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VaNews
March 18, 2024
Top of the News

Democrats criticize Youngkin’s appointment of Yesli Vega to Board of Health

By ANDREW CAIN, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

Virginia Democrats are criticizing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appointment of Prince William County Supervisor Yesli Vega to the State Board of Health. Vega, who lost a close 2022 congressional contest to Democrat Abigail Spanberger in the 7th District, drew fire on abortion early in her campaign for celebrating the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and for appearing to suggest that impregnation might be less likely as a result of rape.


Gov. concerned about Va. school districts using Chinese-owned tutoring platform

By ANNA BRYSON, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

Gov. Glenn Youngkin is concerned that several Virginia school divisions — including three of the state's largest — are using a Chinese-owned tutoring platform associated with TikTok's parent company. The online service tutor.com is controlled by Primavera Holdings Limited, a firm owned by Chinese nationals with a principal place of business in Hong Kong, China, according to its website.


Let minimum wage rise, religious leaders urge Youngkin

By DAVE RESS, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

More than 400 bishops, clergy and religious leaders from across the state are asking Gov. Glenn Youngkin to accept legislation that would raise the minimum wage. Senate Bill 1, sponsored by Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, and House Bill 1, sponsored by Del. Jeion Ward, D-Hampton, would increase the minimum wage from the current $12 an hour to $13.50 on Jan. 1 and $15 an hour starting Jan. 1, 2026. The hikes would mean a pay increase for 611,000 Virginians, the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy said.


Youngkin administration considers bill to expand local authority to lower speed limits

By NATHANIEL CLINE, Virginia Mercury

The Virginia General Assembly passed a measure three years ago allowing local governments to decrease roadway speed limits in their localities to as low as 15 mph. But recently, lawmakers found that the Virginia Department of Transportation denied seven of eight speed limit decrease requests, because, by state law, only the Commissioner of Highways can authorize changes on state-maintained roads. Earlier this month, legislation advanced that would expand a locality’s speed-reducing authority to roadways within a business or residence district, including state-owned highways.


King George, Amazon remain at impasse over data centers

By CATHY DYSON, Free Lance-Star (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

When Gov. Glenn Youngkin gathered with local officials last week to celebrate data center development in the Fredericksburg region, one locality was missing from the party. King George County was the first in the immediate Fredericksburg area to approve the rezonings needed for Amazon Web Services to set up shop. However, no one from King George stood with Board of Supervisors’ members from Caroline, Louisa, Spotsylvania and Stafford counties at the governor’s gathering at Germanna Community College to tout all the jobs and tax dollars the data centers would bring to local coffers. That’s because a change in membership on the King George Board of Supervisors, as a result of November elections, brought a different majority and mindset to the board.


Roanoke board carefully planning apology for urban renewal impacts

By LUKE WEIR, Roanoke Times (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Apologies are difficult. Especially while Roanoke is drafting a city apology to families uprooted by racist policies of years past, every word matters. So too matters every vote of current elected leaders. Recent city council decisions have left some citizen members of the Roanoke Equity and Empowerment Advisory Board questioning the timing of apologizing. Now decades removed from city policies enacted between 1955 and 1980, the generational pain caused to Black residents by urban renewal remains acute in Roanoke.


Kepone in Hopewell: How a roach poison made the James unsafe for commercial fishing for 13 years

By LUCA POWELL, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

The roach poison was as fine as flour, and it looked like it, too. Dale Gilbert would come home caked in the stuff. So would Thurman Dykes, Frank Arrigo and the other 135 workers who baked up Kepone for Life Science Products, beginning in March 1974. Many had been lured to Hopewell by the promise of a good paycheck. But in 1975, they sat before a hearing of Congress. Gilbert’s hands shook as he said he never knew that Kepone, a neurotoxin, could be harmful. Not even the bosses took precautions.

The Full Report
38 articles, 20 publications

FROM VPAP

VPAP Visual Virginia Population Change by County

The Virginia Public Access Project

Estimates from the United States Census Bureau show that Virginia’s population grew by nearly 37,000 people (0.4%) from July 1, 2022, to July 1, 2023. See how each locality’s population changed in the same time period.

