rawdog

Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford County, was removed from his committee assignments in the House of Delegates on Friday after a tense exchange between himself and Del. Cia Price, the chair of the Health and Human Services Health Professions subcommittee. 

Some lawmakers have called the exchange, which occurred during the subcommittee meeting on Thursday, belligerent on the part of Griffin, who sat as a member on the subcommittee until Friday. 

Griffin had begun speaking on matters that did not appear to pertain to the bill being discussed during the subcommittee meeting on Thursday, which prompted Price, the subcommittee chair, to ask him to remain on topic. He continued on, which prompted Price to bring the committee to a pause, also known as going “at ease.” The exchange continued between Price and Griffin for a handful of minutes while the subcommittee remained at ease. 

Griffin said in a social media post following the exchange that House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, asked Griffin to apologize or be removed from his committee assignments. 

By Friday, Griffin had been removed from the two committees that he sat on — the Committee on Health and Human Services and the Committee on Communications, Technology and Innovation. 

“I will not apologize for my germane comments. The violence the Democrat constitutional amendment will do to unborn babies is relevant to a discussion on violence. I’ve never been interrupted by a committee chair. Cia Price should apologize to me,” Griffin said in an emailed statement Monday. 

The bill that was being discussed during the subcommittee meeting on Thursday was HB 1523, which would establish requirements for certified violence prevention professionals to be regulated by the Board of Health. The constitutional amendment regarding access to reproductive health care, including abortion, was passed by the General Assembly in mid-January. 

Price, a Democrat from Newport News, did not respond to a request for comment. 

The office of Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, who controls committee assignments, did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. House of Delegates Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, also did not respond to a request for comment. 

“I think all of us have a commitment to civility and [Republicans] saw that civility broken down by one of their members at a level of disrespect and belligerence,” Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico County, said in an interview on Monday. Willett chairs the Health and Human Services full committee and sits on the subcommittee. 

He added that there’s a shared disgust between Democrats and Republicans regarding how Griffin treated Price and said that Griffin was “completely inappropriate” and “completely out of order.”

“Where he really stepped over the line was his specific treatment of the chair,” Willett said. “It was a level of disrespect that you just don’t see.”

In 2021, three GOP delegates were stripped of one committee assignment each by former Democratic House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn of Fairfax after they penned a letter to then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence that cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election. Dels. Dave LaRock, R-Loudoun County, Ronnie Campbell, R-Rockbridge County and Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania County, were each removed from one committee. 

In 2024, Scott removed Del. Barry Knight, R-Virginia Beach, from his position on the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee during the session and assigned to a different committee, without explanation.

The post Griffin booted from committees; Democrats say he disrespected subcommittee chair appeared first on Cardinal News.

Del. Tim Griffin, R-Bedford County, was removed from his committee assignments in the House of Delegates on Friday after a tense exchange between himself and Del. Cia Price, the chair of the Health and Human Services Health Professions subcommittee. 

Some lawmakers have called the exchange, which occurred during the subcommittee meeting on Thursday, belligerent on the part of Griffin, who sat as a member on the subcommittee until Friday. 

Griffin had begun speaking on matters that did not appear to pertain to the bill being discussed during the subcommittee meeting on Thursday, which prompted Price, the subcommittee chair, to ask him to remain on topic. He continued on, which prompted Price to bring the committee to a pause, also known as going “at ease.” The exchange continued between Price and Griffin for a handful of minutes while the subcommittee remained at ease. 

Griffin said in a social media post following the exchange that House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, asked Griffin to apologize or be removed from his committee assignments. 

By Friday, Griffin had been removed from the two committees that he sat on — the Committee on Health and Human Services and the Committee on Communications, Technology and Innovation. 

“I will not apologize for my germane comments. The violence the Democrat constitutional amendment will do to unborn babies is relevant to a discussion on violence. I’ve never been interrupted by a committee chair. Cia Price should apologize to me,” Griffin said in an emailed statement Monday. 

The bill that was being discussed during the subcommittee meeting on Thursday was HB 1523, which would establish requirements for certified violence prevention professionals to be regulated by the Board of Health. The constitutional amendment regarding access to reproductive health care, including abortion, was passed by the General Assembly in mid-January. 

Price, a Democrat from Newport News, did not respond to a request for comment. 

The office of Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, who controls committee assignments, did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. House of Delegates Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott County, also did not respond to a request for comment. 

“I think all of us have a commitment to civility and [Republicans] saw that civility broken down by one of their members at a level of disrespect and belligerence,” Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico County, said in an interview on Monday. Willett chairs the Health and Human Services full committee and sits on the subcommittee. 

He added that there’s a shared disgust between Democrats and Republicans regarding how Griffin treated Price and said that Griffin was “completely inappropriate” and “completely out of order.”

“Where he really stepped over the line was his specific treatment of the chair,” Willett said. “It was a level of disrespect that you just don’t see.”

In 2021, three GOP delegates were stripped of one committee assignment each by former Democratic House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn of Fairfax after they penned a letter to then-U.S. Vice President Mike Pence that cast doubt on the validity of the 2020 election. Dels. Dave LaRock, R-Loudoun County, Ronnie Campbell, R-Rockbridge County and Mark Cole, R-Spotsylvania County, were each removed from one committee. 

The post Griffin booted from committees; Democrats say he disrespected subcommittee chair appeared first on Cardinal News.

In 2021, when James Madison University sought to upgrade its sports programs by joining the Sun Belt Conference, the school first needed the permission of a group of state legislators collectively known as the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Commission.

JMU submitted an eight-page document that laid out its justification for the move. By joining the Football Bowl Subdivision set of schools, and the Sun Belt in particular, JMU would be aligning itself with peer schools and achieving “stability in a volatile environment” in college sports. It would also be bringing in more revenue from the Sun Belt’s TV contract.

There was just one catch: Virginia law governs what percentage of a public college’s athletic budget can come from mandatory student fees — the higher the status of the school’s conference membership, the lower the percentage is. Under its previous classification (a Football Championship Subdivision school and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association), JMU was allowed to subsidize up to 70% of its athletic budget through mandatory student fees. By JMU moving up to the Sun Belt, state law required that subsidy percentage to drop to 55%.

At the time, JMU was already well over the 70% threshold. The Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database says JMU that year used mandatory student fees to cover 87% of its athletic budget. The pandemic likely goosed that figure upwards, but from 2005-2011, JMU had always derived more than 80% of its athletic funding from student fees. That percentage dropped into the high 70s from 2012 until the pandemic. The lowest it ever got, though, was 75%.

As part of the school’s presentation to the legislative panel, JMU laid out a schedule on how it would get its subsidy percentage down to the required 55% level. It laid out a gradual decline until reaching 54.1% for the 2028-29 school year.

By 2023-24, student fees were supposed to account for 58.3% of the budget.

However, the Knight-Newhouse database (which is current through the 2023-2024 school year) shows JMU was still well out of range at 73%. A report to the Board of Visitors that year calculated the figures differently and put the percentage at 55.4%.

Now, a proposal pending before the General Assembly would give JMU a potentially easier target to meet. That proposal — from state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville — would increase the amount of JMU’s athletic budget that could come from student fees to 60%. The same measure would also increase the percentage for Old Dominion University, the state’s other Sun Belt Conference member, to 60%. In 2023-24, Old Dominion used student fees to cover 61% of its athletic budget, so the Deeds proposal means the Norfolk school wouldn’t have to make many changes to comply. JMU would have to make more, under the Knight-Newhouse calculations, just not as many as under the current 55% threshold. Or maybe it wouldn’t have to make any at all and could increase the share of athletics paid for through mandatory student fees.

The Deeds proposal, which comes in the form of an amendment to the state budget, would also allow Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia to cover more of their athletic budgets with student fees. They are currently capped at 20%. He would raise that to 25%. That could potentially let both schools spend more in student fees on athletics, although it should be noted that neither is close to hitting its cap now. The Knight-Newhouse database shows that in 2024 Virginia Tech used student fees to cover 5% of its athletic expenses while Virginia used 11%.

Why are there different thresholds for schools that are all in the same NCAA classification? Because they’re in two very different types of conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Tech and Virginia play, has a much bigger TV contract than the Sun Belt, in which JMU and ODU play. JMU, which has had a meteoric rise in college football rankings, culminating with an appearance this year in the 12-team College Football Playoffs, has had a particular challenge funding its athletic ambitions. The school lacks a deep-pocked alumni base: Virginia gets 25% of its athletic budget from donors, Tech gets 23%, ODU gets 12%, JMU just 7%. In terms of actual dollars, that ranges from $38.86 million for Virginia in 2024 to $5.68 million at JMU that year. To make up for the lack of donor support and less money from TV revenue, JMU has relied on mandatory student fees. Where Tech raised $14.54 million from 30.504 undergraduates that year and Virginia raised $16.67 million from 17,589, ODU raised $32.39 million from 17,736 and JMU $55.54 million from 21,006.

In actual dollars, JMU raises more money from mandatory student fees than any other school in the country; Old Dominion is second. Many of the top-ranked college sports programs in the country don’t rely on student fees at all, according to the Knight-Newhouse database, because they’re in conferences with big TV donors and generous donors, typically the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference.

Deeds introduced a similar measure last year that didn’t pass. “The bill I introduced last year was at the request of UVA, Tech and JMU,” Deed said by text message. “It was designed to give the schools more flexibility in the use of the fees, for instance for athletes’ medical needs. Virginia is more transparent than other states, so it’s really not fair to compare our schools with those in other states.” He said the budget amendment is “aimed at the same goals as the bill” last year.

Deeds voices a concern often heard in discussions about mandatory student fees for athletics: Some Virginia schools show up as relying heavily on these fees for athletic budgets simply because they’re more transparent than others. The belief is that many schools in other states simply extract that money from students in different ways and don’t report it as a “mandatory student fee” even though it might be a mandatory something else. The Knight-Newhouse database disputes that. It also captures the vague category of “institutional support,” which would cover other ways that colleges raise money for athletics other than TV revenue, donors, ticket sales and such. Even when that is factored in, some Big Ten and SEC schools still show up at zero while JMU has the second-highest amount in the country (behind only South Florida).

Deeds’ budget amendment would do some other things.

For Virginia and Virginia Tech, it would set conditions on using more money from student fees. They would have to demonstrate that the increase in the subsidy “was matched by a comparable dollar increase in generated revenue over a five-year rolling average or that it was matched by a comparable percentage increase in generated revenue utilizing a compound annual growth rate in generated revenue and student fees.”

It would put an expiration of 2030 on all these percentage caps but also set in motion a study by the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “for the purpose of determining whether the provisions of this act should be amended permanently.”

That study would be required to “evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable, competitive funding models for intercollegiate athletics,” to “assess the local, regional, and statewide economic impact of college athletics” and to consider these percentage caps on using mandatory student fees “in light of evolving trends in intercollegiate athletics” and to take into account the ability of Virginia’s public colleges “to maintain competitiveness in intercollegiate athletics.”

Aside from however you feel about these mandatory student fees — I get lots of emails from readers outraged about them but not a single state legislator has proposed their abolition — the fascinating thing about Deeds’ proposed study is that it casts college sports into the context of economic development and would seem to make it a state policy that Virginia’s teams be competitive.

If that’s the case, maybe students shouldn’t be the only ones forced to pay for those teams?

Want more politics and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Fridays. Sign up here:

The post Deeds proposal would allow Virginia Tech and UVa to raise more athletics money from student fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

In 2021, when James Madison University sought to upgrade its sports programs by joining the Sun Belt Conference, the school first needed the permission of a group of state legislators collectively known as the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Commission.

JMU submitted an eight-page document that laid out its justification for the move. By joining the Football Bowl Subdivision set of schools, and the Sun Belt in particular, JMU would be aligning itself with peer schools and achieving “stability in a volatile environment” in college sports. It would also be bringing in more revenue from the Sun Belt’s TV contract.

There was just one catch: Virginia law governs what percentage of a public college’s athletic budget can come from mandatory student fees — the higher the status of the school’s conference membership, the lower the percentage is. Under its previous classification (a Football Championship Subdivision school and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association), JMU was allowed to subsidize up to 70% of its athletic budget through mandatory student fees. By JMU moving up to the Sun Belt, state law required that subsidy percentage to drop to 55%.

At the time, JMU was already well over the 70% threshold. The Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database says JMU that year used mandatory student fees to cover 87% of its athletic budget. The pandemic likely goosed that figure upwards, but from 2005-2011, JMU had always derived more than 80% of its athletic funding from student fees. That percentage dropped into the high 70s from 2012 until the pandemic. The lowest it ever got, though, was 75%.

As part of the school’s presentation to the legislative panel, JMU laid out a schedule on how it would get its subsidy percentage down to the required 55% level. It laid out a gradual decline until reaching 54.1% for the 2028-29 school year.

By 2023-24, student fees were supposed to account for 58.3% of the budget.

However, the Knight-Newhouse database (which is current through the 2023-2024 school year) shows JMU was still well out of range at 73%.

Now, a proposal pending before the General Assembly would give JMU a potentially easier target to meet. That proposal — from state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville — would increase the amount of JMU’s athletic budget that could come from student fees to 60%. The same measure would also increase the percentage for Old Dominion University, the state’s other Sun Belt Conference member, to 60%. In 2023-24, Old Dominion used student fees to cover 61% of its athletic budget, so the Deeds proposal means the Norfolk school wouldn’t have to make many changes to comply. JMU would have to make more, just not as many as under the current 55% threshold.

The Deeds proposal, which comes in the form of an amendment to the state budget, would also allow Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia to cover more of their athletic budgets with student fees. They are currently capped at 20%. He would raise that to 25%. That could potentially let both schools spend more in student fees on athletics, although it should be noted that neither is close to hitting its cap now. The Knight-Newhouse database shows that in 2024 Virginia Tech used student fees to cover 5% of its athletic expenses while Virginia used 11%.

Why are there different thresholds for schools that are all in the same NCAA classification? Because they’re in two very different types of conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Tech and Virginia play, has a much bigger TV contract than the Sun Belt, in which JMU and ODU play. JMU, which has had a meteoric rise in college football rankings, culminating with an appearance this year in the 12-team College Football Playoffs, has had a particular challenge funding its athletic ambitions. The school lacks a deep-pocked alumni base: Virginia gets 25% of its athletic budget from donors, Tech gets 23%, ODU gets 12%, JMU just 7%. In terms of actual dollars, that ranges from $38.86 million for Virginia in 2024 to $5.68 million at JMU that year. To make up for the lack of donor support and less money from TV revenue, JMU has relied on mandatory student fees. Where Tech raised $14.54 million from 30.504 undergraduates that year and Virginia raised $16.67 million from 17,589, ODU raised $32.39 million from 17,736 and JMU $55.54 million from 21,006.

In actual dollars, JMU raises more money from mandatory student fees than any other school in the country; Old Dominion is second. Many of the top-ranked college sports programs in the country don’t rely on student fees at all, according to the Knight-Newhouse database, because they’re in conferences with big TV donors and generous donors, typically the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference.

Deeds introduced a similar measure last year that didn’t pass. “The bill I introduced last year was at the request of UVA, Tech and JMU,” Deed said by text message. “It was designed to give the schools more flexibility in the use of the fees, for instance for athletes’ medical needs. Virginia is more transparent than other states, so it’s really not fair to compare our schools with those in other states.” He said the budget amendment is “aimed at the same goals as the bill” last year.

Deeds voices a concern often heard in discussions about mandatory student fees for athletics: Some Virginia schools show up as relying heavily on these fees for athletic budgets simply because they’re more transparent than others. The belief is that many schools in other states simply extract that money from students in different ways and don’t report it as a “mandatory student fee” even though it might be a mandatory something else. The Knight-Newhouse database disputes that. It also captures the vague category of “institutional support,” which would cover other ways that colleges raise money for athletics other than TV revenue, donors, ticket sales and such. Even when that is factored in, some Big Ten and SEC schools still show up at zero while JMU has the second-highest amount in the country (behind only South Florida).

