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.