EXECUTIVE BRANCH

Youngkin poised to include Potomac Yard arena funding in budget

By ALAN KLINE, Washington Business Journal (Subscription required for some articles)

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin seems poised to make changes to the state’s budget bill to include funding for a new $2 billion sports arena and entertainment complex in Alexandria — with or without input from the state Senate. The Republican governor said in a radio interview Thursday that while his preference is for the Senate to follow the House and include arena-related funding in its budget proposal, he has the ability to amend the budget before signing it into law. “We need to get the Senate to do the work. They’ll recognize the exact same thing that the House has …”


Youngkin Signs Hazing Prevention Curriculum Bill

By ALEXIS GUSTIN, Loudoun Now

A bill that will create standards of learning guidelines on hazing prevention education for Virginia’s ninth and 10th graders has been signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin. SB379 sponsored by Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-38) was created to bring awareness and education on hazing to high school students after the 2021 death of Potomac Falls High School graduate Adam Oakes. An identical bill was sponsored in the House by Del. Atoosa Reaser (D-27).


Housing advocates call on Youngkin to sign bills to improve tenants’ rights, crack down on slumlords

By TYLER ENGLANDER, WRIC-TV

Fair housing advocates met at the Virginia State Capitol on Friday to urge Governor Glenn Youngkin to sign bills they say will improve tenants’ rights and make housing more affordable. The group, called Virginia Organizing, wants Youngkin to sign several bills, including one to allow localities to sue landlords if they don’t fix serious problems that could endanger a tenant’s health or safety. Some examples include a rodent infestation, a lack of heat, water, no electricity, of a lack of adequate sewage disposal facilities.


Gov. Youngkin vetoes bills to rejoin voter data-sharing organization

By EMILY RICHARDSON, VCU Capital News Service

Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently vetoed two bills that would have allowed Virginia to rejoin a national organization that helps maintain voter rolls. The nonpartisan Election Registration Information Center, or ERIC, ensures up-to-date voter rolls and helps voters register when they move, according to Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico. Virginia was a founding member of ERIC in 2012 under the direction of former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Youngkin’s amendment to Virginia Beach voting system bill faces opposition

By STACY PARKER, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)

A bill that would enshrine Virginia Beach’s new election system into its city charter hangs in the balance of the state legislative process this spring. SB189 would officially change Virginia Beach’s charter to reflect the city’s recent transition to a City Council consisting of single-member districts and the mayor. Previously, the at-large system allowed all residents to vote for every council district. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin essentially delayed a decision, amending the bill to say it “shall not become effective unless reenacted by the 2025 Session of the General Assembly.” State Sen. Aaron Rouse, a Virginia Beach Democrat and the bill’s sponsor, said he plans to reject the amendment and send it back to the governor.


Virginia lawmakers send more than 30 gun bills to skeptical governor

By GRAHAM MOOMAW, Virginia Mercury

As Virginia General Assembly members and employees showed up to one of the final workdays of the legislative session, the perennial debate over guns got violently real. An unknown perpetrator fatally shot a man at the “Government Center” bus stop between Richmond City Hall and Capitol Square, causing a brief lockdown on the second-to-last day of the session. Before the day was over, Gov. Glenn Youngkin had vetoed one gun bill and signaled strong skepticism of another, his first actions on the more than 30 gun-related bills Democratic lawmakers sent him this year. Most of the bills passed along party lines with opposition from Republicans.


New legislation supports registry of dementia patients, caregivers

By PARKER BARNES, VCU Capital News Service

Virginia will become one of the few state-backed registries that collects data on patients with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders, in order to improve brain health and caregiving. Annie Rhodes was a doctoral student at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she now teaches, when she first noticed a gap in such collected data — not just in the state, but around the country. … Rhodes knew a registry would be possible with funding and support, which ultimately led to the Virginia Memory Project, or VMP.


