Area legislators were hard at work during this year’s General Assembly session,
which concluded on Saturday. Supplied photos
Virginia’s General Assembly session ended its regularly scheduled 60-day run on Saturday. The work of the legislature is far from over, however—the divided assembly has not yet agreed on a state budget and has left a number of bills on the table. Once the budget is complete, a special session can be held later in the year to continue ironing out the remaining bills.
For the moment, let’s take a look at some notable bills the six state delegates and senators who represent Charlottesville and Albemarle have been able to pass so far.
Delegate Rob Bell (R) was the chief patron of a bill aimed at limiting the amount of information law enforcement has to turn over under the Freedom of Information Act. The bill passed with broad Republican support and a handful of Democrats, including both Deeds and Hudson, on board as well. The bill means criminal investigative files can’t be disclosed to requesters unless the requesters are family of the victim or an attorney petitioning for the accused party’s innocence. The bill had been opposed by the Virginia Press Association and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, but supported by the families of Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington.
Delegate Matt Fariss (R) put forward a bill to increase the penalty for stealing a catalytic converter from a Class 1 misdemeanor to a Class 6 felony, increasing the potential penalty to one to five years in prison. Fariss’ bill was tabled in the House, but the Rustburg delegate was a sponsor on a very similar bill from Bell that did make it through. The bill passed the Senate unanimously but was more controversial in the House, where it advanced 57-38.
Delegate Sally Hudson (D) was the chief patron of more than two dozen bills, but almost all were squashed in the Republican-controlled House, including bills to fund school renovation via local sales taxes and to allow localities to conduct local elections through ranked-choice voting. She was the chief co-patron of two unanimously passed bills that will make hospital pricing more transparent.
Like Hudson, Delegate Chris Runion (R) had some tough sledding in the divided legislature—his bills to tighten ballot access and weaken civilian police oversight bodies passed the Republican House but died in Democrat-controlled Senate committees. Runion was the chief patron of a unanimously approved bill requiring the state’s Department of General Services to prioritize purchasing recycled plastic when it acquires plastic for use by state agencies.
Senator Creigh Deeds (D) was the chief patron of a bill that bans health care providers from collecting debt from patients until after the Criminal Injuries Compensation Fund, a state program to help victims with medical expenses, has had a chance to decide if those patients are eligible for relief. The bill comes the year after UVA hospital received national negative attention for its aggressive bill collection practices. Deeds’ bill passed the Senate 24-15, with much of the Republican caucus opposing, but passed the House 91-7.
Senator Bryce Reeves (R) proposed multiple bills aimed at loosening gun laws. His initiative to allow concealed carry without a permit was killed in a Senate committee, but he did pass a bill declaring that retired law enforcement officers can purchase service weapons without undergoing a criminal background check. The bill passed the Senate unanimously and the House 61-37.
Carolyn Johnson is one of millions of Virginians burdened by costly energy bills. PC: Annabel Jones
By Caroline Challe
For Carolyn Johnson, a Charlottesville homeowner and care worker, the financial strain of the pandemic has been exacerbated by her high energy bill—almost $300 last month.
“Water bill and electric–them the highest thing I got. It’s really hard. I am struggling trying to get it done,” Johnson says. Though her household’s energy habits are typical, Johnson says, “by the time we pay up everything, we end up with maybe $200 left.”
Johnson is one of the three-quarters of Virginians who have an unaffordable energy bill according to federal standards, says Cassady Craighill of the climate advocacy organization Clean Virginia.
“We have a real crisis in Virginia where our energy bills are too high. They’re the sixth highest in the country,” Craighill says.
The prices are all the more galling given that Dominion, Virginia’s energy monopoly, has an enormous cash stockpile. Dominion has near-total control over swathes of the Virginia energy market. In exchange for that power, its profits are traditionally limited to a rate agreed upon with the state—in recent years, 10 percent. Profits above that threshold are supposed to be refunded to customers.
In the last three years, however, Dominion pocketed $500 million more than that rate of return, because a 2018 law allows it to keep excess profits as long as it invests the profits in clean energy projects.
Delegate Sally Hudson believes that over-earnings leave Virginia residents economically vulnerable.
“I’ve met lots of constituents struggling to make ends meet, and between sky-high rent and utilities, just affording safe shelter is a major struggle,” say Hudson, who represents Charlottesville and part of Albemarle County. “The burden of electric bills also hits hardest for the families that already struggle most, because they typically live in units without the more modern energy efficiency measures like improved windows, insulation, and thermostats.”
Despite the astronomical over-earnings, Dominion claims that its rates are low, and consumer error is the reason many are facing astronomically high prices.
“Hopefully, people you know, set their thermostat at the right temperature so that they’re not driving those bills up,” said Rayhan Daudani, Dominion’s manager of media relations.
Daudani says the company’s re-investment of the over-earnings winds up benefiting customers. “Instead of charging customers the costs of the projects, we would take the extra revenue and offset those costs, so that they get the benefit of the project without seeing any rate increase.”
I’ve met lots of constituents struggling to make ends meet, and between sky-high rent and utilities, just affording safe shelter is a major struggle.
Delegate Sally Hudson
Dominion opponents have concerns about those clean energy projects, however. One of Dominion Energy’s newest projects involves building wind turbines off the coast of Virginia Beach. The company says the project requires large over-earnings in order to produce this expensive form of clean energy.
“Dominion receives a 10 percent annual rate of return on anything that they’re building. So instead of cost-efficient renewable energy like rooftop solar that is distributed all over Virginia, they’re going to choose to build a much more expensive renewable energy project so that they can get that rate of return as high as possible,” says Craighill. “And that’s how a monopoly works.”
As the pandemic rages on and millions of citizens struggle, a bill was proposed that would have required the State Corporation Commission to return 100 percent of the amount of a utility’s earnings back to customers’ bills. On February 1, that bill was killed by the Virginia Senate Commerce and Labor committee. In an 11-3 vote, the bill was “passed by indefinitely,” effectively terminating its chances. Eight Democrats and three Republicans decided to tank the bill, while three other Democrats voted in favor of it.
When the bill failed, many advocacy groups like Clean Virginia cited Dominion’s hefty donations to state officials as the reason why. Dominion has long been the largest contributor of campaign funds to both political parties in the state, although recently some Democrats have sworn off its contributions.
“When you have a company like Dominion giving those same legislatures hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, that’s a huge conflict of interest since clearly, those legislators are going to have a hard time convincing their voters and constituents that they’re acting in the best interest of them when they’re routinely passing legislation that favors Dominion,” says Craighill.
Hudson, who works with many legislators who have accepted Dominion’s donations, believes the company uses its capital to maintain influence over the General Assembly.
