Sip and sing: It’s always a good time when you’ve got a local brew in your hand and you’re listening to your favorite song. Richmond’s Blair’s West is known for tight harmonies and an expansive catalog of covers. You help choose the setlist for the husband-and-wife duo, and kick back while they belt out rock anthems (from a distance) such as “Hotel California” and “Let it Be.”
Best of what’s around: The Agents of Good Roots have a long history of jammin’ in Virginia. Founded in RVA in the early ’90s, the group rolled through the same mid-Southern musical trenches as the Dave Matthews Band, signing with RCA, and touring the college circuit extensively (see their music archive for early Trax and Flood Zone gigs). As the four members grew up, they found new passions, and broke up. Reuniting in 2017, the Agents still play for fun, and to Save the Music. Proceeds benefit Loaves & Fishes Food Pantry.
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline is history. In a surprise announcement on Sunday afternoon, Dominion Power called off the 600-mile natural gas pipeline that would have run from West Virginia to North Carolina. “VICTORY!” declared the website of the Southern Environmental Law Center.
The news is a major win for a wide variety of environmental advocacy groups and grassroots activists, who have been fighting the pipeline on all fronts since the project was started in 2014. The pipeline would have required a 50-yard-wide clear-cut path through protected Appalachian forest, and also disrupted a historically black community in rural Buckingham County.
Dominion won a Supreme Court case earlier this month, but that wasn’t enough to outweigh the “increasing legal uncertainty that overhangs large-scale energy and industrial infrastructure development in the United States,” says the energy giant’s press release.
Litigation from the Southern Environmental Law Center dragged the pipeline’s construction to a halt. Gas was supposed to be flowing by 2019, but less than 6 percent of the pipe ever made it in the ground.
The ACP had the backing of the Trump administration, and U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette blamed the “obstructionist environmental lobby” for the pipeline’s demise.
“I felt like it was the best day of my life,” says Ella Rose, a Friends of Buckingham member, in a celebratory email. “I feel that all the hard work that all of us have done was finally for good. I feel like I have my life back. I can now sleep better without the worries that threatened my life for so long.”
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Quote of the week
“It is past time. As the capital city of Virginia, we have needed to turn this page for decades. And today, we will.”
—Richmond mayor Levar Stoney on the city’s removal of its Stonewall Jackson and Matthew Fontaine Maury statues
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Loan-ly at the top
On Monday, the government released a list of companies that accepted loans through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, designed to keep workers employed during COVID’s economic slowdown. A variety of Charlottesville businesses accepted loans of $2-5 million, including Red Light Management, St. Anne’s-Belfield, and Tiger Fuel.
Renaming re-do
An advisory committee recommended last week that recently merged Murray High and Community Charter schools be renamed Rose Hill Community School, but this suggestion immediately raised eyebrows: Rose Hill was the name of a plantation that later became a neighborhood. The committee will reconvene to discuss options for a new moniker.
City hangs back
Charlottesville is one of a handful of localities that have pushed back against Governor Ralph Northam’s order to move to Phase 3 of reopening. While some of the state has moved forward, City Manager Tarron Richardson has decided to keep the city government’s facilities operating in accordance with Phase 2 requirements and restrictions. As stated on its website, this decision was made in order to “ensure the health and safety of staff and the public.”
Soldier shut in
Since at least the beginning of July, the gates of UVA’s Confederate cemetery, where a statue of a Confederate soldier stands, have been barricaded, reports the Cavalier Daily. A university spokesman says the school locked the cemetery because protesters elsewhere in the state have been injured by falling statues. Or maybe, as UVA professor Jalane Schmidt suggested on Twitter, “they’re tryna keep the dead from escaping.”
The six-story-tall equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee has towered over Richmond’s Monument Avenue since 1890. Soon, it’ll be gone, replaced by empty sky.
“That statue has been there for a long time. But it was wrong then and it’s wrong now. So we’re taking it down,” said Governor Ralph Northam during a June 4 press conference.
The announcement comes after the death of George Floyd sparked a week of national protests against police brutality. Demonstrators in Richmond have targeted the Lee statue since the protests began, spray painting “Black Lives Matter” and other slogans across the statue’s base. When Richmond police tear-gassed peaceful protesters at the site on Monday night, the statue became an even more charged symbol of oppression.
Richmonders have re-contextualized other Confederate spots in the city as well—the United Daughters of the Confederacy building, just a few blocks from the Lee statue, was lit on fire on May 31, with the word “Abolition” written next to its steps.
Zyahna Bryant, the Charlottesville student activist who started the petition to remove Charlottesville’s Lee statue in 2016, spoke at Northam’s press conference on Thursday.
