Author: will-goldsmith

Just how long has Debbie Ryan coached UVA women’s basketball team? Thirty-four years. When Ryan started fresh out of Ursinus College as an assistant coach for UVA in 1975, the program was two years old—UVA had only started admitting first-year women in 1970. When Ryan became head coach in 1977, the ACC regular season involved only six games. The NCAA didn’t even organize a women’s basketball tournament until 1982.
She’s worked for five athletic directors and three university presidents and, as she said at her farewell press conference, she’s “had to train every single one of them.”

“It’s been the best years of my life,” said Ryan.

The Cavaliers failed to make the NCAA tournament this season, but received a Women’s National Invitational Tournament bid after Ryan announced her resignation. That gave her the chance to coach at least one more game for the home crowd on March 17, a 69-56 win against Morgan State. On Sunday, UVA travels to play Loyola Maryland.

When coaches step down, particularly those with long careers at one place, the usual banter is about wins and losses, and without question Ryan accumulated remarkable numbers—736 wins out of 1,059 games, 11 ACC regular season titles, 24 NCAA tournament berths, three Final Four appearances. She was named national coach of the year in 1991, when the Cavaliers came up three points short in overtime against Tennessee for the national title. In 2008, Ryan was inducted into the women’s basketball Hall of Fame.

The numbers have become somewhat less remarkable over the last decade, as other programs have caught up with UVA. The Cavaliers haven’t won an ACC regular season title since 2000, and failed to make the NCAA tournament four of the last eight years. Ryan wouldn’t discuss the details of her resignation, whether she was pushed out or stepped down completely of her own accord.

Since announcing her departure, Ryan has received “an avalanche” of correspondence and phone calls from her colleagues and former players, many of them now coaches themselves.

“As I have grown older and now become a coach myself, I have an even deeper appreciation for Debbie,” said former player Dawn Staley, a member of the banner teams of the early ’90s and currently the head coach at the University of South Carolina, in a statement. (Staley leads the gossip list of potential Ryan replacements.) “She is one of the most honest, dependable and trustworthy people I know.”

Yet much of the praise of Ryan comes not because of basketball but for her work for cancer patients since surviving pancreatic cancer.

“This university saved my life 10 years ago, and so I have nothing but great things to say about being a small part of such a big thing,” said Ryan.

UVA President Theresa Sullivan commented in a press release, “She was instrumental in the planning of the recently opened Emily Couric Cancer Treatment Center. This is a facility that was built from the patient’s point of view—largely because of the persuasive vision of both Debbie and the late Emily Couric.” Couric died of pancreatic cancer in 2001.

Ryan said her future might involve the cancer center, but she acknowledged that she can’t leave sports completely behind. “I don’t know if I could ever be invited to be an administrator, but I think I’d be a really good one.”

Regardless of her future or her successor, she insisted that she won’t hover over the program.

“I’m not going to be that kind of person,” she said. “If I come into a game, it will be very discreetly.”

 

Now it’s our turn. We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit and reform our government. That’s how our people will prosper. That’s how we’ll win the future. —President Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 25

 

That Obama and his speeches—he always makes it sound so easy. A little innovating, educating, and infrastructure building, and we’ll win the future. Simple as that.

Or not. What does it actually mean for greater Charlottesville to win the economic future? What kind of prosperity are we heading toward, and how good is our map? How do we keep from getting lost in an economic thicket the size of Detroit?

Many of the answers unfortunately lie with national leaders, who are doing such a hot job that we’re on the brink of a government shutdown. So what can we control locally?

We’re probably not the next Detroit, but there’s still plenty for us to fret over. Within the local context, the debate involves anxieties about sprawl and the value of blue-collar work.

With 20,000 employees, UVA is the region’s work engine. On March 2, 446 positions were open at the University.

Charlottesville’s great fortune is undeniably the University of Virginia, which means that our major sectors—education, health care, and, increasingly, defense intelligence—aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

All appear to be, if not booming, at least growing steadily. The University plans to expand by 1,500 students over the next five years, provided it’s aided by the state as promised. The current student-to-employee ratio is about 1 to 1, which, if perpetuated, would mean new jobs for professors, administrators and other support staff.

In health care, the aging baby boomers almost certainly mean nurses and doctors will continue to be in high demand, too—the state’s 65-plus population is projected to increase from 13 percent today to 16 percent by 2020. The way health care reform plays out will likely dictate how the industry changes, but the field is certainly not in danger of going away.

And barring an outbreak of world peace, Charlottesville’s burgeoning defense intelligence sector should flourish over the next decade. About 350 of the new Defense Intelligence Agency employees are already here, with 650 more coming by September. A steady “contractor tail” of related private businesses like Booz Allen Hamilton will likely grow ever bushier.

Those three sectors will continue to be our bread and butter, and for the most part, that means lots of high-paying jobs. Yet many in the workforce of greater Charlottesville—meaning the city and the counties of Albemarle, Nelson, Fluvanna and Greene—don’t have access to the good jobs in those fields.