Road-kill free-for-all and Virginia’s favorite pollinator: A handful of quirky new laws

By ELIZABETH BEYER, News Leader (Metered Paywall - 3 to 4 articles a month)

Gov. Glenn Youngkin acted on a stack of 50 more bills Thursday, signing 30 into law and vetoing 20. Amid the partisan squabbling, some unique pieces of bipartisan legislation have made it through the gauntlet. Among those are bills to raise the age for jury duty exemptions, recognizing Virginia’s favorite pollinator, and a road-kill free-for-all. Here are some of the quirkiest pieces of legislation to be passed, so far.

FEDERAL ELECTIONS

Mainstream G.O.P. Group to Target Bob Good as It Shifts Mission and Members

By ANNIE KARNI, New York Times (Metered Paywall - 1 to 2 articles a month)

The Republican Main Street Partnership, a group that supports center-leaning House Republicans, plans to direct half a million dollars into a bid to defeat Representative Bob Good, a hard-right lawmaker from Virginia, making an unusual push to oust a sitting Republican member of Congress. The move is notable not just because the group, through its campaign giving arm, is inserting itself into the kind of intramural fight against an incumbent that it typically avoids. It is also striking because the candidate it is backing — John J. McGuire, a former member of the Navy SEALs and an election denier who has pledged fealty to former President Donald J. Trump and promised to bring a “biblical worldview” to Congress — bears so little resemblance to the kind of moderate Republican the Main Street Partnership was founded to support.

STATE GOVERNMENT

Danville Casino revenues up in February

By JOHN R. CRANE, Danville Register & Bee

Danville Casino rang up more money in February than during the previous month, pulling in about $18.7 million in gaming revenue, according to the latest report from the Virginia Lottery. That’s an increase of roughly $1.5 million over January, when the casino saw about $17.2 million in revenue. Of the casino’s February figures, nearly $14 million came from slots and about $4.75 million from table games.


Roanoke Gas seeks rate increase as expenses rise

By MATT BUSSE, Cardinal News

Roanoke Gas is asking state regulators to approve its second rate increase in less than two years as inflation continues to weigh on the company’s operations. The natural gas utility’s latest proposal would increase the monthly bill of an average customer using 5.6 dekatherms of gas by $4.03. The increase would take effect on an interim basis on July 1 and would be subject to refunds if regulators ultimately approve a lower amount or deny the request.


Your poop is tracking public health threats in Va. — for now

By SABRINA MORENO, Axios

Your poop might not be flagging some of Virginia’s public health threats past 2027. That’s when $3.7 million in CDC funding for Virginia’s wastewater testing program expires, health department spokesperson Cheryle Rodriguez told Axios. The program is being used in more than 30 sites statewide, including in Richmond and Henrico, as an early warning sign for the spread of COVID, the flu and RSV. None existed in Virginia before the pandemic. The technology can spot the viruses in people’s feces before they’ve been tested or show symptoms. And it’s been one of the more reliable metrics for tracking COVID-19 spread since other data, like daily case counts and testing, became much more scarce last year.

CONGRESS

U.S. senators from Virginia, Maryland urge no increase in long-distance flights at DCA

By DAN RONAN, WTOP

The four U.S. senators from Virginia and Maryland are urging Congress to keep the current rules for long distance flights from Reagan National Airport (DCA) as they are. The senators wrote both House and Senate members who oversee airports not to change the long-distance flight rules at DCA, which have been in place since 1986 and limit the number of flights more than 1,250 miles.


New FBI headquarters in Maryland gets funding momentum

By CUNEYT DIL, Axios

Sorry, Virginia: President Biden’s new budget includes $3.5 billion for a new FBI HQ in suburban Maryland — and an unexpected new bureau office in the District. Northern Virginia is still bitter about losing the FBI relocation sweepstakes, but Greenbelt in Prince George’s County is looking forward to welcoming the economic boost of 7,500 new employees. In addition to the Maryland HQ, there is money for a new office in the District, the Washington Business Journal reports.

ECONOMY/BUSINESS

Newport News Shipbuilding is hiring thousands as Navy submarine demand grows

By CAITLYN BURCHETT, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)

As the demand for nuclear-powered submarines increases, Newport News Shipbuilding said it’s working to hire 3,000 skilled trades workers this year and a total of 19,000 within the decade. “We are making intentional investments and collaborating with community leaders to ensure we have a robust pipeline for hiring and strong partnerships to meet hiring needs,” Newport News Shipbuilding spokesperson Todd Corillo said.


Cold-storage company announces $77.5 million expansion to Suffolk with 80 jobs

By TREVOR METCALFE, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)

A New Jersey logistics company plans to spend $77.5 million to construct a Suffolk facility to serve the mid-Atlantic — a move expected to create 80 jobs. FreezPak Logistics intends to expand to the city with a 245,000-square-foot cold storage facility in Northgate Commerce Park, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday. “All of FreezPak’s products will go through the Port of Virginia, a logistical advantage that will increase efficiency and increase its direct access to markets,” Youngkin said.

TRANSPORTATION

Washington County trails closer to getting broadband

By TAD DICKENS, Cardinal News

The information superhighway doesn’t cover all trails. Washington County, with help from the Appalachian Regional Commission, is working to change that on two of its multi-use paths. The iconic Virginia Creeper Trail and the new Mendota Trail — both former railways — include unserved and/or underserved areas, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission, which has awarded the county $100,000 for its quest to get them connected.

HIGHER EDUCATION

VCU provost sends racial literacy syllabi to VDOE, Youngkin administration

By MEGAN PAULY, VPM

Fotis Sotiropoulos, the provost at Virginia Commonwealth University, recently shared draft racial literacy syllabi materials with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration at its request, drawing criticism from students and faculty. The requirement for students to take a racial literacy course was initially slated to take effect in fall 2023, but the requirement was dropped after students had already registered. At the time, VCU claimed it didn’t have the space or staff to fulfill the requirement. Faculty disputed that response. Now there’s concern about when the requirement will take effect — if at all — if the Youngkin administration is involved. Sotiropoulos wrote that “a decision on when the requirement can be implemented is pending” in a March 1 letter to Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera.

VIRGINIA OTHER

Poisons still get into the James, 50 years after Kepone

By DAVE RESS, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

A half-century after the scandal over Allied Chemical's years of dumping Kepone into the James River finally prompted officials to take action, poisonous chemicals are still getting into the river — and, for many, it’s not clear from where or how much. What is clear is that decades of state officials’ examinations of fish tissues show that one class of toxic chemicals — polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs — are still in the James in significant amounts, 45 years after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned them, a Richmond Times-Dispatch review of thousands of state records, filed over the past three decades, found.


EPA: Richmond medical sterilizers must slash emissions of harmful gas by 90%

By LUCA POWELL, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

New rules will protect Richmond-area residents from breathing in ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing gas used here by two medical sterilization companies. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it will require sterilizers to slash their ethylene oxide emissions by over 90%. The rules apply to nearly 90 sterilizers across the country, including two in Richmond: Sterilization Services of Virginia is in eastern Henrico County, and a smaller in-house sterilizer run by Bon Secours Mercy Health is in Richmond’s West End.


‘We need to get started now’: Search for backup water storage, supply for Potomac River funded

By NEAL AUGENSTEIN, WTOP

Almost six years after WTOP reported D.C. only has a one or two-day supply of drinking water if the Potomac River weren’t available, a study to find potential water storage or another drinking water source will soon begin. The Energy and Water Appropriations Bill approved by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden last week contains $500,000 in funding for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to begin a study on potential solutions.


Working-class people rarely have a seat ‘at the legislative table’ in state capitols, including in Virginia

By ROBBIE SEQUEIRA, Stateline

In her first few months as a Minnesota state legislator in 2021, state Rep. Kaela Berg often wondered: “What the hell am I doing here?” A single mother and flight attendant without a college degree or prior political experience, Berg now had a seat at the legislative table, shaping policy decisions in her home state. As she ran against a former two-term Republican representative — a commercial real estate agent — she also was struggling for housing and living in a friend’s basement. … While it was gratifying to receive support from working families in her district, her transition to state policymaker felt overwhelming.