“I want to make space to thank the activists in Charlottesville who have put in decades of work to get us to where we are today,” Bryant said. “Without them, we wouldn’t be here.”
Charlottesville, ground zero for the fight over Confederate monuments, could see its statues of Lee and Stonewall Jackson removed later in the summer. This year, the General Assembly finally passed a rule allowing localities to remove their Confederate monuments. The law will go into effect July 1, and then City Council will have to vote on their removal, hold a public hearing, and offer the statues to any museums that want them—a total of 60 days worth of legislative hoops to jump through—before the monuments can legally come down. At an event in March, local activist Don Gathers said he thought it best not to schedule the removal ahead of time, so as to avoid any potential violence.
Richmond’s Lee statue, by contrast, sits on state property, and can be removed without public comment or review. Northam says the cranes will roll in “as soon as possible” and put the statue in storage.
Amanda Chase, the only Republican who has so far announced a 2021 run for governor, called Northam’s decision a “cowardly capitulation to the looters and domestic terrorists” that’s aimed at “appeasing the left-wing mob.” A statement from a collection of Virginia’s Republican state senators said the statue should remain where it is, but called Chase’s statement “idiotic, inappropriate, and inflammatory,” reports WSLS 10 News. (Republicans have not won a statewide election in Virginia since 2009.)
The Lee statue in Richmond is one of five Confederate statues on Monument Avenue. The other four, which Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said Wednesday he also wants removed, are on land controlled by the city of Richmond. To take down those monuments, Stoney would have to follow the same process that’s required in Charlottesville.
Elsewhere in the country, many Confederate memorials have been torn down informally. People in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, have toppled statues during demonstrations, and monuments have been spray-painted and otherwise altered in countless other cities. In Alexandria, Virginia, even the United Daughters of the Confederacy got in on the action, removing a statue of a soldier that it owns from one of Alexandria’s central streets.
“Make no mistake,” Northam said at the press conference, “removing a symbol is important, but it’s only a step.”
“I want to be clear that there will be no healing or reconciliation until we have equity,” Bryant said. “Until we have fully dismantled the systems that oppress black and brown people.”
A few weeks ago, while driving past West Main and McIntire Road, my 5-year-old daughter peered out the car window and asked who those people were on the statue.
“That’s Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea,” I replied.
No, she insisted. “There’s only two.”
Lamely, I offered the party line: “Well, you can’t see Sacagawea very well because she’s low down, but that’s because she’s tracking, because she was their guide.”
My daughter stared at me doubtfully. “Anyway, statues, usually, are mens” she concluded, definitively (she’s still working on her grammar).
While I attempted to explain, I found it striking, and a little funny, that what’s so obvious to a kindergartener should be the source of years-long debate among the grown-ups.
In short, who we choose to venerate in our public places sends a very clear message about who matters. Historical plaques cannot compete with heroic, life-sized figures mounted on enormous pedestals and elevated dozens of feet off the ground. Pretty obvious.
To that end, Kehinde Wiley, the artist best known for his presidential portrait of Barack Obama, unveiled a new bronze sculpture, “Rumors of War,” in New York last week. The 27-foot-tall statue is modeled on one of J.E.B. Stuart, in Richmond, but replaces the Confederate general with a modern-day African American figure, in streetwear and dread-locks—as Architectural Digest put it, “the contemporary anti-image of a Robert E. Lee.”
It will eventually move to the lawn of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, bringing it into conversation with Richmond’s infamous line of Confederate monuments. As a work of art, it’s provocative and visually arresting, even in photographs. And as a public statement it is hugely powerful.
Charlottesville is a much smaller city, and adding more monuments rather than removing the old ones isn’t necessarily the best answer here. But how delightful it would be to think this creatively, and expansively, about what we want to say in our public spaces.
The 2020 federal fiscal year begins October 1, marking the deadline for Donald Trump’s presidential determination on the number of refugees allowed to enter the United States for resettlement. Virginia has already taken a hit from previous reductions by Trump, with Richmond’s Church World Service—one of nine State Department-designated resettlement agencies in the U.S.—announcing that it will close even before Trump makes his determination public.
“We’re turning our backs on a core American value,” says Harriet Kuhr, executive director of the Charlottesville International Rescue Committee. She cites the precipitous drop since Trump took office in the number of people allowed to enter the U.S. after fleeing violence, persecution, and famine in their home countries.
By the end of September each year, the president is required to announce the limit for refugee admissions to the U.S. The determination process is mandated by the Refugee Act of 1980, and requires that the president consult with Congress to reach a decision that is “justified by humanitarian concern.”
In September 2016, President Barack Obama significantly increased that limit to 110,000 for fiscal year 2017, responding to the Syrian refugee crisis. But shortly after taking office, President Trump lowered the refugee ceiling to 50,000 by executive order. In September 2017 and 2018, respectively, Trump cut the maximum number to 45,000 and 30,000.
