VaNews July 23, 2019
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** EXECUTIVE BRANCH
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** NORTHAM: ‘I WON’T BE THERE WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP IS HERE’ ([link removed])
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By DANIEL BERTI, Prince William Times

Gov. Ralph Northam said Monday he won’t be present for President Donald Trump’s remarks at the 400th anniversary of representative government in Jamestown later this month. Several of Virginia’s top Democrats have announced plans to boycott the event while Trump is in attendance.


** STATE ELECTIONS
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** MORE MONEY TALES FROM SENATE CAUCUS DONATIONS ([link removed])
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By DAVE RESS, Daily Press (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Once you know, as 10 state Senators learned last month, that you have no opposition in the November election, those six-figure fundraising successes of the previous few years must end up burning a hole in your pocket. ...Now that the June deadline is past for getting on the ballot, almost all of those unchallenged Democratic senators have cut big checks to the Senate Democratic caucus, which like its GOP counterpart serves as a kind of clearinghouse shifting funds from incumbents who don’t need the money to candidates who do.


** FEDERAL ELECTIONS
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** MARINE VETERAN ROB JONES ANNOUNCES CANDIDACY FOR VIRGINIA’S 10TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT SEAT ([link removed])
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By NATHANIEL CLINE, Loudoun Times

Marine veteran Rob Jones, a Republican, announced Monday he is running for Virginia’s 10th Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (VA-10th) holds the seat


** MARINE VETERAN ROB JONES OF VIRGINIA SEEKS TO CHALLENGE WEXTON ([link removed])
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By JENNA PORTNOY, Washington Post (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

A second Republican is seeking his party’s nomination to challenge Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) in 2020. Rob Jones, a Marine veteran and double amputee, announced his campaign for the 10th Congressional District on Monday, the nine-year anniversary of the day a bomb exploded beneath him in Afghanistan.


** STATE GOVERNMENT
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** WHERE VIRGINIA POLICE ARE MAKING THE MOST MARIJUANA ARRESTS ([link removed])
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By NED OLIVER, Virginia Mercury

As we reported last year, marijuana arrests in Virginia have been ticking up even as social views on the drug have softened. ...There’s no consensus on what’s driving the increase and no obvious geographic pattern. The localities with the five highest arrest rates last year were Colonial Heights, Emporia, Rockbridge County, Buena Vista and Martinsville.


** CONGRESS
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** SPANBERGER SAYS IMMIGRANT DETAINMENT FACILITIES AT BORDER IN TEXAS ARE 'OVERSTRESSED' ([link removed])
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By MEL LEONOR, Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-7th, on Friday traveled with a bipartisan delegation to the country’s southern border and described conditions at immigrant detainment facilities as “overcrowded and overstressed.” Spanberger said in an interview Monday that she joined over a dozen other members of Congress on a daylong trip that included a border entry point and detention facilities for adults, families and unaccompanied minors.


** ECONOMY/BUSINESS
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** RAIL CAR MAKER FREIGHTCAR TO CLOSE ROANOKE FACTORY AND ELIMINATE 200 JOBS ([link removed])
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By JEFF STURGEON, Roanoke Times (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

Two hundred people will be rendered jobless with the closing of FreightCar America in Roanoke this fall, Mayor Sherman Lea said Monday. The rail car maker announced it could save $5 million a year by shifting the work to an Alabama plant where the company has invested for growth.


** MANY BLACKJEWEL EMPLOYEES STILL OWED PAY, FIGURING OUT NEXT STEPS ([link removed])
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By TIM DODSON, Bristol Herald Courier (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

Three weeks after coal producer Blackjewel LLC declared bankruptcy and told its employees to stay home from work, many Virginia miners are navigating a period of limbo between being laid off and deciding whether to hold out hope that the company will fully reopen or pursue new job opportunities.


** NEW TOP EDITOR FOR VIRGINIAN-PILOT AND DAILY PRESS NAMED, AND SHE HAS TIES TO HAMPTON ROADS ([link removed])
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By BRIANA ADHIKUSUMA, Daily Press (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

The executive editor of a New Jersey newspaper was named on Monday as the top editor of the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot. Kris Worrell, 53, who has served as executive editor and vice president of news for The Press of Atlantic City in New Jersey since 2014, has ties to Hampton Roads, having graduated from Kempsville High School in Virginia Beach and worked for both the Daily Press and Pilot.


** AIR TRAFFIC SURVEILLANCE MANUFACTURER TO EXPAND IN VIRGINIA ([link removed])
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Associated Press

A company that makes air traffic surveillance systems is planning to expand its operations in Virginia. Gov. Ralph Northam announced Monday that Aireon, LLC is planning to expanding its headquarters and adding 56 new jobs in the next three years.


** HIGHER EDUCATION
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** FORMER VIRGINIA GOV. DOUG WILDER CONTESTS FINDING THAT HE KISSED VCU STUDENT WITHOUT HER CONSENT ([link removed])
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Associated Press

Former Gov. Doug Wilder says he is contesting an investigator’s finding that he kissed a Virginia Commonwealth University student six decades his junior without her consent. Wilder, who teaches at VCU, posted on his website Monday that he had filed a statement with the university that rejects an investigator’s findings.


** LOCAL
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** PORTSMOUTH OFFICIALS CONSIDERING NEW CASINO SITE NEAR TCC CAMPUS ([link removed])
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By ANA LEY, Virginian-Pilot (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Six months after city officials trumpeted plans to open a casino along the Elizabeth River, they are now considering a new location five miles away at the site of a failed development project.


** A GREEN DREAM: CITY COUNCIL PASSES AMBITIOUS GOAL FOR CARBON NEUTRALITY ([link removed])
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By MATT WEYRICH, C'ville Weekly

The City of Charlottesville has set a plan in motion to reduce its carbon footprint—and it’s not messing around. On June 24, City Council unanimously approved a proposal to curtail carbon emissions by 45 percent over the next 11 years and achieve an end goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. It’s an aggressive plan, one considered by local environmentalists to be the most ambitious of any city in Virginia, and its success is going to depend on buy-in from residents.


** CITY CONSIDERING POLICY ON FOIA REQUESTS, COSTS ([link removed])
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By NOLAN STOUT, Daily Progress (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

Charlottesville officials are reviewing an administrative policy to standardize responses and charges for open records requests. In its current form, the proposed policy would charge requesters in 15-minute increments for time to assemble documents under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act after an employee spent 15 minutes on the requests.


** BEDFORD SUPERVISORS DISCUSS CLOSING OF LANDFILL ([link removed])
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By SHANNON KEITH, News & Advance (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

A $2.7 million renovation project needs to be finished before the Bedford County Landfill reaches its storage capacity, consultants told the Bedford County Board of Supervisors on Monday night....In April, the board of supervisors authorized staff to move forward with the renovation project after Draper Aden determined the landfill only had about two years of storage capacity remaining.


** DANVILLE'S POPULATION IS EXPECTED TO DECREASE BY 25% OVER THE NEXT TWO DECADES ([link removed])
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By CALEB AYERS, Danville Register & Bee

Populations across the country are getting older and growing slowly — a trend that can be attributed to the size of the baby boomer generation and low birth rates right now, research policy analyst Shonel Sen said. “Over the past decades, the events that have happened have contributed to this age distribution,” she said. Sen works with the Weldon Cooper Center — which is part of the University of Virginia — to develop population projections for localities throughout Virginia.


** EDITORIALS
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** THIS PILL IS TOUGH TO SWALLOW ([link removed])
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Martinsville Bulletin Editorial

Some people are upset, and they should be. There were hundreds and hundreds of pills on the front page of the Bulletin on Thursday. There was negative news about Martinsville. No one wants to see the city cast in negative light.


** DEMOCRATIC BOYCOTT OF 1619 COMMEMORATION IS PETULANT ([link removed])
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Richmond Times-Dispatch Editorial (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

In 1619, the Virginia Company of London sent a new governor, Sir George Yeardley, to the tiny, struggling Virginia colony with a set of instructions called the Great Charter. The document called for ending martial law and instructed the settlers to establish a self-governing legislative body to manage the fledgling outpost.


** WE NEED TO KNOW THE DETAILS OF THE OPIOID CRISIS ([link removed])
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Daily News Record Editorial (Subscription Required)

In 2012, after the addictive properties of opioid pain pills were known, drug companies shipped 12.6 billion of them to U.S. pharmacies. That works out to about 38 each for every man, woman and child in this country. No wonder drug companies involved in lawsuits over marketing of opioid painkillers resisted release of the information.


** LOTTERY WINNERS CAN REMAIN ANONYMOUS ([link removed])
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Free Lance-Star Editorial (Metered Paywall - 10 articles a month)

IF your retirement strategy centers on winning the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot, there’s good news. Virginia law now states that anyone winning more than $10 million in the lottery can remain anonymous. No more worrying about being hounded by those second cousins once removed who seem to appear out of thin air


** ANSWERS NEEDED ABOUT NORFOLK CSB OFFICES ([link removed])
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Virginian-Pilot Editorial (Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)

Erick Davis suffered a vicious beating in November while waiting to collect a disability check at the Norfolk Community Services Board offices. The attack left the 43-year-old who suffers from bipolar disorder in a coma and, according to reporting in June by The Pilot, he is in the hospital again after suffering a spinal injury during his rehabilitation and may never walk again.


** OP-ED
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** FAUBER: RICHMOND AND NORFOLK — A STATISTICAL TALE OF TWO CITIES ([link removed])
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By ROY FAUBER, Published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)

If you were recently chosen to lead a major organization that had been under fire for poor performance, you would probably want to know how you compared to your peers. Say you had been elected mayor of Richmond.

Roy Fauber is a retired senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
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