Deeds’ budget amendment would do some other things.

For Virginia and Virginia Tech, it would set conditions on using more money from student fees. They would have to demonstrate that the increase in the subsidy “was matched by a comparable dollar increase in generated revenue over a five-year rolling average or that it was matched by a comparable percentage increase in generated revenue utilizing a compound annual growth rate in generated revenue and student fees.”

It would put an expiration of 2030 on all these percentage caps but also set in motion a study by the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “for the purpose of determining whether the provisions of this act should be amended permanently.”

That study would be required to “evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable, competitive funding models for intercollegiate athletics,” to “assess the local, regional, and statewide economic impact of college athletics” and to consider these percentage caps on using mandatory student fees “in light of evolving trends in intercollegiate athletics” and to take into account the ability of Virginia’s public colleges “to maintain competitiveness in intercollegiate athletics.”

Aside from however you feel about these mandatory student fees — I get lots of emails from readers outraged about them but not a single state legislator has proposed their abolition — the fascinating thing about Deeds’ proposed study is that it casts college sports into the context of economic development and would seem to make it a state policy that Virginia’s teams be competitive.

If that’s the case, maybe students shouldn’t be the only ones forced to pay for those teams?

Want more politics and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Fridays. Sign up here:

The post Deeds proposal would allow Virginia Tech and UVa to raise more athletics money from student fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

In 2021, when James Madison University sought to upgrade its sports programs by joining the Sun Belt Conference, the school first needed the permission of a group of state legislators collectively known as the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Commission.

JMU submitted an eight-page document that laid out its justification for the move. By joining the Football Bowl Subdivision set of schools, and the Sun Belt in particular, JMU would be aligning itself with peer schools and achieving “stability in a volatile environment” in college sports. It would also be bringing in more revenue from the Sun Belt’s TV contract.

There was just one catch: Virginia law governs what percentage of a public college’s athletic budget can come from mandatory student fees — the higher the status of the school’s conference membership, the lower the percentage is. Under its previous classification (a Football Championship Subdivision school and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association), JMU was allowed to subsidize up to 70% of its athletic budget through mandatory student fees. By JMU moving up to the Sun Belt, state law required that subsidy percentage to drop to 55%.

At the time, JMU was already well over the 70% threshold. The Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database says JMU that year used mandatory student fees to cover 87% of its athletic budget. The pandemic likely goosed that figure upwards, but from 2005-2011, JMU had always derived more than 80% of its athletic funding from student fees. That percentage dropped into the high 70s from 2012 until the pandemic. The lowest it ever got, though, was 75%.

As part of the school’s presentation to the legislative panel, JMU laid out a schedule on how it would get its subsidy percentage down to the required 55% level. It laid out a gradual decline until reaching 54.1% for the 2028-29 school year.

By 2023-24, student fees were supposed to account for 58.3% of the budget.

However, the Knight-Newhouse database (which is current through the 2023-2024 school year) shows JMU was still well out of range at 73%. A report to the Board of Visitors that year calculated the figures differently and put the percentage at 55.4%.

Now, a proposal pending before the General Assembly would give JMU a potentially easier target to meet. That proposal — from state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville — would increase the amount of JMU’s athletic budget that could come from student fees to 60%. The same measure would also increase the percentage for Old Dominion University, the state’s other Sun Belt Conference member, to 60%. In 2023-24, Old Dominion used student fees to cover 61% of its athletic budget, so the Deeds proposal means the Norfolk school wouldn’t have to make many changes to comply. JMU would have to make more, under the Knight-Newhouse calculations, just not as many as under the current 55% threshold. Or maybe it wouldn’t have to make any at all and could increase the share of athletics paid for through mandatory student fees.

The Deeds proposal, which comes in the form of an amendment to the state budget, would also allow Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia to cover more of their athletic budgets with student fees. They are currently capped at 20%. He would raise that to 25%. That could potentially let both schools spend more in student fees on athletics, although it should be noted that neither is close to hitting its cap now. The Knight-Newhouse database shows that in 2024 Virginia Tech used student fees to cover 5% of its athletic expenses while Virginia used 11%.

Why are there different thresholds for schools that are all in the same NCAA classification? Because they’re in two very different types of conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Tech and Virginia play, has a much bigger TV contract than the Sun Belt, in which JMU and ODU play. JMU, which has had a meteoric rise in college football rankings, culminating with an appearance this year in the 12-team College Football Playoffs, has had a particular challenge funding its athletic ambitions. The school lacks a deep-pocked alumni base: Virginia gets 25% of its athletic budget from donors, Tech gets 23%, ODU gets 12%, JMU just 7%. In terms of actual dollars, that ranges from $38.86 million for Virginia in 2024 to $5.68 million at JMU that year. To make up for the lack of donor support and less money from TV revenue, JMU has relied on mandatory student fees. Where Tech raised $14.54 million from 30.504 undergraduates that year and Virginia raised $16.67 million from 17,589, ODU raised $32.39 million from 17,736 and JMU $55.54 million from 21,006.

In actual dollars, JMU raises more money from mandatory student fees than any other school in the country; Old Dominion is second. Many of the top-ranked college sports programs in the country don’t rely on student fees at all, according to the Knight-Newhouse database, because they’re in conferences with big TV donors and generous donors, typically the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference.

Deeds introduced a similar measure last year that didn’t pass. “The bill I introduced last year was at the request of UVA, Tech and JMU,” Deed said by text message. “It was designed to give the schools more flexibility in the use of the fees, for instance for athletes’ medical needs. Virginia is more transparent than other states, so it’s really not fair to compare our schools with those in other states.” He said the budget amendment is “aimed at the same goals as the bill” last year.

Deeds voices a concern often heard in discussions about mandatory student fees for athletics: Some Virginia schools show up as relying heavily on these fees for athletic budgets simply because they’re more transparent than others. The belief is that many schools in other states simply extract that money from students in different ways and don’t report it as a “mandatory student fee” even though it might be a mandatory something else. The Knight-Newhouse database disputes that. It also captures the vague category of “institutional support,” which would cover other ways that colleges raise money for athletics other than TV revenue, donors, ticket sales and such. Even when that is factored in, some Big Ten and SEC schools still show up at zero while JMU has the second-highest amount in the country (behind only South Florida).

Deeds’ budget amendment would do some other things.

For Virginia and Virginia Tech, it would set conditions on using more money from student fees. They would have to demonstrate that the increase in the subsidy “was matched by a comparable dollar increase in generated revenue over a five-year rolling average or that it was matched by a comparable percentage increase in generated revenue utilizing a compound annual growth rate in generated revenue and student fees.”

It would put an expiration of 2030 on all these percentage caps but also set in motion a study by the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “for the purpose of determining whether the provisions of this act should be amended permanently.”

That study would be required to “evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable, competitive funding models for intercollegiate athletics,” to “assess the local, regional, and statewide economic impact of college athletics” and to consider these percentage caps on using mandatory student fees “in light of evolving trends in intercollegiate athletics” and to take into account the ability of Virginia’s public colleges “to maintain competitiveness in intercollegiate athletics.”

Aside from however you feel about these mandatory student fees — I get lots of emails from readers outraged about them but not a single state legislator has proposed their abolition — the fascinating thing about Deeds’ proposed study is that it casts college sports into the context of economic development and would seem to make it a state policy that Virginia’s teams be competitive.

If that’s the case, maybe students shouldn’t be the only ones forced to pay for those teams?

Want more politics and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Fridays. Sign up here:

The post Deeds proposal would allow Virginia Tech and UVa to raise more athletics money from student fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

In 2021, when James Madison University sought to upgrade its sports programs by joining the Sun Belt Conference, the school first needed the permission of a group of state legislators collectively known as the Intercollegiate Athletics Review Commission.

JMU submitted an eight-page document that laid out its justification for the move. By joining the Football Bowl Subdivision set of schools, and the Sun Belt in particular, JMU would be aligning itself with peer schools and achieving “stability in a volatile environment” in college sports. It would also be bringing in more revenue from the Sun Belt’s TV contract.

There was just one catch: Virginia law governs what percentage of a public college’s athletic budget can come from mandatory student fees — the higher the status of the school’s conference membership, the lower the percentage is. Under its previous classification (a Football Championship Subdivision school and a member of the Colonial Athletic Association), JMU was allowed to subsidize up to 70% of its athletic budget through mandatory student fees. By JMU moving up to the Sun Belt, state law required that subsidy percentage to drop to 55%.

At the time, JMU was already well over the 70% threshold. The Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database says JMU that year used mandatory student fees to cover 87% of its athletic budget. The pandemic likely goosed that figure upwards, but from 2005-2011, JMU had always derived more than 80% of its athletic funding from student fees. That percentage dropped into the high 70s from 2012 until the pandemic. The lowest it ever got, though, was 75%.

As part of the school’s presentation to the legislative panel, JMU laid out a schedule on how it would get its subsidy percentage down to the required 55% level. It laid out a gradual decline until reaching 54.1% for the 2028-29 school year.

By 2023-24, student fees were supposed to account for 58.3% of the budget.

However, the Knight-Newhouse database (which is current through the 2023-2024 school year) shows JMU was still well out of range at 73%. A report to the Board of Visitors that year calculated the figures differently and put the percentage at 55.4%.

Now, a proposal pending before the General Assembly would give JMU a potentially easier target to meet. That proposal — from state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville — would increase the amount of JMU’s athletic budget that could come from student fees to 60%. The same measure would also increase the percentage for Old Dominion University, the state’s other Sun Belt Conference member, to 60%. In 2023-24, Old Dominion used student fees to cover 61% of its athletic budget, so the Deeds proposal means the Norfolk school wouldn’t have to make many changes to comply. JMU would have to make more, under the Knight-Newhouse calculations, just not as many as under the current 55% threshold. Or maybe it wouldn’t have to make any at all and could increase the share of athletics paid for through mandatory student fees.

The Deeds proposal, which comes in the form of an amendment to the state budget, would also allow Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia to cover more of their athletic budgets with student fees. They are currently capped at 20%. He would raise that to 25%. That could potentially let both schools spend more in student fees on athletics, although it should be noted that neither is close to hitting its cap now. The Knight-Newhouse database shows that in 2024 Virginia Tech used student fees to cover 5% of its athletic expenses while Virginia used 11%.

Why are there different thresholds for schools that are all in the same NCAA classification? Because they’re in two very different types of conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, in which Tech and Virginia play, has a much bigger TV contract than the Sun Belt, in which JMU and ODU play. JMU, which has had a meteoric rise in college football rankings, culminating with an appearance this year in the 12-team College Football Playoffs, has had a particular challenge funding its athletic ambitions. The school lacks a deep-pocked alumni base: Virginia gets 25% of its athletic budget from donors, Tech gets 23%, ODU gets 12%, JMU just 7%. In terms of actual dollars, that ranges from $38.86 million for Virginia in 2024 to $5.68 million at JMU that year. To make up for the lack of donor support and less money from TV revenue, JMU has relied on mandatory student fees. Where Tech raised $14.54 million from 30.504 undergraduates that year and Virginia raised $16.67 million from 17,589, ODU raised $32.39 million from 17,736 and JMU $55.54 million from 21,006.

In actual dollars, JMU raises more money from mandatory student fees than any other school in the country; Old Dominion is second. Many of the top-ranked college sports programs in the country don’t rely on student fees at all, according to the Knight-Newhouse database, because they’re in conferences with big TV donors and generous donors, typically the Big Ten or the Southeastern Conference.

Deeds introduced a similar measure last year that didn’t pass. “The bill I introduced last year was at the request of UVA, Tech and JMU,” Deed said by text message. “It was designed to give the schools more flexibility in the use of the fees, for instance for athletes’ medical needs. Virginia is more transparent than other states, so it’s really not fair to compare our schools with those in other states.” He said the budget amendment is “aimed at the same goals as the bill” last year.

Deeds voices a concern often heard in discussions about mandatory student fees for athletics: Some Virginia schools show up as relying heavily on these fees for athletic budgets simply because they’re more transparent than others. The belief is that many schools in other states simply extract that money from students in different ways and don’t report it as a “mandatory student fee” even though it might be a mandatory something else. The Knight-Newhouse database disputes that. It also captures the vague category of “institutional support,” which would cover other ways that colleges raise money for athletics other than TV revenue, donors, ticket sales and such. Even when that is factored in, some Big Ten and SEC schools still show up at zero while JMU has the second-highest amount in the country (behind only South Florida).

Deeds’ budget amendment would do some other things.

For Virginia and Virginia Tech, it would set conditions on using more money from student fees. They would have to demonstrate that the increase in the subsidy “was matched by a comparable dollar increase in generated revenue over a five-year rolling average or that it was matched by a comparable percentage increase in generated revenue utilizing a compound annual growth rate in generated revenue and student fees.”

It would put an expiration of 2030 on all these percentage caps but also set in motion a study by the General Assembly’s investigative arm, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, “for the purpose of determining whether the provisions of this act should be amended permanently.”

That study would be required to “evaluate approaches taken by other states to create sustainable, competitive funding models for intercollegiate athletics,” to “assess the local, regional, and statewide economic impact of college athletics” and to consider these percentage caps on using mandatory student fees “in light of evolving trends in intercollegiate athletics” and to take into account the ability of Virginia’s public colleges “to maintain competitiveness in intercollegiate athletics.”

Aside from however you feel about these mandatory student fees — I get lots of emails from readers outraged about them but not a single state legislator has proposed their abolition — the fascinating thing about Deeds’ proposed study is that it casts college sports into the context of economic development and would seem to make it a state policy that Virginia’s teams be competitive.

If that’s the case, maybe students shouldn’t be the only ones forced to pay for those teams?

Want more politics and analysis? Sign up for West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Fridays. Sign up here:

The post Deeds proposal would allow Virginia Tech and UVa to raise more athletics money from student fees appeared first on Cardinal News.

A Senate committee on Monday advanced a bill intended to have Dominion Energy data center customers pick up certain costs in order to lower monthly electric bills for the utility’s other customers.

The bill, which Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, presented as a substitute to her SB 253, would allow the State Corporation Commission to decide if Dominion’s biggest users of electricity, primarily data centers, should be required to pick up the tab for expenses known as capacity costs.

The utility pays these costs to ensure that power is available during peak demand times, such as the hottest summer days and the coldest winter nights. Dominion’s capacity costs have risen in recent years as electricity demand has increased, largely due to the growth of energy-hungry data centers that power governments, businesses and online services from Amazon to Zelle.

The bill also would allow the SCC to decide if these heavy-usage customers must pay for the new electric substations needed to connect them to the grid.

“We have all heard about affordability and energy costs,” Lucas said. “There are more than 200 energy bills this session, and as far as I’m aware this is the only proposal to actually reduce rates in the near term.”

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee voted 13-0-1, with Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax County, abstaining, to refer the bill to the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee.

If the bill becomes law and the proposals in it receive the SCC’s approval, the typical monthly bill for one of these highest-usage customers would rise about 16% while the typical bill for residential and other customers would decrease by 3% to 3.5%, according to an SCC analysis.

For a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of power each month, that would amount to a bill reduction of $5.52, starting Jan. 1, according to the analysis.

Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby said in an email to Cardinal News that the utility supports the legislation.

“We want data centers to pay their fair share, and we want to lower costs for our customers. This legislation delivers both. It’s a good thing for our customers,” Ruby said.

Nicole Riley, representing the Data Center Coalition, told the committee that she hopes the bill can be further amended to give data centers the option to build their own electric infrastructure, which she said would shield ratepayers from paying for it.

Riley also said the coalition would like the SCC to study how much of Dominion’s rising capacity costs can be attributed to data centers, and she expressed concern that the proposed bill precludes that.

“We recognize and appreciate ongoing concerns and discussions about data centers costs, causation and cost allocation,” Riley said.