Jobs get the usual lip service around here, but government action on the subject often smashes into the standard local divider, growth and its ugly step-cousin, sprawl. More jobs often means more people, particularly in a place like greater Charlottesville, where the unemployment rate is typically low—currently around 5.2 percent—when compared to the rest of Virginia and the U.S.

Drive time: Michael Harvey, president of the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development, wants to figure out why 11,000 commuters a day are leaving this area for Richmond, Culpeper/D.C., and the Shenandoah Valley.

That’s what makes Michael Harvey so special. Since arriving in Charlotteville four years ago, Harvey, president of the Thomas Jefferson Partnership for Economic Development (TJPED), has cut across the growth issue by focusing on those who live here now—trying to figure out the skills of current residents compared to the jobs available in greater Charlottesville. He’s trying to ascertain why 11,000 commuters a day are leaving the area for Richmond, Culpeper/D.C., and the Shenandoah Valley.

Increasingly, he’s focused on those left out of our steady sectors. He’s most troubled by the area’s shrinking proportion of blue-collar skill jobs.

“A lot of people see me as a tool of developers, housing,” says Harvey. “We have nothing to do with it. I’m focused on that [skilled trades] wedge, that’s my biggest focus.”

We’re not necessarily losing our middle class, says Harvey, but what the middle class does for a living has shifted. Since 1990, middle class white-collar jobs (think office staff and salesmen) have gone from 34 percent of the workforce to 41 percent. The opposite has happened to blue-collar skilled trades, which have dropped from 27 percent of the local workforce in 1990 to 16 percent today. In many instances, the skilled trades actually pay more than white-collar jobs, and fewer of them require a college degree.

Many of those jobs were in manufacturing, where jobs disappeared across the country. But Harvey points out that it’s because we’ve gotten more efficient—the U.S. is still the largest manufacturer in the world, producing 20 percent of the globe’s manufactured goods, down only 1 percent from 1990.

“There are other sectors in that, like construction, like trade, transportation and warehousing that have grown with the global economy,” says Harvey, “but they haven’t grown here, and that’s something that is concerning to me. Are we doing something to put a cap on it? Are we doing something to discourage that?”

Training days: PVCC has played a big role in developing the kind of workforce the region needs. Classes include things like Foodservice Sanitation, Vineyard Management, Home Weatherization Skills and Quickbooks.

Often, politicians and business advocates talk about jobs as if they were completely interchangeable. One-hundred new jobs at DIA—rah rah! Fifty new jobs at State Farm —rah rah! Thirty new jobs at Wal-Mart—rah rah! But the people who can be hired for those jobs are rarely interchangeable. A defense job requires a security clearance, no small chore to obtain. A State Farm job usually comes with its own training, and is usually open to a wider range of potential employees. And the Wal-mart job probably requires few skills but also doesn’t provide much pay or opportunity to advance.

“What you have is an economy that’s running away from a lesser educated population,” says Harvey. The threat is a perpetual underclass, a place where the rich play and prosper while the working class hovers near financial disaster. A new Weldon Cooper Center report shows that while only 10 percent of Central Virginia families technically live in poverty, 25 percent are “income inadequate,” meaning they don’t make $39,500, the amount the Center calculates a four person household needs to be self-sufficient in our area.

In order to remain in the middle class, those without credentials for professional or white collar service work have to chose: drive to somewhere else, get more education, or fall into a lower-paying job.

Race (still) matters: With education a key factor in landing a middle-class job, blacks and whites are off to an uneven start, when high school graduation rates are compared.

“When Hyosung Tire plant closes, and you’ve got a guy who’s been working on a shop floor for 30 years, what are the chances of him becoming a radiologist?” says Harvey. “He’s probably going to be looking at driving elsewhere first. Then he’ll look at re-training. But some of them may end up in lower-wage occupations.”

Beyond our bread and butter sectors, what’s grown locally over the past 15 years have been government jobs and hospitality. While private sector jobs have increased 21 percent since 1995, public sector jobs have grown 35 percent. That includes UVA and NGIC, state and federal employers, but local government has grown more, by 37 percent over that period.

“There’s a blessing and a curse to that,” says Harvey. “There’s the tax issue that comes along with that when you’ve got a public sector employer that is growing. Is this really going to pay for itself?”

As for hospitality, Harvey also wonders if it’s sustainable. “We’re all for tourists coming here, spending their money, and going home, but it does drive job growth at the low end, and we have to ask the question, does it really pay for itself if you’re basically maintaining a permanent underclass?” The percentage of those in the lowest rung, blue-collar service, has remained roughly constant over the past 15 years, hovering at 30 percent.

Harvey points out that, as of 2007, 95 percent of those using government-funded social services were employed.

“It should be my job to give those people an opportunity to get up and out, and if I’m contributing to that issue, maybe I need to re-think my economic policy.” 

Class (still) matters: In our region, 70 percent of students who are “economically disadvantaged” graduated on time, compared to 92 percent for those who aren’t.

