Virginia falls from grace as best state for business

In just 10 years, Virginia has fallen from the top of a 10 best states for a business list to 13.

The Commonwealth is now tied with Wyoming for 13th place, according to a CNBC ranking. The state has a strong workforce but suffers when it comes to a higher cost to do business, according to the 2016 CNBC ranking.

Forbes Magazine in 2006 ranked our state the top state for business. It was the first time the magazine rated states.

Virginia held the top spot on Forbes’ Best State for business list until 2010, when it fell to second place behind Utah. It won first place again in 2013, and now sits at number seven on the Forbes list.

The CNBC post comes nearly eight months after CBS Moneywatch ranked the state the 5th worst for entrepreneurs, in part due to a lack of financing available for small businesses.

“The Prince William Chamber feels that Virginia’s fall from the top ranking state to do business several years ago is disconcerting, to say the least. Sequestration has obviously hurt the Commonwealth’s economy but thinking optimistically, the silver lining here is that two of our state’s lowest ranking categories – cost of doing business and infrastructure – can be improved if the wherewithal exists to do so.”

— Prince William Chamber spokeswoman Andrea Whaley

So, what’s the fix? We sought comment from several area leaders at the state and federal levels.

State Senator Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax, Prince William, Stafford) responded: 

“Virginia’s rank dropped to 13th largely due to weakness in the Virginia economy relative to other states. Our economy is lagging because our largest source of business – The Federal Government – has imposed across-the-board spending cuts via the Sequester. This economic weakness was predicted two years ago.

There are some small short-term steps we can take here at home to fix this. First, raising the minimum wage would help to stimulate more economic activity by giving millions of Virginians more money to spend – 6 of 12 states ranked higher than Virginia (CO, MN, WA, MI, FL, NE) have higher minimum wages than we do here in Virginia.

Second, Virginia needs to expand Medicaid. Virginia has left $4 billion on the table so far. Numerous studies predict that Medicaid expansion would create 30,000 jobs in Virginia, about 2,000 jobs in Prince William and Stafford Counties, save Virginia taxpayers $180 million per biennium that could be spent elsewhere, and provide healthcare to 400,000 people including at least 20,000 in Prince William and Stafford Counties.

Third, cleaning up coal ash would generate at least a billion dollars in new spending right here in Virginia and clean our environment. If the average coal ash job pays $50,000/year, $1 billion in coal ash remediation spending equates to at least 20,000 new jobs and would cost the average rate payer about $1 per month.”

We’ll add comments from other elected officials to this post should the reply with their comments.