How best to regulate the growth of data centers and who should pay costs associated with infrastructure and other aspects of that growth has been a major topic of discussion in this year’s General Assembly, with more than two dozen data center-specific bills introduced.

The high-usage customers impacted by Lucas’ proposed legislation would be those in Dominion’s newly approved GS-5 rate class. It takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, and covers customers requiring at least 25 megawatts of power.

Dominion said in March that the GS-5 rate class is expected to have 131 data center customers and eight non-data center customers.

The bill would give Dominion’s large traditional manufacturing customers a one-time opportunity to opt out of the new GS-5 rate class, Lucas said.

“These are longstanding customers,” Lucas said. “They are not the ones driving new costs today.”

The SCC approved the GS-5 rate class in November when it also approved a rate increase that is expected to raise the average Dominion residential bill by $13.60, or about 9%, over two years.

Lucas emphasized that if her bill becomes law, it would not automatically enact the cost-shifting changes. Rather, the bill gives Dominion the green light to petition the SCC on July 1 for approval to make such changes. The SCC is not required to accept the proposals.

The bill would have Dominion propose the changes again every two years, lasting through 2033.

Joe Reid of the law firm McGuireWoods, representing Dominion Energy, noted that sunset clause makes the bill a “short-term fix to skyrocketing capacity prices.”

In the long term, Reid said, data centers can bring costs down through the ongoing revenues that they pay the utility.

The portion of Lucas’ bill about data center costs would apply only to Dominion’s service territory.

Dominion, along with the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, serves the Northern Virginia market where most of the commonwealth’s data centers have been built.

Appalachian Power, which serves Southwest Virginia, has far fewer but has seen proposals recently as industry interest spreads out across the commonwealth. 

Besides addressing data centers and related costs, Lucas’ bill also includes provisions related to programs for low-income customers and a Dominion program that buries distribution lines.

The bill would extend Dominion and Appalachian’s funding of low-income customer energy assistance and weatherization programs for 10 more years, through 2038, and increase how much money each utility puts toward the programs.

It would extend Dominion’s program to move vulnerable overhead distribution lines underground by 10 years, through 2038. Burying lines underground reduces outages but is more expensive than running them overhead.

Kimberly Pate, director of the SCC’s division of utility accounting and finance, said that program currently costs a typical Dominion customer $4.88 per month. All Dominion customers pay toward it even if they are not served by the lines that are placed underground.

Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham County, suggested that letting the undergrounding program expire could save customers that money.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, said that the program saves customers money in a way that isn’t factored into the monthly bill, because having fewer power outages means fewer expenses incurred from circumstances such as spoiled groceries and missed workdays.

Richmond-based Dominion Energy has more than 3.6 million customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Of those, more than 2.5 million are in Virginia, including in Central and Southside Virginia and the Alleghany Highlands.

The post Lucas proposes data centers pay more to lower Dominion customers’ bills appeared first on Cardinal News.

A Senate committee on Monday advanced a bill intended to have Dominion Energy data center customers pick up certain costs in order to lower monthly electric bills for the utility’s other customers.

The bill, which Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, presented as a substitute to her SB 253, would allow the State Corporation Commission to decide if Dominion’s biggest users of electricity, primarily data centers, should be required to pick up the tab for expenses known as capacity costs.

The utility pays these costs to ensure that power is available during peak demand times, such as the hottest summer days and the coldest winter nights. Dominion’s capacity costs have risen in recent years as electricity demand has increased, largely due to the growth of energy-hungry data centers that power governments, businesses and online services from Amazon to Zelle.

The bill also would allow the SCC to decide if these heavy-usage customers must pay for the new electric substations needed to connect them to the grid.

“We have all heard about affordability and energy costs,” Lucas said. “There are more than 200 energy bills this session, and as far as I’m aware this is the only proposal to actually reduce rates in the near term.”

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

The Senate Commerce and Labor Committee voted 13-0-1, with Sen. Dave Marsden, D-Fairfax County, abstaining, to refer the bill to the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee.

If the bill becomes law and the proposals in it receive the SCC’s approval, the typical monthly bill for one of these highest-usage customers would rise about 16% while the typical bill for residential and other customers would decrease by 3% to 3.5%, according to an SCC analysis.

For a typical residential customer using 1,000 kilowatt-hours of power each month, that would amount to a bill reduction of $5.52, starting Jan. 1, according to the analysis.

Dominion spokesperson Aaron Ruby said in an email to Cardinal News that the utility supports the legislation.

“We want data centers to pay their fair share, and we want to lower costs for our customers. This legislation delivers both. It’s a good thing for our customers,” Ruby said.

Nicole Reilly, representing the Data Center Coalition, told the committee that she hopes the bill can be further amended to give data centers the option to build their own electric infrastructure, which she said would shield ratepayers from paying for it.

Reilly also said the coalition would like the SCC to study how much of Dominion’s rising capacity costs can be attributed to data centers, and she expressed concern that the proposed bill precludes that.

“We recognize and appreciate ongoing concerns and discussions about data centers costs, causation and cost allocation,” Reilly said.

How best to regulate the growth of data centers and who should pay costs associated with infrastructure and other aspects of that growth has been a major topic of discussion in this year’s General Assembly, with more than two dozen data center-specific bills introduced.

The high-usage customers impacted by Lucas’ proposed legislation would be those in Dominion’s newly approved GS-5 rate class. It takes effect Jan. 1, 2027, and covers customers requiring at least 25 megawatts of power.

Dominion said in March that the GS-5 rate class is expected to have 131 data center customers and eight non-data center customers.

The bill would give Dominion’s large traditional manufacturing customers a one-time opportunity to opt out of the new GS-5 rate class, Lucas said.

“These are longstanding customers,” Lucas said. “They are not the ones driving new costs today.”

The SCC approved the GS-5 rate class in November when it also approved a rate increase that is expected to raise the average Dominion residential bill by $13.60, or about 9%, over two years.

Lucas emphasized that if her bill becomes law, it would not automatically enact the cost-shifting changes. Rather, the bill gives Dominion the green light to petition the SCC on July 1 for approval to make such changes. The SCC is not required to accept the proposals.

The bill would have Dominion propose the changes again every two years, lasting through 2033.

Joe Reid of the law firm McGuireWoods, representing Dominion Energy, noted that sunset clause makes the bill a “short-term fix to skyrocketing capacity prices.”

In the long term, Reid said, data centers can bring costs down through the ongoing revenues that they pay the utility.

The portion of Lucas’ bill about data center costs would apply only to Dominion’s service territory.

Dominion, along with the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative, serves the Northern Virginia market where most of the commonwealth’s data centers have been built.

Appalachian Power, which serves Southwest Virginia, has far fewer but has seen proposals recently as industry interest spreads out across the commonwealth. 

Besides addressing data centers and related costs, Lucas’ bill also includes provisions related to programs for low-income customers and a Dominion program that buries distribution lines.

The bill would extend Dominion and Appalachian’s funding of low-income customer energy assistance and weatherization programs for 10 more years, through 2038, and increase how much money each utility puts toward the programs.

It would extend Dominion’s program to move vulnerable overhead distribution lines underground by 10 years, through 2038. Burying lines underground reduces outages but is more expensive than running them overhead.

Kimberly Pate, director of the SCC’s division of utility accounting and finance, said that program currently costs a typical Dominion customer $4.88 per month. All Dominion customers pay toward it even if they are not served by the lines that are placed underground.

Sen. Mark Obenshain, R-Rockingham County, suggested that letting the undergrounding program expire could save customers that money.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, said that the program saves customers money in a way that isn’t factored into the monthly bill, because having fewer power outages means fewer expenses incurred from circumstances such as spoiled groceries and missed workdays.

Richmond-based Dominion Energy has more than 3.6 million customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Of those, more than 2.5 million are in Virginia, including in Central and Southside Virginia and the Alleghany Highlands.

The post Lucas proposes data centers pay more to lower Dominion customers’ bills appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hello Cardinal News readers. Welcome back to Cardinal Commerce Notes, our new regular feature catching you up on various recent business news items.

This is the second edition of Cardinal Commerce Notes. If you missed the first, check it out here to learn more about a big construction milestone in Franklin County, a growing artisans hub in Big Stone Gap and a new restaurant planned for Salem.

I’m always on the lookout for news tips, so please send them my way: matt@cardinalnews.org.

Roanoke-based investment company acquires Wytheville machining firm

Clarke Precision Machine, a machining and fabrication company with roots in Wytheville going back 60 years, has been acquired by the Roanoke-based investment firm Harbor.

Clarke Precision Machine makes custom parts for the automotive, building and food industries, among others, according to its website.

CEO Matthew Clarke said his company has about 25 full-time employees plus student interns and part-time employees.

Harbor CEO Andrew Dunlap said in an email to Cardinal News that his company “exists to keep Virginia companies growing and thriving in Virginia” and that this acquisition is “our first step in building a much larger, state-wide, machine group” under Matthew Clarke’s leadership.

Harbor said in a Feb. 3 news release that Clarke Precision Machine’s existing management team and its day-to-day operations will remain unchanged.

The acquisition “positions Clarke Precision Machine for its next phase of growth,” Harbor said.

“With the support of Harbor, the company will gain access to long-term capital to invest in advanced manufacturing equipment, expand production capacity, and strengthen its engineering, sales, and business development teams,” the company said in the release.

Clarke said in an email that he is “very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with such a strong group of partners and to continue growing Clarke Precision Machine with the support of Harbor’s investment.” 

“We look forward to sharing additional announcements in the coming years as we pursue both organic growth and strategic acquisitions,” he said.

In a news release from the Joint Industrial Development Authority of Wythe County, local officials praised the deal.

“This investment is a vote of confidence in our region’s workforce and our ability to compete at the highest level,” said David Manley, the IDA’s executive director.

Danville’s economic development department relocates

Danville’s Office of Economic Development and Tourism has a new home.

The office announced Feb. 3 that it has officially relocated to Dan River Falls, the former mill building that’s turned into a mixed-use property, at 420 Memorial Drive, Suite 200.

No longer will the River City’s economic development office be divided among multiple spaces in the city’s municipal building on Patton Street.

The new location gives it more space for collaboration as well as hosting workshops, training and visits from prospects, the office said in a news release

It also puts the office under the same roof as the city’s parks and recreation department.

“We are deeply thankful for City leadership’s investment in this modern space, which serves as an essential tool in our toolbox as we work to showcase our community in the best possible light,” Corrie Bobe, director of the Office of Economic Development and Tourism, said in the release.

“The design and layout of the new office also create greater opportunities for staff collaboration, strengthening our ability to host investors and community leaders while demonstrating Danville’s continued growth and potential.”

Virginia launches new paid internship resources

Virginia will commit $14.5 million to a new statewide paid internship program for higher education students, the governor’s office announced Feb. 4.

The program, called InternshipsVA, will provide grants for small- and mid-size employers to match undergraduate interns’ wages; recruitment capabilities through Handshake, an online jobs platform for students; and other program support and resources.

“InternshipsVA aims to make sure every student educated in the Commonwealth has the chance to begin and build a lasting career right here in Virginia,” Gov. Abigail Spanberger said in a news release.

“By partnering with businesses to give students real‑world experience before graduation, we’re strengthening a talent pipeline that will drive Virginia’s economic growth for years to come.”

For more information, visit the InternshipsVA section of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership website.

Contractor picked for big Campbell County building

In summer 2024, Campbell County announced that it would develop an $11 million, 103,000-square-foot industrial building in the Seneca Industrial Park on U.S. 29 near U.S. 460.

At that time, officials said it was the largest project that the county’s economic development department had taken on in a decade.

Work is moving along, with county officials saying in a Feb. 3 email newsletter that they’ve chosen a contractor for the first phase of construction, which consists of the foundation, framing, outside walls, roof and basic utilities.

The county said it received seven bids, and Forest-based Coleman-Adams Construction earned the contract with a bid of $5.675 million. Architectural Partners of Lynchburg will provide construction management services.

That’s a wrap for this week. Do you know of a new business expanding or relocating in your town? Excited about a restaurant opening up soon? Maybe you’ve got an update on a story we’ve reported before. Please send your tips and suggestions to: matt@cardinalnews.org.

The post Cardinal Commerce Notes: Roanoke firm acquires Wytheville machine shop, Danville dept. gets new digs, state rolls out paid internship resources, Campbell building progresses appeared first on Cardinal News.

For more than a year, the new Wildwood Recovery Center in Dickenson County has been completed, equipped and ready to open. Instead, it has remained dark, quiet and vacant.

On Friday, county leaders announced a “major milestone” step toward changing that.

A license to operate the 112-bed residential treatment center for men has been approved by the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, the county said in a news release. Although additional steps remain before the drug treatment facility can accept its first patients, county officials and the operator said they hope to open during the second half of 2026.

“Receiving the state license is a critical step forward and reflects the significant work that has gone into preparing Wildwood Recovery Center to meet Virginia’s rigorous behavioral health standards,” said Dana Cronkhite, executive director of the Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority. “This milestone brings us closer to delivering much needed recovery services to our region.”

The license is conditional and lasts for six months, according to the state behavioral health department. Regulations allow a provider to operate for up to 12 months on a conditional license, through a first and then a second license. If the provider demonstrates compliance during the conditional period, it can be moved to a full annual license, Lauren Cunningham, director of communications for the department, explained in an email.

While the provider is under a conditional license, it is considered licensed, she added.

The license was approved Thursday, one day after the department visited Wildwood, which is in Clintwood.

County officials, including Cronkhite and county Administrator Larry Barton, have been working for years to open a treatment facility because Dickenson continues to have one of the highest overdose death rates in the state and few options for treatment. Wildwood was announced in 2023.

For many years, families in Southwest Virginia have had to send their loved ones with substance abuse issues far away for treatment, if they could afford it and if they could find residential treatment, Cronkhite said. She added that addiction isn’t just a health issue; it affects families, schools and the workforce, and hinders economic development.

“This project really changes access,” she said. “People are more likely to enter treatment and stay in treatment when they can be close to their support system. The goal is to connect them with the resources that are needed for long-term recovery so that they can get back into the workforce and be healthy, tax-paying citizens again.”

Originally, the facility was to be operated by Addiction Recovery Care of Kentucky, which came under an FBI investigation into possible health care fraud. No charges have been filed.

ARC announced in February 2025 that it had submitted its license application, but when months went by with no approval, county officials said in late October that they were going with another operator because it was taking too long to get the license.

The new operator, Momentum Management Solutions, previously Momentum Recovery and Wellness, based in Louisville, Kentucky, filed a new application for the license, and it was approved in 60 days, according to Matt Boggs, the company’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

The plan under ARC was for Wildwood to be a year-long program that was heavy on job training, so the client could complete an internship and get a job when they were done. The county’s plan was to combine substance abuse treatment with job training so the county could raise its low labor force participation rate, which is about 41%.

But Boggs said the treatment will be different for each client, based on individual needs. Some job training will be offered, but some clients will need less time and training, he said.

The next step will be to focus on the credentialing process with Virginia’s Medicaid managed care organizations, which is required to operate, according to Cronkhite.

Boggs said once Momentum got word that the license was approved, it immediately submitted an enrollment application Friday to the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services. In a couple of weeks, he said he expects to get a Medicaid number, which would allow the company to work toward contracting with the managed care organizations, the insurance companies that administer the state Medicaid program.

Boggs said he’s not sure exactly how long that will take.

Under the approved license, Wildwood will operate at a 3.5 level of care, which is clinically managed high-intensity residential treatment. Once the facility is fully open, Momentum plans to pursue licenses for additional lower levels of care in a residential setting as well as outpatient services, Boggs said.

Wildwood will accept patients from across the state but will have a particular focus on those from Southwest Virginia, he said.

Once Wildwood is fully operational, Boggs said the plan is to hire nearly 50 employees.