There’s very little that Harvey—an employee of a nonprofit partnership—can do by himself. What he can do is gather data on the problem—along with potential solutions—and present them to local government.

When it comes to the skilled trades in particular, there are broadly two ways of tackling what has to happen—improve education options and grow blue-collar skilled trade jobs.

Generally, Harvey thinks we handle the education side here almost as well as anyone. In terms of K-12, “You’ve got two superintendents here who are really on the ball,” says Harvey. Piedmont Virginia Community College has proved adroit at creating specialty classes when businesses need them, and it has done particularly well at filling an education role for the wine industry and, increasingly, the defense sector.

Still, it’s not always easy to get kids into classes that will prepare them for the jobs that actually exist. Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center (CATEC) provides vocational training for both the city and county public schools to about 370 students. While CATEC has started offering classes in green building and geospatial technology, which suits the defense sector, demand isn’t as strong as it is for culinary arts and automotive classes, where job placement is more difficult.

Moreover, high school vocational tracking is a delicate matter, historically seen as siphoning poor or minority kids off the college track. Since more and more jobs will require college skills, a strong current of thought suggests educators should focus strictly on college prep rather than blue-collar skills.

From the ground up: Mayor Dave Norris supports the idea of a city-built business park—a kind of malleable space that burgeoning businesses can lease while starting up.

Still, race and class remain broad signifiers about who’s on the college track: Among Charlottesville High students taking the SAT in 2010, only 22 percent were African American even though blacks comprise 44 percent of the student body. In Albemarle County schools, 33 percent of white students take an AP class, yet that’s the case for only 9 percent of black and 8 percent of students classified as economically disadvantaged.“I just don’t think that’s realistic,” says Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, who strongly agrees with Harvey’s focus. “Maybe in some highly educated, affluent parts of our country, you can set an expectation that 90 percent-plus of your young people are going to go to college. I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation for Charlottesville, for our region. And I’m O.K. with that.”

Even high school graduation remains skewed along similar lines. Though graduation rates have improved at Charlottesville High, disparities are still telling: 88 percent of white students graduated on time in 2010, but only 75 percent of black students. Seventy percent of students who are “economically disadvantaged” graduated on time versus 92 percent for those who aren’t.

Those numbers are borne out by statistics on education level and unemployment. In the City of Charlottesville, 53 percent of whites 25-years old and up had a post-secondary degree; for blacks, that number was 12 percent. Thirty-five percent of blacks had no high school diploma, which was true for only 15 percent of whites. From 1997 to 2006, blacks averaged about 22 percent of the city population but 53 percent of its unemployed, according to numbers Harvey provided.

“We used to have a stronger black middle class,” says Norris. “It’s not nearly as robust today. Part of this has to be growing, attracting and maintaining people of color in our workplace.”

And for Norris, that also ties into increasing the options in the skilled trades workforce. On that front, Norris readily admits that the city hasn’t always taken an active role in providing skilled trades jobs.

“I think the skilled trade, the manufacturing, has to be front and center,” says Norris. “We’ve got more work to do to convince the powers that be to make that a higher priority.”

Friend me: Not everyone shares the same definition of a “business-friendly” environment. "People want to come to a place because it looks good, it’s healthy, it has good schools,” says County Supervisor Dennis Rooker.

Norris, who is presumably part of the powers that be, says one option is for the city to build a business park—buy land and provide a malleable space that burgeoning businesses can lease while starting up.

It’s an idea borrowed from Harvey, who saw it succeed in Knoxville, where he worked before moving to Charlottesville. While in Knoxville, the focus was on high tech jobs, a Charlottesville business park could help create “flex space,” for small industrial employers.

“People don’t really fit into a neat box any more,” Harvey says. “There are certain spots around town that make me wonder, why aren’t they doing that?”

As an example, he points to the re-use of the Comdial building on 29 North. The former telecommunications office has been chopped up into several suites for smaller outfits like Vamac, a plumbing supply company, and TransDigital, a digital document service.

A Charlottesville business park is among the more grandiose ideas. Overall, Harvey thinks the task of increasing jobs opportunities for those without college degrees involves a lot of small stuff.

“There are no real outstanding, brilliant ideas,” Harvey says. “It’s a lot more about blocking and tackling to accommodate the kind of economic development that you want.”

Part of the problem will be maintaining solidarity across the local government line. The struggle to maintain a tax base can lead to regional infighting, as has long been demonstrated by the conflicts between Charlottesville and Albemarle.

Since the 1960s, the city has lost asset after asset to the county, as employers and retailers moved operations to the fresh dirt outside city limits, newly accessible thanks to the proliferation of the automobile. State Farm’s operation center started on Emmet Street in 1950 before moving to the county in 1972, a trend followed more recently by major employers like the National Ground Intelligence Center and, this year, Martha Jefferson Hospital. The Downtown Mall owes its existence to Charlottesville’s desperation to remain relevant after Main Street’s businesses fled to 29 North. The Omni arose thanks to government money for so-called urban renewal and as the city competed with the county’s DoubleTree for hotel and conference space.