In recent weeks, rumors have swirled around reports that the Trump administration is considering one of two options for fiscal year 2020: reducing the cap to 10,000 to 15,000 refugees, or dismantling the U.S. refugee resettlement program entirely. Prominent voices have risen in opposition to the anticipated cuts, including high-ranking former military leaders, who argue that failing to accommodate asylum-seekers who have helped our defense, diplomatic, and intelligence efforts could erode national security.
Here in Charlottesville, Kuhr says our local IRC office is not threatened with closing, but she still worries as this year’s deadline draws near. “We don’t know yet what the numbers will be,” she says. “But what we do know is that it seems there is this intention to again significantly reduce the number of refugee admissions at a time when more people are in need than at any other time in history.”
Numbers from the U.N. Refugee Agency back her up. By the end of 2018, the agency reports, 70.8 million individuals worldwide had been forcibly displaced. These included 25.9 million refugees, less than 1 percent of whom have the opportunity to resettle in another country.
“Even before any of this started with Trump, the number of refugees who ever get resettled in a third country—that’s including the U.S. and Canada, all of Europe, and any other country—was already a tiny, tiny number,” says Kuhr. “But now that solution for some of the most vulnerable people in the world is under threat for no apparent reason.”
“We have people who have already been vetted,” she continues. “They have already gone through a stringent security process. They have been found to be in dire need of a new start and a new life—and we’re basically turning our backs on them.”
In 2018, the IRC resettled 154 people here, far below its capacity of 250. “Charlottesville has been a wonderful place for refugee families,” she says. “They feel safe here. They feel welcome. The kids are thriving in school. The parents are working. We know there are people in need of what we have to offer. Yet we’re not being allowed to [offer it].”
Kuhr hasn’t given up hope, but neither is she optimistic. “My expectation is that no matter what happens, the IRC is not going away. We will still be here. We are still resettling a significant number of people, but a lot less than we were two or three years ago.”
Have you heard the news? The planet is getting hotter and it’s a real problem. That was the simple but important takeaway from a recent event at The Paramount Theater, hosted by Piedmont Master Gardeners and Virginia Cooperative Extension. Hundreds of attendees learned about the impact of climate change in the natural spaces around them, and what’s yet to come as temperatures steadily rise.
Even for the most conscientious Charlottesville resident, acknowledging and planning for climate change can feel overwhelming. But activists at the Paramount event warned that it’s imperative to know what lies ahead for our region—and our planet—in the face of global warming, and take action.
One simple option is to plant more trees to sequester increasing carbon dioxide emissions. You could not only help the Earth but also naturally cool your home by planting deciduous trees on its east and west sides. “We probably can’t stop climate change rapidly enough, so we’re going to have to learn to live with it,” said Francis Reilly, Jr., of Washington, D.C., the emcee and a master gardener with more than 35 years of experience as an advisor on environmental policy.
Reilly also suggested mitigating the effects of global warming by creating landscapes with woody, carbon dioxide-absorbing plants, and in a way that minimizes mowable grass. (Most mowers still use fossil fuels, in addition to the other environmental issues, like water and pesticide use, associated with lawns.)
According to Reilly, warmer winters mean garden pests like pine bark beetles and corn earworms will thrive. That’s bad. And less snow equals a drier spring. That’s also bad. An increase in frost-free days will make crops more vulnerable to colder temperatures, so that’s also not good—unless you’re growing sweet potatoes, which prefer a hot, dry environment (and which you probably aren’t growing).
Another speaker at the event, Jeremy Hoffman, a climate and earth scientist at Richmond’s Science Museum of Virginia, said we’re now seeing earlier springs and summers at the expense of falls and winters. In Charlottesville, he said, the average last-freeze date each spring has moved up a week—from April 8 to April 1—over the past 120 years. While this technically extends the growing season, it’s still problematic, because if farmers decide to get a head start on planting, their crops can be killed by a surprise frost. Despite climate change, a crop-destroying freeze is still possible, because of the Earth’s tilt, and this raises the probability of food shortages, Hoffman said.
Hoffman also brought up another climate-change fact: Because of warmer weather, the local mosquito season is now 20 days longer than it was in 1970. It also means folks with seasonal allergies are reaching for their Zyrtec earlier than ever. In 2017, Hoffman said, tree-allergy season in Richmond peaked on April 15, about eight days earlier than 30 years ago.
As the evidence mounts, more people have come to understand that climate change is real. Seventy percent of Virginians—and 80 percent of Charlottesville residents—agree that global warming is happening, according to a study by Utah State University, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Yale. Also statewide, 80 percent of people agree that global warming should be regulated as a pollutant. Curiously, only 42 percent think it will harm them personally, and only 21 percent say they became aware of global warming through the media.
Those statistics would suggest that we have a long way to go, even when it comes to awareness of the global rise in temperatures. Hoffman admitted that it can be a hard topic to discuss. To help start those conversations, he gave his audience some easy talking points: It’s real, it’s caused by humans, and there’s hope. Echoing other experts, he ensured that we haven’t yet lost the battle against climate change: “There’s a lot we can do about it.”
Samantha Baars, a former C-VILLE Weekly staff writer, now works for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which was a sponsor of the Paramount event.
Talking about climate change isn’t usually inspiring, but experts at the Paramount event repeatedly stressed how everyone has the power to help mitigate it. The nonprofit group Piedmont Master Gardeners says small decisions you make while landscaping can make a big difference for environmental health. Here are some tips:
• Plant native species in your garden and remove invasive species, because natives save water and provide food and habitat for wild-
life, while invasives can out-compete them and reduce biodiversity.
• Reduce or eliminate your use of toxic chemicals for landscaping.
• Prevent soil loss due to erosion by covering bare soil with ground covers, shrubs, grasses, and trees.
• Grow your own food and support area food producers by going to farmers markets and spots that use local ingredients.
• Conserve water by collecting it in a rain barrel or cistern and using it to hydrate your plants.
For more resources, visit piedmontmastergardeners.org
Is love in the air? It appears so–at least between the cities of Richmond and Charlottesville, as witnessed by the number of businesses that have decided to open locations in both cities. Charlottesville, with its beautiful setting and college town vibe, has long made lists of best places to live and work. And in the past few years, Richmond has experienced a renaissance of sorts, with praise seemingly pouring in weekly for its long-underrated, still burgeoning arts, dining, and entrepreneurial scene. So it’s not surprising that a mutual admiration society has developed between the two cities.
Hardywood Park Craft Brewery and Sugar Shack donuts, both born in the River City, added Charlottesville locations on West Main Street–Hardywood in February 2017 and Sugar Shack in June 2018 (bringing with it sister business Luther Burger not long after).
Also coming to Charlottesville in early 2020: Quirk Hotel, which first debuted in Richmond in 2015. Why are they interested in C’ville? “First and foremost, the numbers indicate that Charlottesville is a stronger hospitality market than Richmond,” says Quirk Hotel co-owner Ted Ukrop. “Second, UVA is a major and sustainable economic and cultural engine. Having said that, there are also plenty of innovative companies, organizations, and people that align with Quirk’s brand.” The proximity to Hooville–just an hour away–also made a second Quirk location appealing, Ukrop adds.
Meanwhile, Richmond has already experienced an influx of Charlottesville-based businesses, like Roots Natural Kitchen (opened July 2018 in the VCU area), Three Notch’d Brewing Company (opened in 2016 in Scott’s Addition as the RVA Collab House), and Citizen Burger Bar (also opened in 2016, in Carytown). The city’s developing reputation as a supportive, destination craft beer scene was a big draw for Hunter Smith, who founded Champion Brewing in Charlottesville and opened a Richmond location in January 2017 on Grace Street downtown.
“The two cities and their respective governments operate quite differently, which was informative from a business perspective, and has helped me to evaluate additional locations,” says Smith. “I appreciate [chef] Jason Alley from Pasture and Comfort for introducing me to the beautiful former bank space we’re now lucky enough to occupy.”
Up next? Starr Hill Brewery, which is opening Starr Hill Beer Hall & Rooftop in Richmond’s Scott’s Addition this summer. Also coming soon: Common House, the “contemporary social club” that opened in C’ville in 2017, will make the RVA’s Arts District its home sometime in 2019. You’ll be able to find the newest Common House at 305 W. Broad St., just steps away from the original Quirk Hotel.
“Richmond feels like it’s in the midst of a cultural revolution that we are anxious to participate in,” says Common House co-founder Derek Sieg. “The food is world-class, the art scene is electric, and the energy in the entrepreneur community rivals that of any city its size.” While Sieg says his team has been looking at other creative markets in the Southeast in anticipation of growth, the proximity to Charlottesville helped clinch the second location.
“We have a lot of Richmond-based members who use Common House as a landing spot when they’re in Charlottesville, and vice versa, so we see this cross-pollination firsthand and look forward to being a fruit of that pollination ourselves,” he says.
We’re lucky to have Richmond. As a mid-size city, it can offer certain things that Charlottesville doesn’t, but it’s small enough that it’s simple to navigate. And when I took my kids there recently, I was surprised—as I often am—at how easy it is to get there.