The post Dickenson County drug treatment center gets conditional license to operate from the state appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hi, Cardinal readers. Welcome to the first edition of The Pulse, a weekly roundup of health-focused news. Each week, we’ll bring you updates on health policy, community surveys, new clinical studies, programs and services in Southwest and Southside Virginia.

Got a tip or story idea? Email me at emily@cardinalnews.org.

Bills aimed at lowering prescription drug costs and creating more pricing transparency are advancing through the General Assembly this session.

Lawmakers have debated these issues for several years. Some proposals stem from state-commissioned studies, while others build on past legislation or return for a second or third attempt after stalling in prior sessions.

Transparency for pharmacy benefit managers

Last year, lawmakers passed a package of bills to create a single pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM, for Virginia’s Medicaid managed care organizations. A single PBM would reduce duplicative administrative costs and allow transparency in drug costs and dispensing fees. A 2019 General Assembly-directed study showed that the state could save $10.1 million to $22 million with a direct PBM.

The Department of Medical Assistance Services contracts with managed care organizations to manage the benefits for the state’s Medicaid enrollees. Those organizations then contract with PBMs, which are essentially the middleman between manufacturers, health plans and the pharmacists. PBMs negotiate prices and retain rebates and discounts, a practice that has drawn scrutiny for its lack of transparency.

The single PBM system is currently delayed until January 2027.

This year, Del. Keith Hodges, R- Middlesex County, introduced HB 1109, requiring greater transparency from the PBM that will serve all Medicaid managed care organizations.

The bill would require standardized methods for collecting and reporting data to DMAS and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Required data would include detailed breakdowns of expenditures, rebates and the sources of all cost components.

During an interview, Hodges pointed to a 2025 study on drug pricing in Virginia conducted by Strategic Directions Rx, a firm led by Jeremy Counts, a Blacksburg-based pharmacist. The study found that Virginia’s Medicaid spending on prescription drugs exceeded the national average between 2017 and 2023.

According to the study, Virginia Medicaid plans overspent by $10.8 billion on medication during that period, largely due to overpayment for generic medications. 

Hodges estimates that increased transparency could save $1 billion in Medicaid spending in the first year and $1.8 billion in the second year.

“We need to have a transparent system to see what those drug costs are,” Hodges said.

The bill is still in committee, assigned to the House subcommittee on Social Services for review. 

Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, also introduced legislation aimed at regulating PBM payment rules for Medicaid plans. His bill, SB 410, would prohibit PBMs from reimbursing pharmacies below the national average drug acquisition cost plus a dispensing fee. It would also bar PBMs from imposing retroactive or point-of-sale fees; tying pharmacy reimbursement to patient outcomes, scores or performance metrics; or deriving revenue directly from pharmacies or patients.

In addition, the bill would require PBMs to calculate patients’ out-of-pocket costs based on the net price of a prescription drug and increase PBM reporting requirements. PBMs would be required to submit quarterly reports to the governor and the General Assembly detailing drug costs, rebates and other pricing components.

SB 410 is currently in Commerce and Labor, where it will need a committee report before it can move to the Senate floor for a vote. 

Prescription Drug Affordability Board

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, has introduced legislation to establish a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, or PDAB, in Virginia.

This marks the fourth attempt to create such a board. Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2025.

PDABs are state-run entities that review the pricing of high-cost prescription drugs and, in some cases, set upper payment limits. Under Deeds’ proposal, SB 271, the board would meet at least four times a year to review selected drugs sold in Virginia and submit annual reports to the General Assembly beginning Dec. 31. 

The bill applies to health plans and programs run or regulated by the state. It would require those plans to cap what they pay for certain prescription drugs at a maximum price set by the board after it reviews whether the drugs are affordable. Medicare Part D plans would not have to follow those price limits, according to the bill. 

At least nine states have established PDABs, although Colorado remains the only state to successfully implement an upper payment limit. Four years after creating the board, Colorado capped the price of Enbrel, a medication for arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Pharmaceutical company Amgen sued the state, arguing that the cap would cause financial harm, according to reporting by the Colorado Sun. 

Maryland became the first state to enact PDAB legislation in 2019. In November, Maryland’s board moved toward approving upper payment limits for two drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes, though the caps still require final approval.

Critics, including Virginia Bio, a nonprofit trade association representing the life sciences industry in Virginia, argue that PDABs have failed to produce meaningful results. Dr. Harry Gewanter, a pediatric rheumatologist in Richmond and former president of the Medical Society of Virginia, testified against the proposal, saying lawmakers should instead focus on regulating pharmacy benefit managers.

Virginia AARP has consistently supported PDAB legislation. In June, the organization reiterated its support and said it would continue backing legislation in 2026. 

“This would save all Virginians money in the form of lower premiums as well as lower out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter,” according to the Virginia AARP website. 

The estimated cost for VDH to implement the provisions of this legislation is estimated to be up to $1.1 million in 2027.

The bill passed the Senate in a 31-8 vote on Friday. 

Community pharmacies

Another pharmacy-related bill that would have created a grant program to support independent pharmacies in underserved areas died in a 7-0 vote Friday in the Health and Human Resources subcommittee. However, a budget amendment for the program is still in play. 

Del. Bontia Anthony, D-Norfolk, sponsored HB 335 and the budget amendment to create the Independent Pharmacy Access and Resilience Pilot Program. The program would provide grants to 12 pharmacies operating in pharmacy deserts located in medically underserved areas with high Medicaid patient volumes, with priority given to independent pharmacies. 

Virginia mirrors national trends in pharmacy closures. Large chains, including Walgreens and Rite Aid, have shuttered locations across the state, while independent, community-based pharmacies are also disappearing.

The Joint Commission on Health Care has studied pharmacy closures in Virginia and their impact on local communities. Its findings show that 51 communities across 28 localities meet the definition of a pharmacy desert, places where residents must travel more than 1 mile to access a pharmacy in urban areas, 5 miles in suburban areas and 10 miles in rural areas. More than 20% of residents in these communities live below the federal poverty level.

In rural areas, smaller populations and high Medicaid enrollment mean low sales volumes paired with low reimbursement rates, creating significant financial strain. Independent pharmacies typically operate a single storefront and cannot offset losses with revenue from other locations. These factors also discourage new pharmacies from opening in rural communities, according to the commission.

The commission offered several legislative recommendations to help address these challenges, particularly in rural areas. 

Under Anthony’s bill, leadership with the pilot program would consult with state agencies, schools of pharmacy and community health partners to assess closure risks and develop strategies to prevent pharmacies from shutting down.

Grant funding could be used to expand pharmacy services, improve workflow, provide revenue cycle support or help pharmacies access alternative funding streams. The bill also would allow funding to support partnerships with health systems, community clinics, local health departments or academic institutions.

The pilot program would expire in July 2030. 

The program would need $65,000 allocated from the general fund for startup costs, followed by $300,000 annually beginning in 2028. 

The post The Pulse: General Assembly takes up bills focused on medication affordability, pricing transparency appeared first on Cardinal News.

Hi, Cardinal readers. Welcome to the first edition of The Pulse, a weekly roundup of health-focused news. Each week, we’ll bring you updates on health policy, community surveys, new clinical studies, programs and services in Southwest and Southside Virginia.

Got a tip or story idea? Email me at emily@cardinalnews.org.

Bills aimed at lowering prescription drug costs and creating more pricing transparency are advancing through the General Assembly this session.

Lawmakers have debated these issues for several years. Some proposals stem from state-commissioned studies, while others build on past legislation or return for a second or third attempt after stalling in prior sessions.

Transparency for pharmacy benefit managers

Last year, lawmakers passed a package of bills to create a single pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM, for Virginia’s Medicaid managed care organizations. A single PBM would reduce duplicative administrative costs and allow transparency in drug costs and dispensing fees. A 2019 General Assembly-directed study showed that the state would save about $32 million with a direct PBM.

The Department of Medical Assistance Services contracts with managed care organizations to manage the benefits for the state’s Medicaid enrollees. Those organizations then contract with PBMs, which are essentially the middleman between manufacturers, health plans and the pharmacists. PBMs negotiate prices and retain rebates and discounts, a practice that has drawn scrutiny for its lack of transparency.

The single PBM system is scheduled to take effect July 1.

This year, Del. Keith Hodges, R- Middlesex County, introduced HB 1109, requiring greater transparency from the PBM that will serve all Medicaid managed care organizations.

The bill would require standardized methods for collecting and reporting data to DMAS and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Required data would include detailed breakdowns of expenditures, rebates and the sources of all cost components.

During an interview, Hodges pointed to a 2025 study on drug pricing in Virginia conducted by Strategic Directions Rx, a firm led by Jeremy Counts, a Blacksburg-based pharmacist. The study found that Virginia’s Medicaid spending on prescription drugs exceeded the national average between 2017 and 2023.

According to the study, Virginia Medicaid plans overspent by $10.8 billion on medication during that period, largely due to overpayment for generic medications. 

Hodges estimates that increased transparency could save $1 billion in Medicaid spending in the first year and $1.8 billion in the second year.

“We need to have a transparent system to see what those drug costs are,” Hodges said.

The bill is still in committee, assigned to the House subcommittee on Social Services for review. 

Sen. Mark Peake, R-Lynchburg, also introduced legislation aimed at regulating PBM payment rules for Medicaid plans. His bill, SB 410, would prohibit PBMs from reimbursing pharmacies below the national average drug acquisition cost plus a dispensing fee. It would also bar PBMs from imposing retroactive or point-of-sale fees; tying pharmacy reimbursement to patient outcomes, scores or performance metrics; or deriving revenue directly from pharmacies or patients.

In addition, the bill would require PBMs to calculate patients’ out-of-pocket costs based on the net price of a prescription drug and increase PBM reporting requirements. PBMs would be required to submit quarterly reports to the governor and the General Assembly detailing drug costs, rebates and other pricing components.

SB 410 is currently in Commerce and Labor, where it will need a committee report before it can move to the Senate floor for a vote. 

Prescription Drug Affordability Board

Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, has introduced legislation to establish a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, or PDAB, in Virginia.

This marks the fourth attempt to create such a board. Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed similar legislation in 2024 and 2025.

PDABs are state-run entities that review the pricing of high-cost prescription drugs and, in some cases, set upper payment limits. Under Deeds’ proposal, SB 271, the board would meet at least four times a year to review selected drugs sold in Virginia and submit annual reports to the General Assembly beginning Dec. 31. 

The bill applies to health plans and programs run or regulated by the state. It would require those plans to cap what they pay for certain prescription drugs at a maximum price set by the board after it reviews whether the drugs are affordable. Medicare Part D plans would not have to follow those price limits, according to the bill. 

At least nine states have established PDABs, although Colorado remains the only state to successfully implement an upper payment limit. Four years after creating the board, Colorado capped the price of Enbrel, a medication for arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. Pharmaceutical company Amgen sued the state, arguing that the cap would cause financial harm, according to reporting by the Colorado Sun. 

Maryland became the first state to enact PDAB legislation in 2019. In November, Maryland’s board moved toward approving upper payment limits for two drugs used to treat Type 2 diabetes, though the caps still require final approval.

Critics, including Virginia Bio, a nonprofit trade association representing the life sciences industry in Virginia, argue that PDABs have failed to produce meaningful results. Dr. Harry Gewanter, a pediatric rheumatologist in Richmond and former president of the Medical Society of Virginia, testified against the proposal, saying lawmakers should instead focus on regulating pharmacy benefit managers.

Virginia AARP has consistently supported PDAB legislation. In June, the organization reiterated its support and said it would continue backing legislation in 2026. 

“This would save all Virginians money in the form of lower premiums as well as lower out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter,” according to the Virginia AARP website. 

The estimated cost for VDH to implement the provisions of this legislation is estimated to be up to $1.1 million in 2027.

The bill passed the Senate in a 31-8 vote on Friday. 

Community pharmacies

Another pharmacy-related bill that would have created a grant program to support independent pharmacies in underserved areas died in a 7-0 vote Friday in the Health and Human Resources subcommittee. However, a budget amendment for the program is still in play. 

Del. Bontia Anthony, D-Norfolk, sponsored HB 335 and the budget amendment to create the Independent Pharmacy Access and Resilience Pilot Program. The program would provide grants to 12 pharmacies operating in pharmacy deserts located in medically underserved areas with high Medicaid patient volumes, with priority given to independent pharmacies. 

Virginia mirrors national trends in pharmacy closures. Large chains, including Walgreens and Rite Aid, have shuttered locations across the state, while independent, community-based pharmacies are also disappearing.

The Joint Commission on Health Care has studied pharmacy closures in Virginia and their impact on local communities. Its findings show that 51 communities across 28 localities meet the definition of a pharmacy desert, places where residents must travel more than 1 mile to access a pharmacy in urban areas, 5 miles in suburban areas and 10 miles in rural areas. More than 20% of residents in these communities live below the federal poverty level.

In rural areas, smaller populations and high Medicaid enrollment mean low sales volumes paired with low reimbursement rates, creating significant financial strain. Independent pharmacies typically operate a single storefront and cannot offset losses with revenue from other locations. These factors also discourage new pharmacies from opening in rural communities, according to the commission.

The commission offered several legislative recommendations to help address these challenges, particularly in rural areas. 

Under Anthony’s bill, leadership with the pilot program would consult with state agencies, schools of pharmacy and community health partners to assess closure risks and develop strategies to prevent pharmacies from shutting down.

Grant funding could be used to expand pharmacy services, improve workflow, provide revenue cycle support or help pharmacies access alternative funding streams. The bill also would allow funding to support partnerships with health systems, community clinics, local health departments or academic institutions.

The pilot program would expire in July 2030. 

The program would need $65,000 allocated from the general fund for startup costs, followed by $300,000 annually beginning in 2028. 

The post The Pulse: General Assembly takes up bills focused on medication affordability, pricing transparency appeared first on Cardinal News.

The search for a new city council member in Danville has been narrowed to three finalists and one alternate. The council will interview the candidates during a public meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the city council chambers. 

Del. Madison Whittle, R-Danville, resigned from his role on the city council in January to become a member of the General Assembly, leaving an open seat.

The eight remaining members of the council will appoint a candidate to fill Whittle’s seat until November, when a special election will be held. The candidate elected in November will finish the remaining two years of Whittle’s term. 

The finalists are Shakeva Frazier, the runner-up in the most recent city council election; Shelby Irving, Danville’s first female firefighter and longtime fire department member; and Danny Marshall, a former state delegate and former Danville council member. 

The finalists and the alternate, Gwyndolyn Stone, were announced by Danville Mayor Alonzo Jones at a council meeting last week. They were chosen from a pool of 11 applicants. 

“Conducting the interviews in a public meeting is an important part of a transparent process, and we appreciate the community’s continued engagement,” Jones said in a Feb. 3 release from the city. 

The council must fill the vacancy within 45 days of Whittle’s departure, giving them until Feb. 27 to decide among the finalists. The council will make a final decision by majority vote, also in a public meeting. 

If the council cannot agree on a candidate to fill the vacancy, a judge will step in to make a decision.

Frazier, Irving and Marshall each have a long history of public service in Danville, as well as aspirations for their potential time on the city council. 

Shakeva Frazier: Runner-up is once again a council candidate

Shakeva Frazier ran for the city council in 2024 and was about 870 votes shy of being elected. She was the first runner-up of nine candidates after all five incumbents were reelected. That automatically made her a finalist in the process to fill Whittle’s seat. 

She was not available for an interview in time for publication, but she spoke with Cardinal News during her campaign for the city council in 2024.

At that time, Frazier said that “connection and relatability” were the strongest skills she would bring to the council, adding that she has been involved in nonprofits and grassroots organizations in Danville for over 15 years.

Frazier is the executive director of Third Chance Housing, which focuses on homelessness prevention and housing affordability, and serves on the West Piedmont Better Housing Coalition. 

