In praise of Dan Telvock, FLS reporter

One of my first ideas for a blog two years ago was to cover Spotsylvania County government, especially with a small business slant, because I felt that the Free-Lance Star, our local paper, was doing a poor job.

Enter Dan Telvock, who joined the FLS staff as a reporter and was given the Spotsylvania beat. This man got into local goings-on and provided the information I had felt was missing. Not only does Dan write articles for the FLS, he also maintains a blog on the FLS website, into which he puts most of the information that he can't get his editor to print.

Thanks to Dan, I get the information I want and the opportunity to add my two cents in the comments of his blog entries. Twice now, I have gotten ideas for blog entries of my own from his blog (confirmed at least once by Stafford County studpidity), but didn't have my own blog yet in which to put them. The best part is that I don't have to do the primary research. Truth is, I never had time to do it myself, and don't now either, and Dan does a much better job of it than I ever could.

So, Dan, here are two topics that are going to go into this blog really soon. (You've seen them touched upon in your comments section, so I will be going into more detail now that I am not confined to 812 characters per post.)

1) Local taxes. Specifically, I'll show a qualitative economic analysis (with a couple of quantitative examples) of the Gross Receipts Tax levied on businesses as part of business licensing.

2) Making growth pay for itself in a reasonably fair and balanced way.

The first will be from the points of view of an economist and a small business owner. The second will be my inner accountant and economist coming out to 'splain things.

If the Spotsy supervisors ever take up the GRT, then hopefully I can provide you with some hard analysis with which to question them.

In the meantime, keep up the good work, Dan, and I'll keep reading and ruminating.