7 Days has a recent article regarding the empty spaces in the Winooski development project.
The empty retail space is a lot less about the specific site in Winooski than it is about the economic climate in VT. It's not just the national economic [...]
by Chris Campion
I would like to wish every Tiger reader out there a happy and safe Thanksgiving. This year, I’m again thankful to have a family that is supportive and forgiving. Their support has enabled me to achieve things that would have been unthinkable for me 7-8 years ago.
Happy Gobblin’!
Chris
The Burlington Politburo, er, Council, finds time to explore such economically advantageous ideas like providing laptops to all Burlingtonians, because, you know, our children are at risk. Small children needs laptops like I need antlers on my head during deer season. Yet the actions of the mayor result in [...]
Recently, VT became the recipient of a 69 million dollar federal grant from the US Dept. of Energy to implement smart grid technology. As the Freeps describes this morning, the grid will lightly chastise the homeowner for unwise use of electricity. The goal [...]
The state's Joint Fiscal Office released a report in October of this year, detailing the projected shortfalls in the state's transportation fund. As the report details, the revenues for the fund have not materialized (for a host of reasons), which puts federal matching [...]
Even though 17 million dollars might seem like chump change compared to trillions being spent by our representatives in Washington, 17 million divided by 40,000 is $425 per Burlington resident. The City of Burlington just spent $425 per person of Burlington's taxpayer dollars [...]
Newt Gingrich and Dan Varroney in their Clarion Call for Jobs (Forbes magazine) advocate for several steps that would decrease current unemployment and actually improve job growth. Immediately. No stimulus spending required. Gee, how can one do that without our elected "leadership" in DC telling [...]
Our esteemed Senator from NY has trotted out his favorite whipping boy again, after some slaps to the head of Congress have apparently elicited some level of guilt. Sanders has written an amendment to the defense appropriations bill stating:
The measure calls on [...]
It seems that California has come to the conclusion that its highly progressive and anti-business tax rates did more than dampen what was once one of the world's economic powerhouses; their tax policies have literally bankrupted the state. In what might be described as a political' [...]
by Chris Campion
Friday's Freeps has an article describing Burlington as being in the "top quarter" for metropolitan regions in terms of GRP growth in 2009. As the author notes, the details as to what sectors drove the growth are not available in the data, yet' [...]
“You can’t just cut your way out of a recession,” Kraus said. “They’re [...]
The 9.1 Burlington Free Press has a "My Turn" article posted by Dan Smith, regarding economic growth and uncertainty. While some of what Dan says is reasonable, what's unsaid in his article is the key to unlocking economic growth in this state -' [...]
The Memo to Mike
by
Chris Campion
Early in August 2009, Gov. Douglas sent a memo to Rep. Mike Obuchowski, Chairman of the Joint Fiscal Committee, detailing the Governor's rescission plan in response to projected revenue shortfalls in the current FY. In that memo, Gov. Douglas described a' [...]
The July Department of Labor numbers contain some interesting data points. While the numbers themselves in terms of net job losses is grindingly painful, some sectors in the state economy have actually grown year-over-year. Three guesses as to which sector grew 500 jobs from June [...]
Given this data, on the US House and Senate reelection rates that are historically in the 80%-90% range, one begins to ponder a question regarding choice. Essentially, a vote “buys” something, in that we’re trading our votes to put the person we most want to represent us in [...]
If Texas asks us not to mess with 'em, perhaps they will let us copy some public policies that seem to have worked so well that Texas was one of the last states to feel the hit of the recession, and is in a strong position' [...]
The Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains critical labor information broken down to the state level. This chart shows Vermont's gross job losses and gross job gains between 1998 and 2008. When job gains are going up, and job losses are going down, that's net [...]
The Federal stimulus has been shown to act exactly as predicted - it's entirely un-stimulating in terms of economic growth. Our government could have saved jobs (real jobs, not ones that the WH implies they saved with no backing data) and spurred growth by simply' [...]
by Chris Campion
I notice that on Senator Sanders' website there's no mention of his voting "Nay" in requiring all Senators and staff to enroll in the "public option" health care plan that's currently under discussion, if and when it materializes. In other words, the Senator is quite happy to' [...]
Texas is lowering taxes to attract business and stimulate growth. Insert "gasp!" sound here.
Our state spending has gone up during a recession. In other words, the legislature cannot stop itself from spending money it does not have – especially considering how much of the budget is buttressed by federal stimulus spending that will un-magically disappear in a few years. There is no plan to fill the hole [...]
A recent examination of GDP by state available on WiserTrade.org confirmed something understood by a lot of Vermonters, but probably not on a quantifiable basis. Wisertrade carries export data on the national and state basis, based on Federal census data. There are customizable reports, and you can drill [...]
The Freeps is opining on a small piece of the governor’s and the legislature’s cuts to a specific state program, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. To wits:
There is no question about Vermont's need for more housing. By working with nonprofit agencies and leveraging state money for additional [...]
We can learn something about legislative and policy direction by looking at historical data. From 1992-2002, Vermont ranked third out of all states in terms of its tax revenue growth rate compared to its income growth – in other words, the rate at which tax revenues grew compared to growth in personal income. [...]