She previously worked with the Danville Redevelopment and Housing Authority. This work has made her intimately aware of the city’s ongoing housing shortage, and she’s been working to create more transitional housing in Danville. 

In addition to housing efforts, Frazier said she believes that continued workforce development programming is valuable for the region.

Frazier has also worked with youth in the city, including with Project Imagine, a program that is targeted toward at-risk and gang-affiliated youth, and is president of Danville Riverview Rotary Club. 

Shelby Irving: Firefighter and self-proclaimed public servant 

Shelby Irving’s love for public service motivated her to apply for the open seat on the city council. Alongside her career at the city’s fire department, Irving is also a board member for seven local organizations, and she volunteers her time through community groups, food and clothing drives and teaching. 

If either Frazier or Irving is appointed, the city council will have a female member for the first time since 2010. The last woman on Danville’s council was Ruby Archie, who served from 1994 until her death in 2010.

But Irving is no stranger to male-dominated spaces. 

She joined the fire department in 1987, at a time when there were no other female firefighters there. That career choice began with a dare from her friend.

“I had a friend who challenged me to try the fire department,” Irving said. “I’m still right here, 39 years later.”

Of the 30 firefighters who were hired in Irving’s cohort, only three of them are still working at the Danville Fire Department, she said. 

“I joke that everybody counted me out at first, and now I’m going to be the last one here,” Irving said. “Once I got the job, people said, ‘I’ll give her a month.’”

Irving fell in love with firefighting and public safety work, she said, and decided to make a career out of it. 

She was promoted several times in the fire marshal’s office, making her the first Black chief officer at the department. After serving as fire marshal from 2022 to 2023, Irving now works as the director of community risk reduction with the fire department. 

She is still the highest-ranking Black officer in the department. 

“I love this city, and I love working in this city, especially here at the fire department,” she said. “It gives me an opportunity to have a close relationship with the citizens of Danville.”

Irving has strengthened these relationships through community service. She’s involved with God’s Storehouse, a food bank in Danville; the House of Hope homeless shelter; Boys & Girls Club; the YMCA; and several other organizations. 

She also teaches fire safety at schools, church groups, community groups and other organizations. 

“Through teaching, I’ve been able to touch on things that may not relate to fire, but I love branching out, helping with the homeless shelter, with senior citizens, everyone,” Irving said. “People will call me with just about anything.”

Irving said she’s witnessed Danville’s growth over the years and wants to help keep it going. 

One thing she’s heard a lot about from residents is utility prices. She said that although Danville’s rates are still lower than many localities in the region, she’d like to work with city staff and the council on efforts and programs — both existing and new — to make utilities more affordable for residents. 

Danville is the only municipality in Virginia that operates all four essential utility services: water, wastewater, electricity and natural gas.

Danville has been in the utility business since 1876 and serves Danville, most Pittsylvania County households and also portions of Henry and Halifax counties.

Because of her career, Irving said public safety efforts are “my baby,” but she’s also invested in increasing the city’s housing stock and continuing the recent strides in education and economic development. 

“We’ve got to keep getting industries and businesses in here, getting people to come, and giving them a reason to stay,” she said. “Nothing irritates me more than to hear someone say, ‘I wouldn’t move to Danville, there’s nothing to do.’ Well, what are you doing? What have you done to help fix that?”

Irving said that if she is appointed to the city council, she will continue her strong rapport with the community. 

“I’m an open door person, and I will talk to you,” Irving said. “I’d be one of nine, so I can’t make every promise, but you will be heard.”

Danny Marshall: ‘More to do’ after decades as a Virginia legislator

Danny Marshall announced in February 2025 that he wouldn’t seek reelection for his seat in the General Assembly, which he had held for nearly 25 years, citing health issues. 

Whittle was elected to replace Marshall, representing the 49th House District in November, defeating fellow Danville council member Gary Miller. 

Prior to his time in the General Assembly, Marshall served on Danville’s city council from 2000 to 2001.

“This time last year I was living in Durham,” Marshall said. “My wife and I moved down there in December 2024. At that time, I had to be close to the hospital.”

He was waiting for a lung transplant, which he received in March 2025. By then, he had already decided that it “wouldn’t be fair” for him to seek reelection to the General Assembly. 

“You don’t know when you’re going to get the lung,” Marshall said. “I met one person who got a lung within a week, and I met another one who waited a year. By the time I got the lung in March, I had already announced that I wasn’t going to run, and I didn’t want to double back on that.”

But when Whittle’s seat opened up on the city council, Marshall’s love of public service in the region made him want to apply. 

“I still have some things to do,” he said. 

Marshall has had a hand in some of Southside’s biggest economic development and revitalization efforts. 

He represented Danville on the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission, which invests in economic development projects across Southwest and Southside Virginia. 

The commission’s investment in industrial parks in this region spurred the development of the Southern Virginia Megasite at Berry Hill, which landed the largest economic development project in Southside’s history.

Microporous, a lithium battery ion separator manufacturer, announced its decision to locate at Berry Hill in November 2024, representing a $1.3 billion investment and promising to create over 2,000 jobs.

In 2002, Marshall introduced his first bill in the state legislature, establishing Danville’s Institute of Advanced Learning and Research, which serves as a regional catalyst for economic transformation. The following year, he pushed to get IALR funding added into the state budget.

He also sponsored a budget amendment for last year’s state budget to allocate $3 million toward a whitewater channel project in Danville, which is working to bolster its recreational attractions. 

If appointed to the city council, Marshall said his focus would remain on jobs. 

“We have a great city council, and a spectacular city manager and staff. … They’ve worked so hard, and we’ve got to keep that going,” he said. “To me, it’s all about jobs and getting good paying jobs so that citizens can have a good quality of life.”

Part of that effort is a continued focus on education, Marshall said. Danville has made public education a priority in recent years, and residents approved a referendum in 2021 that raised the sales tax by 1% to provide a revenue stream for capital improvement projects at schools. 

Marshall praised this decision and the resulting school renovations and new school buildings. 

“When we have quality education, the workforce that graduates is going to have a lot more skills for the jobs that are coming,” he said. 

After representing a larger region in Southside for so long, he said it would be second nature for him to continue the collaborations that Danville has with Pittsylvania County and other localities and organizations. 

The post Finalists for open seat on Danville City Council to be interviewed in public meeting Tuesday appeared first on Cardinal News.

Those interested in filling the Bristol City Council seat vacated by Becky Nave will be questioned by the four remaining members Tuesday night during the open portion of the council meeting.

The deadline to apply for the position was 4:30 p.m. Monday. Interim City Manager Tamrya Spradlin said a total of seven candidates applied; she declined to release their names, saying they haven’t been presented to council members yet. Mayor Jake Holmes said Monday afternoon that most of the candidates he’s seen are women.

Nave, who was first appointed to the council in 2021, announced on Jan. 28 that she was resigning effective Jan. 31 due to a promotion that will require her to spend more time in Richmond and involve more travel. Currently the director of destination development with the Virginia Tourism Corp., she is moving March 2 into a new role as its vice president of partnership marketing.

The council has 30 days from the effective date of the resignation to appoint a replacement. The candidates will each be asked a series of questions, including why they’re interested in serving as a council member and what their vision is for the city, Holmes said.

During a closed session Tuesday night, council members will then whittle the number of candidates down. At the next meeting on Feb. 24, council will talk further with the finalists in closed session, the mayor said.

The person chosen will serve the remaining three years of Nave’s four-year term. The election for the seat will be in November 2028.

The city has a lot of important decisions coming up, including choosing a new city manager and a city attorney. It will also soon start the budget process for the next fiscal year and will deal with ongoing repairs to the city’s landfill, which has had serious odor issues for years.

The meeting is at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the council chambers at city hall, 300 Lee St. Here’s the agenda. 

The post Agenda Bristol: City council will talk to candidates for vacant council seat Tuesday appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Lynchburg City Council will meet twice this week to take final votes on items reviewed in work sessions last month, including a reaffirmation of the city’s Second Amendment sanctuary status and a zoning ordinance amendment that would restrict where abortion clinics can operate. 

The Second Amendment sanctuary vote will take place at the city council’s 7 p.m. meeting on Tuesday. The abortion zoning ordinance requires a public hearing, which will be hosted at 6 p.m. Thursday along with two other public hearings, all rescheduled from January due to the effects of the winter storm. 

The city council passed a resolution to establish Lynchburg as a Second Amendment sanctuary in January 2023. Along with making the declaration, the resolution states that the city intends to uphold Second Amendment rights, not use city funds to restrict Second Amendment rights, and oppose any infringement on Second Amendment rights using legal means such as court action.

Vice Mayor Curt Diemer and city council member Chris Faraldi have each proposed resolutions to reaffirm the city’s sanctuary status, citing the current climate in Richmond. Several gun control bills have been introduced in the General Assembly this year, including a proposal that would prohibit the manufacture, sale and purchase of many semiautomatic rifles, pistols and shotguns deemed to be “assault firearms” under an expanded definition. 

The reaffirmation would “send a message to Richmond that we disapprove of the direction they’re going,” Faraldi said at a Jan. 29 work session.  

“I think the time is right,” Diemer said at the work session. “I think there is a reason that we need to do it again. This General Assembly has proposed even more legislation that is egregiously taking away our rights in Lynchburg if it passes.”

Faraldi’s proposal involves reaffirming the 2023 resolution as it is stated. He said at the work session that following precedent is the best way to keep the resolution legally sound. 

Diemer’s proposal edits and adds language to the existing resolution, which he said reflects the “present legislative environment to bring it up to date.” Some changes are made in the preamble, which largely add context to the environment in which the 2023 resolution was passed and the need to make such a move again. The other changes are found in the resolving clause, where Diemer adds two resolutions and tweaks language in the declarations already on the books. 

In 2020, more than 120 towns, cities and counties in Virginia declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries in a response to a suite of gun safety laws passed under former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, including those that require background checks for all gun sales, relinquishment for domestic abusers under restraining orders, limits on the frequency of handgun purchases, and mandatory reporting of lost or stolen firearms. 

Lynchburg tried to pass a sanctuary resolution in 2020, but after a six-hour public hearing with about 1,000 attendees, the council voted 5-2 against it. Three years later, after Republicans gained a majority, the council voted 5-2 in favor of the sanctuary resolution during a work session. 

Resolutions of its kind are largely symbolic, as no local legislation regarding the Second Amendment can supersede state or federal law. 

All four counties in the Lynchburg metro area — Amherst, Appomattox, Bedford and Campbell — are Second Amendment sanctuaries. The Bedford County Board of Supervisors in December  unanimously voted on a resolution reconfirming the status. Bedford’s new resolution is almost identical to the former.

On Tuesday, the Lynchburg City Council will vote on whether to adopt Diemer’s or Faraldi’s proposal for reaffirmation. The vote does not require a public hearing, but residents can speak to the topic during the meeting’s general public comment period. 

Abortion zoning amendment and other Thursday public hearings

On Thursday, the city council will host three public hearings and take subsequent votes to make up for a meeting canceled during January’s winter weather. 

One hearing will invite community members to share their thoughts on a proposed abortion zoning ordinance that would significantly restrict where abortion clinics can operate in the city. 

The proposed zoning ordinance, if adopted Thursday, would introduce a new definition for abortion clinics that would separate them from other medical facilities. Under the new definition, abortion clinics would no longer be permitted anywhere by right but could qualify for conditional-use permits in limited areas. According to a map included in the agenda packet, the stretch between Candlers Mountain Road and Odd Fellows Road is one of a handful of areas that would meet all the zoning requirements of the proposed ordinance. 

As Lynchburg’s zoning ordinance is written now, abortion clinics are permitted by right in six zoning districts because they qualify as outpatient care clinics. There are currently no abortion clinics in Lynchburg, so the proposed zoning amendment would only apply to new clinics that choose to move in. 

If the council approves the zoning amendment, Lynchburg would join a growing list of other Virginia localities that have passed similar ordinances and resolutions to restrict abortion access since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court ended federal protection of it. 

Faraldi announced in a press release and on his website Monday that he would not be supporting the zoning amendment, citing his concern that ambiguity in the amendment’s language could lead to a loophole where Planned Parenthood “could claim exemption from the ordinance altogether, bypassing Council review.” He has criticized the amendment since it was first presented by council member Marty Misjuns in October and promotes a different proposal that would regulate all outpatient hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers, which would include abortion clinics, together as a class.

The other two public hearings will ask residents to weigh in on:

• The annual housing and infrastructure goals pursued by the Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships programs, and;
• The relocation of the first precinct polling place of the fourth ward from St. Thomas More Catholic Church to the All Peoples Church. The proposed new polling place is about a mile away from the former, is ADA-compliant and has adequate parking and polling space, according to meeting materials.

The post Agenda Lynchburg: City council to discuss Second Amendment sanctuary resolution, abortion zoning ordinance this week appeared first on Cardinal News.

Here are some of the top headlines from other news outlets around Virginia. Some content may be behind a metered paywall:

Education:

UVa faculty accuse Beardsley of “bribing” students for their support. — The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress (paywall).

Politics:

State lawmakers want to lift local caps on housing grants for government employees. — Virginia Mercury.

Bill to ban the use of herbicide paraquat in Virginia advances with narrow vote. — Virginia Mercury.

Senate bills would broaden protection for people with mental disabilities. — Richmond Times-Dispatch (paywall).

Local:

Planning continues for new Tazewell County school. — Bluefield Daily Telegraph (paywall).

Weather:

For more weather news, follow weather journalist Kevin Myatt on Twitter / X at @kevinmyattwx and sign up for his free weather email newsletter. His weekly column appears in Cardinal News each Wednesday afternoon.

The post Headlines from across the state: UVa faculty accuse Beardsley of ‘bribing’ students for their support; more … appeared first on Cardinal News.

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine has received the largest scholarship endowment in its history: a $20 million gift from Virginia Tech alumni Jim and Augustine Smith.

The endowment will provide $100,000 for scholarships in its first year, supporting tuition for one or two students starting in the next academic year. School leaders say the gift will help reduce medical school debt and strengthen the pipeline of physicians who choose to practice in rural Virginia. 

Priority is given to students from Virginia who need financial support. 

Medical school students routinely graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, said Jim Smith, a financial burden that often steers new doctors away from rural communities and specialties with lower salaries. 

“If we can reduce that debt load and take more in-state students, we’re able to get more doctors to actually stay in Roanoke. They finish school, they like Roanoke, they like Southwestern Virginia, so they stay,” he said. “I think that’s a good way to enhance medical coverage.” 

A longstanding commitment to the medical school

The Smiths, who now live in South Carolina, have supported the Roanoke-based medical school since the early 2000s, when it existed only as a concept. When the school opened, the couple donated a $1 million endowment to help meet its most pressing needs. 

Until now, that gift had been the largest in the school’s history, said Dr. Lee Learman, the dean of the medical school. 

This new endowment will allow the school to recruit more Virginians with less debt when they finish their training. 

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine is one of the smallest medical schools in the country, with an enrollment of just under 200. It welcomed its inaugural class in 2010. In 2024, school leadership announced plans to expand both the campus and enrollment. 

The medical school has worked with local partners for years to cultivate interest in health care careers, reaching students as early as elementary school. But Learman said many prospective medical students already carry undergraduate debt by the time they apply. Adding the cost of medical school on top of that may not be feasible. 

By focusing on students from Virginia, Learman said the Smiths’ gift will help solidify the school’s mission and help accelerate its growth. 

“It will allow us to more rapidly achieve the goals that we need to achieve as a young medical school in order to make sure we are being competitive in the marketplace of attracting the best and brightest students from Virginia,” Learman said. 

Scholarships free students to focus on learning

For Maedot Haymete, a rising fourth-year medical student, the impact of scholarship support has been transformative. 