Making ends meet: Between 2007 and 2010, the number of Food Stamp cases per month increased by 179 percent.

Competitive spirits flared recently, over the city’s use of tax incentives to lure WorldStrides, a student-travel company, to the city. WorldStrides will anchor the Waterhouse building that’s going up on Water Street, just off the Mall, thanks to an incremental tax plan that allows the developer, Bill Atwood, to reap 50 percent of any increase in area taxes after Waterhouse is built.

That’s fueled contention between city and county officials, already hot over infrastructure issues and revenue sharing. Supervisors Ken Boyd and Dennis Rooker both questioned the move, arguing that stealing employers back and forth across locality lines doesn’t help grow the economic pie.

Norris brushes it aside. “It’s a tiny amount of money in the grand scheme of things,” he says. “Really I see that as leveling the playing field. It’s more expensive to build new development in a built up urban area than it is out in the suburbs.”

“I don’t think I was so much upset about that as much as wondering if that’s the right use of tax dollars,” says Boyd. “I think there’s plenty of room for growth in both the city and the county.”

Still, the WorldStrides issue represents a larger one: should local government offer incentives at all to encourage businesses to relocate or start-up in greater Charlottesville?

“In upstate New York, you have to stuff money in people’s pockets,” says Timothy Hulbert, president of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. “We don’t really need to do that here. The best economic development program is a program of low taxes and reasonable regulation.”

We like it like that: At 1,500 jobs, State Farm is one of Charlottesville’s largest private employers. Some don’t have college degrees and many move up. In addition to its own training, the company offers higher-ed tuition credits. As the head of the Chamber of Commerce says, “we need another State Farm.”

For Hulbert, reasonable regulation and welcoming go hand in hand—a willingness to work with businesses that want, say, a building 20 feet taller than zoning allows. To that extent, Albemarle County Supervisors have approved an “economic vitality action plan” that encourages, among other things, streamlining of development review and zoning issues.

Boyd helped lead the charge, and he overall favors a “get government out of the way” approach to job creation similar to Hulbert’s vision. “I’ve not said that I want to lower the bar on regulation. What I want to say is, let’s figure out a way to expedite it,” says Boyd. “Why does it take a year to two years to get site plan approval?”

What will come of the economic action plan remains to be seen. “One person’s streamlining is another person’s elimination of protections for the public,” Rooker says.

But much of it does focus on increasing opportunities for residents currently without “good jobs,” and it’s a testament to Harvey that he’s gotten both the county’s Boyd, a conservative Republican, and the city’s Norris, a liberal Democrat, to agree on the need to focus on blue-collar skilled trades. The county voted to contribute to a $25,000 consultant study that Harvey is commissioning to figure out the most appropriate target industries for job growth.

Still, Rooker (an independent) is not completely sold on the idea that the region should focus on adding skilled trades jobs more than, say, high tech jobs. Nor does he completely share Hulbert’s vision of a business-friendly environment.

“People want to come to a place because it looks good, it’s healthy, it has good schools,” says Rooker. “Sometimes this focus on a government going out and trying to sell somebody on coming to the area is not necessarily a better investment than focusing on providing infrastructure and the regulatory framework that helps make a community a good place to live, and I think that helps attract business.”

Infrastructure was part of the triad that Obama preached in the State of the Union, and compared to most communities, greater Charlottesville has put a lot of thought into roads and water supply.

The problem is action. On top of years of declining state funding, local consensus is elusive, as the issues—over the Meadowcreek Parkway, over the water supply—usually stem from the debate over growth and sprawl.

“I’m not particularly interested in infrastructure that’s going to facilitate suburban sprawl,” says Norris. “I think that’s where the divide has been, is, and will be.”

While well below the national average, Charlottesville’s unemployment rate of 5.2 percent packs some hidden stats. For instance, the chance that an unemployed person here is black is 1 in 2.

City Council and the county Board of Supervisors recently came to grudging agreement over the height of a new dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir, the first step in expanding the water supply to meet current and future needs. But when it comes to consensus over water supply and roads, the norm is instability—the prime exhibit being the 40-years-in-the-making Meadowcreek Parkway, simultaneously under construction and facing a lawsuit.

Harvey thinks that, over the years, the growth wars have unintentionally squeezed out skilled trades jobs.

“It’s like physics, there’s a reaction to a reaction,” he says. “And if you take some of the steps that you’ve taken here over the past 25 years, people with less education are going to be effected by it. And to ignore that is something that we ignore at our own peril.”

The problem with predicting the future is that it is, well, the future.

There are many things we just don’t know. Hulbert likes to recite a stat he heard from a consultant.

“He said in 2009 that 50 percent of the new 2014 jobs in the economy haven’t been invented yet,” says Hulbert. “We’ve got an Academy Award-nominated film about Facebook—five years ago, what’s a Facebook?”

