VaNews July 10, 2019
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** EXECUTIVE BRANCH
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** NORTHAM BOTH A LEADER AND A TARGET IN GUN CONTROL FIGHT ([link removed])
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By MICHAEL MARTZ, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Gov. Ralph Northam is a doctor who doesn’t usually wear his emotions on his sleeve, but his bedside manner changes on the subject of gun violence. Less than two days after a fiery appearance at a black church in Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood, Northam was still trying to hold back his emotions as he spoke about seeing the wounded following a May 31 mass shooting in Virginia Beach that left 12 slain and four seriously injure


** GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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** VIRGINIA LAWMAKERS WON'T CONSIDER ANY GUN BILLS UNTIL AFTER NOVEMBER ELECTIONS ([link removed])
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By MARIE ALBIGES AND PETER COUTU, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Less than two hours after beginning a special session ordered by the Democratic governor to consider new gun laws, Republican lawmakers voted Tuesday to adjourn until November without debating any legislation. That means Virginia won't pass any laws following the Virginia Beach mass shooting, at least until after the Nov. 5 election. Democrats objected to the move, but were powerless to stop it.


** GUN BILLS DELAYED UNTIL AFTER NOVEMBER ELECTION ([link removed])
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By GRAHAM MOOMAW AND PATRICK WILSON, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Advocates on both sides of the gun debate descended on the Capitol for the extraordinary summertime session Gov. Ralph Northam called in the aftermath of the May 31 mass shooting at a municipal building in Virginia Beach that left 12 people dead. As lawmakers entered the Capitol, gun control activists surrounded the entrance, chanting: “Floor vote today!” But the short day ended with gun rights groups applauding Republicans’ maneuver to send all the legislation to the State Crime Commission for a monthslong study.


** GUN DEBATE ENDS ABRUPTLY IN VIRGINIA AS GOP-CONTROLLED LEGISLATURE ADJOURNS AFTER 90 MINUTES ([link removed])
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By BY GREGORY S. SCHNEIDER , LAURA VOZZELLA AND ANTONIO OLIVO, Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Virginia’s Republican-controlled General Assembly abruptly adjourned a special legislative session on gun control after 90 minutes Tuesday without considering a single bill. Hundreds of gun-control activists and gun rights protesters who had packed the State Capitol after lobbying and demonstrating all morning were stunned. “Gutless bastards!” one man shouted from the House of Delegates gallery.


** GENERAL ASSEMBLY ADJOURNS WITH NO ACTION ON GUN BILLS, ELECTION 4 MONTHS AWAY ([link removed])
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By AMY FRIEDENBERGER, Roanoke Times (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

Well, that didn’t take long. About 90 minutes after the Republican-controlled General Assembly convened for a special session to debate guns in the wake of the May 31 shooting at a municipal building at Virginia Beach that left 12 dead, lawmakers went home without taking any action on legislation. The House of Delegates and Senate abruptly adjourned until November, stunning Democrats who had introduced several gun control bills at the request of Gov. Ralph Northam and hoped to present them.


** NORMENT ADMITS TO 'MACHIAVELLIAN THOUGHTS' AFTER INTRODUCING, THEN STRIKING, GUN CONTROL BILL ([link removed])
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By PATRICK WILSON, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Senate Republican Majority Leader Tommy Norment caused a stir in the Virginia Capitol on Monday after he filed a bill that would ban the public from bringing guns into local government buildings, something gun rights groups strongly oppose. By Tuesday afternoon, Norment, of James City County, announced through an aide that he would strike the bill.


** AMID BITTER DIVISIONS ON GUN CONTROL IN VIRGINIA, MOMENTS OF UNDERSTANDING ([link removed])
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By GREGORY S. SCHNEIDER AND LAURA VOZZELLA, Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

One man held an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and wore a black “Make America Great Again” hat. The other man held a sign with a picture of two arms in an embrace and the caption “The only arms we need” and wore a blue hat that said “Make America Obama Again.” They were caught Tuesday morning outside the Virginia State Capitol between hundreds of anti-gun protesters on one side and a long line of gun rights activists on the other.


** HUNDREDS RALLY IN RICHMOND, ON BOTH SIDES OF GUN DEBATE ([link removed])
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By MARIE ALBIGES AND PETER COUTU, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Ruth Winters was hopeful when she met with Sen. Tommy Norment a few weeks after the Virginia Beach mass shooting. As founder of the Peninsula chapter of Moms Demand Action, Winters was surprised she got a meeting in the first place — it was the first time to her knowledge the Republican Senate majority leader from James City County had agreed to meet with her organization. And she was even more surprised Tuesday when she arrived in Richmond and heard Norment wanted to ban guns in all government buildings.