Born and raised in Ethiopia, Haymete became interested in medicine after watching a documentary in high school about Dr. Catherine Hamlin, an Australian OB-GYN who moved to Ethiopia to train midwives and ended up working to address widespread obstetric fistulas. The film solidified Haymete’s desire to become a physician.

She finished high school in South Africa and moved to the United States, enrolling at Amherst College in Massachusetts on a pre-med track. 

The Association of American Medical Colleges offers a financial assistance program to help medical students pay for fees for entrance exams and application fees. But when Haymete finished her undergraduate degree, she did not initially qualify for assistance due to her non-permanent resident status. 

For four years, Haymete worked at a pharmaceutical company and as a medical scribe in Northern Virginia, saving money while waiting to obtain her green card.

“There were a whole bunch of challenges with me leaving Ethiopia and coming to the U.S. but I always knew one day I would be applying to med school,” Haymete said. “I never gave up.” 

After gaining permanent residency, Haymete paid for the medical school entrance exams and applied. Though she was accepted to an Ivy League school, she chose the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine because it was in-state and she liked the small class sizes.

She expected to work part-time throughout medical school. But then she learned she had been selected for the James R. Smith Family Charitable Foundation Scholarship, which came from the Smiths’ original $1 million gift to the school.

Instead of juggling work and classes, Haymete immersed herself fully in her education and volunteer work.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a very focused student. I didn’t have to worry about anything else on a day to day basis. I was able to explore all the specialties I wanted. I didn’t feel like I had to go into a speciality that pays well just to pay off my loans,” Haymete said.

Haymete plans to specialize in diagnostic radiology. While her residency may take her elsewhere, she hopes to return to Virginia or the Washington, D.C., metro area after completing her training.

That outcome is exactly what the Smiths envision for future scholarship recipients.

Who are Jim and Augustine Smith?

Augustine Smith remembers a very different era of higher education. As a Virginia Tech student, she received a four-year scholarship from the Women’s Alumni Association. In the 1960s, she said more government support and financial assistance made college much more affordable. 

“I know how important it is for people that do have goals and they want to accomplish great things. And we felt the medical school with the leadership that they have would be a good place to put those resources,” she said. 

She earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1971 and worked for the Niles and Niles accounting firm, then at Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co., a predecessor company to KPMG, where she was promoted to the management team.

She eventually founded a CPA firm in Rocky Mount, and she extended her work to teach at Ferrum College. At the same time, she served in the region’s chamber of commerce and Business Women’s Association. 

She sold her share of the accounting firm to her partners and worked alongside her husband to help build his business. 

Jim Smith’s connection to health care began in high school, when he joined the National Guard and trained as a medic. He later earned an associate degree in business administration from Virginia Western Community College before completing a bachelor’s in sociology at Virginia Tech in 1974. 

He went on to work in behavioral health at the Southwest Virginia Training Center in Hillsville and later served as business manager for the Department of Mental Health and Retardation at Catawba Hospital. His career also included roles at Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Department of Defense, before he founded his own business developing nursing homes and senior housing facilities.

Jim Smith has helped develop more than 200 senior living facilities. He also founded a private equity company focused on senior housing and commercial real estate, where he continues to serve as president and CEO. 

Together, the Smiths say they hope their gift will ease financial barriers for future physicians — and help ensure that Virginia communities have access to the care they need.

The post $20 million scholarship endowment marks a milestone for Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine appeared first on Cardinal News.

For decades, Dan River Mills executives went to work in a two-story brick building in the Schoolfield neighborhood of Danville, where they could look out their windows and oversee mill operations and the company town. Today, those windows look out over a drastically different view. 

The Schoolfield neighborhood has transformed from a mill site into a historic district and the home of the Caesars Virginia casino resort. And the company office building is transforming with it. 

The same stone steps and double doors that led mill executives into their workplace every day will soon lead visitors into the lobby of the Laurel Hotel, the city’s newest boutique lodging option.

Renovations are wrapping up on the 123-year-old building, which is slated to open in February with 36 rooms, each with its own unique layout.

A sister property to the Bee and Holbrook hotels, which are also in renovated historic buildings, the Laurel will be the first hotel in the collection to be located in a former Dan River Mills building. 

The hotel’s art and decor will include references to the building’s mill history, encouraging guests to connect with the historical significance of the space, said Schoolfield historian Ina Dixon, who helped with the interior design of the hotel. 

“We want to make the history cohesive with the hotel,” Dixon said. “It’s not a full museum, but we wanted pieces that will speak to the corporate history.”

This rehabilitation project is part of a larger preservation effort in the Schoolfield neighborhood, Dixon said.

At the same time, the Laurel will expand the offerings of the established Bee and Holbrook properties as lodging demand and visitation in Danville increase. 

The three boutique hotels together will be labeled the Danville Hotel Collection, said Madison Eades, area general manager of the collection.

“The tourism market overall is growing so significantly, and so many people who never saw Danville as a destination on the map are coming for the first time,” Eades said. “Hotel products in the area need to be able to keep up with what all different types of tourists are looking for.”

A new addition to an old story

Built in 1903, the company office building served as a headquarters for Dan River Mills executives for over 100 years until the mill’s closure in 2006. Now, it’s one of the few mill buildings left in Schoolfield.

Dan River Mills was the largest textile firm in the South for many decades, employing about 14,000 people in Danville. When it closed, the city was plunged into a period of economic distress that it has been working to bounce back from. 

Part of that work has included rehabilitating and redeveloping historic buildings — including former mill buildings — for new uses.

Ed Walker, a Roanoke developer who specializes in adaptive reuse and is also Dixon’s husband, bought the Dan River company office building and spearheaded the hotel project. Walker also owns both the Bee and Holbrook hotels.

In 2019, Walker and Dixon also bought a building across the street, the Schoolfield Museum and Preservation Foundation, which had closed for financial reasons. 

“We said we would store all of their stuff, all the archives, all the materials from the museum … with the understanding that some day it would be put together as an exhibit or displayed in the renovated buildings within Schoolfield,” Dixon said.

The Laurel, as a former office building, will be able to tell the corporate history of Dan River, she said. 

“Executives usually leave a lot of paperwork behind and mill workers do not,” Dixon said. “We were able to tell that story from that perspective and have a lot of fun with it.”

The first floor of the hotel will showcase Dan River’s story and background, with a streamlined timeline of the company history, she said. 

“We want to make sure that when people come into the building they know that it’s one, not part of Caesars, and two, that it had a history before it was a hotel,” she said.

Dixon, along with interior designers and consultants, especially wanted to reference patterns and fabrics from the bedsheets that Dan River Mills produced, since the purpose of a hotel is an overnight stay, she said.

“People are sleeping, that’s what they’re doing there,” she said. “The patterns of the carpet, the matting of the photos that we have, all of them derive from what we have in the [Dan River Museum] collection.”

Some of the company’s ads also conveyed the idea that travelers could pack as much as they wanted in their suitcases, because Dan River fabrics didn’t wrinkle. That sentiment also fits well with the hospitality and travel themes of a hotel, Dixon said. 

“We merged that idea with hospitality and sophistication,” she said. “It’ll showcase something offsite from Caesars but at the same level of luxury and hospitality.”

Dan River was a massive figure in the city’s history, but especially in the history of the Schoolfield neighborhood, Dixon said. 

A few local historians have been responsible for preserving the neighborhood’s history through the years, as Dan River closed, the finishing plant was demolished and the casino was built. Dixon said the rehabilitation of the Laurel is a continuation of the work of these folks: Dana and Barry Reagan, Judy Edmonds, Cheryl and Lee Hall, Gary Grant, Clara Fountain, Randy Hedrick and Gary Knick.

“It’s very important that we continue the work they did and integrate it into the redevelopment at every opportunity,” Dixon said. 

She was part of the work to get Schoolfield added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. 

The neighborhood is already “a wonderful place,” she said, with a great community, a vibrant elementary school and a lot of beloved establishments like the Schoolfield Restaurant and Foxglove Clothing. 

“That’s been organic,” she said. “That hasn’t happened because Ed and I started anything there. The Laurel will be great because it will highlight the people and community that already make Schoolfield amazing.”

Historic features, modern function

Restoring a building as old as the Dan River Company Office takes a lot of intentionality and meticulous work, said Chris Taylor, superintendent for Blair Construction, the general contractor for the project. 

Because the construction is being done with the use of historic tax credits, original features must be repaired when possible. If repair isn’t possible due to deterioration, all doorways, windows and even the bricks and mortar must match the historic features in material, design, color and texture, according to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. 

Those stipulations create unique challenges, Taylor said.

“A lot of it is recreating these 100-year-old products that you can’t buy anymore,” he said. “So many things have to look original, but work like they’re brand new. It can be hard to find vendors to create things that look like the original product.”

For example, new wainscoting, or decorative wall paneling, on the first floor of the Laurel was custom-made in a mill in Salem to match its former look, Taylor said. 

The entire foundation of the building was stabilized at the beginning of the project, Taylor said. Construction teams lowered the foundation 5 feet and lowered the floors 3 feet so that rooms could be placed in the basement of the building. 

The original elevator shaft has been preserved and is one of the historic features of the property. The windows are also original and were taken out of their panes, refurbished and reinstalled.

“These buildings don’t happen magically,” Dixon said. “Their history is important, but they are also a beast to take care of. … There’s a lot of remediation and effort put in. Now, it’s got a great roof, a great foundation, and another 100 good years ahead of it.”

Eades said the total project cost was over $15 million, though she was unable to share an exact figure.

The other two properties in the Danville Hotel Collection are also in historic buildings. 

The Bee Hotel is in the former Danville Register & Bee newsroom. The Holbrook Hotel is in a former doctor’s building. 

All three properties are located along the same road, which runs from Danville’s River District to the Old West End and Holbrook-Ross historic district, to the Schoolfield neighborhood. 

“Ed would say it’s a string of pearls,” Dixon said. “From West Main Street to Main Street to North Main Street, Danville is just one historic neighborhood after another. [The Laurel] will continue that tradition of highlighting some of the loveliest parts of Danville.”

Bringing Dan River’s history into the hotel collection will be meaningful to locals and guests alike, Eades said. 

“Dan River represented the livelihoods of thousands of people in the region,” Eades said. “To see the Schoolfield neighborhood come back to life has been really exciting. It’s so important for people to be able to drive by and see that these aren’t just empty buildings anymore.”

Meeting increasing lodging demand

The Danville-Pittsylvania County region was the fastest-growing tourism destination in Virginia in 2024, according to data from the Virginia Tourism Company that was released in the fall. 

Visitor spending across the two localities was over $275 million in 2024, a 23.5% increase from the year before. Tourism also supported over 2,200 local jobs and brought in over $11 million in local tax revenue in Danville and Pittsylvania, according to VTC. 

Eades said she’s seen tourism and visitation increase dramatically since she began working at the Bee Hotel in 2022. 

“Every little corner of Danville is growing,” she said.

Lodging demand for all kinds of stays — in boutique and chain hotels alike — is continuing to increase in the city, she said. While boutique hotels draw a niche type of traveler who is usually interested in a luxury and upscale experience, “there are guests for every single type of hotel in this town,” Eades said. 

There are around 1,200 hotel rooms in Danville today, according to information provided by Lisa Meriwether, Danville’s tourism director. 

Since 2020, the Bee Hotel, Holbrook Hotel and Caesars Virginia hotel have opened, adding over 400 rooms to Danville’s lodging supply.

“We all have to work together to be able to accommodate everybody coming, whether that’s for business, leisure, construction or tourism,” Eades said. “I think there’s a piece of the pie for everyone. It might be new for Danville, but it’s pretty typical when you look at other towns to see so many different types of hotel offerings.”

Even though the Laurel will be immediately adjacent to the Caesars Virginia resort, which has a hotel attached, Eades said she doesn’t anticipate competition because the properties are so different.

The two companies also have a good relationship, she said, and Caesars often sends guests or VIPs to the Bee and Holbrooks for stays during high-demand dates. 

When the 36 rooms at the Laurel come online, the Danville Hotel Collection will have a total of 129 rooms across all three properties. 

“The umbrella of the Danville Hotel Collection will tie all the properties together, and you can expect the same excellent hospitality and service across the collection, but each one has their own unique characteristics, offering and amenities,” she said. 

The Laurel is expected to open by the middle of February, though no official date has been announced.

The post Former Dan River Mills building becomes boutique hotel in transforming historic district appeared first on Cardinal News.

After a week of Hurricane Helene updates and public hearings, you can celebrate Valentine’s Day by jumping into the New River to benefit Special Olympics Virginia. 

Monday: Radford City Council meeting to include report on Hurricane Helene and FEMA 

The Radford City Council regular meeting at 7 p.m. Monday will include an update on FEMA support related to Hurricane Helene. The meeting agenda does not provide further information about the FEMA update. At the previous council meeting on Jan. 27, the city council unanimously approved Tall Oak Ventures’ request to subdivide a parcel of 11.7-plus acres located on the corner of Tyler Avenue and Rock Road to allow for additional business development. Monday’s council meeting is open to the public and will be held at the Radford City Office at 10 Robertson St. 

Tuesday: Christiansburg Town Council to hold public hearing on rezoning 37-plus acres for a housing development of 53 homes

The Christiansburg Town Council regular meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday will include a public hearing on rezoning 37-plus acres at 300 Kimball Lane from agriculture to single-family residential to allow for a housing development of 53 detached homes. The Christiansburg Planning Commission approved the project at its meeting last week. Tuesday’s town council meeting is open to the public and will be held at the Christiansburg Town Hall at 100 E. Main St. 

Tuesday: Blacksburg Town Council to hold 2 public hearings and schedule 3 more

The Blacksburg Town Council regular meeting at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday will include public hearings on (1) vacating public easements on Holiday Lane and (2) approving a permit for general office use of 207 W. Roanoke St. in the Old Town Residential Zoning District. The council will also schedule future public hearings on three issues: (1) VCOM’s new educational facility, which the planning commission unanimously approved at its meeting last week, (2) granting a franchise to broadband provider Gigabeam Networks; and (3) leasing use of the Bennett House to SEEDS, a nonprofit organization focused on nature education for children. The council will also adopt a resolution requesting the planning commission to review and update the floodplain overlay district in the town’s zoning ordinance. The council meeting is open to the public and will be held in the Roger E. Hedgepeth Chambers of the Blacksburg Municipal Building at 300 S. Main St.

Monday and Wednesday: New River Health District to host community forums about substance use in the NRV

Forums about substance use in the NRV will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Monday at the Pearisburg Public Library and Wednesday from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Radford Public Library. The forums include panels of individuals with lived experience of substance use, as well as staff members of organizations that are part of the NRV Recovery Ecosystem. The meetings are open to all. Refreshments will be provided.

Saturday: New River Polar Plunge to raise funds for Special Olympics Virginia

At 12:30 p.m. Saturday at Dudley’s Landing in Bisset Park, the 2026 Polar Plunge will kick off with an opening ceremony, costume contest and safety briefing. The plunge is a fundraiser for Special Olympics Virginia, which hosts nearly 2,000 events a year for 23,000-plus athletes of all abilities. The cost of plunging is $100, which can be split by individuals who register as a team. Registration for individuals and teams is available online or in-person starting at 10 a.m. the day of the event.

The post NRV Agendas: Radford City Council meets Monday; Christiansburg and Blacksburg councils meet Tuesday; public health community forums on Monday and Wednesday appeared first on Cardinal News.

We have a map. 

Unlike the perplexing 10-1 gerrymandered congressional map coming out of Virginia Democrats’ playbook, ours is compact and groups communities of common interest.

Our map defines Cardinal News’ main coverage area. We define it loosely as Southwest and Southside Virginia but are often asked which places exactly, and can you stretch it some to include my county.

At Cardinal’s start in 2021, we carved out this large swath of Virginia because it was mostly rural, mostly left behind in the state’s political and economic conversations, mostly abandoned by legacy media, and mostly had interesting stories to tell about the people reinventing their economies and protecting and celebrating their culture.