The VT State Dept of Labor’s Economic Indicators report (from February 2009) shows year-over-year fiscal YTD percentage changes in state tax revenues. In other words, how are tax revenues doing compared to last year. There’s a wealth of indicators here, but the State Tax Revenues section on the [...]
I hate to break the news to the Freeps, but cutting state jobs that it cannot fund should not be avoided because it would “add to unemployment” – that’ll be a hard sell for state employees when their checks start bouncing because we couldn’t afford to lay them [...]
Instead of UVM students asking the Board why UVM's expenses exceed its operating revenues - which is why there have been layoffs and financial chaos at the school - we're instead treated to a Board responding to student demands by cherry-picking which investments are the most acceptable on any' [...]
With all the talk about “green” jobs, and a sense of near-panic in the calls to immediately implement green economies, there’s been little talk about what impacts a “green” economy might really have once the rubber meets the road (or the tofu hits the solar panel, if you [...]
The VT Department of Labor's monthly labor market newsletter shows a lot of negative numbers in job growth, continuing a trend mentioned frequently here prior to the larger economic meltdown late last calendar year. At the bottom of this newsletter is a "Nonfarm Employment" section that features year-over-year changes' [...]
The Freeps reports that part of the federal “stimulus” package will be going to Vermont schools to help shore up budget shortfalls. All well and good, on the surface, but what this means is that Vermont schools, again, won’t have to truly face spending and revenue challenges because they’re going to get a [...]
USA Today reports that 23 schools in the Detroit public schools system will be shut down in 2009. This is largely due to declining enrollments, which create conditions where outlays for so many individual schools start making less and less sense:
The mass closing would be the third this decade for DPS, which has shuttered [...]
Ronald Wanamaker takes a turn in the Freeps today to talk about the projected changes in Burlington zoning to allow taller buildings. I don’t know if taller buildings will magically help or demonstrably harm Burlington, but Wanamaker’s claims don’t seem to jibe well with the state’s job growth rate [...]
The only real way to keep businesses that are teetering on the edge of folding from going out of business boils down to two things – the business needs to increase revenues or reduce costs, or both. It’s that simple. If the business becomes unprofitable, the doors [...]
Our vaunted Congressional delegation defends, in the Freeps, their schnuffling in the Federal trough. I guess I could wrap earmarking up in a pretty package of "helping" Vermonters, too, but where do those dollars that they're sending back to us come from in the first place? They're either taxed [...]
The Secretary for Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources, Jonathan Wood, has just written a welcome piece in the Freeps on permitting reform, and he’s exactly right that the permitting process itself is the barrier, not permitting in general. The process allows for too much interventionist power by tiny constituencies, which drives up project costs [...]
Our government (once again) has dipped into its amazingly limited toolbox and come up with a magical solution to the recession. Obama's new economic plan will raise tax rates on the higher marginal tax rates in an effort to trim deficits. Here's a suggestion not contemplated in the plan [...]
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about deflation rearing its ugly head. While consumers may appreciate reduced prices right now, they are even less able to make purchases due to reduced income (in aggregate) because of the recession. This tends to make prices drop even harder as inventory [...]
The Freeps has a piece today on the stimulus package winding through Congress and those agencies in the state that are looking for some of that money. Unfortunately, little is mentioned about how government borrowing and spending money over the course of 3-5 years is going to stimulate anything [...]
The Congressional Budget Office has a lot of interesting data on its website, detailing federal budget outlays, revenues, deficits, etc. In 2009, it's Budget Projections show that our expected federal deficit will hit an astounding one-year record of 1.186 trillion dollars, courtesy (mostly) of stimulus spending. However, other expenses [...]
Full Vermont employment is apparently only a federal jobs program away. Since the Obama administration plans on creating 3-4 million jobs as part of its stimulus program (it just went up from 3 million jobs to 4 million jobs in the last month), and promising that 80% of those [...]
The Free Press has an article on UVM's current financial woes. Leaving aside for a minute UVM's profligate spending in recent years, including an increase in interest and principal payments on new debt recently assumed in construction projects that jumped from $5M in 2002 to $175M in 2007 (on [...]
The January 24th Free Press has an article on state educational institutions grappling with financial problems due to their investment of assets in the markets. The real reason UVM is feeling the pain right now is because it operates every year at a loss, relying on investment income (the [...]
What is regrettably happening with Vermont's Building Bright Futures program is another argument for a tax cut and real incentives for businesses to grow in this state. Tax revenues cannot be generated out of good will – they can only be generated by businesses. Businesses that pay salaries to' [...]
In President Obama's Jan. 24 national address, he outlines his proposed recovery and re-investment plan. I think his ideas on economic growth are misplaced, based on this statement:
"Our economy could fall $1 trillion short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family" [...]
Recently, UVM's "The View" posted an article discussing the school's budget woes, and how the Trustees of the college are "grappling" with the latest cuts. Funny, it seems more like the budget itself is driving the bus now at UVM, since the college, for years, has seen fit to cover [...]
Budget shortfalls are simple to understand - expenses exceed revenues. Since Vermont's economic growth is virtually non-existent, and has been even prior to the recent national economic woes, there's a corresponding decrease in tax revenues collected. Monday, the State will unveil its plan to deal with the inevitable fallout of [...]
As part of UVM's plan to cut costs because of projected budget shortfalls, the university has lovingly decided not to increase the tuition to two points over the inflation rate. As the Freeps reports:
