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By TRENT ENGLAND,
published in
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
Virginia voters can have confidence in November that the election process will be simple and their votes will count. That’s because of the defeat of two radical election proposals pushed by well-financed lobbying groups. Each would have made voting less transparent and more confusing. Voters were spared the latest mess only by gubernatorial veto on April 8. That bill, Senate Bill 428, would have required the commonwealth to assist local implementation of an election system known as ranked choice voting, or RCV.
England is founder and executive director of Save Our States and co-chairman of the Stop Ranked-Choice Voting Coalition.
VaNews April 23, 2024
By SARAH RANKIN,
Associated Press
The former longtime medical director of a Virginia hospital that serves vulnerable children used physical examinations as a “ruse” to sexually abuse two teenage patients, a prosecutor said Monday, while the physician’s attorney “adamantly” denied any inappropriate conduct.
The trial of Daniel N. Davidow of Richmond, who for decades served as the medical director of the Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents, opened Monday morning in New Kent County, where a judge will weigh the charges against him.
VaNews April 23, 2024
By STAFF REPORT,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
(Metered Paywall - 7 articles a month)
The CoStar Group, which announced in February plans to move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Rosslyn, announced that it will acquire California 3D technology company Matterport for $1.6 billion. Matterport offers 3-D capture technology which delivers “dimensionally accurate, photorealistic virtual tours” for any type of property and is widely used in real estate. ... CoStar said last year it expected to hire 2,000 more people in Richmond, putting its workforce here at about 3,500.
VaNews April 23, 2024
By JILL PALERMO,
Prince William Times
In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created a Civilian Conservation Corps, and about 2,000 of its members worked from 1935 to 1942 to build what is now Prince William Forest Park.
On Monday, President Joe Biden made an Earth Day stop at that park, one of Prince William County’s two national parks, to announce what he called “two major steps forward” in his proposals for fighting climate change — including that the new “American Climate Corps” is now open for applications for the first time.
VaNews April 23, 2024
By LUKE WEIR,
Roanoke Times
(Metered Paywall - 5 articles a month)
Your trash becomes gas. It happens gradually, as mountains of our garbage decompose at Smith Gap Regional Landfill in Roanoke County. That’s where the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority hauls all the waste — more than 500 million pounds per year — from Roanoke, Salem, Roanoke County and Vinton. Among rotten banana peels and other decaying organic material sealed inside the landfill, methane-rich fumes are captured by a system of buried vacuum tubes ...
VaNews April 22, 2024
By JASON ARMESTO,
Daily Progress
(Metered Paywall - 25 articles a month)
The United States Congress is broken. So said L.F. Payne, a Virginia Democrat who represented Virginia’s 5th Congressional District in the House of Representatives from 1988 to 1997, during a special visit to Charlottesville Friday. “In the last Congress, I think there were over 500 pieces of legislation that were passed,” Payne said, adding that’s on track with recent history. “This Congress by comparison, now three-fourths of the way through, has passed 69 pieces of legislation. So it is clearly by many measurements dysfunctional.” ... Now serving as president of Former Members of Congress, or FMC, a bipartisan nonprofit group, part of Payne’s job is to help remedy that dysfunction.
VaNews April 22, 2024
By MATT BUSSE,
Cardinal News
The Roanoke-based fiber-optic technology company Luna Innovations Inc. on Friday added more than a year’s worth of previous financial statements to the list of those that it says are no longer reliable.
Luna said in a news release that a committee formed by its board of directors has determined that the company’s financial statements from 2022 and the first quarter of 2023 “cannot be relied upon and need to be restated due to identified accounting errors relating to revenue recognition.”
VaNews April 22, 2024
By DWAYNE YANCEY,
Cardinal News
The news that broke late last week about the U.S. government loaning $100 million to a California company to open a lithium-ion battery plant in Lynchburg is much bigger than the 100 or so jobs it will involve.
Let’s count the ways. 1. This helps put Virginia in the “battery belt.”
Dixie is the new Detroit: The Southeast has been quietly building a hub of auto-related plants for decades. The Roanoke and New River valleys are part of that, with truck-building operations at Mack Truck in Roanoke County, Volvo in Pulaski County and lots of suppliers in between.
VaNews April 22, 2024
By CHARLIE PAULLIN,
Virginia Mercury
Almost 20,000 acres have been lit by flames that primarily torched the western and central parts of the state so far during Virginia’s 2024 spring fire season. With about a week left until the season ends, that is double the amount of acres affected annually in the state across its 10-year average.
There’s no question that the fires visibly caused an immediate loss of vegetation and wildlife habitat, but state and federal officials said in interviews with the Mercury last week the blazes provide some benefits and are a centuries-old resource management tool.
“It does play an important role in the ecosystem,” said Michael Downey, assistant director for wildfire mitigation and prevention at the Virginia Department of Forestry.
VaNews April 22, 2024
By DAN RONAN,
WTOP
Thursday’s near collision at Reagan National Airport is raising concerns about plans to increase the number of flights at the airport.
Virginia Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said Thursday morning’s close call at Reagan National is another reason not to expand the number of flights at the airport as some other senators are attempting to do.
“It’s just plain crazy that some are pushing to add more flights to DCA’s overburdened runway,” Warner said to the Senate Friday.
VaNews April 22, 2024