** GUN-SESSION RESULT TRIGGERS OUTRAGE AMONG DEMOCRATS ([link removed])
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By BILL ATKINSON, Progress Index (Metered paywall - 5 free articles a month)

They call General Assembly Republicans ‘irresponsible,’ ‘cowards’ for delaying action on legislation until after the November elections Virginia Democrats strongly denounced the General Assembly’s Republican leadership for bringing a special session on gun legislation to an abrupt halt Tuesday and delaying any action until after the fall legislative elections.


** VIRGINIA IS NOW ELECTION BATTLEGROUND IN FIGHT OVER GUN LAWS ([link removed])
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By ALAN SUDERMAN AND SARAH RANKIN, Associated Press

Deep-pocketed interest groups and activists on both sides of the long-running fight over gun laws are gearing up for a major clash in Virginia, now a key election battleground in the issue after Republicans on Tuesday adjourned a special legislative session called by the governor to consider gun-control measures in the wake of a mass shooting. The state’s off-year election will be closely watched because Virginia is the only state where control of the Legislature is up for grabs in 2019. Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.


** STATE GOVERNMENT
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** BLUE RIDGE REHAB, ASSISTED-LIVING FACILITIES IN MARTINSVILLE TAKEN OVER BY COURT ([link removed])
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By PAUL COLLINS, Martinsville Bulletin

A judge has issued an emergency order and appointed a special receiver in an effort to keep open the financially struggling Blue Ridge Rehab Center and Blue Ridge Manor in Martinsville. The order was issued June 20 by Martinsville Circuit Court Judge G. Carter Greer because officials with the Virginia Department of Health and Virginia Department of Social Services indicated in court filings that it’s important for the skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility to be maintained.


** CONGRESS
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** BEN CLINE ANSWERS QUESTIONS FROM VOTERS IN STUARTS DRAFT ([link removed])
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By JERRY BLAIR, News Virginian

Ben Cline spent the better part of two hours Tuesday afternoon speaking to constituents and answering questions on a wide range of topics from the nearly 100 people packed into VFW Post 9339. The big national issues of the day — Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the 2016 presidential election, the immigration crisis at the southern border, gun control and health care — dominated much of the discussion.


** REP. BOBBY SCOTT, AT SCHOOLS EQUITY EVENT, SAYS FUNDING MECHANISM SPURS UNEQUAL EDUCATION ([link removed])
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By GABRIELLE BIRENBAUM, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

When the Supreme Court made its landmark ruling in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd, was 7 years old. Sixty-five years later, much has changed for the longtime congressman, the chair of the House Education and Labor Committee. And yet one thing that remains true is the reality of segregation, Scott told about 500 educators Tuesday at the Virginia is for All Learners Education Equity Summer Institute held at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.


** REP. SCOTT ON $15 MINIMUM WAGE BILL: ‘I’D LOVE TO CAMPAIGN ON IT’ ([link removed])
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By ROBIN BRAVENDER, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott (D-3rd) believes the U.S. House will soon pass his legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. “I feel confident that the votes are there,” said Scott, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. House leadership has announced that the measure — a top priority for Democrats in the chamber — will receive a floor vote next week.


** ECONOMY/BUSINESS
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** PERRONE LAUNCHES AUTONOMOUS SHUTTLE PROGRAM IN CROZET ([link removed])
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By ALLISON WRABEL, Daily Progress (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Autonomous shuttles are now on the road in Crozet. Perrone Robotics, a Crozet-headquartered developer of autonomous vehicle software, is running the pilot autonomous shuttle program in a partnership with JAUNT and Albemarle County.


** HIGHER EDUCATION
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** JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY RAISES MINIMUM WAGE TO $12 AN HOUR ([link removed])
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Associated Press

More than 100 employees at James Madison University have received a pay increase after the school adopted a minimum wage of $12 an hour. The school announced Monday that it was adopting a living wage for all full-time employees, and set the minimum wage at $12 an hour after determining that a living wage in Rockingham county is $11.38 an hour.


** VIRGINIA OTHER
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** DOZENS OF AGENCIES ENFORCE SAFETY ON APPALACHIAN TRAIL ([link removed])
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By ROBERT SORRELL, Washington County News

A Massachusetts man found incompetent to stand trial in the fatal attack of an Appalachian Trail hiker encountered a number of officers with law enforcement agencies — just a few of the dozens of departments that protect and serve the 2,180-mile-long corridor. In early May, the FBI charged James Jordan, 30, of West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, with murder and assault in the fatal stabbing of Ronald Sanchez Jr., 43, of Oklahoma, and wounding of an unidentified Canadian woman.