Job readiness 101 Here’s how to ensure that you hold one of the jobs of the future Edjumicate yerself There will remain plenty of service jobs—in retail, in hospitality—that don’t require college degrees. But few of them will offer a chance at the middle class. As you fight for those few slots allowing upward mobility, you’ll increasingly find yourself competing against people with advanced skills or college degrees. Fortunately, Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) has increased its adult and night class offerings, and for those pursuing a bachelor’s, it has a guaranteed transfer program into Virginia’s state schools, including UVA. PVCC offers free advising on a career path, regardless of whether you’ve got your own education roadmap and just need to know how to pay for it, or if you have no clue what other jobs are out there. The admissions and advising center takes walk-ins and stays open until 6pm most of the week and until 7pm on Mondays. For an appointment, call 961-6551. If you’ve been recently laid off, you’re likely eligible for special opportunities—visit the Virginia Workforce Center at 2211 Hydraulic Road. For more information, call them: 977-2662. Remember too that education doesn’t just mean college degrees. As Richmond motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford pointed out in his 2009 book Shop Class as Soulcraft, blue-collar repair work can in fact involve more critical thinking than an office job. To stay ahead of the machines, we at least need to know how to fix them. Hop on the defense gravy train India call centers have shown that many white-collar jobs aren’t secure, with information technology widening the global worker pool. Thankfully Charlottesville’s major sectors—education and health care—are still hard to offshore. That’s especially true of defense intelligence, possibly our biggest growth industry. Almost a thousand jobs for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were relocated to NGIC’s site in northern Albemarle, and a surprising number of those DIA jobs are opening up—so far, only 60 percent of employees have relocated from the D.C. area, leaving 40 percent for locals and others. In addition, several defense contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton have expanded their local operations. So how to get a DIA job? First, you have to be a U.S. citizen. A military background helps a lot, but isn’t strictly necessary—a majority of them are civilian. DIA jobs are posted online, but also keep an eye out for job fairs. If you apply for a DIA job, however, and don’t already have a security clearance, be prepared to wait. Any hire is provisional on a security clearance, and that could take up to a year to complete. Remember too that with job security might come location instability—being a civilian doesn’t rule out overseas deployment. Finally, about 40 percent of the DIA jobs in Charlottesville don’t require a bachelor’s, according to a DIA spokesman. Among those that do, engineering and science degrees are in highest demand, followed by international affairs and political science. Create your own damn job If you’ve got the entrepreneurial itch, call Nora Gillespie, who directs the Central Virginia Small Business Development Center, at 295-8198. She’ll talk to you, privately and frankly, about your business plan, and help you understand the hoops you’ll have to jump through, possible financing routes, and site options. Once a month, she runs a two-hour seminar on starting a business. She can also help point you in the direction of various networking groups that can help you find investors and mentors. If you’re a University researcher with business dreams, remember that UVA recently hired a new vice president, Mark Crowell, specifically to encourage innovation and commercialization. Give him a call at 243-2203.—W.G.

Among anxieties about tomorrow is whether we’ve got the right anxieties. In worrying over improving the lot for those without college degrees, are we like a homeowner shoring up his locks against petty theft when a hurricane is about to strike?

Last month, I grew uneasy watching Watson whip “Jeopardy” geniuses Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. In the aftermath, philosophers and computer scientists reassured us that Watson still can’t think, that it’s just a bulky computer rigged to parse riddles using statistical probability. They pointed out Watson’s incapacity to understand a category when answering Toronto for a final “Jeopardy” question about “U.S. Cities,” a mistake no human would make.

I was not reassured. The hardware required several rooms and cost $3 million. Nevertheless, if an IBM team can build such a machine, it seems only a matter of time before processing efficiency increases, technology costs decrease and Watsons appear in virtually every information field, replacing many of the white collar workers whose jobs haven’t been shipped overseas. I started imagining Call Center Watson, Lawyer Watson—just after the show, IBM crowed that it’s already developing Doctor Watson, or at least Medical Textbook Watson. How long until Journalist Watson, who will compose in eight milliseconds a thoroughly researched 3,000-word article after only a few keywords entered by clumsy human hands. Might the newspapers of the future involve just one person, who simply points Journalist Watson in the right direction and looks over his shoulder to double check whether Toronto’s a U.S. city?

The day after Watson’s triumph, I visited State Farm’s operation center on Pantops. State Farm is one of Charlottesville’s largest private employers, with about 1,500 jobs that mostly fall into the “good jobs” category, jobs that pay a living wage and have seemed unlikely to go away. There’s room at State Farm for people without college degrees, and there’s room for many to move up. In addition to its own training, the company offers tuition credits for those pursuing higher-ed. It’s an employer almost no one can argue with—Hulbert told me that “we need another State Farm.”

But might not those State Farm jobs, and their proffered pathway to the middle class, disappear just as similar blue-collar jobs did?

I toured State Farm, with its maze of cubicles and echoes of human conversation, guided by a young P.R. rep, Amy Preddy, who felt fortunate to land her job a few years ago after graduating from James Madison University. She proudly mentioned that Charlottesville is home to the company’s longest-tenured employee, Earl Wood, who works as an underwriter after 51 years on the job.