That’s not even counting I-64, which might be fast but—I’ll go out on a limb here—is also the most boring stretch of interstate in the nation. Instead, I drove most of the way on 250. Up and down we went over rolling hills, with always something new to look at. For me, that’s well worth a few extra minutes of travel.
Our destinations that day were the Science Museum of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, though I wasn’t certain we’d make it to both. My girls, ages 7 and 5, voted to start with science, maybe because I’d told them about the Body Worlds exhibit, “Animal Inside Out,” on view there this summer. That was a must-see.
But first, we paused in the museum lobby to take in what turned out to be one of our favorite elements of the day: a 96-foot-long pendulum, suspended from the dome of this former train station, traveling back and forth at a stately speed. The 235-pound weight knocks down a circle of pegs, one by one, as the Earth turns beneath it. Witnessing a peg fall feels like an event, and the girls were suitably impressed.
We glanced over an exhibit on speed, finding much of it to be a bit contrived, and pressed on to “Animal Inside Out.” If you’re not familiar with the idea of plastination, it’s a method of preserving bodies by replacing water and fat with plastics, leaving specimens odorless, durable and amazingly intact. Body Worlds exhibits have toured the world since 1995, sometimes stirring controversy. This one, with its focus on animals, offers many different ways to understand anatomy.
Beginning with sea creatures like squid and scallops, then progressing to mammals, we gaped at bodies and body parts in various forms. There are specimens that show the incredible density of blood vessels in a body; others highlight internal organs, or muscles and bones. Plastinated bodies can be shown with skin and fur still on, or partially or totally removed. They can be sliced thinner than paper or opened up like a book.
If you’re wrinkling your nose, this exhibit may not be for you. The bodies are fascinating and sometimes startling—for me, the first mammal I encountered, a horse with its head in three vertical slices, was a minor shock.
But I found the exhibit enlightening, not disturbing, even where it included human bodies. I think my kids agreed. They used words like “creepy” and “wow” and “the perfect thing to be for Halloween.”
They also zoomed through it about twice as quickly as I would have liked to—fair warning for contemplative adults.
Leaving “Animal Inside Out,” we found ourselves learning about the nest-building behavior of the cutlips minnow. This is characteristic of the SMV: A lot of information comes at you, sometimes without much context. It’s up to you whether to interpret for your kids, or just let it all wash over them. An exhibit called “Boost” was, for us, an exercise in confusion.
But we all liked sitting in a small theater to watch “rat basketball”—a short live program designed to teach the basics of behavioral psychology. The girls also enjoyed seeing a working beehive, turtles in terrariums and—again—that beautiful pendulum, always in motion.
We could have walked, as it turned out, to our other two destinations. Then again, parking was so easy (and free) that it caused no stress to drive. We found lunch in Carytown at the Can Can Brasserie. It’s a French place with a pressed-tin ceiling and great service, and the girls loved their “Eloise” drinks—like a Shirley Temple with a sliced orange.
Although the hour grew late, we made a stop at the VMFA anyway, encouraged to do so by the fact that the museum is free. Stopping by for a short time, then, is entirely reasonable. (Maybe, with kids, it’s even preferable.)
On a friend’s recommendation, we headed straight for the display of Fabergé eggs. I lifted each girl up to let her view the intricate creations, whose fineness I’d never appreciated before. We each chose a favorite, and we were enchanted by videos showing how the eggs ingeniously open and unfold.
As at the science museum, the building itself is half the fun—in this case, a modernist gem with a truly lovely, water-filled courtyard. We decided that next time, we’ll reverse our itinerary, starting at the VMFA and topping off the day with a film at the science museum’s Dome theater. After all, we’ll always have Richmond.
If you thought 2017 was a year like no other, well, 2018 will likely continue to ride the tide of the unprecedented, at least according to what we’ve seen in the new year’s first week.
The General Assembly begins its session January 10 with a tsunami shift from last year’s seemingly unbreachable 66-34 GOP majority. The makeover from the November 2017 election unseated 15 white male Republicans. Among the 15 Democrats taking office are 11 women, including the state’s first transgender legislator, first openly lesbian delegate, first Asian American and first Latinas.
For a few months, it looked like the legislature would be evenly split 50-50, until a random drawing January 4 kept the balance of power with the Republicans 51-49 when the 94th District’s David Yancey’s name was pulled out of a bowl to break the tie with Dem Shelly Simonds.
Even if Simonds asks for another recount, which means Yancey won’t be seated until the recount is certified, the GOP will hold a 50-49 majority, enough for it to elect Kirk Cox to succeed longtime speaker Bill Howell.
“We’ve never had a tied race for equitable distribution of the House of Delegates,” says State Board of Elections Vice Chair Clara Belle Wheeler. “We’ve never had a 50-50 split. There’s no protocol on how to pick a speaker.”