“The state guarantees that Dominion will recover its costs for those projects anyway. The company doesn’t need to over-earn to make clean energy investments,” Hudson says. “Dominion writes its own rules, and some legislators just sign off. They don’t want you to understand why you’re not getting a fair deal. Fortunately, there are fewer and fewer of those legislators every year.”
What would you do with $300 million in drug money?
That’s the question now facing the Virginia General Assembly.
Both the Virginia House and Senate have passed bills promising to legalize marijuana for adult use by 2024. In the coming days, legislators from the two chambers will meet to reconcile the two bills before sending a final version to the governor, which he’s expected to sign.
Over the first five years of marijuana legalization, the commonwealth could bring in anywhere from $184-$308 million, according to a 2020 report from the assembly’s nonpartisan research commission. The state government won’t be the only entity profiting when weed is legal, either. With cultivation and retail industries poised to flourish, questions about who makes money from marijuana are at the front of legislators’ minds.
The state plans to levy a 21 percent tax on pot sales, in addition to the existing 6 percent sales tax. (For reference, liquor is taxed at 20 percent in Virginia, the third-highest rate in the nation.)
Both the state Senate and House bills propose the same spending plan for that new marijuana tax income: 40 percent will be devoted to pre-K education for at-risk youth, 30 percent to the Cannabis Equity Reinvestment Fund, 25 percent to substance abuse treatment and prevention, and 5 percent to public health initiatives.
That might sound reasonable enough, but some activists have concerns. Marijuana Justice’s Chelsea Higgs Wise wants to see 70 percent devoted to the equity fund, which would seek to make up for past discrimination by providing things like tutoring and mentoring programs and free transportation in cities like Richmond.
“Three- to 4-year-old pre-K is something that’s very dear to our heart, but we understand that those 3- to 4-year-olds would be better served if they are housed with rent relief funds, or if they’re fed with different feeding programs,” says Higgs Wise. She warns against “giving this reinvestment money back to institutions that have not invested it intentionally for our community.”
Under the current proposal, the Charlottesville and Albemarle local governments stand to make money from legalization, too—the bills give localities the option to add a 3 percent tax of their own on top of the state’s fees. Massachusetts adopted an identical local option system when it allowed retail sales to begin in late 2018. In the second full year of legalization, 46 Massachusetts localities combined to bring in $14 million from marijuana sales, according to Mass Live.
Matt Simon, senior policy analyst at the Marijuana Policy Project, says high tax rates won’t prevent people from buying legally.
“People may experience sticker shock when the stores first open, and say ‘I can get this cheaper from my guy I went to high school with,’” Simon says. “But both Colorado and Washington have higher taxes than are in this bill, and over time they’ve captured the vast majority of the market…The prices are much lower in the stores than from illicit sources.”
Legislators must also consider who runs those stores. Exactly how many licenses will be passed out remains to be seen—Simon says the current plan could be “in the realm of 400 retailers.” That’s a departure from Virginia’s two-year-old medical cannabis industry, in which only five large corporations have licenses.
The bills currently prioritize giving cultivation and retail licenses to those whose communities have been subjected to racist enforcement of marijuana laws in the past. The state can’t directly offer Black people a head start, but it can decide that businesses owned by those with marijuana convictions, or businesses that employ 10 or more people with past convictions, will be given a six-month head start in the license application process.
Higgs Wise says those provisions might not be enough, however. For example, she’s concerned that allowing 10 formerly arrested low-wage employees to qualify a business for equity priority won’t meet the intended goal of giving Black and brown people access to lucrative business management positions.
Ross Efaw owns the area’s Greener Things CBD Dispensary, which sells a variety of low-THC hemp-derived products. He also hopes that marijuana licenses are accessible to the little guy.
“Small, locally owned businesses like us want to participate in legal cannabis sales. We’re well positioned to. We have the experience. It’s just a matter of if the state will allow for accessible permits for small businesses,” Efaw says. “We hope there’s opportunity for everyone.”
Efaw says Charlottesville could quickly become a hub for marijuana sales in the state. “I think Charlottesville’s a great market and it’ll really catch on here. No doubt in my mind. Our clientele ask us all the time, ‘When are you going to have THC products available?’”
While lots of questions remain about the future of marijuana in Virginia, one thing is for sure, says Efaw: “The demand is high.”
State Senator Creigh Deeds and Delegate Sally Hudson will prioritize criminal justice reform, expanded unemployment benefits, and school funding during the upcoming legislative session. PC: Photos courtesy subjects
By Geremia di Maro
Amid a surging number of COVID-19 cases in the state, and political turmoil at the national level, the Democrat-controlled Virginia General Assembly will convene Wednesday (remotely in the House) for the 2021 legislative session. Charlottesville’s local lawmakers have an ambitious agenda planned for the marathon 46-day session. Delegate Sally Hudson and state Senator Creigh Deeds will both prioritize criminal justice reform, expanded unemployment benefits amid the pandemic, and increased school funding, among other things.
Hudson plans to serve as the chief patron for seven bills in the House of Delegates, and said at a virtual town hall Sunday that each one represents one of her central lawmaking priorities. At a time when new COVID-19 cases continue to break daily records in Virginia—more than 5,700 new cases were reported January 9 alone—three of Hudson’s proposed bills aim to lower utility bill costs, prevent illegal evictions, and streamline unemployment benefits for Virginians beleaguered by the still-worsening pandemic.
“Unemployment payments are a crucial part of our social safety net and our economic recovery,” said Hudson on Sunday. “They ensure that—while there are a lot of people out of work and a lot of businesses that aren’t safe to operate—we can still continue to help all of our residents pay for rent and groceries and keep the wheels of our economy churning.”
More specifically, Hudson says her proposed bill would address some of the administrative hang-ups within the Virginia Employment Commission that have delayed the disbursement of benefits for as many as 70,000 Virginia residents this year. According to Hudson, 1.4 million people—or one in six Virginians—have applied for unemployment benefits during the past year.
On the Senate side, Deeds has related bills. He will propose that the state allocate $100 million to the Virginia Employment Commission for the purpose of providing long-term benefits for unemployed low-income and part-time workers. Deeds says these funds would come from a $650 million allocation to Virginia’s reserve fund proposed in Governor Ralph Northam’s budget.
“The reserve fund is somewhat supplementary to the constitutionally required rainy day fund, but in this pandemic, it’s raining on a whole lot of families,” says Deeds. “There have been people that have been thrown out of work because of the pandemic. [This proposal] is a one-time deal, for one year of funding, to provide long-term unemployment benefits for some of those people who have lost their job because of the pandemic.”
Hudson has also proposed a sweeping bill that would decriminalize the simple possession of any drug or controlled substance, meaning that the maximum penalty an individual could face for possessing a given substance would be a misdemeanor charge rather than a felony. The simple possession of marijuana was decriminalized by the General Assembly during the 2020 legislative session. Hudson says her long-term goal is for drugs to be completely decriminalized in Virginia, citing the state of Oregon as a model for how to go about the process.
“People who are struggling with substance abuse need economic support, they need jobs, they need connections to their community—they don’t need to be in cages,” says Hudson.
Also on her agenda: ending the abortion ban for those who receive health care from Virginia’s version of the ACA; retiring coal tax credits in an effort to incentivize green energy; repealing right to work laws; and prioritizing school funding when crafting the budget.
Hudson says she feels empowered and obligated to press forward on issues such as criminal justice reform in the General Assembly due to her district’s desire to see such changes.
“Charlottesville is continuing to push the leading edge of the conversation in Richmond, because I think what our constituents want is often a little further ahead than where Richmond is ready to go,” says Hudson.
Deeds, meanwhile, says one of his central legislative priorities is for the General Assembly to provide significant long-term funding for the modernization andconstruction of schools across the commonwealth. Deeds hopes to fund the infrastructure upgrade through tax increases on wealthy Virginians. The plan is to raise taxes from 5.75 percent to 5.9 percent on income greater than $150,000 a year. The increase would generate about $134 million and $144 million in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, respectively.
The plan wouldn’t just fund schools, though. According to Deeds’ proposal, 45 percent of the new revenue would be devoted to schools, and 55 percent would be used to provide raises for deputy sheriffs officers throughout Virginia. Deeds says deputy sheriffs are tasked with law enforcement and many other duties in rural localities, but are often underpaid. After the General Assembly passed laws to raise training and conduct standards for officers during last year’s special session, Deeds says the pay increase for these officers is appropriate.
“I’m interested in coming up with a sustainable source of funding because I think it’ll take pressure off where we’ve got a well-documented need,” says Deeds about the schools portion of his bill. “If we’re serious about providing opportunity through our public school system, we ought to be serious about making sure we provide that opportunity.”
While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people of all backgrounds across the globe, statistics show that it has had a disproportionate impact on black Americans. Data is limited, because only about 35 percent of U.S. cases specify a patient’s race, according to the CDC. But its numbers show that black people comprise nearly 34 percent of those infected with COVID-19, though they make up only 13 percent of the population. And African Americans make up nearly 30 percent of U.S. deaths from the virus, according to the latest Associated Press analysis.
Charlottesville is certainly not immune to this issue. In the Thomas Jefferson Health District, as of April 17, about 32 percent of people infected with coronavirus (and 25 percent of those who’ve died) are black, while black people make up only 13.9 percent of the district’s population.
Black communities in other parts of the state have been hit even harder by COVID-19. In Richmond, all eight people who’ve died from the virus were black. And while 48 percent of the city’s population is African American, black people make up about 62 percent of local cases.
Medical professionals, activists, and political leaders around the country have attributed these disparities to pre-existing inequities within our health care and economic systems. Blacks are more likely than whites to be uninsured and receive lower-quality health care, as well as have underlying conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease—all often caused or worsened by poverty. And due to unequal education, housing segregation, and other systemic inequalities, a significant portion of black Americans live in densely packed areas and do not have jobs that allow them to work from home, making social distancing more difficult.
To provide more black Virginians with adequate health care access, the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP has sent a letter to Governor Ralph Northam asking him to use his “executive discretion” to speed up the Medicaid eligibility process using data available immediately from the Department of Taxation, along with other resources. Because there is currently a backlog of applications, those trying to be approved for Medicaid may have to wait as long as 45 days—which, for some people, “may be a death sentence.”
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Quote of the Week
“There was a housing crisis two months ago, and this entire community spent a number of years moving towards addressing that…And now we have an even bigger crisis.”
—Brandon Collins, Public Housing Association of Residents, addressing City Council on Monday
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In Brief
Gradual grads
UVA announced two tentative dates for graduation, after the original ceremony was canceled due to coronavirus. The class of 2020 will walk the Lawn on October 9-11, or, failing that, May 28-30, the weekend after the class of 2021 graduates. The university will still hold a digital ceremony to confer degrees this May, although it’s unclear if Zoom will have installed a virtual cap-flinging feature by then.
Sales are not on the menu
Seventy-eight percent of Virginia’s restaurant employees have been laid off since February, according to a new study from the National Restaurant Association. In the first week of April, the state’s restaurant sales declined 77 percent, compared to the same time period last year. That downturn has already forced longtime Charlottesville staple the Downtown Grille to permanently close its doors, while other beloved spots like Rapture, Tavola, and Oakheart Social have closed temporarily.
Capital loss
Death penalty critic Jerry Givens died last Monday in Henrico County at age 67. His son, Terence Travers, did not reveal Givens’ cause of death, but said that he had pneumonia and had tested positive for COVID-19. Givens, who spoke with C-VILLE in February for a story about the fight against the death penalty in Virginia, served as the state’s chief executioner for 17 years, before becoming an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.
Out of the House
Legislators in the state capital won’t be able to meet in their regular chambers for this month’s short veto session. Instead, Democratic leadership reports that the Senate will gather in a convention center, with members seated at desks 10 feet apart from each other, and the House will convene in a huge tent on the lawn near the capital.
Updated 4/22: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Rapture had closed permanently; according to the restaurant’s Facebook page, it is closed “indefinitely.”
In August 2006, 24-year-old William Charles Morva made national headlines when he sent the Montgomery County Police on a manhunt unlike any the town of Blacksburg had seen before.
While awaiting trial for an attempted armed robbery, Morva was taken to Montgomery Regional Hospital for minor injuries. After using the bathroom, he knocked out the deputy escorting him with a metal toilet paper dispenser, stole his gun, and fatally shot unarmed security guard Derrick McFarland before escaping the building.
As police searched the Blacksburg area for Morva, a disheveled man wearing only a blanket and boxers was spotted on the Huckleberry Trail near the Virginia Tech campus. Montgomery County Sheriff’s Corporal Eric Sutphin went to check out the trail and encountered Morva, who fatally shot him.
After a 37-hour manhunt, Morva was finally captured on the trail, and was charged with two counts of capital murder. In March 2008, he was sentenced to death.
On July 6, 2017, Morva was executed by lethal injection at Greensville Correctional Center, becoming the 113th person executed in Virginia since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Virginia plays a unique role in the history of the death penalty—it’s believed the first execution in America occurred in Jamestown in 1608. Since then, over 1,300 people have been executed here, more than any other state.
But times might be changing. Last January, the Virginia State Senate passed a bill banning the death penalty for defendants with severe mental illness, a bill that could have made a difference in Morva’s case. It was not until after Morva was sentenced to death that a psychiatrist diagnosed him with delusional disorder, which made him falsely believe, among other things, that a former presidential administration conspired with police to imprison him, and that he was going to die in jail if he didn’t escape. According to family and friends, Morva’s mental health had been in a downward spiral since his father died from cancer in April 2004, leading him to drop out of high school, live in the woods, and, ultimately, engage in criminal behavior.
After Morva’s appeals were denied on the state and federal level, many individuals and agencies, including the United Nations and Sutphin’s daughter, Rachel, petitioned then-governor Terry McAuliffe to change Morva’s sentence to life in prison due to his severe mental illness. But McAuliffe declined to grant Morva clemency.
A year and a half after Morva’s death, the bill banning the death penalty for the severely mentally ill passed in the state Senate with bipartisan support, 23-17. Although the House version died in committee, the Senate bill was a major victory for advocates—the first time either chamber of the General Assembly had ever voted to limit the death penalty.
On January 30, a similar bill was reintroduced in the Virginia Senate and approved by an overwhelming margin (32-7). And with bipartisan patrons Delegate Patrick Hope (D-Arlington) and Delegate Jay Leftwich (R-Chesapeake), the House version may have a better chance of passing the Courts of Justice Committee this time.
But groups like Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty don’t want the momentum to stop there. In November, 13 family members of murder victims—in alliance with VADP—sent a letter to the General Assembly asking lawmakers to join the 21 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that have outlawed capital punishment. This session, a bill to abolish the death penalty entirely was introduced in both chambers of the General Assembly, although it did not make it out of committee (the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to delay consideration of the bill until next year, while the House did not schedule hearings).
If Virginia abolished the death penalty, it would be one of the first Southern states to do so, and could lead the rest of the region to do the same—and bring about other crucial criminal justice reforms, advocates say.
Governor Ralph Northam has voiced his personal opposition to capital punishment, and a spokeswoman told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that “if the General Assembly passed legislation to replace the death penalty with life without parole, the governor would absolutely sign it.”
Could Virginia get rid of the death penalty for good?
A decades-long mission
Back in 1989, a Virginia Commonwealth University survey found that, while a majority of Virginians supported the death penalty, support decreased when given the alternative of life in prison with no possibility of parole, along with restitution to victims’ families.
The results spurred a group of 13 people, adamantly opposed to the death penalty, to form an advocacy group, Virginians Against State Killing, in the hope of swaying public opinion. In 1994, they changed their name to Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Since then, VADP has held numerous protests against the death penalty across the commonwealth, aiming to bring as much attention as possible to the many problems within the system. It has also sponsored educational programs, held vigils for those who’ve been executed, and lobbied the General Assembly—not just to reform the state’s death penalty laws, but to abolish it all together.
Though VADP has had limited influence for much of its history, it has gained more traction in the past decade, garnering greater public support and assistance from legislators, and helping to prevent the expansion of Virginia’s capital murder statute.
Today, the group has grown to 2,872 members, who have a range of political affiliations. Conservative membership has increased since Michael Stone, a 25-year veteran of the Catholic diocese of Richmond, became executive director in 2015.
“One of the key things that I’ve been focused on in my five years with [VADP] is diversifying the organization politically,” he says. “When I came on board, the membership was overwhelmingly moderate [and] liberal Democrats. Because of my long history with the Catholic diocese, I have really strong relationships, not only with the Catholic leadership in the state, but with a lot of evangelical and interfaith leaders…as well as conservatives and Republicans.”
“If we’re going to win abolition in Virginia, it really needs to not be a partisan issue,” he says.
Michael Stone worked for the Catholic Diocese of Richmond for 25 years, and became VADP’s executive director in 2015. PC: VADP
At the diocese, Stone often worked with Bishop Walter Sullivan, who championed criminal justice reform. One day in 1984, Sullivan encouraged Stone to attend a vigil being held outside of Virginia State Penitentiary, where a man was to be executed. After much thought, Stone decided to go.
“The penitentiary was on this busy, divided four-lane north-south road. And on the side where the prison was, there were about 40 of us lined up in a silent vigil holding candles,” Stone says. “On the other side… was a group of over a hundred drunken revelers who were celebrating the execution of the man. They were holding up signs with racist messages and chanting racist things, because the man being executed that night was an African American gentleman.”
“It was just a very ugly scene. It struck me in that moment that there had to be something profoundly wrong with the death penalty, if that is what it could do to us as a society,” he says. “I came away strongly convinced that we had to end the death penalty.”
Like previous directors, Stone was VADP’s sole paid employee. But in 2017, after much fundraising, the group was able to hire Dale Brumfield as its field director, who has led scores of public education programs and “single-handedly increased VADP membership by at least 500…across the political spectrum,” says Stone.
Others, like former VADP board president and capital defense attorney Matthew Engle, work directly in the courtroom. In 2015, Engle opened a private practice in Charlottesville with his partner, Bernadette Donovan. The pair represent capital murder defendants (and other serious felony cases) at the trial level across the commonwealth, and have helped reverse multiple death sentences.
Engle’s fight against the death penalty began many years earlier, while he was an undergraduate at Cleveland State University, where he worked at a residential treatment unit that helped former inmates reintegrate into society. He saw first-hand how ex-offenders could be rehabilitated and learned that “people who have been convicted of crimes, even very serious violent crimes, are often not that different than the rest of us,” he says.
“[That] really got me thinking about the death penalty and realizing that a lot of the people I was getting to know and really enjoyed working with, but for a few lucky breaks, could have been sentenced to death,” Engle says. “It made me really feel it was not something I could support.”
After graduating from Washington & Lee School of Law in 2001, Engle went on to work for the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center in Charlottesville and for the Capital Defender Office of Northern Virginia, providing representation to those facing the death penalty. In 2010, he became legal director of the UVA law school’s Innocence Project, both teaching at UVA and representing many wrongfully convicted inmates.
Charlottesville capital defense attorney and VADP member Matthew Engle has helped reverse multiple death penalty sentences in Virginia. PC: Donovan & Engle
In addition to the several organizations, like Engle’s, that have been advocating against the death penalty in Virginia for years, VADP is joined in its fight by the ACLU of Virginia. Since the national ACLU became active in Virginia in the 1960s, its Virginia affiliate has voiced its opposition to the death penalty through public education, litigation, and advocacy.
It has challenged (unsuccessfully) Virginia’s policy of keeping all death row inmates in solitary confinement, and fought to reverse the death sentence of William Morva.
“That is a person who undoubtedly in my mind was put to death suffering from very severe mental illness,” says Bill Farrar, director of strategic communications for the ACLU of Virginia. “It makes me tremendously sad, personally, to think about a person who was strapped down to a table and had poison injected into his veins, and no idea what was happening to him or why.”
Victims’ voices
Those in favor of the death penalty often say they want justice for the families of murder victims. And some victims’ families do push for capital punishment. Unlike her granddaughter, Eric Sutphin’s mother, Jeaneen Sutphin, wanted Morva to be executed, though she felt empathy for his family.
“I have no hatred for this creature who shot him execution-style,” she told the Richmond Times-Dispatch about Morva, shortly before his execution date. “I just want justice for my son.”
But not all families of murder victims feel that the penalty brings them justice.
In 2001, Lucy and Terry Smith were brutally tortured and murdered in their home in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, by their 17-year-old adopted son, Michael Bourgeois, and his 19-year-old friend, Landon May.
Linell Patterson, Terry’s daughter (and Lucy’s stepdaughter), was only 19 at the time. She had just moved to Virginia to attend Eastern Mennonite University when the murders occurred.
Her parents’ deaths rocked Patterson, and her then-21-year-old sister Megan Smith, to their core. Patterson felt both “clashes of anger” and “deepest sadness,” she says, and that no one could understand what they were going through.
Bourgeois pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole (later changed to 80-years-to-life due to changes in juvenile sentencing laws). However, because May did not plead guilty to all of his charges, he was put on trial by jury, which Patterson and her family attended.
“[When] we had a meeting with the prosecuting attorney [Craig Stedman], he sat us down and told us what to expect. It was very clear he knew what he was doing. He was very confident [and] calming,” she says. “He felt like he was our person.”
“But then he asked us how we felt about the death penalty, [and] my sister and I [said] we don’t want to be a part of that,” she says. “His tone changed very, very quickly…and he made it absolutely clear that regardless of how we felt, he was going to pursue the death penalty…Our opinions didn’t actually matter.”
Throughout May’s trial, Patterson says, Stedman continuously talked about how he was seeking justice for the Smith’s family, and it felt to her like he was lying and using them. She felt even more adamantly opposed to the penalty after meeting May’s family, who were just as devastated, connecting with them through their shared grief.
“I just will not forgot that noise that came out of that line of women when it was announced that Landon was to have the death penalty,” Patterson says. “I had also made that noise. I had also cried in that same way.”
On the evenings of executions, VADP holds vigils for the victims and the condemned throughout the state. PC: VADP
After May’s trial (and through the years of legal appeals that come with a death penalty conviction), Patterson experienced a whole range of emotions, and felt that she had nowhere to put them. She began reaching out to and meeting with other family members of murder victims, who she found to be “incredibly nurturing.”
“They were living very similar experiences, but also they were much further along in their process and had a sense of healing that was inspiring. I was able to visually see what it looked like to have this kind of trauma occur, and then continue to live a life that is based on joy, and calmness, and social justice,” Patterson says. “That’s something that I wanted.”
She also began researching the numerous injustices within the death penalty system, leading her to connect with anti-death penalty groups—including VADP, where she later served on the board.
Since then, Patterson has shared her story with a host of schools, legislators, and organizations, and written many op-eds against the death penalty. She’s also gotten married, and moved to Harrisonburg. Her work as a nurse practitioner keeps her quite busy, but she still makes time to be involved with VADP.
Though her advocacy against the death penalty has brought her healing, May’s impending execution—in the name of justice for her and her family—still haunts Patterson to this day. It won’t bring her parents back or bring them justice, she says, only “making a whole other family grieve in the same way.”
“I understand when people want the death penalty. It’s not that I haven’t struggled with those feelings,” she says. “But all that means is that some people want it, and some people don’t. You have to strip that away and explore the actual system, and then you find out that the system stinks. It’s not functional, and it makes a ton of mistakes.”
Like Patterson, Rachel Sutphin, who was 9 when Morva gunned down her father, has continued to advocate against the death penalty. Now a student at Columbia Theological Seminary, she has signed a joint letter with a dozen other surviving family members of murder victims asking the new General Assembly to end the death penalty.
“Instead of supporting my family and me when we needed it the most, the Commonwealth devoted its resources to the trial and appeals that lasted more than 10 years. Year after year, I was retraumatized by the uncertainty and was repeatedly forced to relive the worst day of my life,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “Morva’s execution brought no solace to me, but it strengthened my resolve that the death penalty needs to be abolished…to value and protect human life.”
VADP has held many protests against the death penalty across the state, bringing attention to the injustices that plague the system. PC: VADP
Public opinion shifts
For the first time since the Gallup poll began asking Americans for their stance on the death penalty, in 1985, a majority of Americans today are opposed to it—when life without parole is also on the table.
In 2019, 60 percent of Americans surveyed, across a wide range of demographics and party lines, chose life without possibility of parole as “the better penalty for murder” over the death penalty. Thirty-six percent opted for capital punishment.
That’s a big shift even since the last Gallup poll, in 2014, when 50 percent of Americans said the death penalty was the better penalty for murder, and 45 percent favored life in prison.
While some states, like Wisconsin and Minnesota, abolished the death penalty many decades ago, this change in public opinion can be reflected in other states’ more recent actions. Washington and New Hampshire abolished the death penalty in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Also in 2019, California governor Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on executions in the state, which currently has 737 inmates on death row, for as long as he is governor. (The death penalty can only be abolished by California voters, a move they narrowly rejected in 2016.)
And in Virginia, no juries have handed down the death penalty in more than eight years.
Stone attributes this overall decline in public support and use of capital punishment to the rise in awareness of its numerous issues, especially “when the system gets it wrong.”
Since 1973, 167 death-row inmates, 87 of them black, have been exonerated of all charges. According to a 2014 study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1 in every 25 people sentenced to death is innocent—an error rate of 4.1 percent.
As the Death Penalty Information Center notes, it’s impossible to know how many of the 1,513 people executed in the United Sates since 1976 (when the death penalty was reinstated) were innocent. However, it lists over a dozen executed inmates who were possibly innocent, as well as several who were pardoned after their executions.
People have also become more aware that “people of color are more likely to be given the death sentence than white people,” Carissa Phillips, VADP’s secretary, says, pointing to recent television shows and movies like Just Mercy that expose the racism within the death penalty system.
Charlottesville resident Carissa Phillips describes herself as “consistently pro-life,” and has been involved with VADP since 2017. PC: VADP
According to The Intercept, from 2009 to 2018, 60 percent of defendants given the death penalty were people of color. And today, while black people make up only 13.4 percent of the total population, they make up roughly 41 percent of those on death row, per the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s 2019 report.
A person is also much more likely to receive the death penalty if the murder victim is white. Ever since executions have been carried out exclusively for murder, 75 percent of death penalty convictions have involved the murder of white victims—even though black and white people are equally as likely to be victims of murder.
And, as Engle notes, the death penalty disproportionately affects the poor.
“What I have learned from the cases that I’ve worked on, the single biggest factor that determines whether or not somebody gets sentenced to death isn’t how bad they are [or] how heinous or awful the crime is…[but] how effective the defense lawyers are,” he says, putting those—especially black people—who cannot afford to hire a good lawyer at a grave disadvantage.
Largely because of the lengthy legal process involved, the death penalty is also far more expensive than life without parole. Like many other advocates, Stone believes the millions of dollars going towards death penalty cases should instead go towards services for victims’ families, from funeral costs to counseling, and programs that effectively prevent acts of violence.
“There really is no evidence that the death penalty prevents violent crime in any way,” he says. “In fact, the murder rates in abolition states tend to be significantly lower than the murder rates in death penalty states.”
In addition, the years of mandatory appeals and uncertainty “continue to traumatize murder victims’ family members,” as well as the other people involved in the criminal justice system, Stone says.
Stone points, in particular, to the executioner, who has to administer the lethal injection and “actually end the life of someone who is helpless, strapped to a gurney.” He says that performing executions can traumatize them over time. Former VADP board member Jerry Givens was an executioner in Virginia for 17 years, and still wonders if he ever killed an innocent person.
“People don’t realize that [for] the people that have to carry these things out, that’s a burden on them,” Givens says. “It’s no machine; it’s a human being that has to take another human being’s life.”
Jerry Givens worked as an executioner in Virginia for 17 years. PC: Subject
Before working in the system, Givens used to think that “people that take other people’s lives deserve to have their life taken as well.” However, he realized that the death penalty was not right after seeing that innocent people were being sentenced to death—like Anthony Ray Hinton, a black man who was wrongly convicted of murder and held on Alabama’s death row for 28 years.
“Think about the people that’s incarcerated now. Were they given a fair trial? Is there such a thing as a fair trial in the American criminal justice system?” he says. “The system is broken.”
To Givens, the death penalty only shows the world that “killing is okay,” and it must be ended.
Change on the horizon?
As much as public opinion has shifted, there are still significant numbers of prosecutors and politicians, as well as average Americans, who believe those convicted of capital offenses deserve to die, and that their deaths bring true justice to victims and their families.
Republican Delegate Matt Fariss, who represents the 59th District (including parts of Albemarle), says he wishes we didn’t need the death penalty, but supports it in “some egregious cases,” such as “violent gang and drug related [cases] and sexual abuse cases that end in murder.”
“There just needs to be stiff enough penalties that people realize when they’re heading down these paths, that they’re heading down the wrong path,” he says.
Fariss also believes not having the death penalty for “egregious cases” does an injustice to victims’ families.
“There needs to be some accountability and responsibility to the victims,” he says. “I just don’t know how I could ever look a victim’s family in the eye and tell them that their loved one’s life was less important than the person who took it.”
But with the Democratic takeover of Virginia’s legislature, in addition to growing bipartisan support, advocates see reform as only a matter of time.
“The death penalty is in its last days here in Virginia,” says Stone. “We are cautiously optimistic that there will be a serious floor debate on death penalty abolition in at least one chamber of the General Assembly” in the next session.
If an abolition bill is not passed this legislative session, Phillips believes it could happen within the next year or two, while Engle sees it happening most likely within the next decade.
Others like Farrar say that it’s difficult to determine the political will to abolish the death penalty in Richmond, on the part of both Democrats and Republicans. And, as shown by other states, it can take years of political battles to get abolition passed.
“For some, there’s a real urgency to make real changes as quickly as we can, and for some, there’s a desire to do that in a more incremental way,” says Farrar. “There is momentum on a national level away from the death penalty but, historically Virginia, especially in its criminal justice system, hasn’t really looked to other states as something to follow.”
In the meantime, advocates like Patterson are committed to keeping up the fight.
The movement has given her “a sense of purpose when there has been very little purpose,” she says. To succeed in abolishing the death penalty “would feel a sense of accomplishment in that I have been a part of something that matters…It would feel like we are stepping towards social justice.”
Charlottesville's dark skies are getting less dark. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
Blinded by the light
Everyone’s afraid of the dark. But night is fundamental to the delicate balance of life on Earth—so says UVA astronomer and artificial light expert Ricky Patterson, who gave an illuminating presentation on the dangers of light pollution at a Sierra Club event at the downtown library this week.
More people, more cars, and bigger cities means there’s more light in the sky, and all that artificial light hurts the planet’s wildlife. Trees bloom before the spring and die before they should. Fireflies don’t flash in the bright evenings, so they can’t find each other to mate. Baby sea turtles, who have evolved over millions of years to crawl out of the beach sand and toward the glimmering reflections of stars on the ocean, now hatch and totter off toward the glowing lights of Florida’s nightclubs. Humans in urban areas can’t fall asleep properly with too much light around.
Charlottesville’s bright future threatens to contaminate the fragile wilderness areas in the darkness on the edge of town. Shenandoah National Park “becomes less and less night-friendly as we grow,” Patterson said.
Patterson urged attendees to highlight the issue at upcoming planning commission and City Council meetings. Sean Tubbs, of the Piedmont Environmental Council, says the event was inspired in part by C-VILLE’s reporting last year on light pollution in Belmont. Charlottesville’s lighting ordinance was written in the late ’90s, before the popularization of LEDs, and Patterson says it’s “really ineffective in the current world.”
Progressive progress
Our newly-blue state legislature has had a busy week: On Monday, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which could mean the amendment gets added to the U.S. Constitution. The day after gun-rights activists rallied in Richmond, Democrats moved forward with their “red flag” law, which allows authorities to take away firearms from citizens deemed a threat to themselves or others. (GOP state Senator Amanda Chase called those in support of the bill “traitors.”) In party-line votes,
the Senate also voted to ban LGBTQ conversion therapy directed at those under 18 and codify rights for transgender students. Additional bills advanced that would eliminate Lee-Jackson Day as an official state holiday and make Election Day one instead.
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Quote of the Week
“You associate Kobe with so many great memories of watching NBA Finals. Whenever an iconic hero like that passes, it makes everybody sort of step back and realize how precious life is, your own mortality.”
—UVA men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett, reflecting on the death of Kobe Bryant
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In brief
False alarm
Two patients in central Virginia were thought to be carrying the deadly coronavirus that has led to the shutdown of a major Chinese city—but tests came back negative, per the Virginia Department of Health. The virus, which manifests as a respiratory illness, hasn’t been confirmed in Virginia yet, but it does spread from person to person. Wash your hands, everybody.
A chalk mural on the free speech wall asks for statue removal.
Monumental art
As two bills proposing local control over Confederate monuments make their way through the General Assembly, activist group Take ’Em Down Cville made its feelings clear with a 10-panel chalk mural on the Free Speech Wall. Created by local artist Ramona Martinez, the mural, which was unveiled on Sunday, features a broken tiki-torch and a plea for a more inclusive future, including tips for what you can do. Martinez also drew Queen Charlotte and York the Explorer, who she believes should be honored instead.
Floor it
Rev your engines: The State Senate voted this week to increase the threshold for a reckless driving offense from 80 to 85 miles per hour. Until now, doing 81 in a 70 has been a Class 1 misdemeanor, on par with domestic violence and punishable by up to a year in jail. (Don’t burn rubber on your way home from work today, though. The bill won’t become law until summer, pending Governor Northam’s approval.)
Closing the book
On February 1, Margaret O’Bryant, the first—and only—librarian and head of reference resources at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society will be officially retiring. For more than 30 years, she has helped thousands of people research Virginia history and genealogy.
Robert Tracci hopes to fend off challenger Jim Hingeley to retain his seat as the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney in a race that’s already had an “unprecedented” twist. Photo by Jen Fariello
Political races in Albemarle County are usually pretty staid compared to Charlottesville’s—except for the commonwealth’s attorney race.
Prosecutors Jim Camblos (in 2007) and Denise Lunsford (in 2015) were both ousted after controversial, high-profile cases. And 2019 has promised to be another closely watched contest—even before incumbent Robert Tracci’s opponent received an unheard-of $50,000 donation.
Republican Tracci, 47, is a former federal prosecutor and U.S. House Judiciary Committee counsel. Jim Hingeley, 71, founded the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender’s Office in 1998. Both men tout their experience—and their opponent’s lack of it.
Democrat Jim Hingeley, founder of the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender’s Office, faces Republican Robert Tracci in the commonwealths’s attorney race.
“He doesn’t have any prosecution experience at all,” says Tracci.
“I’m proficient as a criminal trial lawyer,” says Hingeley, noting his more than 40 years as an attorney. A factor in his decision to run, he says, “was [Tracci’s] inexperience and the mistakes he made…When he was elected, he’d never tried a case on his own in state court.”
Hingeley calls Tracci’s failure to secure a perjury conviction against Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler “a rookie mistake. He failed to prove the perjury occurred in Albemarle County.”
“The court made a finding with which I disagree,” says Tracci.
The two men differ on their interpretations of prosecutorial discretion and on the role of money in the campaign, notably activist Sonjia Smith’s $50,000 donation to Hingeley.
Hingeley says he also decided to run because he disagrees with Tracci’s approach. “Mr. Tracci has, for the most part, the view that prosecuting people, convicting them, and removing them from the community is the way to address criminal behavior and solve crime in the community,” says Hingeley, who describes himself as a progressive.
For his part, Tracci says Hingeley is part of a “political prosecution movement in which the commonwealth’s attorney is a political activist rather than a legal advocate.” He is “already expressing a reluctance to bringing felony offenses and that has consequences that are not good for public safety,” says Tracci.
“We don’t have authority to summarily disregard the law,” says Tracci, who suggests Hingeley is running for the wrong job and should be seeking a seat in the General Assembly to change the laws with which he disagrees.
“I have a different approach,” says Hingeley. “I know a lot about what is driving criminal behavior.”
Mass incarceration is the “result of the kinds of policies Mr. Tracci has in his office,” says Hingeley. “I think we need to look at ways to keep people in the community.”
Both Hingeley and Tracci cite support for treating substance abuse and mental illness outside of incarceration. “Jails and prisons are not equipped” to treat those issues as well as the services that are already available in the community, says Hingeley.
Tracci says, “I’ve sought alternatives to prosecution, including the therapeutic mental health and drug dockets.” He says his is the first commonwealth’s attorney office in the state to have overall responsibility for sexual assault at UVA, rather than have cases handled as Title IX. “We were ahead of the curve,” he says.
And while he’s committed to enforcing laws as written, Tracci says some reforms are in order. “I’ve written the attorney general that it’s time to look at cannabis laws.” And he wants to see a uniform standard to determine cannabis impairment.
That was an issue Hingeley cites as an example of Tracci’s inexperience. When a train collided with a garbage truck on the tracks in Crozet in early 2018, Tracci tried driver Dana Naylor on involuntary manslaughter and maiming from driving while impaired because he had THC in his bloodstream.
The problem, says Hingeley, is that the science on THC, including results from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is that “THC in the blood does not appear to be an indication of impairment.“ And when Tracci attempted to prove Naylor was impaired, “his own toxicologist said that’s not correct,” recounts Hingeley.
Hingeley has raised more than $150,000, the largest amount for any commonwealth’s attorney race in memory. That includes $50,000 from Smith, who also gave $10,000 to Andrew Sneathern, who, when he decided not to seek the prosecutor’s job, contributed those funds to Hingeley.
“I think it reflects the support I have gotten for change and for criminal justice reform,” says Hingeley.
Tracci thinks it reflects an “unprecedented” amount of campaign money in this district, if not the commonwealth, and that Smith’s $50K was almost equal to what he spent on the last election.
“The community should have the right to know what conversations were made before that contribution,” he says.
Tracci says he met with Smith, who disagreed with his support of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail’s notification of ICE when undocumented immigrants are released from the jail. “After that, I learned she wrote the $50,000 check,” he says.
Smith says she’d contributed to Hingeley more than two months before she met with Tracci at his request on April 1, and that her record as an active Democratic donor shows “that I do not support Republicans.”
Tracci says he didn’t do any fundraising his first three years in office, and as the county’s current prosecutor he doesn’t accept contributions from any defense attorney with cases that will appear in Albemarle courts. “I’m going to be outspent and I know I’m going to be outspent.”
Hingeley says he wants to find solutions that will break the cycle of racial injustice and the disproportionate number of minorities in prison. “I’m seeing a lot of interest in this community in doing things differently.”
“We don’t have the authority not to prosecute violent crimes,” says Tracci. That disrespects the victims, he says, “and there’s nothing compassionate about that.”