About 60 percent of its employees work in claims, handling the calls of those unfortunate customers who need assistance. Claims employees have to quickly advise people in distress about procedures that vary state to state. It can be a lot to keep up with. A Claims Watson might need some extra programming in order to handle distressed customers, but on the knowledge side, it could master the complexities of state-by-state regulations in a few nanoseconds.

Is it possible, I asked Preddy, that the bulk of State Farm jobs might eventually lose ground to a computer?

“I don’t think that’s anything we’ll see in my lifetime,” laughed Preddy. “I don’t think a robot can replace a person. That personal connection and that personal touch are very important to our customers.”

And with that, she told me about some of the technical advances over the years. Mail, once hand-delivered by people pushing mail carts through the 367,000 square foot building, now gets handled on an endless loop. Who does the work? Two robots, Oliver and Milton. 

The legacy of Biscuit Run continues to reverberate in this session of the General Assembly, where two bills head towards passage, each tackling the implications of the state’s hasty acquisition of the 1,200-acre former development for a future state park.

After the Virginia Department of Transportation appraised the 1,200-acre Biscuit Run tract at $12 million, former investors Forest Lodge LLC submitted a competing appraisal that valued the property at $87.7 million. Forest Lodge is appealing its $11.7 million in land preservation tax credits.

Outraged by the deal, State Senator Creigh Deeds has championed reform of the land preservation tax credit program. Initially, Deeds says he was fine with the state’s decision to buy the Biscuit Run property for $9.8 million. But when he got wind that the investment group, Forest Lodge LLC, submitted an appraisal claiming the property was worth $87.7 million, “it was just something that infuriated me.”

Had the state tax department honored that appraisal, the private investors would have received $31.2 million in land preservation tax credits, on top of the $9.8 million in cash, for a property the Virginia Department of Transportation had appraised at a scant $12 million. Forest Lodge LLC would have received $41 million total for a property bought at the height of the real estate market in 2006 for $46 million.

“It called into question the entire credibility of the program,” says Deeds. It’s a program Deeds feels responsible for: As a state delegate, he carried the legislation that created the land preservation tax credit program in 1999 and he calls it “one of the most important things I’ve ever done.”

After review, the tax department reduced Biscuit Run’s fair market value to $39 million and issued Forest Lodge LLC $11.7 million in tax credits. The investors have appealed that ruling, but assuming the tax department’s decision stands, Deeds says he thinks the appropriate result was ultimately reached.

Still, to help restore credibility to the program, Deeds introduced Senate Bill 1232, which creates a process for the tax department to conduct additional appraisals if warranted. After the usual tinkering, the bill passed the Senate. Last week, a similar version passed the House, meaning it will likely become law.

“We think that’s a good thing,” says Rex Linville, who handles local land conservation for the nonprofit Piedmont Environmental Council. In his view, the changes won’t encumber the process for most people making land donations. “It’s a kind of low-cost way of trying to put more accountability in the program.”

Deeds initially toyed with forcing public disclosure of land preservation tax credits, but reconsidered.

“If you’re going to disclose one tax credit, shouldn’t you disclose them all?” he says. “It was too much to think about.”

A bill introduced by Delegate Watkins Abbitt, whose district includes southern Albemarle, tackles a different Biscuit Run issue—the state park’s “donut hole,” a 36-acre tract in the middle owned by Elizabeth Breeden and several LLCs she manages. House Bill 2167 allows the state to exchange that tract for other land, either in the state park or nearby. It has passed both House and Senate.

The swapped land will be of the same value, but not necessarily 36 acres. Breeden’s land has numerous development rights, but if she takes other Biscuit Run land, she won’t have any unless she goes through a judicial proceeding. The state could also buy land “in proximity” to trade with her.

In his first year in office, Ken Cuccinelli demonstrated a knack for busting the traditional bounds of an attorney general. Health care? Carbon emissions? Abortion clinics? Gay rights? Cuccinelli craftily found ways to insert himself into each issue with his own lawsuits, rulings, and interpretations.

Even Mann’s critics have said that Cuccinelli should call off the dogs. "No matter what has prompted your investigation, there is no doubt that it will be interpreted as a witch hunt," said one.

Down in Richmond, some Democratic lawmakers are trying a new strategy to wall off Cuccinelli’s reach: Cut away his powers.

State senators Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax) and Donald McEachin (D-Richmond) have introduced separate legislation that would limit the Attorney General’s ability to issue civil investigative demands (CIDs), a form of civil subpoena that Cuccinelli has used to pursue former UVA climate scientist Michael Mann.

“The attorney general had abused and is continuing to abuse his current subpoena powers under Virginia law, and I felt that we had to put some type of reins on it,” says Petersen. The bill, SB 1314, would strip the attorney general of his power to issue CIDs entirely, but Petersen’s, SB 831, would restrict the attorney general only from issuing a CID to a university when the case involves “a matter of academic inquiry or research.”

“I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” says Petersen. “To me, civil investigative demands are a useful tool to ferret out fraud. But to me, where you have a matter that is the subject of legitimate academic inquiry or research, there’s no business for the AG to investigate and say this position is fraudulent and this position is not fraudulent.”

So far, the bill has survived the Senate, where Democrats are a majority. Its House shepherd will likely be its co-patron, Charlottesville’s Democratic delegate, David Toscano.

Toscano’s not optimistic that it will pass the Republican-controlled House, “but if you think about the interference with personal liberty brought by the state, perhaps some of my conservative colleagues will think carefully about that and decide that it would be a good thing to rein this in a little bit.”

In his pursuit of Mann, Cuccinelli has invoked his powers under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA), and in doing so, has overstepped the usual role of the attorney general in such cases.

Virginia’s fraud act, which became law in 2003, was modeled on the federal fraud act. Usually used against Medicaid fraud, FATA’s purpose is to recoup fraudulently obtained government money. To that end, it encourages whistleblowers: If a private person with knowledge of taxpayer fraud files a claim, the whistleblower can receive up to 30 percent of the damages, plus expenses. The rest goes to the government.

In order to test whether the whistleblower’s claims are valid, FATA gives Cuccinelli the power to issue civil investigative demands, which are basically subpoenas. At that stage, the plaintiff’s claims are sealed and the AG is supposed to act as a sort of referee, to keep plaintiffs from bringing frivolous suits. After investigating, the AG can do one of three things: take the case, let the plaintiff bring the case without the state’s help, or throw it out.

Charlottesville Delegate David Toscano is a co-sponsor of one of two bills aimed at limiting Cuccinelli’s CID power: “If you had a liberal attorney general going after someone who did research into family values, it would be inappropriate as well,” he says.

“The CID provision exists basically so that the attorney general can decide whether to get involved in a case,” says Zachary Kitts, a Northern Virginia lawyer who specializes in fraud act claims.

In April, Cuccinelli opened an investigation into whether Michael Mann, who left UVA for Penn State in 2005, violated FATA by fraudulently receiving money from five grants totaling $485,000. Cuccinelli issued a CID to UVA seeking e-mails Mann sent to and received from 39 scientists and all of his assistants; all documents generated by the grants; and Mann’s computer algorithms, programs and source code.

Contrary to the typical fraud act claim, no whistleblower has filed suit alleging that Michael Mann committed fraud. Cuccinelli, an avowed global warming skeptic, initiated his investigation of Michael Mann based on criticism of Mann’s science and the allegations surrounding the Climate-gate controversy, which the AG laid out in court documents.

“It’s never been used for this purpose,” says Toscano. “That’s a terrible precedent, independent of your political perspective. If you had a liberal attorney general going after someone who did research into family values, it would be inappropriate as well.”

After at first negotiating with the attorney general’s office, UVA opted to fight the CID and hired outside counsel. In late August, Albemarle Circuit Court Judge Paul Peatross ruled in the University’s favor, tossing the CID on the grounds that the AG failed to properly state Mann’s alleged fraud. Peatross also ruled that, as four of the five grants involved federal rather than state funds, Cuccinelli could only investigate one of the listed grants, and only if payments were issued after January 1, 2003, when FATA went into effect. That grant was issued in 2001.

Undeterred, Cuccinelli issued a revised CID in September for the same information related to the one grant, valued at $215,000. Once again, UVA opted for a fight; the case is still in circuit court.

Cuccinelli also appealed Peatross’ ruling to the state Supreme Court, which must first decide whether it wants to take the case. In January, UVA filed its opposition brief, and the case should soon have a scheduled hearing.

Kitts, who makes money bringing fraud act lawsuits, applauds Cuccinelli’s expanded use of CIDs. He opposes the Democrats’ legislative changes, and he disagreed with Peatross’ ruling. “Michael Mann and UVA were able to successfully turn this into some kind of political issue, but to me, on the black letter of the law, this is a very noncontroversial use of the CID provision.”

Still, there is no Virginia Supreme Court case law regarding CIDs issued under the state’s fraud act according to Kitts, who hopes it takes the case: “These standards need to be qualified.”

Cuccinelli’s court documents show a predisposition to believe only what Michael Mann’s detractors say, rather than anything that supports the conclusions of the climate scientist.

Regardless of the Supreme Court’s decision, Democrats in the state legislature hope their efforts will qualify Cuccinelli’s powers. Cheering them on is Brian Turner, a member of the American Association of University Professors—he spoke in favor of SB 831 at the subcommittee level.

“We think this nicely carves out a defense of academic inquiry,” says Turner, who, based on a close reading of Cuccinelli’s CID and court filings, sees the AG’s investigation as an attack on Mann because of his research.

Cuccinelli claims that he is merely investigating whether Mann committed fraud. “Our office is investigating whether a false claim was presented to the University to secure payment under government-funded grants—nothing more, nothing less,” he argued in an August press release.

But his court documents show a predisposition to believe only what Mann’s detractors say, rather than anything that supports Mann’s conclusions.

