Month: July 2005

Tuesday, July 19
It’s not the heat, it’s the… O.K., it’s the heat

With temperatures topping out at 91 degrees today, we’re suffering through, er, enjoying the 11th day of 90+-degree heat so far this year. Just to put that into perspective, 2004 registered only three days of the wretched 90+-degree temperatures. There is a bright side: According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration, July 20-23 is the hottest period of the year. If we’re talking statistics, the end should be right around the corner.

Wednesday, July 20
Music makes the (jobless) people come together

About 140 people turned out today for a chance to check wristbands and serve sparkling beverages at Charlottesville Pavilion at its first of two job fairs. Working with Event Planning, Inc., Pavilion General Manager Kirby Hutto plans to have all positions staffed in time for the venue’s first gig on Wednesday, July 27, a free show by Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe. In other Pavilion news, after rain damaged the rear panel of the $1 million canopy roof last week, a replacement is en route from Hungary, and it will go up following Loretta Lynn’s much-anticipated show on Saturday, July 30. Until then, a partial roof will cover the Pavilion, Hutto says.

 
Local rate payers will pony up for the Chesapeake Bay

Today the Virginia Department of En-vironmental Quality announced that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority might have to pay around $30 million to make improvements to the Moore’s Creek Sewage Treatment Plant. The overhaul—which RWSA director Tom Frederick warned would be largely paid for by increases to local water bills—could be necessary to bring the plant in line with new DEQ standards for nitrogen and phosphorous discharge. It’s part of a larger state strategy to protect the declining health of the Chesapeake Bay.

Thursday, July 21
State sets aside $437 million for a rainy day

Governor Mark Warner’s office today announced a $542 million budget surplus for the fiscal year that ended June 30, officially sparking the fight for the pot. Warner’s office said the money would not go toward developing new programs. Instead, the governor will propose that $437 million go to the State’s rainy day fund; $54 million to water quality improvement (especially waste treatment facilities that impact the Chesapeake Bay); $26 million to the transportation trust fund; and $25 million to base realignment and closure expenses. The surplus represents 3.9 percent of the general fund for FY 2005. Earlier in the year, Virginia was the only state to receive a straight-A report card on fiscal management from the Pew Charitable Trust and Governing magazine.

Friday, July 22
School Board set to strategize

City Councilors gathered today for their regular monthly lunch with the City School Board, the first such meeting since appointing Louis Bograd and Alvin Edwards to the seven-member body. Standardized-test passing rates and the division’s strategy for strategic planning comprised the agenda. Though final results are still out, it looks good that all six city elementary schools will be accredited by the State for the first time; Councilors and Board members agreed that efforts should now focus on improving middle school passing rates. As for drafting a strategic plan, the Board has selected Florida-based consultants MGT to facilitate the process, for $45,500. “We really must have the framework of a strategic plan by November 1 from the State’s point of view,” Board member Dede Smith said.

Saturday, July 23
Nats barely back in first place

Today the Washington Nationals beat the Houston Astros 4-2 when Houston’s center fielder misjudged a ball with the bases loaded. The Atlanta Braves didn’t play today, meaning the storybook Nats again have first place in the National League East, but by merely a half-game. The Nationals have earned a 55-43 record so far, with 64 games left to play.

Sunday, July 24
Attention, shoppers! Consumer nirvana open

With the numerous rumors, protests and complaints that preceded its construction, maybe it was inevitable that the grand opening of Target in the Hollymead Town Center would be anti-climactic. Unofficially open to the public for a week now, the store offered little fanfare to mark today’s official opening of the Minneapolis-based retail giant. Aside from the free bag of pharmacy shwag offered to customers as they entered the 400,000-square-foot store, little else was “grand” about the opening. As one Target employee put it, “We’re just servicing our customers.” O.K., but where’s our free balloon?

Monday, July 25
Get in line for Hall and Oates

Today members of The Paramount Theater can buy advance tickets for the 2005-06 season. Folks who pay between $40 and $25,000 or more for membership benefits get early dibs on front-row seats to Daryl Hall and John Oates, The Berenstain Bears On Stage and a rap version of Shake-speare’s The Comedy of Errors.

 Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.

Membership has its privileges
Keswick sues Albemarle over tax bill, claiming it has overpaid by at least $150,000

Most people just grumble when they write their checks to the taxman. Keswick, however, called in the lawyers.

One of Albemarle’s swankiest country clubs is suing the County over its 2003 and 2004 tax bill. The Keswick Club L.P. alleges in its suit that the County Assessor improperly calculated the club’s value, and therefore overcharged the club by nearly $150,000 in taxes during those two years.

Working for Keswick, Frederick Payne and William Tanner, of the Charlottesville law firm Payne and Hodous, filed the suit in May 2004. The case was heard in Albemarle Circuit Court on June 27, 2005; Circuit Court Judge James Luke has taken the case under advisement—meaning he will make a decision after both sides have submitted briefs summarizing their arguments. Keswick’s brief is due August 1; the County will have two weeks to file a response brief before Luke decides the case.

   The suit centers on about 154 acres at Keswick Country Club east of Char-lottesville, including land, a golf course, a clubhouse with a restaurant, a spa and exercise room, a pro shop, tennis courts and a swimming pool. In May 2003, County Assessor Bruce Woodzell assessed the property at $12,585,700; Keswick, however, claims the assessment should have been no more than $2,900,000.

   The crux of the case is the method by which the County decides how much a commercial property is worth. The County used the “cost meth-od” to assess the Kes-wick property—basically, the assessor sets the value by estimating what it would cost to rebuild the property, minus depreciation. In the suit, Keswick argues that the County should assess the property by the “income method,” that is, assigning value to a commercial property based on its revenue stream.

   The County performs assessments every two years. Under the 2003 tax rate of 76 cents per $100 of assessed value, Keswick would have paid $95,651 in real estate tax each year under the County’s method. Under Keswick’s method, the bill would have been $22,040.

   Woodzell declined to comment for this article, but Deputy County Attorney Mark Trank says the County uses the cost method to assess other golf clubs: Farmington Country Club (assessed at $21,585,700), Glenmore Country Club ($13,281,200) and Birdwood Golf Course ($9,159,800).

   According to court documents, the genesis of the suit stretches back to a $25.5 million deal in 1999 between Keswick’s former owners, Metropolaris, and Orient Express Hotels, Inc. For that sum, Orient Express acquired Keswick Hall (the club’s 48-room luxury hotel), Keswick Estates (a 600-acre gated community adjacent to the club) and the Inn at Perry Cabin (an upscale hotel on the Maryland shore).