** LOCAL
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** ARLINGTON COUNTY CONSIDERING JAIL DIVERSION PROGRAM FOR MENTALLY ILL ([link removed])
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ArlNow

Arlington County is considering a new program to divert people with mental illnesses into treatment instead of jail. The proposed program would waive incarceration for people with mental illnesses who are convicted of non-violent misdemeanors if they agree to an intensive treatment program supervised by a judge.


** FAIRFAX CO. LEADERS VOICE SUPPORT FOR POLICE BODY CAMERA PROGRAM ([link removed])
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By MICHELLE BASCH, WTOP

Fairfax County, Virginia, police tested body-worn cameras in 2018, and several county leaders are expressing support for plans to bring them back permanently. It’s estimated that a program to outfit some 1,200 officers with cameras would cost almost $30 million over the first five years.


** PETERSBURG TREASURER FILES LAWSUIT OVER COUNCIL VOTE TO STRIP POWERS ([link removed])
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By SEAN GORMAN, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Petersburg Treasurer Kenneth Pritchett is challenging city efforts to strip him of responsibilities with a lawsuit alleging a majority of the City Council has worked to “eviscerate” the office he was elected to lead in 2017. The complaint, filed in Petersburg Circuit Court, centers on a 4-3 vote the council took in May to transfer powers from Pritchett to the collector of city taxes — a position that’s held by City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides.


** HUNDREDS OF ROBERT E. LEE HIGH SCHOOL-BRANDED ITEMS NOW FOR SALE ([link removed])
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By RILYN EISCHENS, News Leader (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Hundreds of Robert E. Lee High School-branded athletic uniforms are now for sale to the public. Now that Staunton High School is the school's official name, Staunton City Schools is clearing out unusable items with the Lee logo and colors. The school board declared a group of items – exclusively athletic uniforms and gear – as surplus at a meeting Monday night.


** SCHOOL LEADERS ASK ROANOKE COUNTY TO RECONSIDER FINANCING METHODS FOR LONG LIST OF SCHOOL RENOVATIONS ([link removed])
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By ALICIA PETSKA, Roanoke Times (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

Faced with a mounting list of facility needs, Roanoke County school leaders are gently nudging the county to consider reevaluating its long-standing approach to project financing. In a joint sit-down Tuesday, the county school board shared a new internal analysis that estimated it could take 20 years or more to tackle the school division’s renovation needs under the current financing plan.


** DEVELOPER GETS ENTIRE ADMISSIONS TAX FOR ENTERTAINMENT COMPLEX AT THE PINNACLE ([link removed])
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By JOE TENNIS, Bristol Herald Courier (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

Developer Steve Johnson is now set to receive the entire 10% admissions tax for his entertainment complex at The Pinnacle, the Washington County Board of Supervisors decided at its Tuesday night meeting. Johnson said the admissions tax — adopted earlier this year by the board — has been needed to help fund the $200 million entertainment complex, slated to include an amphitheater, hotel and water park just off Interstate 81’s Exit 1.


** COUNCIL SPARS BUT APPROVES FUNDS FOR SCHOOLS ([link removed])
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By DAVID MCGEE, Bristol Herald Courier (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

The Bristol Virginia City Council remains sharply divided about fixing its schools but came together Tuesday to approve a $100,000 appropriation to improve elementary school buildings. The 5-0 vote followed a spirited discussion where Councilman Kevin Mumpower said the city, not the school system, should manage the construction process — something Mayor Neal Osborne termed “micromanaging.”


** EDITORIALS
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** PREVAILING WINDS BLOW TOWARD VIRGINIA'S USE OF OFFSHORE WIND PROJECTS ([link removed])
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Daily Press Editorial (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Test turbines are a good way for Virginia to dip its toes into the water of alternative energy sources In about a year, Dominion Power will begin operating the first offshore wind turbines to be built in federal waters anywhere in the U.S.


** PASSION OUTPLAYED BY POLITICS AT GENERAL ASSEMBLY ([link removed])
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Richmond Times-Dispatch Editorial (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Tuesday’s special session of the General Assembly, called by Gov. Ralph Northam to pass “commonsense gun laws” in the immediate aftermath of the horrific May 31 shooting at Virginia Beach, lasted about as many minutes as there were total bills submitted. No one should have been surprised that the Republican-controlled legislature quickly dispatched the session, with GOP leaders dismissing it as “an election year stunt” by a Democratic governor scrambling to politically rehabilitate himself after the blackface scandal nearly forced him out of office.