LOCAL

2-mile tunnel project under Alexandria reaches major milestone

By MATT PUSATORY AND MATT GREGORY, WUSA-TV

Nearly 150 feet underground, the City of Alexandria is tunneling toward a more environmentally friendly future. The key to that future is 360-ton tunnel-boring machine, affectionately named Hazel. Hazel has not seen the light of day since November 2022. Over the last 16 months, Hazel and her highly skilled crews have been carefully constructing a 2.2-mile tunnel under Old Town Alexandria and the Potomac River. This tunnel, left in her wake, will prevent millions of gallons of combined sewage from polluting the region’s waterways.


Parents want more say as Fairfax high school to get fifth leader in 12 years

By KARINA ELWOOD, Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Parents at Justice High School in Northern Virginia are calling for more involvement in the selection of its next principal as the high school gears up to have its fifth leader in a span of 12 years. The school’s current principal, Tiffany Narcisse, announced late last month that she will be leaving at the end of the academic year for an opportunity abroad after leading Justice for three years.


Fauquier supervisors OK zoning changes aimed at curbing large data centers at Vint Hill

By PETER CARY, Piedmont Journalism Foundation

New data centers in Vint Hill will have to undergo rigorous scrutiny due to zoning changes the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors approved Thursday. However, the board agreed that two projects already in progress — a planned four-building data center complex on Vint Hill Parkway and an expansion of a nearby existing data center — would be exempt from the new rules. The changes were controversial with landowners in Vint Hill, especially those contemplating data center projects, claiming the measures were unnecessary and would discourage businesses from locating in Vint Hill.


Warrenton council aims to pry more information from Amazon data center site plans

By PETER CARY, Piedmont Journalism Foundation

The Warrenton Town Council wants to make more information available to the public about Amazon’s plans for its controversial data center on Blackwell Road. Councilmembers voted 4-2 on Tuesday to discuss ways to release details of the project’s noise mitigation plans as well as how Dominion Energy will route power lines to the facility. The move came after impassioned pleas from Councilman Paul Mooney (at large) to provide residents with information that is missing from public versions of Amazon’s site plans, which are detailed building plans that must be approved by town staff.


Richmond planning group details greenhouse gas reduction effort

By DAVE RESS, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

Richmond region planning officials have put together a plan to cut the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change, and it calls for more electric vehicle chargers and changes to handling garbage and trash in local landfills. The PlanRVA group’s plan also tallies, for the first time, annual emissions of greenhouse gases at some 17.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and equivalent pollutants in the metropolitan statistical area, a swath of central Virginia anchored on Richmond and stretching from King and Queen County in the northwest to Amelia and Dinwiddie counties in the southwest.


Danville council rules on public comment raise questions; officials say policy not unique

Danville Register & Bee

A city rule requires citizens to register four days ahead of time in order to comment publicly on a topic not on the agenda during a Danville City Council meeting. They must sign up online or contact the city clerk by noon the Friday before a Tuesday night meeting, according to the policy. ... The city’s policy, implemented about a year ago, was called into question by speakers at a recent Danville City Council meeting who said the requirement to sign up the previous Friday before council meetings stifled free speech.


Bedford supervisors talk solar measures as ‘preemptive strike’ against state

By JUSTIN FAULCONER, News & Advance (Metered Paywall - 18 articles a month)

On the heels of a Virginia General Assembly session that included talks of state involvement in regulating utility-scale solar farms, a Bedford County official has suggested looking into an ordinance for restrictive zoning measures to have in place if the legislature “forces our hand.” The county currently has no ordinance allowing utility-scale solar farms. Bedford County Board of Supervisors District 4 member John Sharp said the county should brace for the state legislature indicating as early as next year it could pass a bill that enables bypassing localities in regulating utility-scale solar operations.

 

EDITORIALS

Broad study of the tax system needed for the commonwealth’s future

Virginian-Pilot Editorial (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)

Virginia needs a modernized tax policy that fairly spreads the burden across all sectors of the state economy while ensuring the commonwealth collects sufficient revenue to pay for its aspirations. Gov. Glenn Youngkin is correct that the current set-up is, by those measures, insufficient. But neither his budget proposal nor the budget adopted by the General Assembly at the close of this year’s legislative session rise to that challenge. While Virginia too often chooses to study ideas as an excuse for inaction, this is an area where the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission could provide the sort of nuanced, impartial and thoughtful perspective that can help the commonwealth achieve something historic.


