set of employees.   Virginia has neglected transportation, higher education and its pension program for too long.  It’s time to pay the piper. 

Gov. Bob McDonnell on Monday unveiled a two-year, $84.9 billion spending plan that balances increases in transportation, higher education and the state’s pension system with $882 million in targeted reductions largely to Medicaid and public education funding. The proposed budget for July 1, 2012, through June 30, 2014, contains no tax increases but raises certain fees, including $10 million worth from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

If fees are increased at the DMV, doesn’t that really constitute a tax increase, by another name? 

Additionally, if items like Medicaid and public education get shortchanged, doesn’t that simply make local governments more strapped for much needed cash?  The real estate market has not rebounded all that much which is where the taxes come from in most localities.  There is also a movement under way to do away with the BPOL tax. 

Somehow politicians need to accept that we are not all that stupid.  We know that neither PWC nor Virginia can print money.  We know that a certain amount of money is needed for schools and for medicaid.  If the buck stops here, we either do without cops and other public safety services or we have 40 kids in a classroom. 

How do you cut back on Medicaid?  Where do you start?  Do you disqualify people?  I don’t know the answers.  It just seems that we are playing a shell game.  The fed cuts what it gives to the states.  The state cuts what it gives to the localities.  The localities have things they must do like provide medicaid, education money and public safety.  So we move it around. 

This is like the song, Where have all the Flowers Gone.  Gone to Flowers everyone.  McDonnell is on Fox News bragging that he has a surplus.  Not really.  How about that money owed to VRS that has not yet been repaid?  How about what is being shorted the localities?  How about the increased fees?  Just because we don’t call it a tax, is it still a tax?  Yup. 

I don’t really care.  I noticed a huge hit since the last time I renewed my license.  I expected it.  But lets call it what it is.  It’s a tax increase called a fee. 

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jaime Radtke and roughly 30 of her Tea Party supporters stood outside the Capitol on Wednesday to protest Radtke’s exclusion from a debate featuring former Govs. Tim Kaine and George Allen.

Democrat Kaine and Republican Allen were the only two candidates for the Senate seat being vacated by Jim Webb to meet the qualifications laid out by event organizers, the Associated Press and the Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association. To get an invite candidates must have averaged at least 15 percent in published polls and raised at least 20 percent of the amount of money raised by their party’s front runner.

In addition to Radtke, this left out Tim Donner, E.W. Jackson and David McCormick who are running for the GOP nomination, and Julien Modica and Courtney Lynch on the Democratic side.

Richmond Times Dispatch:

More than 60 percent of states pay their rank-and-file employees better than Virginia.

And when compared to the average salary among Virginia’s private-sector employees, the outlook for state government worker pay in Virginia is even worse, ranking 48th in the nation.

Those startling statistics come from a recently released report from the state’s Department of Human Resources Management using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The numbers are in stark contrast to this year’s analysis of compensation details for 104,552 state employees by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which shows the average state salary of roughly $52,553 — nearly identical to the average salary in the state’s private sector.

The disparity reflects the difference between the average of all state employees — including highly-paid university faculty and doctors and judges — and classified state employees, such as people who repair potholes, guard jails and staff offices.

According to the state’s report, the average salary for classified employees, which do not include university faculty or any branch of government other than executive, is about $43,800. The median salary is about $39,000.

When those higher earners are added to the mix, the median rises to nearly $43,900.

From what I have been hearing on this blog and on the TV, public employees are raiding and raping the public coffers.  Apparently that must be happening some place other than in the Old Dominion.  

Let’s hear what the union folks ….errr…professonal association folks have to say about all this:

Ron Jordan, executive director of the Virginia Governmental Employees Association, said the average salary of state employees was misleading.

“The state employee average numbers are heavily weighted by the faculty and administrative staff in higher education who tend to be paid at wage levels far above the average classified state employee,” he said. “That inflates the average tremendously.”

Jordan pointed out that in the state’s comparison between certain individual occupations, state employees are paid an average of 25 percent less than their counterparts in the private sector.

According to DHRM, 25 percent of state employees make $31,000 or less. While the median salary of the entire workforce represented by the database is about $43,900, the median salary of the classified workforce — that is, rank and file employees who fix potholes, guard prisoners and crunch numbers in state offices — is nearly $39,000, according to DHRM statistics.

Historically, while the public sector has paid less in many areas, the benefits offered by the state have made up for that disparity. But even those advantages have been diminished.

According to DHRM, the level of benefits as a percentage of salary for classified state workers has dipped dramatically from nearly 43 percent in fiscal year 2009 to just over 27 percent in fiscal year 2011. The state’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

“The times, they are a changin’,” Jordan said. “Benefits are not the incentive they used to.

It used to be that people traded top dollar for decent benefits.  Those top benefits are what attracted highly skilled employees to jobs in the public sector that perhaps didn’t pay what the private sector counter part jobs paid.  People are now rethinking the idea of benefits as belts become tighter and the public arena has grown so cynical of public employees.   I truly believe it is generally a mantra rather than thought behind what is being said. 

When one looks at words that denote central tendancy like ‘average’ and ‘median’ we are just looking at the middle.  If the median salary is $43k, then half the salaries are above that number and half are below.  That really doesn’t tell us much.  On the other hand, we don’t expect the pot hole fillers to be making what our heads of the environmental science departments make either.  The chief mining inspector probably makes more than the college meter maid. 

There is no reason for anyone to make less money because they work for the state of Virginia.  We are the Mother of Presidents, We are the state for lovers, not cheap-skates.   Those taking pot shots at state employees had better be prepared to back it all up with facts and figures. 

If bad times are coming down the pike,  we need to make like General Bea and rally behind the Virginians…the public employee Virginians, because those folks will be the first hurt by the mini-recession that might fall out of cutting defense spending.   That automatic trigger is bound to sweep through Maryland and Virginian.  Hopefully the impact will be light and over with soon.  Congress needs to get its act together immediately.  

In the wake of the child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State the cost legendary football coachJoe Paterno his job, a Virginia legislator has filed two bills that add to the list of mandated reporters in the case of child abuse or neglect.

In HB3 and HB4 Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Manassas, proposes adding coaches and athletic directors working at colleges or universities or for private sports organizations to be required to report any suspected abuse or neglect to their local Department of Social Services.

If passed these coaches and athletic directors would be added to a long list of professionals who are considered mandated reporters by the state, including doctors, nurses, K-12 teachers and coaches, probation officers and day care workers.

The emphasis here is on  college and university level coaches and athletic directors because these individuals generally don’t deal with minors in their day to day work.  Adding these positions to the long list of mandated reporters would remove the guess work out of who is and is not responsible for reporting suspected child sex abuse. 

Perhaps it seems like over-kill but it is better to be safe than sorry.  In many ways its seems that those at Penn State were ill prepared to deal with child sex abuse.  If this bill passes into law, there will simply be no question as to the right and legal behavior required.  For once, we  give Del. Marshall a rare thumbs up. 

While the native tribes of Virginia plan on presenting Governor Bob McDonnell with a deer later this week, a liberal leaning group, ProgressVA has left a 12 pound turkey for McDonnell, naming him the Turkey of the Year.  Why does McDonnell deserve this dubious award in the bestows eyes?

According to Hamptonroads.com:

The deer offering Gov. Bob McDonnell will accept from native Virginia tribes later this week comes with good intentions and a dose of tradition.

The frozen turkey left for him Monday?

Not so much.

A 12-pound gobbler was presented to McDonnell’s staff by ProgressVA, a left-leaning interest group which named the governor its “Turkey of the Year” for what it deemed his use of accounting gimmicks and cuts to core government services to balance Virginia’s budget.

In addition to the bird, the group left a framed resolution for the governor, accusing him of “maxing out the state’s credit card” with borrowing and refusing to close tax loopholes “that benefit his corporate donors.”

Figuring the governor wouldn’t consume the turkey, ProgressVA recommended a donation to a local food bank, which is how his office will handle the gift.

“The fact is in this tough economy many Virginians could use a free turkey at Thanksgiving,” McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin said. “With that in mind we will donate the turkey to the Central Virginia Foodbank and we encourage all Virginians to support their local food banks this holiday season.”

But if officials had their druthers, Martin joked, instead of a turkey they “would have preferred a one year membership in the jelly of the month club, the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.”

McDonnell has played loosey goosey with the accounting as far as VRS is concerned.  I will hold a grudge forever on that subject simply because I believe allowing payments to VRS to be deferred was unconstitutional.  Additionally, McDonnell proclaimed a balanced budget.  If you still have outstanding debt, is the budget balanced?

But I don’t know what else he has done slippery.  Is he still trying to sell our liquor stores?  I guess now he gains a little more power with the senate win, we are getting ready to find out.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Gov. Bob McDonnell’s administration has awarded a contract to a Pennsylvania-based catering company to sell food, drinks and merchandise at Virginia highway rest areas.

 CRH Catering of Connellsville, Pa., will pay the Virginia Department of Transportation about $2 million a year for vending and advertising rights at the state’s 42 rest areas and welcome centers. Most are along interstate highways.

I thought we were prohibited from installing vendor sales at our interstate rest stops because of federal regulations and that Governor Kaine has applied for relief from the regulations.  How is it we can now have vendor machines at interstate rest stops?  Actually it is a good idea but the bidding  should have been limited   to Virginia companies first.  If no Virginia companies met the specs, then out of state companies could then bid. 

Bringing in CRH Catering is supposed to add an extra  million dollars a year to help offset the cost of keeping rest areas open.   Rest stops should be open.  To do otherwise is dangerous and irresponsible to travelers and it hurts the tourist industry.