Maybe Virginia’s unemployment funds would have lasted longer if the state hadn’t given 15 percent of its payments to unqualified claimants last year. In October 2009, the state’s unemployment money ran out and it had to borrow $347 million from the federal government. The same year, it paid $166 million to Virginians who didn’t qualify [...]

Virginia schools are putting band-aids on the Titanic. That was the metaphor used by Kitty Boitnott, president of the Virginia Education Association, when we spoke last week about using one-time federal dollars to postpone teacher layoffs. After last year’s stimulus package sent $1.1 billion to Virginia schools, many districts used their portion to fund teacher [...]

After Gov. Tim Kaine left office, the Web site he set up to track Virginia’s portion of the federal stimulus money was, for all practical purposes, abandoned. Six months later, and two months later than projected, Virginia Comptroller David Von Moll has launched a revamped version that uses Google maps and allows visitors to search [...]

Sometimes politics is like a Rube Goldberg machine. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli usually sets Virginia’s ball in motion, triggering a predictable chain of events. The sequence goes like this: 1. Cuccinelli issues an opinion or files a lawsuit. 2. Right away, Del. Bob Marshall strongly and publicly supports it. 3. Democrats such as Sen. Creigh [...]

Lay off workers, pay more taxes. Pay more taxes, lay off more workers. Repeat. An irony has been cycling through Virginia’s economy lately. The number of Virginia businesses filing for bankruptcy doubled between 2007 and 2009. When these companies close their doors, they leave behind laid-off workers — and their compensation needs. That prompts higher [...]

If you understand when you’re asked if you’ve done a “foy-ya,” then you’re familiar with the Freedom of Information Act (shorthand: FOIA). Very generally, the law requires governments to provide the public with documents and records when requested. Specific laws vary from state to state. How does Virginia’s FOIA law compare? Megan Rhyne, director of [...]

If you want to entice companies to your state, bribery’s becoming a big part of the game. It’s a game Virginia’s good at — at least when it comes to dishing out the funds. In the past 15 years, the state has awarded private companies $181.3 million through the Governor’s Development Opportunity Fund. The fund [...]

By Paige Winfield Cunningham Making Freedom of Information Act requests could be a bit annoying and time-consuming when I first started reporting. Many government agencies required that I fax a letter and then wait for them to snail-mail me the requested documents. Now, I can more often email my FOIA request and receive back a [...]

By Paige Winfield Cunningham Gov. Bob McDonnell, Sens. Mark Warner and Jim Webb and Reps. Randy Forbes and Glenn Nye all seem a bit like whiny children in my Local Blog Network colleague Peter Galuszka’s take on their protest of military cuts yesterday. The officials attacked Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s intention to shut down the [...]

Sens. John McCain and Tom Coburn received some attention this week for their report on 100 stimulus projects around the U.S. that “give taxpayers the blues.” Their aides, presumably, gathered information on projects that are wasteful, mismanaged or destroying jobs instead of creating them. Two Virginia projects were included in the report. One checks out [...]