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Yancey: Nothern Virginia is ‘at a critical crossroads,’ which means rural Virginia is, too
An office complex in Fairfax County recently changed hands, and taxpayers across rural Virginia ought to be alarmed. Why should we care who owns Tysons International Plaza? We don’t. We should, though, care about what the new owners paid for it: 60% less than the previous owners had bought it for just eight years ago.
Mother of teen killed in York County crash has spearheaded new state safety laws — and she’s not done
If you let someone drive your car without a license — and they cause an accident that injures or kills someone — you could now face up to a year behind bars. A new state law says if you knowingly authorize someone to drive a car when they have no legal right to do so, you’re guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor “if the offense results in a motor vehicle accident that causes injury or death.” That includes parents who let minors drive without a license or while breaking the state’s rules on learner’s permits. It’s the fourth state law that Tammy McGee has spearheaded to passage since her son, Conner, was killed in a York County car crash nearly six years ago.
General Assembly prepares for potential September special session
General Assembly leadership has advised legislators that they could be called back to a special session the second week of September, lobbyists, delegates and state senators told VPM News. At the end of the 2025 session, legislators amended the rules for a still-active special session from 2024 to “address the impacts” of actions taken by the federal government. The special session would come after trillions of dollars in changes to the federal tax structure . . .
Herndon sues Comstock, demanding return of downtown redevelopment site
Herndon is officially taking legal action against Comstock Companies after the developer backed out of its long-stalled downtown redevelopment project last year. The town filed a lawsuit in Fairfax County Circuit Court this afternoon (Friday) demanding that Comstock return the nearly 5-acre site that it planned to transform into a mixed-use block with an arts center, apartments, retail space and a parking garage. The Town of Herndon transferred the property to Comstock in 2020 as part of an agreement for the redevelopment originally signed in 2017.
Report identifies major gaps in regional response to homelessness
The Fredericksburg Regional Continuum of Care’s Homeless Helpline is the primary access point for housing assistance in Planning District 16, which includes Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford counties as well as the City of Fredericksburg. But from July through December of 2024, the helpline was only able to refer one in 10 households to shelter out of the 1,256 who called seeking assistance, . . . The helpline’s limitations were just one troublesome aspect of the report, which also noted that housing in the region is becoming increasingly unaffordable, eviction rates are on the rise and racial disparities are disproportionately affecting Black households.
Coming in first, fourth or last? The ballad of Glenn Youngkin
As rankings go, is No. 4 really that bad? On its face, the political reaction to Virginia’s precipitous drop in CNBC’s all-important “Top States for Business“ rankings — we got the news that our long-time rival, North Carolina, supplanted the Old Dominion as No. 1 on Thursday morning — somehow feels both alarmist and apropos. “It’s terrible,” Democratic House Speaker and Portsmouth Del. Don Scott told the RTD’s Michael Martz on Thursday, pointing out CNBC’s emphasis on federal job cuts and tariffs in this year’s rankings: ... Gov. Glenn Youngkin, of course, dismissed the drop on X. “CNBC’s new methodology this year is thrown off by a new subjective metric that mistakenly ascribes substantial risk to Virginia from the federal government’s presence in the Commonwealth,” Youngkin wrote.
Osprey came back from the brink once. Now chicks are dying in nests, and some blame overfishing
Stepping onto an old wooden duck blind in the middle of the York River, Bryan Watts looks down at a circle of sticks and pine cones on the weathered, guano-spattered platform. It’s a failed osprey nest, taken over by diving terns. “The birds never laid here this year,” said Watts, near the mouth of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. “And that’s a pattern we’ve been seeing these last couple of years.” Watts has a more intimate relationship with ospreys than most people have with a bird — he has climbed to their nests to free them from plastic bags, fed them by hand and monitored their eggs with telescopic mirrors.
Fredericksburg Planning Commission unanimously recommends disapproval of Gateway data center
Thomas Johnson spent some time working at Hugh Mercer Elementary School, which means he was already familiar with a couple of the proposed transmission line routes for a data center project discussed at Wednesday’s Fredericksburg Planning Commission meeting. “With what I see, one goes through the car [rider] line and one goes through the play area,” said Johnson, a planning commissioner. “So, both would be very difficult obstacles for that entity.” Ultimately, concerns surrounding the transmission lines that would be required to feed power to the proposed 2.1 million square foot campus led to the project’s undoing.
'People are scared': N.Va. Korean community faces tariffs
Steve Lee hasn’t seen costs increase yet for the products he imports from South Korea for the specialty chicken franchise he runs here in the heart of Fairfax County’s thriving Korean community. But Lee, a former Democratic candidate for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, knows it’s coming if President Donald Trump carries through on his latest threat to impose a 25% tariff on most goods coming from one of the United States’ most reliable trading partners. . . . “Eventually (the cost of) products from Korea coming over will change, and our consumers will have to pay for it. And it hurts.”
Formerly ousted U.Va. president has questions about Ryan’s departure
Teresa Sullivan first wants to make one thing clear: She doesn’t have any inside scoop on what took place behind the scenes with the unexpected resignation of University of Virginia President Jim Ryan, whose last day leading the university was Friday. “I’m 1,400 miles away,” she says, having moved to Texas following her retirement last year as a member of U.Va.’s faculty. “I don’t understand what happened. For starters, does the Justice Department have some evidence of wrongdoing? What is the evidence? Did the board play any role in this, or do they just stand by and accept the resignation? I don’t know. Did the governor play any role? I don’t know.” Other than questions about Ryan’s resignation in June, which he acknowledged was due to the federal government’s pressure to oust him from the university he led since 2018, what Sullivan has is experience and context.