In an earlier blog, we predicted that 2008 might be the year the legislature’s short-term transportation fix unraveled. Well, it did.

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled today that the regional taxation powers of the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority are unconstitutional because the authority is an unelected body. It looks as if the Hampton Roads Transportation Authority will share the same fate. These authorities would have been able to raise an estimated $400 million and $200 million, respectively, for regional transportation projects.

Lawmakers already starting dismantling the 2007 transportation package this year by striking abusive driver fees, which were supposed to raise about $65 million a year. The Virginia Department of Transportation also recently announced that the slowing economy has lowered estimated revenues over the next six years by $1.1 billion.

The 2007 transportation package is unraveling quickly.

So where do we go from here? Gov. Tim Kaine, Speaker of the House Bill Howell and Attorney General Bob McDonnell have promised to work together to create new laws that work within Virginia’s constitution.

The regional plans paved the way for the compromise package last year - allowing the state’s most traffic-clogged regions to raise money without forcing delegates or senators to vote for raising taxes. But that compromise was reached only after years of bickering that included a 246-day taxpayer-funded session.

Now the economic downturn may make compromise even tougher. There’s less money to go around and increasing taxes while consumers are pinched would be a tough political vote.

Graduate business student Jong-Uck “Max” Park learned a lesson about luck today.
He picked out a briefcase containing $18,750, the equivalent of a semester’s tuition at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. That made him Darden’s Luckiest Student, the winner of a contest patterned after the television show “Deal or No Deal.”
Instead of Howie Mandel, the emcee for the Darden event was business professor Sam Bodily, who designed the exercise with fellow professor Phil Pfiefer.
This year’s Luckiest Student program started on Feb. 15 with five first year students going through a series of elimination events.  The field of competitors, for example, was winnowed by picking loaves of bread. One loaf had a $1 bill and the rest had $2 bills (bearing the face of U.Va. founder Thomas Jefferson). Park’s final challenge was choosing between two brief cases. One contained a sign saying “$18,750” and the other was empty. .
The entire exercise is part of a research experiment by Darden faculty but also teaches students the role that randomness plays in business.

Video: Darden’s Luckiest Student

Prince William County supervisors have shown just how serious they are about combating illegal immigration.

Facing a $51 million shortfall in its budget, supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to spend almost $800,000 from the county’s reserve fund to staff and equip a six-member police team the county formed to apprehend and process illegal immigrants. That leaves them with $3,000 in the fund, which typically is allotted in the budget to make up for shortfalls or match grants.

The Washington Post covered the meeting, reporting that the use of the reserve fund to start a new program is unusual for the county.

Illegal immigration has become a hot-button issue in Virginia in the past year, where localities are looking for ways to restrict county services to illegal immigrants and state legislators have considered more than 100 bills on the issue.

Prince William has been on top of the issue, creating a $14 million, five-year plan for a police task force to check the immigration status of residents suspected of breaking the law. The county also restricts the county services it legally can from illegal residents.

A proposal to help the working uninsured could be a fatality of a weakening economy.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine had proposed spending $7.7 million to help small businesses provide health insurance for poor, uninsured workers.

The budget bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee excluded the program, while the Senate Finance Committee’s version included only $2 million for the program.

Kaine’s proposal would have provided state subsidies for businesses that employed between two and 50 people. Workers who had incomes less than or equal to 200 percent of the federal poverty level (about $41,000 for a family of four) would have been eligible for Kaine’s program.

Under the initiative, the state would pay for up to one-third of employees’ health insurance premiums, while the company and employee would each pay the remaining third.

Lawmakers have had to cut back on spending initiatives in their budgets this year because of a projected $1.4 billion shortfall.

It doesn’t have to be lonely at the top.  The Venture Forum of Richmond hopes to roll out a mentoring network next month that would link entrepreneurial CEOs with seasoned executives who have already taken a business from startup to financial success.

The concept of the proposed program is simple, says Chuck McCabe, president and CEO of Peoples Income Tax, Inc. and a member of the forum’s Entrepreneur Advisory Committee. “If you need advice on how to get to the next level, the best person to give that advice is another CEO.”

The forum wants to make it easy for members to find a match. So far, the network is being designed with mid-level CEOs in mind.  For instance, they would need to meet several requirements: be in business for at least a year (and the business couldn’t strictly be a sole proprietor “lifestyle” business), have minimum annual revenue of $100,000, employ at least one other person and be committed to growth by hiring other employees. 

Mentors would be drawn from Central Virginia and would not have to be forum members. They would be asked to provide up to two hours a month of free consultation to a member CEO at no charge. In return, the mentoring CEO could receive up to 2 hours of free counseling from a CEO whose business has already achieved the next highest level in terms of revenues and employees.

Just goes to show that talk can be cheap and valuable.