Tracci and Hingeley will face off at The Center on Hillsdale Drive on October 9 at 1:30pm.
Democratic General Assembly candidates Jennifer Kitchen, Elizabeth Alcorn, and Tim Hickey are sharing resources to help make inroads with rural voters. Photo: courtesy of subjects
Ten Dems running in solidly red General Assembly districts—like the ones that dissect Albemarle County—are doing what rural folk have always done: banding together to help each other out.
They’ve formed a coalition called Rural Groundgame, hired a few staffers, and are sharing resources on how to reach the voters who face the same rural issues.
“We were shocked to learn something like this didn’t already exist,” says Jennifer Kitchen, a community organizer who is challenging Republican Chris Runion in the 25th District, which includes Crozet and western Albemarle. The seat, long held by Steve Landes, is up for grabs this year because Landes decided to run for Augusta clerk of court.
Kitchen got involved in the coalition when she realized her race was not going to get money from state Democrats, who are going to be feeding cash into races they believe are more competitive and can flip the General Assembly.
The 58th District, firmly held by incumbent Rob Bell since 2002, is not one of those.
Elizabeth Alcorn decided to challenge Bell because she felt it was important to protect the democratic process and not have uncontested races. The way politics work in Virginia, she says, if a candidate is not in a targeted race, they don’t get the resources from the Democratic Party of Virginia and the Democratic House Caucus.
“They got a little surprise in 2017 when some unsupported candidates won anyway,” Alcorn points out. That year, Dems came close to controlling the House of Delegates when they picked up an unexpected 15 seats.
The 58th District includes Greene and parts of Albemarle, Fluvanna, and Rockingham counties. With the rural/urban divide that’s going on across the nation, she says, “It’s more important for Democrats to step up and get their message out in rural areas.”
Rural Groundgame is not a PAC, says Kitchen. The group has an ActBlue page where donations will be split evenly between the 10 candidates.
By sharing resources, the coalition was able to hire a consultant to develop and coordinate their field programs.
“It’s a very grassroots collaboration that arose among a number of us running for the House of Delegates,” says Tim Hickey, an educator who lives in southern Albemarle. He’s running for the 59th District seat, a district that stretches down to Rustburg, where incumbent Matt Farris lives.
“I don’t view these districts as red or blue,” he says. According to the candidates, the issues throughout the rural districts are the same: underfunded schools, health care affordability, and access. “Access to broadband is an issue we all see,” says Hickey.
The Dem candidates are going up againstsome sizable war chests—Bell was sitting on nearly $370,000 at the last filing—and they say that major corporations and utilities number among their opponents’ donors.
“One of the first things I’m going to do as a delegate is ban corporate political donations,” says Hickey. “We spend hours fundraising from individuals and then a candidate gets thousands from Dominion. I don’t think it’s right to take money from the corporations you regulate.”
The rural Dems are knocking on thousands of doors, some of which haven’t seen a candidate from either party in years. “They felt forgotten by Richmond,” says Kitchen. “They’re so glad to see someone.”
Kyle Kondik at UVA’s Center for Politics points out that the three districts around Charlottesville were carried by Donald Trump in 2016 by double digits, and Democrats are prioritizing more competitive districts as they try to win a House majority.
“So Democrats running in these districts need to be creative in how they try to score upsets, and banding together in such a way may be such a creative way to tackle this problem,” he says. “But their odds remain long.”
The Rural Groundgame Dems are undeterred. “We’re all in passionate agreement this is how we win rural America back,” says Alcorn. “Maybe not this year, but in 2021. Focusing on the needs of your district was extremely effective in 2017.” She points to Danica Roem, who ousted longtime incumbent Bob Marshall in northern Virginia. “Danica Roem focused on traffic,” she says.
Says Kitchen, “Our larger goal is to create a blueprint for the re-prioritization of rural America that can be used in any community, so they understand they have not been forgotten.”
Correction September 26: the RGG hired a consultant to develop and coordinate its field programs, not a field coordinator as originally reported.
Due to new legislation and cameras, you could be sent a $250 ticket if you illegally pass a stopped school bus. Photo by Martyn Kyle
Approximately 6,000 drivers whiz past stopped school buses in Albemarle County each year, putting students getting on and off the bus in jeopardy. New legislation that allows the installation of stop-arm cameras aims to put an end to this dangerous trend.
County school officials say they’ve been advocating for the technology for at least six years, and dozens of aggravated bus drivers signed a petition calling for cameras in March 2018. In the most recent General Assembly session, Delegate Rob Bell, an Albemarle resident, carried and helped pass a bill to allow the cameras.
The politician says putting kids on the bus under current conditions can be scary.
“It’s a leap of faith,” he says. “You put your little one on the bus and hope that it works.”
Bell’s daughter usually catches a ride to Baker-Butler Elementary with bus driver Chris Conti, whose route goes up U.S. 29 North and through the Briarwood neighborhood.
“On a regular, weekly basis, I have cars that run my lights,” says Conti.
From the time Conti turns on his amber lights—the ones that signal drivers to slow down before he applies the red lights, which mean stop—he adds, “You can almost see people hit the accelerator instead of the brake. They go shooting by me on the left, and the students are getting off on the right. It’s a scary situation.”
Recently, in Earlysville, a motorist plowed right through a bus’ stop arm, which Albemarle County Supervisor Diantha McKeel calls “shocking.”
“We’ve been lucky in this community that we haven’t had a tragedy,” she says.
The Board of Supervisors will need to pass an ordinance that matches the new state code to allow the cameras to be installed, and McKeel says it intends to do it before the next school year begins.
Though Albemarle County Public Schools have about 160 buses, somewhere between 20 and 40 vehicles in the most problematic and high-volume traffic areas will be the first to see the new technology, according to Jim Foley, the division’s director of transportation.
He suspects folks often speed past the buses “out of ignorance of knowing the law,” but a $250 fine will likely help educate them. The motion-sensing cameras will photograph the license plate of the offending driver, and then county police will mail a ticket to the car’s owner.
The cameras are proven to be an effective deterrent: Foley says only about 1 percent of offenders get caught more than once.
Says bus driver Conti, “Word will get out and hopefully behaviors will change.”
The news of stop-arm camera installations also pleases Forest Lakes parent Josh Cason, who has been drawing attention on social media to cars passing stopped buses at a bus stop in the southern part of his neighborhood since last school year.
After calling, emailing, and sending videos to the Albemarle County Police Department for months, he was disappointed when he only noticed cops stationed at the stop a handful of times, though the department assured him on Twitter that officers focus on school zones and bus routes.
Says Cason, “I think it’s about time it’s being taken seriously.”