It’s VCU’s mistake. So why is the state punishing the city?

Richmond Times-Dispatch Editorial (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

Richmond may have 99 million problems with its tax collections. Overcharging Virginia Commonwealth University, however, isn’t one of them. State lawmakers have directed VCU Health to stop payments on a 25-year, $56 million agreement with the city for taking valuable downtown real estate off the tax rolls. Part of the bottomless saga surrounding what has to be the costliest lease termination in university history — if you haven’t heard, VCU Health paid $73 million to back out of an office-tower project on Clay Street — the General Assembly has given the health system authority until Oct. 1 to tear up the contract.

COLUMNISTS

Schapiro: So many veto opportunities, so little time

By JEFF E. SCHAPIRO, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

With the legislature gone — but not forgotten — Gov. Glenn Youngkin again has to himself the stage that is the state Capitol. Practicing his hallmark performative politics, the Republican pushed onto X, formerly Twitter, a video in which he huffily declares — before bounding up the stairs toward his office on the third floor of the Jefferson-designed statehouse — that he’s got to act on more than 1,000 bills sent him by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.


Yancey: Henry County has the state’s biggest imbalance between deaths and births

By DWAYNE YANCEY, Cardinal News

Henry County has a problem that most localities in Virginia have. Henry County just has it to a bigger degree. Whether Henry County can solve that problem will determine what kind of future the county has. Henry County has too many people dying and too few babies being born. Most localities across Virginia are in the same situation — with an aging population and a declining birth rate, they have more deaths than births. But no county has as big an imbalance as Henry County does. From 2000 to 2023, Henry County had 1,481 more deaths than births.


Williams: Petersburg’s schools need leadership, not a disappearing act

By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

With the constant turnover of superintendents in its school district, you’d think the Petersburg School Board would have mastered how to handle the transition process. You would be wrong. On Feb. 25, I received a tip that Petersburg Superintendent Tamara Sterling had been separated from her employment. But nearly three weeks later, the Petersburg School Board still hadn’t acknowledged this and Sterling remained on the district’s website, even as she — according to her LinkedIn account — had moved on.

OP-ED

Town: Youngkin can cut energy costs and boost our economy

By MICHAEL TOWN, published in Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)

In 2020 and 2021, Virginia passed a number of laws propelling our state from the back of the pack to a leader, nationally, in the transition to a clean energy future. This General Assembly, lawmakers again advanced a number of measures that will lead to cleaner air and lower energy costs, while creating good-paying jobs and bringing clean energy investment to our state. Gov. Glenn Youngkin now has the chance to sign into law several of the policies outlined in his Energy Plan, which makes an explicit call to remove barriers to distributed generation, including shared solar, advance energy efficiency, and capitalize on federal energy investments.

Town is executive director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters.


Guber and Wolfson: Maintaining degree requirements threatens Virginia’s growth

By STACEY GUBER AND JONATHAN WOLFSON, published in Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)

Last spring, Gov. Glenn Youngkin removed degree requirements for hiring in roles where skills and experience are better measured. And bipartisan legislation to codify that change to make it even more impactful was on a fast track to passage after it unanimously passed the House of Delegates. But on Feb. 27, in a partisan 10-5 vote, the 10 Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee stopped the legislation in its tracks. Rather than focusing on the thousands of workers who would have a more permanent path to good jobs for the commonwealth, these members focused instead on denying the governor a bipartisan victory.

Guber of New York is a visiting fellow at the Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan policy organization located in Austin, Texas. Wolfson of Richmond is Cicero’s chief legal officer and policy director.


Smith: Sorry, judge, but minority traffic stops aren’t ‘unconstitutional’

By ZACK SMITH, published in Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)

On Feb. 12, Obama-appointed federal judge John A. Gibney Jr. declared it unconstitutional for Richmond police to stop minority motorists. At least, that’s what the logic of his decision suggests. That’s because Gibney based his decision on the fact that Richmond police stop fewer white motorists (based on the data presented to Gibney) than those who are not white, a difference he attributed to historic discrimination rather than to any individualized facts on the ground.

Smith is a legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.