   In 2002, Orient Express also bought the 154-acre property that includes the golf course and clubhouse from Metropolaris for $3.7 million.

   In 2003, Keswick challenged the County’s $12,585,700 assessment before the Board of Equalization—a panel that mediates assessment disputes. The Board reduced Keswick’s assessment by 11 percent to $11,175,700. Keswick sued anyway. Club officials did not return repeated calls.

   “The value of the real estate is intimately affected by the performance of the business that’s on it,” says Will Tanner, a junior partner at Payne and Hodous. And business ain’t been good. According to the suit, the business on the property in question “has not realized a positive net income in many years.”

   This isn’t the first time a country club has thrown a tax tantrum in court. In 1994, Farmington went through a similar appeal. “Roughly, the County assessed it back then at about $12 million,” says Trank. Farmington wanted it reduced to $4 million or $5 million, but the judge reduced it to about $10.2 million.

   “A lot of property owners go through administrative challenges up to the Board of Equalization,” says Trank. “It’s pretty unusual to have one of these cases end up in Circuit Court.”—John Borgmeyer

Dilated pupils
Mixing up Albemarle school districts is never easy

Where is your kid going to school next year? If you live in Albemarle County, you can never be sure.

   As the county’s population of 89,000 continues to grow by about 5 percent per year, school officials routinely rejigger Albemarle’s school districts. This year, the redistricting process was long and occasionally uncivil, but a compromise proposed by Superintendent Kevin Castner seems to have satisfied most people.

   Castner presented his plan to the School Board on Thursday, July 14. “I told him jokingly that he did a very good job of splitting the baby,” says Linda McRaven, who sat on the 16-member redistricting committee assembled to advise Castner.

   Castner had to play Solomon between some committee members who favored an ambitious redistricting proposal and a group favoring a more conservative effort.

   The County Board of Supervisors threw a kink in the committee’s efforts in February when they announced that there would be no money for a new middle school in fast-growing southern Albemarle. Populating this new school had been one of the committee’s major missions—after it was thrown out, McRaven says the group lacked direction. Which kids would move? Where? Why? No one seemed sure.

   “Some of us realized that the only kids who were being moved around for no compelling reason were kids who lived west of Charlottesville,” McRaven says.

   In June, the committee released a report that recommended redistricting 629 students. But one week later McRaven and four other members—John Hermann, Anne Izard and James Ryan—issued a “minority report” that outlined numerous flaws with the process and urged more conservative redistricting. (You can relive the drama for yourself at www.k12albemarle.org.) Castner’s plan “scales back a lot of what the redistricting committee wanted to do,” says Dean Riddick, the committee chair.

   The School Board will consider Castner’s plan on August 25; if they pass it, the changes will go into effect in the fall of 2006. Castner’s July 14 proposal would affect 479 students, with 148 students in the Woodbrook district possibly switching schools. The total potentially redistricted kids amounts to less than 4 percent of Albemarle’s 12,356 enrollment. But residents of Woodbrook in northern Albemarle seem to be taking the changes with equanimity.

   “It worked out beautifully for us,” says Monica Pawinski, the parent council representative for the Woodbrook district. A previous redistricting decision had sent all Woodbrook kids to Sutherland Middle School, except for kids in the Raintree subdivision. Now, all Woodbrook kids will go to Jack Jouett Middle School. Students who choose to stay at Sutherland, however, can take advantage of the plan’s “grandfather” clause.

   For Steve VeGodsky, this means his son can choose to stay at Sutherland, but he wouldn’t be able to ride the bus, which heads to Jouett. “I hope it stays the way it is, but I’m just holding out to see what happens,” VeGodsky says. “I’ve heard some people say they like Jack Jouett, some say they like Sutherland. I don’t think there’s a lot of uproar about it around here.”

   Most of the uproar has been about the process itself. When redistricting happens again—and it surely will—Riddick says the plan should not be in the hands of a public committee. “I think the public should weigh in, but it should be handled by the staff and the superintendent. It’s too divisive for the general public.”—John Borgmeyer

Mixed use
University women give a hand to SHEA Center, combining arts and social services at Ix

To Johanna Drucker, words are not merely aggregations of letters. For Drucker, a letterpress artist and UVA professor of media studies, words are literally something else, too—measurements of weight and height found in each piece of metal type that goes into printing them.

   Her involvement in a new Downtown arts project marks another instance when one word has many meanings.

   In this case, the word is ”SHEA.” It signifies both the surname of a highly regarded painter who died in December, Karen Shea, and the interdisciplinary arts center that might be inaugurated next year in her honor. SHEA, in the latter case, stands for Social Services, Hu-manities, Education and Arts— disciplines that would be joined beneath one roof. It’s hoped the center will be developed at the Frank Ix building, the monolith on Elliott Avenue.

   The SHEA Center is the brainchild of, among others, Joan Fenton, a Downtown business owner and longtime friend of Gabe Silverman, one of four Ix developers and Shea’s husband. Jill Hartz, the director of UVA Art Museum and Drucker’s colleague in recruiting local artists to help envision SHEA, credits Fenton with the idea to join social service groups (such as Computers 4 Kids and FOCUS) with artists and maybe even an arts-centric charter school. Proximity is everything in this vision—proximity of artists and nonprofits to each other, and of the SHEA Center itself to the people its tenants hope to serve. Ix’s location, in south Downtown, would make it easy for low-income kids from Friendship Court and Sixth Street to participate in outreach programs at SHEA.

   “Karen felt that through the arts, and specifically getting to kids at a young age, you could give them the self-confidence to understand that everyone doesn’t have to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer,” says Silverman. “When-ever she could, she reached out to kids. I’m trying to put enough nonprofits together that deal with kids so that there’s a critical mass and it’s easy to put the arts programs in front of them.”

   Though the arts piece is being spearheaded at this nascent stage by two prominent UVA women, the majority of artists to whom they’ve pitched the idea are not affiliated with the University. They organized an initial meeting on July 7, and about 35 artists attended, Hartz says. Based on those discussions, Hartz estimates that SHEA would need about 25,000 of Ix’s 300,000 square feet—some of it to be common performance space. Once SHEA organizers come up with enough firm rental commitments from artists and nonprofits, developers will start to carve the space into the studios and shared areas the artists want.

   Peter Swendsen, a graduate student in music at UVA and co-artistic director of Prospect Dance Group, attended the July 7 meeting and found it “very encouraging to see the cross pollination happening.”