That crisis was averted, but questions remain about how the shift in power will affect legislation and committee assignments, where previously, Democratic bills went to die in subcommittee.
“The speaker has immense power,” says former Daily Progress political reporter Bob Gibson. “He has the ability to assign all members to all committees—at any time. The speaker assigns all bills to committees. It’s unlike anyone in the Senate.”
House Minority Leader David Toscano is optimistic that Cox won’t stack committees with Republicans because for the past two decades, the House leadership has agreed to proportional representation on committees.
Of course, those proportions look a lot different with a 66-34 majority than a slimmed down 51-49 majority.
“There is no doubt November 7 was an earthquake in Virginia,” says Toscano.
UVA Center for Politics’ Geoffrey Skelley says, “On the face of it, it’s a closer divided chamber. Previously, when Republicans were working with a very large majority, they could ignore anything Democrats had to say.”
Going in to the session even with a slim majority, “the GOP doesn’t have to worry about power sharing,” says Skelley.
The nearly even body has led Toscano to warn his members to not call in sick and not go to the bathroom during the floor session, in case a close vote is called while the member is away, the Washington Post reports.
And it’s not like shenanigans haven’t taken place in both chambers in the past.
The last time the House was this closely split was in 1998, when Dems held 50 seats and the GOP had 49, plus an independent who tended to vote with Republicans. “When the session opened, the Democrats had a slight majority and reelected Thomas Moss as speaker before other Republicans could be seated,” recounts Skelley. “There was a lot of outrage.”
And in 2013, with a 20-20 Senate split, Republicans took advantage of Democratic Senator Henry Marsh’s absence to attend President Barack Obama’s inauguration to vote to redraw the lines and take a chunk out of Marsh’s district.
Skelley doesn’t think the GOP can write off Dem political pressure after the 2017 election, especially with midterm congressional elections looming. “At the same time, in this partisan era, I’m going to vote on them battening down the hatches, especially if they’re stacking committees.”
Skelley points out that the House makeup could still shift if Simonds calls for a recount. And that’s not the only district where election results are being challenged. In the 28th District around Fredericksburg, where Republican Bob Thomas won by 73 votes after a recount, voters have filed suit in federal court asking for a special election because 147 voters were given the wrong ballots for their district. “That’s another potential sleeping dog,” he says.
And while all attention has been focused on the uncertainty in the House of Delegates, Republicans hold a slim 21-19 lead in the Senate, with a Democratic lieutenant governor as tiebreaker, offering an opportunity for bipartisanship in the usually more moderate body.
Albemarle Delegate Rob Bell, a Republican who’s heading to Richmond for his 17th session, is not perturbed by the influx of Dems. He says he’s served in close sessions before, as well as under both Republican and Democratic governors. “For a bill to become law, Governor Northam has to sign it, and we have to work together for that to happen,” he says.
Speaker Cox hasn’t made committee assignments yet, but with Bell the vice chair and senior member of the Courts of Justice committee, it’s possible he could end up chair. [Update January 11: Bell was named chair.]
Twelve-term Republican Delegate Steve Landes, who represents western Albemarle, also has accrued seniority, and last year was chair of the education committee and vice chair of appropriations.
“One of my concerns is from listening to a lot of new members, who seem to be anti-business,” says Landes. “When the governor-elect is trying to improve the economy, saying business is the enemy” is not helpful, he says.
Landes offers a different perspective from pundits on how the House will operate with the influx of Dems. “The majority of what we do is not partisan.”
As for the still possibly up-in-the-air election results, says Landes, “We’ll play the cards we’re dealt.”
The General Assembly is a part-time gig, with the budget session lasting 60 days if all goes well. To Republican Delegate Matt Fariss, who represents southern Albemarle, some of the newly elected delegates seemed unaware that they need to be in Richmond for eight or nine weeks.
“My freshman year there were 13 of us,” he says. Adjusting to the House was like “drinking water from a firehose,” he says. “We knew to be quiet and learn.”
When it comes to his new colleagues, he says, “It’ll be interesting to see what they can get done.”
State Senator Creigh Deeds, who first came to the General Assembly in 1992, says the biggest difference will be “most Republicans in the House of Delegates have never been there when they didn’t have a supermajority.”
Says Deeds, “I think having to work with the other side is not a bad thing in a democracy.”
Biennium budget
Every other year, the General Assembly makes a budget, and this is the year.
“The budget will be and always is the biggest issue,” says Landes. “The unknown is whether we’ll have additional dollars. That could help us or hurt us.”
“The hardy perennials are still there—education, Medicaid and Medicaid expansion,” says Bell.
