“My way or the highway”
State pols try to force unwanted Western Bypass on stubborn City Council
The first order of business for Council on Tuesday, February 17, was to appropriate about $550,000 that flowed into the City from Commonwealth and Federal coffers. The money was granted for police equipment, walking trails and financial aid for low-income families. While Council was counting its blessings from the Commonwealth, however, Richmond was putting on the heat in other areas.
Just three days earlier, the Virginia Senate had passed a bill demanding that the State build the U.S. 29 Western Bypass around Charlottesville, regardless of opposition from local transportation planners. Leaders from Lynchburg and Danville have long demanded the bypass, but strong local opposition and money troubles at the Virginia Department of Transportation have stalled the project.
A great deal of Charlottesville’s fate is bound to the will of bureaucrats and legislators in Richmond and Washington, D.C., who have the power to infuse local schools, police and social services with extra funds as well as the muscle to push local officials around. The relationship with the higher rings of government is crucial for Charlottesville’s prosperity, and that relationship will change soon, when at least two new people join City Council in July.
“It’s quite important to know the State process in terms of funding—to have some connections and people you can talk to in various agencies,” says Harrison Rue, president of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. “Any official needs to do their homework and learn the system to be effective.” Rue’s group oversees regional planning initiatives.
Meredith Richards has a high rank in the Virginia Transit Association, is a member of the Metropolitan Planning Association (MPO), the Virginia E-Communities Task Force, and a policy committee established by the Virginia Municipal League. She likely knows more about playing nice with the higher-ups than her fellow Councilors, but earlier this month her bid for a third term was quelled as Democrats elected two first-time politicians—Kendra Hamilton and David Brown—to share the May ticket with incumbent Kevin Lynch. Republicans also put up two new faces—Kenneth Jackson and Anne Reinicke—to run for two of the three open seats. The preponderance of newcomers means the next Council will have at least two new members who, like many rookies before them, will surely be too busy learning about local politics to handle the intricacies of State and Federal affairs.
Negotiating the State system will fall to the veteran Councilors—Blake Caravati, Rob Schilling and perhaps Lynch. Schilling, a four-year City resident, still seems to be learning how things work in Charlottesville. Caravati’s resumé includes stints on the Planning Commission and the Housing Authority board, but he’s probably more familiar with the streets of Charlottesville sister city Besancon, France, than the General Assembly in Richmond. As chair of the MPO, a regional transportation body, Lynch knows how Federal and State money trickles down to localities. Should he win reelection, however, Lynch is favored to be the next mayor, a job that leaves little time for searching out Federal grants or bickering with VDOT.
Council’s change in State and Federal expertise will come at a time when outside hostility to the region seems on the rise. At press time, the U.S. 29 bill, sponsored by Lynchburg Sen. Stephen Newman, was awaiting its fate in the House of Delegates. Even if Newman’s bill fails, it reveals impatience with this region’s local government, to which some local politicians are sensitive.
In November, Albemarle voters elected two new supervisors—Ken Boyd and David Wyant—who seem more likely than previous supervisors to play ball with VDOT on the bypass.
“I don’t like the idea of the State coming in here and telling us what to do with local matters,” says Boyd. But, he adds, “I think we need a bypass in our county. We need to get that on the fast track.” The State, Boyd says, “thinks we’re a bottleneck.”
The rest of Virginia seems to view Charlottesville as a place where plans grind to a halt. Surely the 36-year-old Meadowcreek Parkway saga reinforces those opinions, and the City is feeling tremendous pressure from VDOT and the County to build that long-delayed road.
But while Albemarle County is cozying up to the State, City Council is moving in the opposite direction. The Dems ousted Richards largely because of her aggressive pursuit of the Meadowcreek Parkway. (Lynch opposes the road. Hamilton says it’s “not on her radar screen,” while Brown says he will support the Parkway only when cash-strapped VDOT can afford to build an interchange for it at the Route 250/Ridge-McIntire intersection.)
Butch Davies, the local representative to the State’s Commonwealth Transportation Board, says Richmond is getting fed up with Council’s delays.
“Local needs indicate the road ought to be built,” says Davies. “The people who are applying the brakes now create a real problem.”
Davies does not support Newman’s bill to build the Western Bypass, but he sees it as the result of “deep-seated resentment” that’s building against the region. The City should take the bill as a warning, he says. The public transportation projects the Democrats want to initiate in Charlottesville, such as a bus rapid transit system, will require County participation and extensive cooperation from the Feds and Richmond, as well. Those entities may not be inclined to deal with Charlottesville if they feel Council won’t return the favor.