   For Hartz, SHEA’s community outreach would be an extension of her UVA work. The museum, she says, is also “the community’s museum.” But for Drucker, community involvement—be it at SHEA or with the Virginia Arts of the Book Center, where she does her letterpress work and which is already located at Ix—provides a welcome respite from her UVA career. “This is a place to not be Professor Drucker. Here I’m just an artist who teaches people stuff,” she says.

   However SHEA might link to Hartz and Drucker’s day jobs, sculptor Susan Bacik, another meeting-goer, says the arts center, with the “interesting conversations” it could engender, might herald a new day in Charlottesville. “During the life of any city,” she says, “from time to time there are certain moments of opportunity that dramatically expand the quality of life. This is one of those moments and places, and to have it attached to Karen Shea’s name is very fitting.”—Cathy Harding

Beyond the call of duty
Friendship Court employs off-duty police officers for extra protection

For the second consecutive year, Friendship Court has donated money to the City for extra police protection. The fiscal year 2006 sponsorship agreement will pay $88,522 to the police department in four installments.

   While similar agreements already exist between the department and retail outlets such as Food Lion, Fry’s Spring Beach Club and Wild Wing Café, Friendship Court is unusual in that it’s a housing project. But it’s not the residents themselves who pay. The property owners foot the bill.

   Two years ago, the Washington, D.C.-based National Housing Trust/Enterprise Preservation Corporations (a nonprofit that works for affordable low- and middle-income housing) and the local Piedmont Housing Alliance entered into a limited partnership (of-ficially termed the NHTE Piedmont Garrett Square Lim-ited Partnership) to acquire the Friend-ship Court property. PHA owns 50 percent of the de-velopment; NHTE owns the other half. PHA Exec-utive Director Stu Armstrong calls the partnership “a good marriage.”

   Edgewood Property Manage-ment is in charge of the day-to-day operations and signs the check to hire the off-duty officers. The money comes from the operating budget, supplied by rent income. Technically, they’re not hiring the officers themselves, but rather giving the City money to provide the extra services, says John Morland, the Friendship Court project manager at NHTE. Moreover, the extra coverage at Friendship Court, NHTE’s only property in the area, is not a new development; the previous property managers had a similar deal.

   According to Police Chief Tim Longo, the department currently has 12 to 15 “operational vacancies” and six actual vacancies. However, while seeking out extra law en-forcement could imply that the management company finds the police coverage already provided by the City to be insufficient, Morland is hesitant to say so.

   “We want more attention paid to our property than the normal police service would allow,” says Morland. “In order for us to get [that attention] we have to pay for it. We want a very high level of service for our properties.”

   Morland also points out that the alternative is a private security firm. But the City’s police force already spends time at Friendship Court and has an established relationship with residents.

   The going rate for hiring the off-duty cops is $30 an hour. According to Longo, the extra Friendship Court patrols enlist the services of 10 officers and provide an average of 33 additional hours of police coverage per week.

   While working off-duty at Friendship Court, officers wear their uniforms and have access to all the department’s equipment.

   Longo likes the City’s arrangement with NHT/Enterprise. He says that while “community policing” is the philosophy de-partment-wide, being short-staffed means officers don’t always have time to get out to meet and greet citizens. Because of the arrangement, Friendship Court gets more face time, says Longo, and the housing development is thus “more likely to have one-on-one contact with officers because it’s a higher ratio of person to officer.”

   City Councilor Kevin Lynch agrees with Longo’s assessment, allowing that, “In an ideal world we would provide that level of policing across the city, but we can’t afford that.”

   Lynch also cites a similar situation in which UVA paid the City to hire another housing inspector for University housing. True, says Lynch, the City should already be doing inspections, but the students present a particular challenge.

   “Clients, be they students or residents with specific needs, put specific financial stress on the City,” says Lynch. “I think [offering to help] is a goodwill gesture to the City.”—Nell Boeschenstein

Tuesday, July 12
Phone book company plays dirty?

DataNational, Inc., the company that puts out The Community Phone Book, filed suit today in U.S. General District Court-Western District against competitor Yellow Book Sales and Distri-bution Company, Inc., and six former DataNational employees who now work for Yellow Book, seeking $7.7 million in damages. In the 13 counts ranging from false advertising to defamation and conspiracy, Data-National alleges that Yellow Book sales reps misrepresented DataNational’s advertising fees and told advertisers Data-National was going out of business. Both companies distribute phone books locally.

How the mighty have fallen!

Today Money magazine unveiled its 2005 list, “The Best Places to Live in America,” ranking Charlottesville No. 90. Because its ranking is based largely on financial indicators (median household income, state income tax and housing prices, etc.), the fact that we’re on Money magazine’s list at all is anomalous. As City Communications Director Maurice Jones points out, “None of the cities listed in the Frommer’s ranking made the Money magazine cut, except for Charlottesville.” Frommer’s, of course, liked Charlottesville better than any other U.S. city a couple of years ago.

Wednesday, July 13
Habitat goes “green”

Facing the heat and late-afternoon rainstorm, dozens of volunteers gathered on Page Street to dedicate Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville’s first “green” house in the city, built for Salvadorian immigrants Emperatiriz Amaya and her 7-year-old son. Increasingly, the green building movement is joining forces with affordable housing initiatives, and Bank of America rewarded the work in this case with a lead donation of $60,000. The resulting three-bedroom home is “energy efficient, low maintenance and environmentally friendly,” said Habitat’s Bruce Hogshead, who also noted that with the house “we’re…moving forward with sustainable design.” The home’s insulation derives from recycled newspapers, the carpet is made from recycled two-liter bottles, and its Hardiplank siding and metal roof should last more than 50 years.

Thursday, July 14
God apparently condones child labor

About 15 protestors, including young children, from Life and Liberty Ministries displayed images of dismembered fetuses today outside Planned Parenthood’s Hydraulic Road clinic. “People will either stand for God’s law or against God’s law,” said Dennis Green, pastor of the Powhatan-based group. Though he was confident in informing a passer-by of God’s thoughts, he didn’t reveal the Almighty’s opinion about enlisting children in the macabre display.

The best of times, the worst of times

Fate dealt Charlottesville Pavilion General Manager Kirby a tough blow, or as he said this morning, “I’ve had better days.” Within hours of raising the $1 million canopy roof over the Pavilion yesterday, hard rains falling at “probably the most vulnerable point in the process” ripped a huge gash in the rear roof panel. By this morning, Hutto had the “whole team” at hand to assess the situation: “No one has waved a red flag and said, ‘Here’s the reason we can’t open July 27’” when Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe is scheduled to play a free show. The only question, Hutto said, is whether “come July 27 will we open with a partial roof, a temporary roof, or no roof?”