“The good news is our economy is picking up,” says Toscano. The biennium budget outgoing Governor Terry McAuliffe submitted has $500 million earmarked for new Standards of Quality for education, including teacher salaries, he says.
“Teachers and rural sheriffs’ departments need to get paid more,” says Fariss. “They’re having a hard time keeping deputies.” And he wants to avoid the situation of a couple of years ago when state employees were promised 2 percent raises, only to have state revenues fall short.
Medicaid expansion
McAuliffe pressed to expand Medicaid for 400,000 uninsured Virginians and take federal Affordable Care Act dollars every year he was in office—to no avail in the GOP-dominated General Assembly.
Bell, who is not a supporter of expanded Medicaid, refuses to speculate on how it will fare this year. “I always hesitate to predict,” he says.
“We have a real shot at doing that,” offers Toscano.
“I honestly think Medicaid expansion has a real chance this year,” says Deeds, because the need for coverage continues to grow, especially in mental health.
Former reporter Gibson also says Medicaid expansion has a better chance, especially with a couple of moderate Republicans in the Senate open to the idea. And he points out that Democratic Governor-elect Ralph Northam, who campaigned on expanded health care, strikes a “cooperative, bipartisan tenor.”
Northam is also the first governor elected who’s a Sorensen Institute alum, notes Gibson, who used to head the political leadership institute. “He’s a true moderate.”
However, Skelley says the Republicans who lost their seats in the House were the moderates. “If the House is even more conservative, that would auger poorly for Medicaid expansion. That’s such a polarizing issue.”
Nonpartisan redistricting
As more citizens understand the impact of gerrymandering, which gave Republicans their 66-34 House of Delegates majority despite Democrats winning all statewide races since 2012, the call for reform continues.
Previously, “anti-gerrymandering bills, despite Republican support, get killed in subcommittee,” says Gibson, who also co-chairs with former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, a Republican, an advisory panel with One Virginia 2021, a bipartisan group advocating—and litigating—for compact, contiguous line-drawing when redistricting occurs in 2021 after the 2020 census.
Toscano says redistricting reform “may have a shot and Republicans could say, ‘We’d be better off with nonpartisan redistricting, especially if the Democrats are drawing the lines.’” But such reform requires a constitutional amendment, not an easy process that must go before voters twice before it becomes law.
“I could imagine some consensus on that,” says Skelley. “However, it would have to get out of committee.” The reform requires General Assembly members giving up their right to draw the lines and a constitutional amendment.
“It could be an opportunity for progress,” says Skelley, adding, “I’m skeptical.”
Following the summer of hate in Charlottesville, Toscano and Deeds will be carrying bills designed to lessen the area’s attractiveness as a place for violent clashes.
One bill adds Charlottesville and Albemarle to the 10 or so localities in the state that can prohibit people from carrying guns in public places, Toscano says.
Another would allow localities to determine what to do with monuments in public spaces, an issue that’s currently being litigated in Charlottesville after City Council’s vote to remove two Confederate monuments. “Mine would clear that up,” says Toscano.
A third bill was proposed by McAuliffe, who wanted Toscano to carry it, says the delegate. “It gives more flexibility for localities to regulate weapons around demonstrations like August 12.”
Toscano predicts there will be a lot more gun-safety legislation, much of it coming from Northern Virginia delegates who ran on issues such as restricting bump stocks, like those used in the Las Vegas massacre, or reinstating Virginia’s purchasing-one-gun-a-month prohibition.
The long-term viability of solar energy depends on the ability to store energy when the sun is not shining, says Toscano, and he’s carrying two bills to encourage increased battery capacity, including tax credits.
And he’s got money in the budget to go to the Daughters of Zion to help figure out who is buried in the downtown cemetery.
Bell is carrying one of his perennials, the Tebow bill, which would allow homeschooled students to participate in public school sports. “McAuliffe vetoed it three times,” he counts.
Bell’s bills typically deal with criminal justice, and this session he’s trying again with restitution reform. Its numbers “shock the conscience,” he says—$230 million overdue to victims.
Service dogs in court became an issue here recently, says Bell, so he wants to define what exactly a service animal is and what sort of notice must be given to have them show up in courtrooms.
He’s also got a bill that re-examines the statute of limitations for animal cruelty.
Landes usually carries legislation dealing with education, and this year he has a bill that establishes academic standards for dual-enrolling high school students who take community college courses. He also wants to make it easier to move from other professions into teaching to alleviate the teacher shortage, and proposes shortening a collegiate teacher-certification program from five to three years.
Last year Landes caused a stir when he tried to modify the ironclad revenue-sharing with Charlottesville that’s widely loathed by Albemarle residents. “I’m looking at that and hoping to reopen talks between the city and county,” he says.
