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By BILL ATKINSON,
Progress Index
(Metered paywall - 10 articles a month)
City Council unanimously chose a familiar face as its preferred casino vendor Wednesday night, but the choice took a back seat to what happened once the special meeting was adjourned. Instead of sticking around to talk about the economic potential of that decision or the next steps in the process of pushing the idea to Petersburg’s voters, councilors quickly dashed to their cars in the Petersburg Public Library parking lot. Some of them declined to comment while others walked stone-faced without saying a word as they approached reporters waiting outside for reaction.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By SALVADOR RIZZO AND KARINA ELWOOD,
Washington Post
(Metered Paywall - 3 articles a month)
A 24-year-old woman who sued school officials in Fairfax County, Va., for millions of dollars, saying they mishandled allegations more than a decade ago that she was raped, lost her case Wednesday when she was unable to convince a federal jury that the school system had failed her. The woman, identified in legal records only by the initials B.R., testified through tears at times in U.S. District Court in Alexandria that she was bullied and harassed in 2011 as a student at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon, a pattern of abuse that she said escalated to gang rape.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By MARKUS SCHMIDT,
Cardinal News
A member of the Pulaski Town Council was charged with three class 1 misdemeanors and one class 3 misdemeanor last week relating to alleged ethics and conflict of interest law violations in his role as a public official between January 2021 and April 2024.
The charges against Michael Reis, an attorney from Pulaski who was first elected to the council in 2020, stem from his role in facilitating the appropriation of public funds to benefit the renovation of the Calfee Community & Cultural Center, a local institution that came to be known as the Calfee Training School when it first was a school for Black children in 1894, and Wide Angle Strategies LLC, a consulting firm with a vested interest in the center.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By GRAHAM MOOMAW,
Virginia Mercury
After a closed meeting that lasted more than an hour and a half, the Petersburg City Council abruptly voted Wednesday to pick Baltimore-based Cordish Companies as the developer that will have a chance to build a casino in the economically struggling city.
There was nothing on the council’s meeting agenda indicating such a monumental decision could be happening on Wednesday afternoon, and council members quickly left the mostly empty auditorium without explaining the move to the handful of reporters in attendance. Several members said “no comment” when approached.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By STACY PARKER,
Virginian-Pilot
(Metered Paywall - 2 articles a month)
A U.S. Department of Justice evaluation of a dozen Virginia Beach facilities found that the city is not in compliance with the American Disabilities Act and will need to make changes to those buildings and others. It could cost millions of dollars and take several years for the city to reach compliance with its facilities, sidewalks, web-based services and emergency operation plans as part of a settlement agreement with the DOJ.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By BEN PETERS,
Inside NOVA
The Prince William Board of County Supervisors on Tuesday voted unanimously to raise taxes on data centers in hopes of making good on the promise that data center revenue will help to offset the county’s residential tax burden. … The data center rate hike will bring Prince William County more in line with its neighbors in how it taxes the tech hubs.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By MATTHEW BARAKAT,
Associated Press
A jury on Wednesday rejected a woman’s lawsuit seeking tens of millions of dollars from Virginia’s largest school system over allegations that she was raped multiple times as a middle schooler.
The woman, who was identified in court papers only by her initials, sued Fairfax County Public Schools under Title IX, a law that guarantees girls and women equal educational access. The lawsuit alleged school officials at Rachel Carson Middle School in Reston ignored her complaints that she endured sexual harassment and sexual assaults inside and outside of the school back in 2011 and 2012, when she was a seventh-grader.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By RYAN NADEAU,
WRIC-TV
There are nearly 1,800 registered sex offenders who live, work or go to school in the City of Richmond — but it still isn’t the community with the most registered sex offenders per capita in Central Virginia, according to new data from Virginia State Police.
Following a recent report stating that the City of Richmond has the highest rate of registered sex offenders per capita among over 430 total major cities surveyed, 8News investigated more local cities and counties to learn how many registered sex offenders are in the Richmond region and some surrounding localities.
As the 8News team looked into this topic, multiple issues were discovered in how Virginia’s sex offender registry returns information to users.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By MATT BUSSE,
Cardinal News
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that a $1 billion federal lawsuit filed by West Virginia’s governor, his family and their companies against a Martinsville-based bank and its board be transferred from a court in West Virginia to Virginia.
Gov. Jim Justice; his wife, Cathy; their son, Jay; and more than a dozen of their family companies filed the suit in November. They allege that Carter Bank & Trust and its directors have violated banking laws and prevented the Justices from working with other lenders so that the bank can continue collecting interest on the family’s loan portfolio.
VaNews April 25, 2024
By ERIC KOLENICH,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
Virginia Commonwealth University Health is seeking to terminate a deal that pays the city of Richmond $56 million, VCU president Michael Rao said Wednesday. The health system agreed to give the city a payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT, as part of a failed redevelopment project at the Public Safety Building downtown. State lawmakers have called for VCU Health to end the payments, but Mayor Levar Stoney objected, saying the health system should pay what it contractually owes.
VaNews April 25, 2024