Friday, July 15
High schoolers get the love

The Washington Post reports today that the gap in reading scores between white and minority elementary students has narrowed over the past 30 years, but research suggests little progress in closing the gap among high school students. All of which creates a hospitable context for an initiative from Governor Mark Warner, Democratic presidential candidate-in-waiting. This week the National Governors Association, which Warner chairs, announced a grant to Virginia to help “redesign the high school experience,” according to a news release. Last month, 17 percent of Charlottesville High School seniors did not graduate.

Saturday, July 16
Kilgore ducks the camera

Political junkies awakened this morning to…nothing. Though today marked the first gubernatorial debate, there was nothing to view—at least, not on television. Republican Jerry Kilgore would not allow his debate with Democratic challenger Tim Kaine to be televised. “It’s the same ol’ Kilgore—nothing is new with him,” says Charlottesville Dem Mitch Van Yahres. “He won’t be on TV because people would clearly see the difference, especially against Kaine’s visionary ideas.” Van Yahres’ sentiment was typical of the 12 people gathered for a debate non-watching party at the local Democratic party office on W. Main Street.

Sunday, July 17
NGIC cozy with MZM

Today The Washington Post reported that defense contractor MZM, Inc., a company now under investigation for questionable ties to Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.), and which was the largest donor earlier this year to the coffers of area Congressional Rep. Virgil Goode, is also cozy with the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center in Charlottesville. The story says that two months after MZM got its first order in October 2002 to perform services for NGIC, the company hired the son of the center’s senior civilian official, NGIC executive director William S. Rich, Jr.

Monday, July 18
Thousands of eyeballs crossed today

Today thousands of local kids are cross-eyed from their weekend reading: the 672-page Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in author J.K. Rowling’s wildly popular series. More than 2,000 people showed up at Barnes & Noble to buy the book at midnight on Friday, July 15. “With each book the fan base gets even bigger,” says B&N flak Allyson John.

 Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.

House of cards
In the wake of national credit card hacking, local banks stay alert

The hacking of credit card information pertaining to 40 million American consumers, which broke the headlines on June 17, affected 7 percent of the nation’s population. The largest case of attempted identity theft to date, it didn’t leave Charlottesville immune. Fifty-two of Virginia National Bank’s 10,000 customers were affected. Also, according to Aaron Paula Thompson, a marketing specialist with the UVA Community Credit Union, “a small percentage of” the bank’s mem-bers (out of 47,000) were affected as well, although the exact number has not yet been disclosed.

   The hackers accessed the credit card information via CardSystems Solutions, Inc., a service provider for credit card-swiping machines common in retail stores nationwide. Local banks were not culpable for the breach itself. But they are taking responsibility for managing the fallout, for reassuring customers of account safety and for communicating to customers how they can work together with banks to improve account imperviousness.

   The breach allowed the hackers access to cardholder names, account numbers, security codes and expiration dates, but not to Social Security numbers or dates of birth. Visa, MasterCard, Discover Card and American Express customers were affected.

   According to VNB President Mark Giles, Visa alerted the bank “within days” of the newspaper headlines that VNB was affected. In response, on July 1 the bank sent out a letter to its 52 affected customers that began, “CardSystems Solutions, Inc., a third party payment processor for retailers nationwide, has identified a potential security breach involving 40 million customers. We have received an alert from Visa’s Compromised Account Management System that your debit card information was contained in the compromised database.”

   The letter goes on to reassure customers that no fraud had been identified, but that as a precaution, VNB had ordered replacement debit cards. Moreover, should fraudulent charges appear, the banks, not the customers, would be charged. New cards arrived within days of the letter.

   The Credit Union, according to Vice President of Marketing Janine Williams, dealt with the CardSystems alert almost identically, sending out letters and reissuing cards to affected members. The entire process took about two weeks.

   Despite Visa’s and MasterCard’s allegations that CardSystems was not meeting the credit card giants’ minimum-security requirements at the time of the breach, VNB’s Giles, remains confident in Visa’s anti-fraud systems.

   “I think that they do an awful lot for predictive fraud control,” he says, “and they know how to find us really quickly.”

   CardSystems admitted that indeed the minimums were not being met, and its website now assures visitors that this oversight has been rectified.

   Sharon Jones, whose struggles as a victim of identity theft C-VILLE chronicled in a February 2004 cover story, is a member of the Credit Union.

   Upon hearing about the national breach, “It didn’t surprise me,” Jones says. “I just knew that it was a matter of time before [credit card security breaches] hit big.”

   But then Jones heard that Credit Union members had been targeted.

   “I was just waiting for that letter to come,” she recalls. Luckily for Jones, it never arrived.

   Jones has been dealing with the fallout from her identity theft for six years. As a result of the bad credit accrued in her name, she’s had to have relatives co-sign on her car loan and purchase cellphone service for her. Her latest hurdle involves a townhouse that her identity thief leased in Fredericksburg, before skipping out on the rent and leaving the real Sharon Jones with a $956 bill for late rent and fees. There is still a judgment out against Jones and, she says, Fredericksburg has made no effort to arrest the thief.

   According to the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft affects 10 million Americans each year. Last year, bogus charges resulting from that kind of crime totaled $52.6 billion nationwide. Between 2001 and 2003, reported incidents of identity theft jumped 150 percent.

   In 1998, the federal government passed the Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act making it a federal crime. Virginia Code regards identity theft just as seriously, stating that, “Any violation resulting in financial loss of greater than $200 shall be punishable as a Class
6 felony.”

   Devon Porter, vice president of Sona-bank, a new locally owned operation, notes that banks often outsource their online services. Therefore, says Porter, “there’s no way to get inside the banks’ networks because they’re not putting themselves on the Internet.”

   Instead, Porter suggests that if a consumer is doing online banking, he do a little research into the company providing the Web services. He also suggests consumers take things into their own hands by checking balances at least once a week.

   Moreover, says Jacques Smith, Sonabank’s chief information officer, if people want to avoid what’s known as “social hacking,” they need to be more careful with where and how loudly they announce their passwords

   “In our experience, people don’t take that seriously enough,” says Smith. “[Security] is two-part: us and the consumers themselves.”—Nell Boeschenstein

The great wide open
As Downtown development heats up, what about the coal tower?

Facing east down the dirt road that runs along the railroad tracks by the coal tower, roughly situated at 10th and Water streets, you might mistakenly think you’re standing somewhere in the middle of the country. Both sides of the narrow thoroughfare are overgrown with grasses and weeds, and the only immediate sign of city life is the Bel-mont Lofts building across the tracks, peek-ing up from behind the thick foliage.