** VIRGINIA REPUBLICANS DID NOTHING ON GUN CONTROL. VOTERS MUST TAKE ACTION. ([link removed])
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Washington Post Editorial (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

NO DEBATE. No action. No legislation. Total abdication. That was the upshot Tuesday from Richmond, where Republicans who control the General Assembly short-circuited the special session called by Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to deal with gun violence in the aftermath of the Virginia Beach mass shooting. The utter failure to rise to the governor’s challenge to address this issue — which Mr. Northam rightly called an emergency for both commonwealth and country — should prompt Virginia voters to take their own action.


** COLUMNISTS
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** SCHAPIRO: FOR NORTHAM, ADVERSITY MAY YET YIELD OPPORTUNITY ON GUNS ([link removed])
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By JEFF E. SCHAPIRO, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Ralph Northam — the bridge of his nose dinged by a runaway bungee cord while recently puttering on his sailboat — knows what it’s like to get roughed up in politics, too. He went through it for several months over the blackface calamity. He went through it for several hours Tuesday over the legislature’s response — non-response — to the May 31 mass slaying in Virginia Beach


** WILLIAMS: HANOVER COUNTY MUST NOT TOLERATE HATE ([link removed])
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By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

An unambiguous expression of revulsion at the assemblage of a white supremacist hate group should be an easy lift. Yet Hanover Board of Supervisors Chairman W. Canova Peterson — not unlike Donald Trump after the horrors of Charlottesville two years ago — cannot seem to pull it off.


** OP-ED
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** OWEN: VIRGINIA AND RICHMOND’S LONG ROAD TO ATONEMENT ([link removed])
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By KAREN OWEN, Published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

On June 23, The New York Times Sports Sunday section ran a cover story on the great Arthur Ashe and the renaming of the Boulevard. It was full of observations about “the former capital of the Confederacy,” about which no news story from Richmond is complete without mentioning. The narrative — as always seems to be the case — was about the city’s many shortcomings, not the redemptive and happy story at hand....But I have tired of persistent stereotypes that undercut the many advances that have been made in Richmond and Virginia, advances that belie how far both have come.

Karen Owen of Richmond is the former Viewpoints editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg and former publisher of literary fiction at Van Neste Books.


** FILLER-CORN AND SASLAW: AFTER THE VIRGINIA BEACH SHOOTING, LET’S REPLACE ‘THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS’ WITH ‘VOTES AND LAWS’ ([link removed])
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By EILEEN FILLER-CORN AND DICK SASLAW, Published in the Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

“The victims are in our thoughts and prayers.” We’ve all read and even offered our own variations of this condolence after every tragic shooting that makes the headlines. All too often Virginians have felt the pain of senseless death — 12 people murdered by a co-worker in Virginia Beach; 32 students and faculty gunned down at Virginia Tech; a little girl fatally shot at a Memorial Day picnic in Richmond

Eileen Filler-Corn, a Democrat, represents Fairfax Station in the Virginia House of Delegates. Dick Saslaw, a Democrat, represents Springfield in the Virginia Senate.


** SERIFF: PIPELINE HURTS, NOT HELPS, OUR ECONOMIC GROWTH ([link removed])
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By DAVID LEE SERIFF, Published in the Roanoke Times (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

On Feb. 4, 2015, The Roanoke Times published my commentary titled “Virginia’s Gold Rush.” My words decried the rush to build two massive 42” high-pressure gas pipelines across our state. I wrote: “Like the 49ers who rushed into California to stake their claims and strike it rich, energy companies are staking claims to lay fracked gas pipelines across both states. The mining claims of 160 years ago stole land from Native Americans, often through violence, and without compensation. These current land claims will commandeer private citizens’ property via the law of eminent domain. Big corporations will dictate what they pay, and landowners’ rights will be quashed in the name of progress.”

Seriff is a training manager with a technology company and lives in Blacksburg.


** FEINBLATT: IN VIRGINIA, REPUBLICAN LAWMAKERS CHOSE THE NRA OVER PUBLIC SAFETY ([link removed])
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By JOHN FEINBLATT, Published in the Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Politics is about choices, and today Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly chose a familiar response to the mass shooting in Virginia Beach: Complete and utter inaction. They chose not to act on a plan from Gov. Ralph Northam (D) to enact common-sense measures such as universal background checks, an extreme-risk law and an assault weapons ban that would keep guns away from people with dangerous histories.

John Feinblatt is president of Everytown for Gun Safety.
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