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Coyner and Aird: Riverside Regional Jail needs competent leadership — now
There has been a crisis of leadership at Riverside Regional Jail. With the departure of the superintendent, there is an opportunity to chart a new course, to invest in quality leadership — and we are calling on the Riverside Jail Authority Board, made up of the city managers and county administrators of all the participating localities, to hire the most qualified candidate with successful experience running a jail. In 2022 alone, Riverside Regional Jail witnessed the heartbreaking loss of four lives, adding to the seven deaths recorded in the preceding year and another seven in 2020.
Kaine listens to appeals regarding the Israel-Hamas conflict
U.S. Senator Tim Kaine was at St. Thomas Episcopal Church Friday, where he met with members of the Appalachian Peace Education Center and heard their concerns regarding the ongoing violence in Gaza. Kaine heard from several speakers, who presented him with a call to action. “When we see the epidemic of violence, the genocide in Palestine, we don’t know all the solutions. But we do know that sending more bombs and more rockets is not the answer,” Buckey Boone, APEC chairman, said. “We want you to speak out against the mass killing and forced migration of people, the starvation of children, the total destruction of the medical system.
Democrats regroup on taxes, climate after budget compromise
Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, smiled ruefully after a meeting of the Senate Democratic Caucus on Monday as the General Assembly prepared to act on a state budget compromise that included all of the spending that Democrats had sought in a political showdown with Gov. Glenn Youngkin. "We gave up some good stuff," said Deeds, one of 12 legislators who negotiated the compromise with the Republican governor.
Youngkin vetoes bills on skill games, contraception and Confederate heritage tax breaks
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin took action on a final batch of bills from the year’s regular legislative session Friday, signing seven but vetoing 48, including closely watched measures that would have ended a tax break for a Confederate heritage organization and allowed small businesses to host skill games, which are similar to slot machines. The vetoes came after Youngkin first proposed amendments that the legislature rejected. In a nighttime statement, he said he was willing to keep working with the Democratic-controlled General Assembly on the issues but was vetoing measures that were “not ready to become law.”
Schapiro: When business gave Byrd machine the business
At the Jefferson Hotel — an overstated example of Beaux Arts architecture — there was a comparatively understated side entrance through which politicians and plutocrats could discreetly slip into the Rotunda Club, one of the few places in Richmond they could dine and do what state law would discourage until 1968: order with a meal a highball or three. The Rotunda Club, now no more than a memory, was in December 1958 where Lindsay Almond, a conservative Democratic governor absolute on preserving racial segregation, was warned by 29 business and professional leaders that the state’s economy could be crippled by continued defiance to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education outlawing separate public schools for white and Black children. Friday was the 70th anniversary of the decision.
Youngkin vetoes skill games bill but signals openness to a compromise
Just hours from his midnight deadline to take action on the remaining legislation on his desk, Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Friday vetoed another 48 measures, including a bill to legalize skill games and create a regulatory framework for the electronic devices in Virginia. However, when speaking to reporters after an impromptu signing ceremony for the state’s bipartisan spending plan at the state Capitol earlier this week, Youngkin signaled a willingness to consider a new proposal on skill games that lawmakers hope to deliver to him in the coming weeks, “in the same spirit that we made a commitment to work on this budget.”
In a GOP stronghold, two Democrats seek chance to take on Wittman
Two Democrats — the former legal director of the ACLU of Virginia, and New Kent County’s former treasurer — are vying for the nomination to challenge a long-serving GOP incumbent in a strongly Republican district. New Kent’s Herb Jones, a retired Army colonel who tried but failed to unseat Rep. Rob Wittman, R-1st in 2022, is facing Leslie Mehta, currently on leave as counsel and chief of staff of the Richmond Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in the June 18 Democratic primary.
Fox News requests chance to host vice presidential debate at Virginia HBCU
Fox News has requested the opportunity to host a vice presidential debate at Virginia State University, an HBCU, after President Joe Biden ignored the proposal for a presidential debate on the network for Oct. 1. Anchor Bret Baier said former President Donald Trump has accepted the request on behalf of his future vice president, who has yet to be announced, but Biden’s campaign has not accepted yet.
Youngkin vetoes bills that would safeguard right to birth control, end tax exemptions for Confederate groups
Gov. Glenn Youngkin took action Friday on the last remaining legislation from the recent session, signing seven bills and vetoing 48 others, including high-profile measures related to birth control, skill games and tax exemptions for organizations with Confederate ties. “While I look forward to working with the General Assembly to see if we can reach agreement on language in the future, today I must act on the language before me, and there are several bills which are not ready to become law,” Youngkin said in a statement. Del. Cia Price and Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Richmond, carried the birth control bill in their respective chambers. “This is such a popular issue,” said Price, D-Newport News. “It was the one thing that I was holding out hope for, but the governor has his allegiances to the most extreme part of his party.”
Biden-Harris campaign responds to Youngkin’s veto of contraceptive rights measure
On Friday, May 17, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin took final action on a last set of bills from 2024’s regular legislative session; Youngkin signed seven of the measures and vetoed 48. The Biden-Harris campaign released a statement Saturday in response to Youngkin’s veto of a bill that would have protected contraceptive rights in the Commonwealth.