The coal tower property, which Coran Capshaw purchased from fellow developer Oliver Kuttner in September 2003 for $2.3 million, is 10.4 acres of prime, undeveloped, Downtown real estate. As the rest of that area booms with the chorus of bulldozers and jackhammers working on various redevelopment projects, the coal tower property remains quiet, if not eerily peaceful. But for how long?

Before selling to Capshaw, Kuttner had rough plans to build a 30,000-square foot mixed-use building on the lot, until his building permit was rejected and the plans abandoned. But questions surfaced about what, if anything, is on the development horizon for the acreage after a rape was allegedly attempted on the site last month. Three men allegedly attacked a female victim, beating her and kicking her to the ground.

That wasn’t the site’s first brush with notoriety. It made headlines in August 2001 when 20-year-old Craig Nordenson shot and killed two people there. Nordenson then holed up in the building and had a shoot out with police, before being taken into custody. On a lighter note, as a testament to Charlottesville’s railroad and industrial history, Live Arts staged a play there, and the tower was a featured site in the UVA Art Museum’s 2000 exhibition of site-specific installations, “Hindsight/Foresight: Art for the New Millennium.”

According to Jim Grigg, whose architecture offices on 10th Street NE abut the coal tower property, Capshaw commissioned Daggett & Grigg to draw up “very rough” sketches for the property “a couple years ago,” but they never progressed beyond the preliminary stages. Grigg believes, however, that Capshaw has been working with other local firms to generate ideas for the lot’s development.

   Jim Tolbert, Charlottesville director of neighborhood planning, allows that there have been “preliminary discussions about concepts.” But he further says no plans have been left for review. Beyond that, he will not elaborate. Capshaw’s camp has no comment.

   Regardless of whether the plans have been submitted, de-velopment of the pro-perty is inevitable.

   “Anything we can do to extend the Down-town area into the eastern part of the city would be extremely helpful,” says Director of Economic Planning Aubrey Watts.

   With market demand for Downtown dwellings on the rise, as evidenced by the Belmont Lofts, Norcross Station and The Holsinger now under construction at Fifth and Water streets, Grigg anticipates that when the coal tower is developed, it will be residential.

   Bill Dittmar, who developed the Norcross Station apartments a few blocks west, agrees with Grigg.

   “I would anticipate that you would see residential development on the property,” he says, noting further that “[the property] is not wide enough to do a lot of commercial.”

   Grigg also asserts that developing the area would enable the City to extend Water Street through to Carlton Road, which, in turn, might improve Downtown traffic patterns.

   But whatever the mystery plans may hold, “development would make the area safer,” Grigg says.—Nell Boeschenstein

Promises, promises
But can the candidates deliver on lower real estate taxes?

Virginia’s two main contenders for governor, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Jerry Kilgore, both have plans to lower your real estate tax bills. It seems that neither plan, however, will amount to anything more than campaign bluster.

   “Blah, blah, blah,” is how UVA’s state political expert, Larry Sabato, characterizes both plans. “I always enjoy the campaign promises, because the reality is that either man would have trouble getting the General Assembly to adopt his program.”

   Rising real estate taxes prompt much griping in the Com-monwealth, especially in affluent communities like Charlottesville and Northern Virginia. Over the past decade, skyrocketing property assessments have left homeowners here (and there) with ever-higher real estate tax bills. It’s not just the usual Grover Norquist-lovin’ rich white guys whining about real estate taxes, anymore—homeowners on fixed incomes say their tax bills could force them to sell their houses.

   So rising real estate taxes have become major political issues for both parties at the local level; not surprisingly, Kaine and Kilgore would each like to be seen as “the man with a plan” to reduce taxes. Neither plan seems to be satisfying local officials, however.

   “Even though I’m very much in favor of low real estate taxes, I would rather see the decisions be left at the local level,” says Ken Boyd, an Albemarle County supervisor. Boyd, a Republican, tentatively endorses Kilgore’s plan, “if we have any change at all.”

   Kilgore proposes a constitutional amendment that would limit increases in real estate assessments to no more than 5 percent a year. The plan would likely mean local governments would be forced to raise their tax rates to make up for limited assessment increases.

   Kaine, meanwhile, is proposing an amendment of his own that would give local governments the authority to cut real estate taxes to homeowners, but not commercial property. City Council, for example, could cut homeowners’ real estate taxes by up to 20 percent while leaving the tax rate charged to, say, Barracks Road Shopping Center, unchanged. Kaine’s proposal would “be
a useful tool” for the City, says Mayor David Brown.

   “It addresses a real problem for localities—how to save homeowners money without losing a whole lot of tax revenues,” he says.

   The bloggers known as Not Larry Sabato say that the much-coveted voters in Northern Virginia seem to be favoring Kilgore’s plan. “Tim Kaine risks his plan being seen like Don Beyer’s car tax plan: Too little, too late,” says NLS, referencing 1997’s Democratic gubernatorial election. That year, Republican Jim Gilmore cruised to office with a plan to cut Virginia’s car tax.

   Sabato himself, however, says that neither plan has much chance of passing the Senate. The failure of Gilmore’s car-tax cut has left that body skittish of any tax-cut schemes, he says.

   Outgoing 57th District Delegate Mitch Van Yahres, a Democrat, says Gilmore’s shadow hangs over any tax plan this year’s gubernatorial candidates might propose. “It left us in a $6 billion hole,” says Van Yahres. “We’ll never get over that.” He says state pols interested in giving local taxpayers some relief should consider fully funding education, transportation and social services costs, which the Commonwealth regularly passes down to city and county governments.—John Borgmeyer

Thou shall not…
Unlike many comparable universities, UVA’s honor code leaves much to the imagination

Lying, cheating and stealing—those are the three big no-no’s in UVA’s honor code.

   But what, exactly, does that mean? Many elite schools have rules governing academic integrity, but most provide more information about what’s prohibited than does UVA. Perhaps keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s well-known affinity for lofty ideas rather than the messier realms of law and politics, UVA’s honor code sets a high ideal. The interpretation of that ideal, however, is left to the students themselves.

   The question of what exactly constitutes cheating arose last month, when faculty in UVA’s economics department announced that they suspected that some graduate students may have cheated on a homework assignment. According to Inside Higher Education, there’s an online answer key to some problems in an economics textbook, and at least one student found the answers and apparently shared the information with classmates. The incident involves “a large fraction” of the 30 first-year econ grad students, department chair David Mills told Inside Higher Education.

   David Hobbs, a soon-to-be senior finance major and chair of UVA’s honor committee, declined to say whether any students face formal honor charges in the case.