Davies warns that Charlottesville’s stubbornness may cause VDOT to restore its “iron fist” approach to local transportation issues.
“When you focus solely on your own objectives and you ignore the political realities around you,” says Davies, “things happen that you cannot control.”—John Borgmeyer
Indy bandwidth
Cvilleindymedia.org publishes all the news you won’t see on CNN
Media mergers and the oft-cited charge that cable TV and other news sources beat the drum for war in Iraq have fueled a growing belief that the media have become shills for corporate America.
Though CNN has yet to answer these complaints with a “think you can do better?” taunt, a group of local activists has attempted to do exactly that.
In an effort to fill a perceived void in news coverage, the group has created www.cvilleindymedia.org, which will officially kick off on Tuesday, February 24, at a launch party at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar. The site is part of a network called the Independent Media Center, an international collection of at least 130 sites, all of which encourage people to “be the media” by posting their own reporting.
“It’s a source for information that I don’t think [Charlottesville residents] are going to find anywhere else,” says Alexis Zeigler, a founder and driving force behind cvilleindymedia.
Though Zeigler says he hopes the site will get the scoop on local news, he says the worst hole in media coverage is on foreign policy or big-ticket environmental issues.
“The tone gets set in the mainstream media by corporate America,” Zeigler says, adding that coverage of the war in Iraq is usually “patriotic bullshit.”
Following the method of “open publishing,” cvilleindymedia posts the thoughts of any contributor, as long as the submissions are not blatantly racist or intended to undermine the site, according to Zeigler.
“Basically, people are free to post,” Zeigler says. “We haven’t taken anything down yet.”
The site went through an upgrade on February 10. That same day, a posting on the site drew international attention, not all of it welcome. The post, which was an announcement of the recent Earth Liberation Front attack on equipment and vehicles at the Hollymead Town Center construction site, beat local media to the story by a day.
“It hit the global site immediately,” Zeigler says of news of the local ELF attack, which he says he does not support. “That’s not exactly what I had in mindIt just puts a shadow over us all.”
The most disconcerting part of that shadow is possible scrutiny by Federal law enforcement, Zeigler says. The Federal Bureau of Investigations is handling the ELF attack.
“It just makes me nervous,” Zeigler says of the investigation, adding that he fears possible suppression of the new website by law enforcement.
So far the Feds have yet to touch cvilleindymedia, which is currently posting several stories and event listings each day. At the Tuesday launch party, the new site will celebrate its link to the global network. Zeigler says the international group “didn’t bat an eye” at the Charlottesville organization’s proposal to join the network.
Zeigler says the ultimate goal of the local news venture is to engage residents through several different mediums, including radio. And to join the group’s leadership, people need only come to its biweekly meetings.
“Whoever walks through the door becomes part of the consensus,” Zeigler says.—Paul Fain
Is race an issue in the race?
Yes, though candidates say it shouldn’t be the only issue
There are two African-American candidates for City Council in this year’s election. And though both Republican Kenneth Jackson and Democrat Kendra Hamilton say their priorities as Councilors would extend far beyond issues of race, the topic will likely surface during the campaign season.
There has been a black Democratic voice on Council for all but two of the last 34 years—always a Democrat. And maintaining this representation is clearly important to many people in Charlottesville, which is 22 percent African-American, including Mayor Maurice Cox, who sought a black candidate among Democrats prior to deciding to bow out of this year’s race, as previously reported in C-VILLE.
The May 4 election won’t be the first time two black candidates have vied for seats on Council. The most recent occurrence was 20 years ago, when two parties fielded African-American candidates. However, the second black candidate, Margaret Cain, who joined Democratic incumbent Rev. E.G. Hall in the 1984 election, belonged to the liberal Citizens Party.
A law student at UVA, Cain failed in her bid for Council, drawing 1,713 votes. Her tally prompted some Democrats to hold her responsible for the failed reelection bid of John Conover, a Democrat who lost to upstart Republican Lindsay Barnes by only 22 votes. Democrats charged that Cain pulled black voters and female voters away from their candidates. Think Ralph Nader in the last Presidential election.
David Toscano, who would later serve as a Democratic City Councilor and mayor, ran Cain’s campaign. Toscano disputes the claim that Cain’s candidacy tanked Conover’s reelection bid.
“I don’t think there was block voting based on race in that election,” Toscano says of the possibility that black voters may have voted for both Hall and Cain back in ’84. Furthermore, Toscano thinks a similar block vote by blacks for the current black candidates in May’s election is unlikely. “I just don’t see it happening,” Toscano says.