But, wow, it is a large area. We continually ask ourselves how best we can serve our communities with the local news that is essential for people to have information that is presented in a nonpartisan way.

The answer is to hire more reporters. Through the generosity of foundations, corporate support and readers like you, we have been able to place local reporters in Roanoke, Bristol, Martinsville, Danville and in Lynchburg.

As we continued to look at the places that are bare of coverage, we created a map with six zones. We are often asked to expand into more places in Virginia — especially to provide news in all the rural places that have been abandoned by traditional newspapers. We truly would like nothing more than to do that.

First, we have to serve our core. Last year we looked at our bare spots, and planned how we could cover these zones with the resources unique to those communities.

Through Report for America, we were able to place a reporter in Lynchburg. Report for America pays only a portion of the costs for a limited time, so we are counting on individuals and businesses there to help sustain this position.

Thanks to the generosity of the Anne and Gene Worrell Foundation we will be able to add another reporter in Southwest who will be based in the Norton/Wise area. We soon will share more about the editor and reporters who will work together in this zone. The foundation also is generously funding a development position so that we can work on a way to fund this team long term.

This still leaves two of our six zones bare: the New River Valley and the Alleghany Highlands.

We are focusing first on the NRV, and were selected by the Google News Initiative to be one of 14 news organizations out of hundreds that applied to be accepted into its first Growth Catalyst Initiative.

This comes with coaching and support, and a $150,000 grant to build the framework for expansion. Unlike most of our other zones where we secured direct funding for a reporter, the Google grant cannot go toward a reporter’s salary.

Instead, we must use the grant to ensure a sustainable pathway to fund an NRV reporter. 

Last month, we launched a weekly newsletter for the NRV that already has nearly 2,200 subscribers. If you would like to receive this, sign up here. In addition to news stories, we are trying new features to deepen our conversation with readers.

This grant allows us to try new things. We are building relationships with journalism students at Virginia Tech and Radford University. We want to find ways, outside of traditional internships that benefit just one student at a time, to help students gain work experience. And we seek for our audiences to benefit from the stories they produce.

These alliances should also allow us to explore new storytelling paths and platforms so that stories reach people in ways they like to consume news.

All of this does take money. Overall, about 30% of Cardinal’s budget comes from reader support. We are aiming to raise a third of the cost of placing a reporter — roughly $100,000 — from readers living in the New River Valley.

To kick this off, we are holding a one-week fund drive and are seeking 30 new members to join the Cardinal Club. This is our membership program that offers benefits such as our weekly Reporter’s Notebook to those who sign up for monthly or annual contributions.

Help us fill in the coverage gap in the NRV. Once we do that, we can move onto the Alleghany Highlands. Only then, can we start to answer the question we hear so often: Can you extend Cardinal’s coverage to my county?

The post Your valley, your voice: The first step to supporting coverage in New River Valley is your support appeared first on Cardinal News.

When Montgomery County voters cast their ballots on the amendment to the state constitution to redraw congressional districts in Virginia, three precincts will be using an alternative polling place.

Pending the result of a court battle, there may likely be a referendum on amending the state constitution to redraw congressional election districts ahead of November U.S. House of Representatives elections. Democrats in the General Assembly propose temporarily redrawing the districts to favor Democratic candidates. They do so in response to Republican efforts in other states to draw new districts that favor Republicans.

The polling place changes would affect voters in the A-3, E-3 and F-3 precincts, who typically vote at Virginia Tech’s Squires Student Center. According to county Director of Elections & General Registrar Connie Viar, the facility won’t be available on April 21. The alternate polling place will be the McComas gym on the Tech campus.

Public invited to comment to supervisors at Monday meeting on proposed storage yard, revenue estimates, more

Montgomery County supervisors will take public comments and vote on a proposed contractor’s storage yard when they meet Feb. 9.

The board also will get a presentation on two sections of the county comprehensive plan update, discuss revenue estimates for the next fiscal year, vote on funding a drone for the sheriff’s office and get comments on polling place changes for an upcoming election.

Supervisors will convene at 7:15 p.m. in the second floor board chambers at the county government center, 755 Roanoke St., Christiansburg.

Storage yard to be built on ‘resource stewardship’ area

Supervisors will hold a public hearing and vote on granting a special use permit for a contractor’s storage yard at the end of Flanagan Drive near Christiansburg.

Shah Development LLC wants to establish the facility on more than 9 acres of a roughly 41-acre property that is close to Interstate 81 and intersects with Riner Road. According to county planning staff documents, it will be used to store construction equipment, vehicles and materials that are now being stored within the Christiansburg town limits.

The property is now zoned for agricultural use and is in a “resource stewardship” area under the current comprehensive plan, meaning it has high resource value based on soil types, environmental sensitivity or other unique land characteristics.

Two other contractor’s storage yards are located nearby.

Planning staff expect vehicle traffic to be minimal, and no significant increase in noise is expected.

If it is approved, typical operating hours will be 7 a.m.-5 p.m. on weekdays.

Planning staff recommend that any exterior lighting should prevent glare onto adjacent properties, and that the facility should screen outdoor storage from public view with opaque fencing at least 6 feet high.

Community development, education and health all up for discussion as comprehensive plan presentation continues

The county Planning Commission is in the final stages of updating the five-section comprehensive plan, which must be updated every five years under state law. County planners have worked for 18 months to gather input from citizens and local stakeholders, such as town governments and other entities, through surveys and community meetings.  

In late January, supervisors heard a presentation on the first two sections — a description of the planning process and a detailed examination of matters involving outdoor and cultural assets.

The Feb. 9 presentation will highlight sections three and four, focusing on community development and health and services. 

Regarding development, notable observations include:

— Citizens have suggested new development should be focused in the Merrimac area between Blacksburg and Christiansburg, the Bethel area on Tyler Road near Interstate 81, along the transportation corridors connecting with Christiansburg and in some of the county’s villages.

— Development challenges include the fact that Blacksburg and Christiansburg are slowly running out of developable land; there is growing concern about whether existing county infrastructure can support anticipated growth; there is concern about the impact of further development on the environment; current development relies heavily on education and health care; there is workforce concern around retaining younger residents and making sure wages align with keeping the county an affordable place to live; and more coordination is needed between local and regional jurisdictions.

— A community survey of what new development people would like to see, ranked from top to bottom, favored more food options, new stores, more housing options, more offices and jobs and more manufacturing businesses.

— Economic development stakeholders called for continued technology sector growth, creating a manufacturing hub, more investment in public services outside the towns, widening Interstate 81 and bringing passenger rail service to the area.

Regarding housing, a community survey indicated residents want more affordable options, with a focus on single-family homes and mixed housing developments.

Regarding transportation, the plan states that assets include five county exits on Interstate 81, planned expansion of Amtrak rail service to the county and public transit services. However, it states, the interstate experiences travel delays, the corridors into the towns experience high congestion at peak hours, and public transit options are limited outside the towns. 

Transportation goals include more use of technology to provide real-time travel guidance; advocating for construction of more travel lanes or expanded intersections; and eliminating or redesigning driveway or street access points along major roads. The greatest challenge is finding the money, the plan states.

The fourth section focuses on health and human services, including education, health care, communications and energy and emergency services.

Notable observations on education include:

— In a survey, 38.5% of respondents expressed general satisfaction with county public schools, while 15.5% expressed strong satisfaction and 19.8% said they were unsatisfied.

— Public school enrollment was relatively stable from 2021 to 2024, with slight growth in elementary and middle schools and a slight decline in high schools.

— Education-sector strengths include Virginia Tech, Radford University, New River Community College and successful public schools, while weaknesses include the way a lack of affordable health care affects students’ well-being.

— Suggested public school improvements and goals include making sure public school programs are consistent across schools, amid a perception that some schools have more resources than others; forming a community advisory committee to ensure local feedback in decision making; increasing outreach to address related needs such as housing and food security; analyzing enrollment projections as to how they align with housing development trends; and providing more outreach to inform residents of educational resources. 

— The county should bolster lifelong learning initiatives, such as an existing program that provides up to two years of tuition assistance to eligible high school graduates, along with other career training initiatives.

Notable observations on health and human services include:

— In a community survey, 32.8% of respondents said they are satisfied with health care quality and local access, but 32.1% are unsatisfied.

— Top concerns include access to and availability of services overall, along with access to specialty services such as mental health, dental care and obstetrics and gynecology.

— There should be a community advisory committee for hospitals to ensure that decision makers are aligned with community needs.

— Limited availability of substance use treatment facilities is a significant challenge, along with limited awareness of available behavioral health and substance use disorder resources among underserved populations.

— 14% of county residents experience food insecurity, which is higher than the rates in peer counties, such as 11% in Rockingham County and 10% in Albemarle County.

Regarding public infrastructure, notable observations include:

— Surveyed members of the public say improvement of digital communications access is a top priority. Nearly 2,900 households do not have an internet subscription, including 1,100 with income of less than $20,000, 1,375 with income of $20,000 to $74,999, and 383 with income of $75,000 or more. Meanwhile, the county is working to expand broadband in underserved areas, with two major projects underway in partnership with Gigabeam Networks.

— Residents want more promotion of renewable energy options, especially solar arrays and mixed land use involving agriculture and solar energy. The zoning ordinance should get revisions to boost more renewable energy.

— The county Public Service Authority has been changed to a county utilities department to better coordinate service and projects. However, some residents are concerned with low water pressure, poor well water quality, and limited septic system services. Also, water and sewer lines are sometimes not aligned with the villages and high-growth areas.

Regarding public safety, the plan notes:

— There are eight fire, emergency medical service and rescue stations in the county, along with five police stations within the towns. A new fire and emergency services facility is being developed in the former FedEx building in Christiansburg, which the county acquired in March 2025.

— However, nearly 20% of structures in the county fall outside recommended drive-time standards for emergency response; limited broadband hinders emergency response efforts; and emergency services struggle with staff shortages.

— Residents of the Belview community want an emergency services station.

Other items

The board will also:

— Hear a staff presentation on projected revenue estimates for fiscal 2026-27, which will begin July 1.

— Schedule a public hearing on temporary polling place changes for an April 21 special election. 

— Vote on appropriating nearly $22,700 from Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services funds to the sheriff’s office to buy a small unmanned aerial system.

You can find meeting documents at https://montva.community.highbond.com/Portal/MeetingInformation.aspx?Org=Cal&Id=402.

The post Drone in the air and polling place changes on the ground for Montgomery County appeared first on Cardinal News.

When the big tobacco companies reached a legal settlement over health care costs with 46 states in 1998, those states were in line for a major windfall of money calculated in the billions.

Those states used the money in lots of different ways — some simply used it to plug budget holes — but only two used some of it to try to create a new economy in former tobacco-growing counties.

One of those two states was North Carolina; the other was Virginia. In the years since, the Tobacco Region Revitalization Commission has paid for miles of broadband fiber and other infrastructure improvements across Southwest and Southside.

While tobacco is a declining industry, oil and gas is not — at least not in North Dakota. When that prairie state found itself home to a gusher of boom towns, the state set up a special fund to receive its oil and gas taxes. That fund today pays for lots of other things: roads, bridges, tax relief and, perhaps most importantly, research into potentially new economic sectors the state could embrace once the oil and gas run out.

In both cases — one with tobacco, the other with oil and gas — states took the opportunity to use their momentary good fortune to look out for future generations.

Now comes this question: Should communities try to do the same with data centers?

That’s the question posed in a proposal released this week by the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. In an 18-page paper entitled “Turning the data center boom into long-term, local prosperity,” authors Daniel Goetzel, Mark Muro and Shriya Methkupally advance a fascinating proposition that Virginia localities currently negotiating with, or hoping to negotiate with, data centers should read before they sign anything on the dotted line.

They make the case that localities hold more bargaining power with data centers than they realize and should use that power to negotiate for deals that help create a new economy in their regions.

The Brookings authors contend that artificial intelligence has changed the balance of power in localities’ favor because “hyperscale” data centers intended to do AI work require more land and more power — and both of those are in short supply. That means localities that want to attract data centers can be more aggressive in making demands, the authors say, and they lay out some of the things that localities ought to start asking for. Specifically, they should be asking for data center contributions that don’t just cover a one-time community need but can help jump-start an entirely new economic cluster.

Here’s how they lay out their argument:

“Traditionally, data centers have been built as standalone industrial facilities,” the Brookings paper says. “Accordingly, both developers and communities have treated data centers like warehouses — routine projects that produce a surge in short-term construction jobs followed by a steady stream of tax revenue without offering many direct contributions to or interactions with the local economy.”

Data centers also had more choices about where they could locate, which limited the power of localities to cut deals, because localities feared losing the tax revenue.

Enter artificial intelligence, which the Brookings authors see as a little-recognized game changer.

“Now the ChatGPT era is disrupting the standard model,” the Brookings paper says. “From the moment the AI titans committed to super-scaling their models to unprecedented sizes, they began to require unprecedented amounts of computing infrastructure to train and operate their datasets. What’s more, the faster the firms have sought to scale, the faster they have needed to strike deals with communities to build gargantuan computing facilities, often in the face of increased local concerns about electricity use, noise issues, and other side effects.”

That has shifted the dynamic some — maybe not a lot, but at least some.

“For years, data center development has pitted community against community in races to attract data centers and their perceived jobs,” the Brookings paper says. “Now, the new frenzy of competition between the hyperscalers themselves (and other actors) for the biggest sites with the best power connections has given communities at least a sliver of their own leverage to shape AI-focused data center deals into more forward-looking, mutually beneficial development projects.”

What do the authors have in mind?

The short version: They say localities should require data center companies to invest in the local economy — not just give a one-time contribution to pay for something.

The longer version: “More communities have the leverage to trade expedited permitting and approvals for substantive gains that truly advance the region’s goals, whether that involves donations of compute to local universities, R&D partnerships, support of local talent programs, or investments in AI startup intermediaries,” the paper says.

Vocabulary note: The phrase “compute” is not a typo that was meant to say “computers.” The word “compute” is the industry lingo for “computing power.” It rings odd to my ear, and not just because I spent too many years blasting Led Zeppelin at full volume, but our language evolves and that’s the word today. Copy editors, take note.

The Brookings authors offer some specifics.

Here’s one:

“Universities and states should seek to participate in AI players’ super-sized fundraising rounds, perhaps by asking for early access to cutting-edge models for their researchers in exchange for their investment. Using this approach, AI companies (at the scale of Anthropic and OpenAI), or smaller, high-growth companies, receive an inflow of much-needed capital and the ability to train their models on university datasets. Universities, meanwhile, need to receive near-term access to compute, which is critically important to their faculty recruitment and retention and broader R&D efforts. In the long run, universities can hold equity stakes in increasingly valuable companies, hoping to replicate Stanford’s windfall from its early equity stake in Google.”

Here’s a second:

“Communities or community-designated entities should seek to co-invest in AI-related real estate deals alongside developers of data centers. Both parties (impact investors and data center developers) would commit to transferring a portion of their illiquid equity shares into a separate fund called a community equity endowment (CEE). If (and only if) a given project is successful, then a portion of any windfall financial returns would be distributed to community members via the CEE, with direct community oversight on the uses of funds. The community shareholders could collectively decide if they wanted to use their CEE allocation to introduce universal basic income programs, develop a fund for one-time emergency expenses, provide micro-grants to small businesses, or even develop programs like local baby bonds.”

Here’s a third:

“Ask AI negotiating partners to commit to organizing AI-related pilot programs and testbeds as a condition of incentives for data center buildouts. By incorporating phased asks into these negotiations (such as calls for tech pilots, shared compute, and other benefits), states and regions can transform their interactions with the AI sector from a series of disconnected, isolated data center projects into AI hubs.”