   Permanent expulsion is the only penalty for an honor infraction, be it lying, cheating or stealing. Hobbs says students explain the honor code to incoming freshmen during summer orientation and again in the fall, through presentations held at the freshman dorms. The simplicity of UVA’s honor code, and its all-or-nothing punishment, makes it unusual among other elite universities.

   For example, Stanford University—the private UVA of the West Coast—also has a fairly simple honor code. Upon registering at Stanford, students agree “that they will not give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in class work, in the preparation of reports, or in any work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading,” according to The Stanford Bulletin. The code also says Stanford students ought to “do their share” to make sure others uphold the school’s honor code.

   Unlike UVA, however, Stanford also publishes a guide to its honor code and documents to help resident advisors explain the code to students.

   And whereas a philosopher could have written UVA’s honor code, codes of conduct at Ivy League schools like Harvard or Brown, by contrast, could have been written by lawyers.

   Harvard publishes a lengthy “Standards of Conduct in the Harvard Community,” with lengthy subsections on sexual misconduct, unauthorized use of Harvard’s logo and plagiarism. The “Academic Code of Brown University” is a nine-page document explaining offenses in the use of sources, test taking, homework assignments—it specifically bans, for example, the use of research companies or files saved from previous classes. Brown’s code outlines punishments ranging from a reprimand to expulsion and revocation of a student’s degree.

   While an honor code full of specifics may make prosecution less complicated, maybe that’s not such a good thing, either. “I think the struggle is good,” says Mark Hyatt, president of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University. “Honor violations are a big deal. It can affect people’s lives and careers,” Hyatt says. “I think we need people to struggle with this.”—John Borgmeyer

Tuesday, July 5
Now City Hall can ignore you more efficiently

Today marked the debut of the much-ballyhooed CityLink, which unifies Char-lottesville’s various computer systems. CityLink will cost $17 million over the next decade, but in return City officials promise that residents will be able to pay certain bills online, and that City staff will be able to keep better track of unfulfilled resident requests. The most vehement critic of CityLink has been UVA computer science professor and former Republican City Council candidate John Pfaltz, who for the past year has insisted the City could get by with a far cheaper system. So far, Pfaltz says he has seen no problems with CityLink because the City has not let him near it. “It is possible they are hiding something,” says Pfaltz. “Almost all of what they have shown us, such as the ‘training CD,’ has been substandard.”

Wednesday, July 6
County drivers forced to look at poor people no more

Today the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a law prohibiting people from standing on public roads or highway medians to ask for money. County police pushed for the ban, saying that panhandlers intimidate motorists, create safety hazards and leave trash near the road. Violations of the new law will be treated as traffic infractions, according to news reports, and the County will spend the next two weeks informing panhandlers of the new law before the crackdown begins. The ban applies not only to panhandlers, but also firefighters who stand in the road to collect money, or anti-abortionists who wave pictures of dismembered fetuses. “You can’t say that it’s O.K. for one group to do it, but not another group,” says County Spokeswoman
Lee Catlin.

Thursday, July 7
Cindy dumps on Charlottesville

City and County officials freaked out today as the remnants of tropical storm Cindy closed in on Charlottesville. Their skittishness was no doubt amplified by Tuesday’s surprise storm that downed trees, left 14,000 without power and closed about 80 roads. Early estimates predicted Cindy could deliver up to 8" of rain and cause floods, but in the end, only 3"-4" inches fell. “Last night we kept the Emergency Operations Center open until about 11:30pm and then the track of the storm was such that we realized we were going to get off pretty lightly,” said County Spokeswoman Lee Catlin. Power outed by Tuesday’s storm was restored by midnight Wednesday, said Le-Ha Ander-son, media and community relations manager for Dominion Virginia Power. So you wonder, why does my house go dark while my neighbor still has lights? Anderson says it’s because houses are fed off of different lines, depending on when the house was built.

Friday, July 8
Gronlund takes the hot seat

Today Julie Gronlund kicked off her stint in one of Charlottesville’s toughest jobs—Chair of the City School Board. The Board nominated her during their meeting last night, and she will now oversee the search for yet another school superintendent. The Board’s quest to avoid past mistakes began with its decision not to use Ray and Associates, the search firm that failed to inform the Board that former superintendent Scottie Griffin had been involved in two job-related lawsuits prior to her brief, rocky and expensive tenure in Charlottesville. “I expect that in this go-round, Board members will take a more active role reviewing applications and conducting background checks,” Gronlund says.

Saturday, July 9
The king of beer dies

Long before there were Starr Hill and South Street breweries, the task of keeping Char-lottesville socially lubricated fell to beer distributor J. “Wally” Sieg, who died today at the age of 94. Sieg led an extraordinary life before settling down in Charlottesville, according to an obituary in The Daily Progress. He prospected for oil, explored the world on a cruise ship and owned a jazz bar during World War II before buying Char-lottesville’s Busch beer distributorship in 1962. When Sieg took over, the company had six employees and sold 57,000 cases of beer a year—today J.W. Sieg & Co. employs 80 people and sells 2.2 million cases of frothy goodness annually.

Sunday, July 10
Trailer park renewal project advances

Judging commenced this afternoon of some 160-plus designs that were submitted from around the country for “Urban Habitats,” a new low-income, green housing initiative spearheaded by the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity. The focus of the project is Sunrise Trailer Park, a Belmont community whose residents were threatened with losing their homes when the site went on the market last year. Instead, Habitat purchased the property and, with support from local funders and sustainable design advocates, launched Urban Habitats. The goal: to redevelop Sunrise into a mixed-income neighborhood without displacing any current residents, and to create a model for such projects throughout the United States.

Monday, July 11
Governor Warner: Throw the bums out!

Today The Washington Post reports that Virginia Governor Mark Warner is ramping up his presidential rhetoric. In a speech to Democrats in Arizona, Warner said voters want someone who will reclaim the “sensible center.” Warner’s star rose in 2004 when he successfully courted moderate Republicans to pass a budget and thwarted right-wing opposition. He’s not as well known nationally as his potential challenger for the nomination, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, but that may be a good thing for Democrats eager to adopt a centrist image.

Is MZM bad news for Goode?
Defense contractor, now under fire, is the GOP Congressman’s main campaign donor this year

Democrats are launching an opening volley in an effort to “nationalize next year’s midterm House elections around the issue of ethics,” as The Washington Post recently reported. They’re spending $36,000 on local advertising to target a handful of incumbent Republicans. And though Virgil Goode, Charlottesville’s 10-year Congressional vet-eran, is not on their list, an unfolding criminal investigation into his largest campaign contributors could loosen the conservative Republican’s firm grip on the Fifth District.