In his re-issued CID, Cuccinelli explains that he is investigating Mann because two of Mann’s early papers “have come under significant criticism.” He called them papers that “Dr. Mann knew or should have known contained false information, unsubstantiated claims and/or were otherwise misleading.”

With “or”s, “should have known”s and “misled”s, the attorney general sets a low bar for potential fraud. In his updated CID, Cuccinelli argues, “To the extent that Dr. Mann did reference or rely on his past work in these papers (or others like them) to aid in the winning of the grant when he knew of [sic] should have known of the potential of the papers (or others like them) to mislead the grantor, such actions would subject him to potential FATA liability.”

In those two papers, published in 1998 and 1999 before he came to UVA, Mann and several colleagues developed the chart widely known as the hockey stick graph. Humans started regularly recording temperatures around 1850, but Mann’s research charted average Northern Hemisphere temperatures going back to 1,000 C.E. using proxy data such as tree rings and ice cores. The graph got its name because of its shape—the plotted temperatures waving within a narrow band until suddenly shooting up in the last 150 years, like a hockey stick as drawn by Picasso.

What was most unusual about the papers was the contention that average temperatures since 1981 were unprecedentedly warm.

“The climate contrarians, one of their favorite arguments at the time was that it was hotter several hundred years ago during the so-called Medieval Warming Period,” says Aaron Huertas, spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization that maintains a webpage cataloguing the cherry-picked nature of Cuccinelli’s science claims in his legal briefs. “So the hockey stick really upset them, because it took away one of their talking points.”

Zachary Kitts, an attorney who makes money bringing fraud act lawsuits, applauds Cuccinelli’s expanded use of CIDs: “Michael Mann and UVA were able to successfully turn this into some kind of political issue, but to me, on the black letter of the law, this is a very non-controversial use of the CID provision.”

Huertas adds, “It’s a meaningless talking point—even if it was hotter 400 years ago in some parts of the world, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re altering the climate now.”

Cuccinelli is correct that Mann’s work on the hockey stick graph came under significant criticism. Two separate papers published in 2003 took issue with aspects of the research and methodology, as Cuccinelli cites in his legal briefs. What he fails to cite, however, is the responses of Mann and other scientists generally supportive of Mann’s findings.

“I don’t think there’s any other climate research that has been as thoroughly debated, vetted, and re-vetted than that original hockey stick research,” says Huertas. “So if there’s anything wrong with it, we would have known by now from the scientists themselves. But the climate contrarians just don’t want to let go of it. They’ve built up this fable of Mike Mann.”

The fable of Mann was perpetuated during the heated parsing of Climate-gate, the tempest stemming from climate scientists’ e-mails that were hacked or leaked from a British university server. Mann was the second-most frequent author of the e-mails released, but he was exonerated after investigations by the British university and Penn State.

Even Mann’s critics have said that Cuccinelli should call off the dogs. “No matter what has prompted your investigation, there is no doubt that it will be interpreted as a witch hunt,” said Thomas Fuller, co-author of a book playing up the revelations of Climate-gate, in an open letter to Cuccinelli.

Steve McIntyre, co-author of major studies criticizing Mann’s work that were cited by Cuccinelli in his court briefs, has also called the attorney general to task. At a May conference to promote “global warming realism,” McIntyre, after detailing problems in the research on historic temperatures, disappointed the crowd with his comments on Mann.

“I strongly disagree with Cuccinelli’s recent investigation of potential financial abuse,” said McIntyre. “Regardless of what one may think of the quality of Mann’s work, he’s published diligently. In my opinion, Cuccinelli’s actions are an abuse of administrative prerogative that is on the one hand unfair to Mann and on the other hand provides an easy out for people to avoid dealing with real issues.”

Nevertheless, expect to see Cuccinelli issuing more CIDs in the future. Kitts says he’s worked on several FATA cases with Cuccinelli that will soon be unsealed.

“This is not an isolated incident,” says Kitts. “He’s been the first attorney general to step up and really prosecute. The ball is only starting to get rolling.”

“I don’t think there’s any other climate research that has been as thoroughly debated, vetted, and re-vetted than that original hockey stick research,” says the Union of Concerned Scientists spokesman of the climate-change graph that first appeared in Mann’s early research.

In an appendix to his novel depicting global warming as a hoax perpetuated by conspiring environmentalists, the late Michael Crichton posed a comparison: Is global warming the new eugenics? Both, he claimed, involved well-funded researchers at prestigious universities peddling measures with “little basis in fact or science.”

Most climate scientists, on the other hand, likely see a greater likeness between the blowback to their research and the blowback to research linking tobacco to cancer. Early researchers endured attacks and vilification before time and the scientific method eventually bore out their claims.

Is global warming like eugenics or more like tobacco-related cancer? Well-practiced science seems capable of sorting this out eventually. The objections of a skeptical former mining officer like McIntyre have pushed researchers like Mann to more complete disclosure of data. But Cuccinelli’s crusade to punish Mann for his research will get us no closer to that truth.