The spoiler tag wasn’t the only beef Democrats had with the Cain campaign. Prior to the election, a mysterious flier supporting Cain appeared in primarily black neighborhoods. The flier included a picture of Rev. Jesse Jackson with Cain, and touted a Jackson endorsement, which said, “Sunshine or rain vote for Cain.”
Rev. Jackson had never officially endorsed Cain, and Cain’s campaign said it hadn’t distributed the flier.
“That created quite a flap,” Toscano says of the “infamous” flier, which he says was “never authorized” by the Cain campaign.
Controversy has revisited Cain, and this time, authorities say she had something to do with it. Cain, a lawyer in Charlottesville since the ’80s, had her law license revoked in November by the Virginia State Bar over allegations that she settled a client’s personal injury claim and then deposited the check into her own account. According to the Bar, Cain never notified her client about the judgment. Cain was indicted on Tuesday, February 18, by a grand jury on fraud charges in Charlottesville’s Circuit Court.
“Not a black candidate”
Republican candidate Kenneth Jackson says his campaign isn’t about representing a certain race. Instead, Jackson says, he intends to give voice to a class, specifically working, lower-income people.
“Really, I never looked at it on a black or white basis,” Jackson says of his candidacy.
“I’m one of those average, working class people who’s trying to make ends meet,” says Jackson, who is disabled and only able to work part-time. Jackson was a Democrat until two years ago, and attributes his party shift to Republican Rob Schilling, whom he says “asks common-sense questions” in the role of Councilor.
Though she says she cares about the concerns of black residents, Democratic candidate Kendra Hamilton stresses that her goal is to listen to the concerns of the broader community and to represent people who support her positions on issues such as the achievement gap, community-police relations and housing affordability.
“These are not black issues—they’re community issues,” Hamilton says via e-mail (due to illness, she was unable to speak on the phone). “In an at-large system you have to be accessible and listen to all the voices.”
Corey Carter, the editor of Reflector, a local newspaper aimed at African-Americans, says having black candidates from both parties means more diverse viewpoints in the election. “That’s a good thing. Not just for the African-American community, but for the community on the whole.”
Jackson and Hamilton’s statements on race are reminiscent of those made by Charles Barbour, the first African-American elected to City Council in modern times. Barbour, who still lives in Charlottesville, was elected in 1970, served two terms and was also mayor. According to The Daily Progress, upon accepting his candidacy in April 1970, Barbour said, “I’m not a black candidate. I’m one of two Democrats running to represent all people.”—Paul Fain
Gay rights clears another hurdle
Assembly passes domestic partner
insurance reformVirginia’s gay rights advocates had something to cheer about on February 16, just two days after www.dontgivetouva.com officially kicked off its campaign for gay partner benefits at UVA. The victory was a 50-49 vote by the State House of Delegates to allow private employers to offer health insurance to partners of gay employees.
The General Assembly is hardly cozy with gay rights groups, having reinforced the existing State ban on gay marriage only a week prior to the health insurance vote. However, the change in direction from Richmond seems unlikely to provoke a shift from UVA, which, as a State agency, is not directly affected by the vote.
Victoria Cobb, director of legislative affairs for the Family Foundation, says the Delegates’ vote for partner benefits so soon after the marriage ban is “at best contradictory and at worst disingenuous.”
But according to David Lampo, the vice-president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Virginia, a gay rights organization, the key to the insurance bill’s passage was that it dealt with the decisions of private Virginia companies to pay for health insurance. Several corporations, including credit card giant Capital One, publicly supported the measure.
As a result, Lampo says, lawmakers were able to look at the bill “through the eyes of free-market Republicans,” instead of “through the eyes of homophobia.”
Cobb, whose organization strongly opposes the bill, concedes that its passage is a “large step forward for those advancing a homosexual-rights agenda.” Cobb rejects the argument by the bill’s proponents that health benefits for gay partners is primarily a free-market issue, claiming that governments regulate many business practices. For instance, she cites child labor laws, and adds “protecting marriage is on that level.”
The State Senate is set to consider the bill in the next two weeks and Lampo says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the bill will pass.
But even if gay partner benefits clear the Senate, the bill will not remove legal impediments for State agencies such as UVA to offer domestic partner benefits to employees. And according to Lampo, changing the rules for State agencies on partner benefits would be far more challenging than for private companies. He says opponents will come down hard on any effort to allow an institution that receives taxpayer money to give benefits to gay partners.
“That’s going to be a much tougher road to go down,” Lampo says. —Paul Fain