   The story of MZM Inc., a defense contractor with offices in Albemarle County and Martinsville, is rooted in a June 12 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. That paper reported that in November 2003 California Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee and the defense appropriations subcommittee, sold his home for $1,675,000 to a company owned by Mitchell Wade, MZM’s founder and then-chief executive. In the summer of 2004, Wade resold the house at a $700,000 loss. It subsequently also emerged that Cunningham had been using a 42-foot yacht owned by Wade as his Washington residence.

   Founded in 1993, MZM was not awarded significant government contracts until after 2002. In 2003, the year of the home sale, MZM won $41 million in defense contracts. That figure increased to $69 million in 2004, according to the Union-Tribune.

   Goode, a member of the appropriations committee, reportedly was the principal sponsor of a provision that led to the creation of MZM’s Martinsville office, which was also supported by a $250,000 loan from Gov-ernor Mark Warner’s Opportunity Fund, $250,000 from the Vir-ginia Tobacco Indemnification and Com-munity Revitalization Commission, and $127,000 from the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber’s Partnership for Economic Growth. The program, which researches the ownership of foreign defense contractors, “was not a Pentagon priority and was not requested by the Defense Department,” according to a Post report, which cited an anonymous senior defense official who further said the program “was mandated by Goode on MZM’s behalf.”

   The Pentagon has now suspended additional work orders for MZM, and earlier this month federal agents raided Cunningham’s California home and Wade’s Washington home, office and boat.

   Goode was the second-largest single recipient of campaign contributions from MZM and its employees in the 2003-04 election cycle, and MZM contributions were his largest single source of financial support, accounting for $39,551 of the total $818,460 he raised, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. So far in 2005, MZM employees and donors that appear to be related to MZM employees because of identical last names and hometowns have given $48,625 to Goode, accounting for 85 percent of the total $57,296 he’s raised so far this cycle.

   Three MZM employees who asked not to be identified told the Union-Tribune that Wade had pressured employees to contribute to MZM’s political action committee. The newspaper said one employee “quoted Wade as describing his congressional strategy this way: ‘The only people I want to work with are people I give checks to. I own them.’”

   Goode has since said that he doesn’t want coerced donations. Earlier this month he was preparing an offer to return donations that weren’t made “freely and voluntarily.”

   Al Weed, Goode’s Democratic challenger in 2004, says he does not think that “Virgil has done anything dishonest.” Still, he characterizes the situation as a result of a lost “ethical compass,” resulting from a sense of entitlement and arrogance rooted in the entrenchment of power.

   Generating employment for the district is a chief responsibility for the congressman, Weed says, “but when there’s $50,000 on the table, then you begin to wonder, was he doing it because they were good for the district, or was he doing it because there was $50,000 on the table?”

   Weed, who lost decisively in 2004, garnering 36 percent of votes compared to Goode’s 64 percent, says the relationship with MZM clashes with Goode’s “earned” reputation “for being very frugal, for being very straight-laced.”

   Weed says he hasn’t yet made a decision whether to run in 2006, but of the MZM issue and ethics in general he says, “It’ll become part of the campaign, I’m sure.”—Harry Terris

Photo finish
Newspaper shells out $5,000 to settle cover case

  Changed into a fresh shirt and refreshed by a glass of fruit juice last Tuesday afternoon, Dave Phillips settles behind his desk, just back from cleaning up a mess at McIntire Park. As CEO of the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors, he had had a big role in the previous night’s brilliant July 4 fireworks, which CAAR helped to sponsor, and Phillips spent what he calls an exhausting day loading used rockets and mortar tubes onto the back of a truck. It’s dirty work, but arguably light labor compared to the mess that for months prior had plagued Phillips and The Real Estate Weekly, a newspaper that
is a wholly owned subsidiary
of CAAR.

   On May 19, The Real Estate Weekly settled two lawsuits brought in January by attorney John Simpson on behalf of his daughters Ashley and Sasha. A photo of the Simpson sisters and another young woman, taken at a fundraiser for Martha Jefferson Hospital, was reproduced on the cover of the newspaper’s October 14, 2004 issue with the headline “Special Holiday Shopping Supports Women’s Health Program’s [sic] Martha’s Market October 15-17 at the Omni.” Citing section 8.01-40 of the Virginia Code, Simpson charged that The Real Estate Weekly, “without first having obtained the written permission or consent” of the plaintiffs, had used their pictures “for advertising purposes or for the purpose of trade…” and he sought $100,000 in punitive damages for his daughters.

   “I always have said that no good deed goes unpunished,” Phillips says. “We tried to help Martha’s Market promote their event.

   “We have a reasonable right to expect attendees at an event, when posing, to have given reasoned consent to use this picture,” he continues. “It would be different if we’d plastered it on an advertisement.”

   Indeed, according to the law that would have been the key difference. The Real Estate Weekly may be heavy—very heavy—on advertising, but it clearly includes editorial or noncommercial content, too. In the disputed 100-page issue, besides the two-page article about Martha’s Market, there was a page-and-a-half piece about the Shenandoah Valley Airport, a two-and-a-half-page article about Montpelier, and the regular content about industry news and repair tips for homeowners.

   Robert O’Neil, a leading scholar on First Amendment issues and the founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, contacted by e-mail, says that a suit like the Simpsons’ “would seldom be legally actionable” in a U.S. court, “unless the photo had been blatantly used without the subject’s permission for commercial advertising purposes—and even then seldom unless the subject were a celebrity whose image had real commercial value.

   “Otherwise, courts in this country… take the view that one appears in public at one’s risk, and is fair game for photographers, tape recorders, videographers, etc.”

   But though the law might be on The Real Estate Weekly’s side, Phillips and the paper’s attorney for this case, Edward Lowry, opted to settle. They agreed, two months ago, to donate $2,500 each to two charities in the name of the Simpson sisters. Additionally, neither party admitted liability.

   Simpson was on vacation and unavailable for comment at press time.

   “My personal opinion was that The Real Estate Weekly had not violated any law and were not liable in any way,” says Lowry. Still, he advised his client to settle rather than fight in court because “$5,000 was a small fraction of what it would be to try the case.”

   But some would say there are other costs to be paid in settling
a case like this one. Wayne Mogielnicki, now director of communications at Monticello, was editor of The Daily Progress for more than eight years. In his view, the use of a photograph taken at a public event like Martha’s Market “should be protected.” In fact, he says, “a more common reaction is for the family to request extra copies.”

