The national base realignment and closure program (BRAC) is transforming the Aberdeen Proving Ground into a major center for high tech research and development. Employment at Aberdeen will hit about 22,000 by late 2011. The bulk of these employees will be civilians in occupations such as computer science, IT, engineering, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Will Delaware benefit from the Aberdeen explosion? The BRAC effect Will the tremendous expansion at the Aberdeen Provin

It was very helpful to receive the comments in the News Journal of Delaware OMB director, Ann S. Visalli, regarding the unfunded retiree benefits of government employees. My response follows.   First, Ms. Visalli is correct that the state’s pension fund is 94% funded. The data that the Pew Foundation had at the time of their analysis was 92%. So that is positive change. Based upon the Pew analysis, however, that leaves a dollar amount of unfunded pension obligations ranging f

The passage of New Castle County’s 1998 Uniform Development Code (UDC) swiftly halted—and continues to harm-- economic growth and development. Within just a few years employment in the County had flat-lined, more people were moving out of NCC than were moving in, residential permits shrunk while shifting to southern Delaware and NCC’s incorporated areas, and transfer payments outstripped wages as the prime source of personal income. New Castle County now ranks last in contrib

When we started the Delaware Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the University of Delaware, Bill Wyer was the president of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce (DSCC). Bill was a junk yard dog for business in Delaware. Under his leadership the DSCC fought against any tax increases and invasive regulations, and the encroachment of government into the marketplace. With Bill at the helm, the DSCC was skeptical that a government subsidized service such as the SBDC woul

In March of this year, Caesar Rodney Institute’s Center for Economic Policy and Analysis released a technical study of the methodology behind Delaware’s prevailing wage system. With regard to the prevailing wage (PW) the study documented that: a) the methodology used by the Department of Labor was seriously flawed, b) the PW was biased toward union collective bargaining wage rates, and c) the PW was 40% above the market wage for experienced construction workers.     As a resu

This piece from the website of Hillsdale College is a clear statement of what is wrong with the U.S. and DE economies!

Caesar Rodneys Transparent Delaware website has been updated to include the state of Delawares FY 2014 vendor payments of $4.7 billion encompassing almost 474,000 individual transactions. The state is a major player in Delawares economy with vendor payments that amount to nearly 10% of private industry output. Transparent Delaware now contains over 8 million records. The state vendor data covers 11 years of transactions. The sophisticated website software allows the annual ve

Any discussion of job creation in Delaware must start with the recognition of the existence of the two distinct societies in Delaware: persons with limited education (a high school degree or less) and persons with ample education (a college degree or more).   The limited education folks are being hammered by the current economy while the ample education crowd barely knows there has been a recession. The ample education crowd dominates policy decision making and that is to the

The most recent benchmarked data does little to evidence that state and local government is recognizing the true impact of the recent recession. As shown in the chart below, as private sector employment in the nation and the Delaware region dropped from 2007 through 2009, state and local government employment continued to grow.   While total private jobs in the U.S. fell 4.2%, state and local government jobs across the nation rose 1.3% (and Federal government jobs jumped 3.4%

The Tax Foundation has just released its 2012 Facts and Figures on state finances. The results are below in order of Delaware’s ranking among all the states. Delaware ranks 9 th highest in tax collections per capita and 8 th highest in debt per capita. The high ranking in tax collections is not a disaster as Delaware “exports” much of its tax burden through the corporate franchise tax and lottery tax (note that in lottery tax revenue per capita Delaware is the “first” state