Movement toward consensus on 81?

AFP

Virginia is taking the lead to getting states in the Interstate 81 corridor to think long term. “The hope there is that we can start to pull together a consensus,” said Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton, who convened a meeting of transporation leaders from Tennessee, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania on Wednesday in Salem. Virginia…

Kathleen Rogers and Jigar Shah: Moving capital and winning the debate on climate

AFP

Disasters from climate change are becoming more frequent and more severe – consider this year alone, with the devastating flooding in Pakistan, the Russian heat wave, an incredible ice chunk calving off of Greenland – and New York’s hottest summer on record. Governments are becoming exhausted dealing with these impacts and realizing that adapting to…

The Koch-Waynesboro connection

AFP

The recent New Yorker story on the Koch brothers has folks in Waynesboro musing aloud about the influence of the libertarian scions on the political scene in the River City, where the biggest employer, Invista, is a subsidiary of the privately-held Koch Industries. At first glance, it’s … interesting … to note a couple of…

Text of McDonnell budget speech

AFP

Gov. Bob McDonnell addressed the joint Senate Finance, House Appropriations and House Finance Committees in Richmond on Thursday. Below are the governor’s remarks as prepared for delivery. Thank you. Chairman Colgan, Chairman Putney, Chairman Purkey, members of the General Assembly money committees, ladies and gentlemen: good morning. As is the custom each summer, I come…

No pressure: We’ve only been waiting 19 months

AFP

Column by Chris Graham [email protected]   Nineteen months. That’s a long time at the height of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression to be doing economic development on the fly. Waynesboro finally took a step in the direction of again becoming a player in the development arena with the announcement last week that…