   For his part, CAAR’s Phillips doesn’t foresee that the settlement will put much of a chill on The Real Estate Weekly’s operations. But the paper has altered its procedures when it comes to photos and will now obtain photo releases “of everyone who appears in the paper, especially when a minor is involved.”

   But even if settlement was the most prudent action from a financial point of view, the way Mogielnicki sees it, the public may be the poorer for such an outcome. “Newspapers and TV would be a lot less colorful if there was some prohibition against using pictures of attendees at an event in an editorial setting,” he says.—Cathy Harding

This land is my land
Supreme Court’s eminent domain ruling reverberates here

When Eddie Ryan heard about the recent Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, he wondered whether it would make the City of Charlottesville more aggressive in exercising its powers of eminent domain.

   “I reckon with this new law they’ll be getting on to everybody,” says Ryan, a chaplain at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1827 on River Road. “They don’t have no consideration for nobody… but that’s just my opinion.”

   Ryan’s suspicions of local government largely stem from the City’s efforts in late 2002 to claim 138,000 square feet of the VFW’s land along the Rivanna River. The City had wanted to add on to the Greenbelt Trail and build a parking lot, and a deadline for spending federal grant money was running out. City Attorney Craig Brown presented the VFW with a choice—sell the land, or the City would take it through eminent domain.

   The U.S. Constitution gives government the right to seize private land for public use, as long as “just compensation” is provided. When eminent domain is invoked, a court decides whether the government’s case for public use is justified, and sets a payment amount.

   In the past, eminent domain has often been used to clear blighted slums, as when the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority demolished the Vinegar Hill neighborhood in the 1960s. In New London, Connecticut, however, city leaders there wanted private land for a hotel, a conference center, a state park and various other commercial enterprises that would expand the tax base in a town that has fallen on hard times. A group of nine homeowners refused to sell, however, and argued that economic development did not qualify as “public use.”

   On June 23, the Supreme Court sided with New London in a 5-4 decision.

   After the ruling, Virginia politicians—especially Democratic candidates—rushed to lambaste the decision. Former Mayor David Toscano, who is running for the 57th District seat in the House of Delegates, issued a press release saying he would tighten Virginia’s definition of “public use.” Currently, State Code allows eminent domain for “all uses which are necessary for public purposes.” Toscano warned, “The ruling might provide openings to big-box retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to approach localities about the use of eminent domain to expand their businesses at the expense of established neighborhoods.” The Daily Progress also quoted Toscano’s Republican challenger, Tom McCrystal, as well as 56th District Democratic candidate Peter deFur, criticizing the decision.

   Kelo was also widely denounced in Congress, with Republicans bemoaning the erosion of private property rights, and Democrats concerned about the impact on poor people.

   Some, however, see the uproar over Kelo as a public relations victory for right-wing conservatives who champion “private property rights” to dodge government regulation protecting the environment.

   “There is a very well-organized, right-wing movement to restrict the authority of local and state governments to manage growth and protect the environment,” says Richard Collins, an environmental activist who challenged Toscano for the Democratic nomination. “The conservatives would like nothing better than for the Supreme Court to review any challenge a developer will make.” The Kelo decision, says Collins, affirms that the Supreme Court “will not look over local governments’ shoulder” when elected officials decide that the public interest in environmental regulation trumps the development rights of a single landowner.

   Locally, the City seems to have wielded its eminent domain powers as a big stick to force reluctant landowners into negotiation. Most recently, the City nearly invoked eminent domain to acquire properties on High Street to make room for a new juvenile courthouse. The City eventually paid a total of $920,000 for two pieces of land owned by Preston Morris and Elizabeth Wheeler at 407 E. High St.; the City nearly took Frank Hardy to court to acquire 15 parking spaces at 417 Park St., but eventually reached a settlement.

   Landowners have a weapon of their own, however—noise. In the VFW case, City Council backed off its eminent domain threats when Ryan and other veterans complained. The City eventually paid the VFW $230 for an easement—not ownership—of about 10,000 square feet.—John Borgmeyer

Into the void
Who’s Virginia’s newest political star? It’s Not Larry Sabato…

Political junkies all over the country know Larry Sabato. For reporters at major newspapers from The Los Angeles Times to The Washington Post, the mustachioed director of UVA’s Center for Politics is the go-to guy for political analysis.

   Sabato is particularly famous for offering a horserace-style analysis of politics couched in quotes like the one he recently gave to the Denver Post. In a July 7 article about the upcoming battle between Republicans and Democrats over the Supreme Court nominee, Sabato said: “It’s hard to imagine that this one won’t be nasty.” No shit.

   The combination of Sabato’s ubiquity and occasional innoc-uousness has prompted a back-lash from a quartet of smartasses in the blog-osphere. Two Democrats and two Repub-licans writing under the name “Not Larry Sabato” have created a blog (http://virginia 2005.blogspot.com) to analyze Virginia politics from a non-Sabato point of view.

   “It was kind of a joke about how everywhere you go, you see him quoted,” says one of the bloggers, who names himself only as Not Larry Sabato. “We thought that if our blog became big enough, newspapers would quote us as a counter to him. Like, ‘Larry Sabato said this, but Not Larry Sabato said this.’”

   Besides the fact that they are not Larry Sabato, one thing that’s clear about the bloggers is that they are plugged into both the Virginia Democratic and Republican parties. That’s the reason the bloggers refuse to announce their identities.

   “There’s no point in doing this if you’re not anonymous,” says Not Sabato. “We’re putting out information we get in secret meetings…if people knew who we were, we wouldn’t get invited.”

   Not Larry Sabato says he and his fellow not-Sabatos started the blog to shed some light on how political campaigns actually work behind the theater of press releases and photo ops.

   “Most incumbents in this state are out of control,” he says. “They don’t care about the impact of anything they do. There’s extraordinary arrogance on both sides. They want to do their stuff in the dark, and they don’t like people discussing anything about them.”

   The bigwigs have apparently been reading the Not Larrys. On a recent post, one Not Larry says that when the blog mocked a photo of Democrat Brian Moran posted on the delegate’s official website, the picture was replaced within two days. When the blog chastised Republican Jim Hyland for negative attacks, the candidate’s message turned much more positive. “We’re getting reports back from the meetings… we hear they’re all complaining about the blog,” Not Sabato says.

   One person who isn’t complaining is Larry Sabato. “I thought it was hilarious,” says Sabato, who recently posted a comment on the blog saying so. “I don’t think they meant it as a dig. I’m at the age where in order to survive, I frequently interpret insults as backhanded compliments.”—John Borgmeyer

Written by John Borgmeyer from staff reports and news sources.