Redistricting reform is not typically an issue for Republicans, but it is for many of Landes’ gerrymandered constituents, so he’s taking another crack at it, this time focusing on the process around line drawing so that localities don’t make precincts that the legislature will split.
Rustburg resident Fariss says his bills are aimed at reducing regulations to make it easier for people to do business. For example, a single proprietor locksmith has to jump through the same hoops as a business with 10 people, he says.
And Fariss has had it with hunters who dump animal remains all over the place. “It makes me so mad when these deer hunters throw deer carcasses out along public roads,” he says. He wants stiffer penalties and to draw attention to the unsightly littering.
Legislators file thousands of bills—literally—during their 60-day session, most of which die quietly in subcommittee. Because the elected ones have until the morning of January 10 to get those bills filed, we’ve only seen a smattering of legislation.
Here’s some of what the General Assembly will be considering.
• Menstrual supplies exempt from sales tax, aka the Dignity Act. If you’re betting this bill didn’t come from a man, you’d be right. Another bill provides female inmates menstrual supplies at no extra cost.
• Swearing or cursing in public no longer a crime.
• Elimination of the Kings Dominion law. A couple of bills would allow localities to set their own school calendars, rather than have to request permission from the General Assembly to start school before Labor Day.
• Absentee voting for any reason, unlike current law that only allows specific excuses for not showing up at the polls on election day to vote.
• Female genital mutilation would become a Class 6 felony rather than the misdemeanor it currently is.
• Grand larceny threshold. Currently stealing something that costs $200 is a felony. Various bills up that limit to $500, $750, $1,000 and $1,500.
• Fornication between unmarried people would no longer be a crime.
• No talking while driving. Virginia could join the many other states that prohibit use of a handheld cellphone while driving.
Former Albemarle County registrar Jim Heilman, who has traveled all over the world monitoring elections in developing democracies, has been through at least eight recounts. “I believe I’m fairly knowledgeable about recounts,” he says.
And that’s why he feels qualified to declare that the three-judge panel handling the recount in the 94th District, upon which control of the House of Delegates hinged, made “two major mistakes.”
Democratic challenger Shelly Simonds trailed Republican incumbent David Yancey by 10 votes in the November 7 election for the 94th District seat representing the Newport News area.
A December 19 recount put Simonds ahead by one vote. The Republican leadership sent its congratulations and the recount results went to a three-judge panel the next day for certification.
That’s where things went screwy, say Heilman, who also is a member of Albemarle’s electoral board, but stresses he’s speaking personally, not as a board member.
Overnight, an unnamed Republican contacted one of the judges and said an invalid ballot should be counted, says Heilman. And the three-judge panel reopened the recount.
“Mistake No. 1,” he says.
He explains that recount officials are appointed by each party, and with Democratic and Republican observers on hand, they feed all of the paper ballots through the optical scanners, which kick out undervotes or overvotes. Those are the ones recount officials scrutinize, he says.
And if there are questions about the ballot’s validity, it goes to the three-judge panel, says Heilman.
The ballot in question, which had bubbles filled out for both Simonds and Yancey and a line through Simonds’ name, was declared invalid by the recount officials, who signed off on the recount, as did the registrar, says Heilman.
“The three-judge panel has no reason to open the recount,” says Heilman. “The election is over. Under the Code of Virginia, they had no legal right to reopen the recount.”
The second mistake, he says, was to count the vote for Yancey.
“The universal principle is that the intent of the voter is clear,” says Heilman. State election guidelines have “pages and pages” on what constitutes clear intent and whether a ballot is valid or invalid, he says.
The judges looked at other races marked on the ballot and reasoned that because the voter went Republican, using an X to indicate Ed Gillespie for governor, the intent was to vote for Yancey.
“No, no, no,” says Heilman.”It could be a split ticket. They shouldn’t be looking at other races.”
State elections guidelines are clear, he says. “Two shaded bubbles is an invalid ballot.”
Albemarle resident and State Board of Elections Vice Chair Clara Belle Wheeler disagrees, and says a 2015 revision in the rules for recounts allows the ballot to be counted if the intention is understandable. “The three-judge panel deliberated for over two hours,” she says, and until the panel certifies the recount, “It’s not a done deal.”
Heilman and Wheeler agree about one thing: If a voter marks the wrong candidate, he should get a new ballot.
Heilman says the optical reader likely would have had a pop-up screen indicating a problem with the ballot when the vote was cast. “I guess the voter didn’t want a new ballot,” he surmises.
The three-judge panel declared the race a tie at 11,608 votes each. The panel refused to reconsider Simonds’ challenge to the recount, and less than a week before the General Assembly was gaveled into session, Yancey won a drawing out of a bowl January 4, giving Republicans a 51-49 majority in the House and the opportunity to elect a GOP speaker.