Any successful negotiation requires some give-and-take; here’s what Brookings suggests states could offer: faster approval for various permits in exchange for “reduced energy usage during periods of peak usage; jointly funded pilots of AI-driven technologies that shift loads and energy mix during peaks and lulls in data center activities, while giving opportunities to locally sited data centers and proposed testbeds to incubate and stress-test these models; economic development commitments that expand beyond traditional short-term construction jobs; market commitments and conditional purchase agreements with geothermal and nuclear companies that are building projects within a given state, as a way to allow states to invest in new technologies and finance pilot projects without sticking ratepayers with the future bill; and commitments and investments that replicate at the state scale the arrangements emerging AI companies are making with federal agencies and national labs, such as Anthropic’s commitment to the Department of Energy’s Project Genesis or OpenAI’s and Nvidia’s agreements for sharing supercomputer and model resources with national laboratories.”

How practical are these suggestions? Some of this is already happening around the country. Botetourt County, which is getting a Google data center project, is exploring ways Google can make the Roanoke Valley a testbed for certain AI tools. The Brookings authors note that “Quietly tucked into the announcement with President Donald Trump hosted by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) were $2 million in commitments from Anthropic to provide cybersecurity education to middle and high school students in Pennsylvania and funding for energy research at CMU, which is increasingly becoming a nexus of AI, energy, and industrial innovation.”

What the Brookings authors propose is that such deals become routine — that data center requests just aren’t about setback requirements or water permits, but more substantial investments to grow the local economy. The first step might be for state and local officials to read their report. They could even ask AI to summarize it for them. 

After reading that report, you can also read West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that comes out on Friday afternoons. Sign up below.

The post Here’s a way to use the data center boom to build a new economy in some communities appeared first on Cardinal News.

The day after the recent Grammy Awards, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger tweeted recognition to Virginians who “won big” at the ceremony.

“Congratulations to @SkillzVa, @ShaboozeysJeans, @clipse, & @natesmithdrums on your wins,” she posted on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. “Congratulations to @Pharrell for receiving the Dr. Dre Global Impact Award in recognition of your generational influence.”

She might not have known about a Roanoke native who picked up a couple of awards that night. Ruchaun Akers Jr., known professionally as Scott Bridgeway, took the stage twice in Los Angeles with hip-hop phenomenon Kendrick Lamar, singer Sza and other collaborators, for their work on the single “Luther.”

Akers has lived in Los Angeles for the past five years, but he was born in Roanoke and lived there until after second grade, when he moved with his mother to Charlotte, North Carolina. He returned to the Star City every summer to be with family.

“I think I’m claiming both” Virginia and North Carolina heritage, Akers said in a Wednesday afternoon phone call.

Follow him, Governor, @scottbridgeway.

Akers joined Lamar, Sza and others, including Lamar’s chief collaborator, Sounwave, and saxophonist/composer/arranger Kamasi Washington, onstage before the televised portion began, when “Luther” won Best Melodic Rap Performance. Their second trip down the aisles came when the TV cameras were on, and “Luther” won the Grammy for Record of the Year. 

The event marked the first-ever Grammy nominations for the 25-year-old Akers. 

“The night was just, it was so surreal and like a blur,” Akers said. “I definitely felt like I was supposed to be there. I felt like it was just destiny or something. It was just meant to happen.”

His work as a co-producer with Lamar also includes “Squabble Up,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Singles chart, and “Peekaboo,” all from the album “GNX.” Akers’ resume includes co-producing Kanye West’s “We Did It Kid.”

Before he was Scott Bridgeway, a 19-year-old Akers was sharing beats he made while playing “Call of Duty” online with a group of folks. Unbeknownst to Akers, one of the video game players hearing his work was a hip-hop producer, Cardo Got Wings, who would bring him to Los Angeles in 2020 to work with rapper Baby Keem on his album “The Melodic Blue.” 

Among the numbers that Akers worked on was one that featured Lamar, a cousin of Baby Keem. Lamar and Sounwave then brought him onboard for their sessions. Single and album credits list him as Scott Bridgeway, a moniker that Keem gave him.

Building ‘Luther’

The double Grammy-winning “Luther” flows from a song that its namesake, the late Luther Vandross, recorded in 1982: “If This World Were Mine,” a collaboration with Cheryl Lynn. 

Lamar and Sounwave had been holding onto a chopped version of the Marvin Gaye-written number that they brought to Akers.

“I did an idea with the drums and it landed, and we just built from there,” Akers said. “Everybody started putting their 2 cents and spark onto it, and then it just became what it is today.”

The version Sounwave chopped up is a few beats per minute faster than the Vandross/Lynn single. “That was the tempo that felt right,” Akers said. “We just moved on from there and just built on that foundation.”

Akers, using software called FL Studio, created an airy halftime groove that is solid but not static. Within a week, they had the part together, Akers said. 

By May 2025, Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” had been No. 1 for 12 consecutive weeks, breaking the record for longest run atop the Hot 100 chart among co-billed duets from a man and woman, according to Billboard.com. The record broke a tie with Puff Daddy and Faith Evans’ “I’ll Be Missing You,” from 1997.

Akers said he doesn’t take sales and chart positions into account with his work.

“I just make sure the music is good first,” he said. “As long as the music is good and it resonates with me, and it touches people around the world, I feel like that’s the most important thing you can ask for besides sales and charts and stuff.”

As for his association with the multi-platinum-selling, multi-Grammy-winning Lamar and Sounwave: “They’re geniuses,” he said.

“They have like their own chemistry and I just try to fit in and give my input and put my sauce wherever I can fit in. I just try to help. That’s it. But those two, they’re like masters at their craft.”

Mama’s proud

Sherri Davis had a big Grammy-watch party planned in Charlotte, North Carolina. Davis, Akers’ mother, had reserved a room at a high-rise with a view of downtown, and had T-shirts made that read: “And the winner is …” for the big crowd she had invited.

Then came about 9 inches of snow.

Instead of hosting a celebration, “I was at home, watching it,” Davis said.

She had a lot of confidence in the son she calls “RJ,” confidence that she had instilled in him ever since she began to see his growing skill level. Davis had for years used her social media to predict Grammys in her son’s future. Watching the internet stream of the pre-television portion, she saw the first win and was nervous but hopeful during the broadcast.

Watching Akers take the stage with a group including award presenter Cher, elation struck.

“There was a moment when RJ approached the stage and his peers and collaborators, the way that they embraced him once he got to the stage, it was an extremely emotional moment for me, because I’ve always told him throughout his career, ‘You belong in every room that this path takes you,’” Davis said. “‘You belong in these spaces.’

“‘You are just as talented as the people in these spaces and you belong there.’ … It was an extremely emotional moment for me.”

Akers gave shout-outs to his mom — who raised him on a diversity of music that included Nirvana, Sugarland, Biggie Smalls and Mobb Deep — and to a legion of other family members, grandmas Cookie and Angie, dad Ruchaun Sr., Uncle Rod, cousins Demetrius and Ashanti, and Auntie Cherie. 

What’s next

Out in Los Angeles, the post-show celebration was low-key. 

“We just hung out like at a party or two and then we called it,” he said. “That’s pretty much it. … Got to plan for the next one and just keep moving forward.”

That includes the next Baby Keem album, ETA unknown. Further work with Lamar is likely, too.

“Whenever he summons me, I’ll be there.”

The post Roanoke-born hip-hop music producer celebrates Grammy wins with Kendrick Lamar appeared first on Cardinal News.

Last week, after the Democrats’ proposed congressional map came out, I received a text from a journalistic colleague. He had read my column “10 things to know about the Democrats’ proposed redistricting map” and told me good-naturedly he was surprised I didn’t have 76 things to say.

Dude, I’m trying! I may have been the second-fastest student in my high school typing class (back when there was such a thing) but I’ve already typed so much I have one key missing from my keyboard.

I’ve now had more time to crunch the numbers, and so have others, especially the folks at the Virginia Public Access Project and State Navigate, both of whom I recommend. Armed with more numbers, but still missing one key, here are 10 more observations about the new map (which is still subject to a ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court and an April 21 referendum, if the court says all this can go forward). 

1. This is an opportunity for rural Democrats. Not a likely one, but better than they had before.

Rural Democrats have become an endangered species but if there are any ambitious ones still out there, this map represents an opportunity. Maybe not much of an opportunity, but more than exists with the current congressional map.

Here’s how I see this: Right now there is very little opportunity for a rural Democrat to win a congressional seat in Virginia. The last truly rural Democrat in the Virginia delegation was Rick Boucher of Abingdon who departed after the 2010 election; his former 9th District seat in Southwest Virginia is now a bright shade of red. Democratic candidates think they can win the current 1st in eastern Virginia, the current 5th in Charlottesville/Southside and the current 6th in the Shenandoah Valley/Roanoke Valley, but the reality is they haven’t and their hopes this year rest largely on the toxic disapproval ratings of Donald Trump. Even with that, none of those districts are guaranteed.

The whole point of the gerrymandered map is to guarantee Democratic victories in as many districts as possible; Democrats hope for 10. They’ve done this by drawing five congressional districts that start in deep blue Northern Virginia, then snake out into the rural parts of the Shenandoah Valley and the Piedmont. This “buries” the Republican voters in those rural areas into districts dominated by Northern Virginia (at the risk of drawing down some Democratic majorities).

All five of those districts — the new 1st, 7th, 8th, 10th and 11th — are designed to be reliably Democratic districts. They also contain more rural voters than the Northern Virginia incumbents who hold four of those seats (one is an open seat) are accustomed to. That won’t trouble them in a general election, but what about a primary?

The scenario I’m about to lay out is highly unlikely but is theoretically possible. The danger for Democratic incumbents under these maps is that they would acquire a lot of new constituents, most of them rural. I’ve attempted to compute the “rural” percentage in those districts. These are rough numbers, but it appears about 24.7% of the voters in the new 7th District would be rural, about 33.7% in the new 8th District are. That alone isn’t enough to win a nomination contest but what if there were a multicandidate primary, and one of those candidates was a rural candidate who could sweep the rural areas and win a decent fraction of the vote in Northern Virginia? I realize such a candidate would be a unicorn; when I look at these maps no obvious names come to mind because Democrats don’t have much of a bench of rural officeholders. Still, should this magical figure arise when the moon is in a certain phase, the math might be there for an upset. 

This map is designed to produce five Democratic House members from Northern Virginia, but in theory it could produce none. 

2. Two Democratic incumbents would lose most of their constituents

We shouldn’t be surprised that the map shears away constituents from Republican incumbents; the whole purpose of this map is to do as much political damage to them as possible. What’s surprising is that two Democratic incumbents would see most of their current constituents taken away — and replaced by new voters. That’s a potentially dangerous development for those two Democrats — Don Beyer of Alexandria (the new 8th) and James Walkinshaw of Fairfax County (the new 11th) — who might now face primary challenges from fellow Democrats who see an opportunity.

According to calculations by the Virginia Public Access Project, 56% of the voters in the new 8th would be new to Beyer, 53% of the voters in the new 11th would be new to Walkinshaw.

As noted above, the new 8th, which would now stretch from Arlington County to York County, also is one-third rural. Fortunately for Beyer, he previously served as lieutenant governor so has experience running in those areas. Unfortunately for him, that was in the ’80s and ’90s.

3. The Democrat most hurt by this new map is 6th District challenger Beth Macy

In the current 6th District, she’d have been the favorite to win the Democratic nomination. The best-selling Roanoke author (four of her five books have been best-sellers) is by far the best known of the four candidates and easily the best-funded. In less than two months of campaigning, she raised more money for a campaign in a bright red district than any Republican candidate across the state had, incumbent or otherwise. I remain skeptical that any Democrat would be able to win a general election in the 6th against Ben Cline, but she’d have made a fight of it.

While the mapmakers seemed careful to draw lines to benefit certain General Assembly members, they acted as if either a) Macy didn’t exist or b) they want her out of the race.

The new map takes away most of the voters she was trying to reach — 61.3% of the voters in the reconfigured 6th would be new to that district. The map also pairs her with another well-funded Democratic challenger, former Rep. Tom Perriello of Albemarle County, and gives him a bigger base than Macy (Albemarle/Charlottesville has more than twice as many Democratic voters as the Roanoke Valley, and not all of the Roanoke Valley is in the new 6th). Another handicap: Perriello won every locality in the new 6th in the 2017 Democratic primary for governor. This is a map that seems tailor-made for Perriello. 

I’m not saying Macy can’t win this primary — it’s more likely than my scenario about a rural Democrat sneaking in to represent a Northern Virginia district — but she’s in a much more difficult spot now. Macy had originally endorsed redistricting. I think that was a mistake. I realize Democratic activists are frothing at the mouth for this gerrymandering, but any Roanoke Democrats who support this map may be condemning their hometown candidate to an early exit. Macy may at least get a new book out of this, about how political insiders conspired to handicap an outsider, even if she was only an afterthought in their deliberations. 

4. There’s an opportunity for a Black Democrat in the new 5th District

Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor would appear to have made out pretty well in the new map — but I see a danger for her.

Let’s review: Taylor had been the top Democratic fundraiser in the current 1st District, but she wasn’t the only Democratic candidate — and would have been an underdog to Wittman, even in a targeted district. She’s now in a 5th District that stretches west (to Campbell County!) rather than east. She may still face some of the same Democratic contenders but winds up in a more favorable district for the general election. She also has a head start on her primary challengers in this new district since she ran last year for the party’s nomination for attorney general.

However, here’s the challenge: She lost all but one of these “new” counties in last year’s primary to Jay Jones. The data released as part of the proposed map says that 21.4% of the voters in this new 5th District are Black; that’s up from 13% in the current 1st where Taylor has been running.

If there’s an ambitious Black Democrat in this district, this map creates an opportunity. The scenario would be similar to the one I laid out for rural Democrats early: sweep these rural counties as Jones did and then take a big enough share in the Richmond suburbs to win. 

5. Of the four Republican incumbents targeted, McGuire got the worst deal 

Jen Kiggans of Virginia Beach didn’t see her 2nd District changed much at all; I discussed the reasons why in my previous column. That’s probably the best she could hope for. The other targeted Republican incumbents saw their districts rearranged in ways they’d find unfavorable, but none wound up with such a “bad” district as McGuire.

He currently represents the 5th District in Southside. Most of that district is carved away and distributed among four other districts. Under the new map, the Goochland County Republican would be in the 7th District, which stretches all the way to Arlington County (and, is, of course, is designed for a Democrat). 

This is the district that was reputedly designed for Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, the chief fundraiser for Democrats in last year’s House of Delegates elections. 

Only 12.1% of the voters in this district were ones McGuire previously represented. (Yes, the new map puts Cline in the 9th and Griffith in the 6th, but I don’t think that matters much. House members don’t have to live in their district; Griffith lives just outside the 9th now after the last redistricting changed the lines.) Griffith can keep running in the 9th and Cline has at least a fighting chance in the new 6th.

6. The locality most silenced by this map is Appomattox County

I went looking for the strongest Republican counties that got shifted from Republican congressional districts into Democratic ones. I can’t say these localities are disenfranchised, because people there still get to vote — their votes just don’t matter much anymore. The locality that gets the worst deal — from a Republican point of view — would be Appomattox County. 

Here’s how I figure this: It’s the strongest Republican-voting county that now gets assigned to a Democratic district. In last year’s gubernatorial election, Appomattox cast 75.9% of its votes for the Republican candidate for governor. Under this map, it would stay in the 5th District but that district gets a makeover from a Republican one to a Democratic one. 

There are some other localities that come close: Page County, a 74.4% Republican county, moves from a Republican 6th District anchored in the Shenandoah Valley into a Democratic 11th District anchored in Northern Virginia. Most of Bedford County, a 74.3% Republican county, gets put in a reconfigured 6th District that has a slight Democratic lean. Augusta County, a 72% Republican county, gets split between three districts — one Republican (the 9th), one with a slight Democratic lean (the 6th) and one with an almost-guaranteed Democratic outcome (the 7th that goes all the way to Arlington). The voters in Stuarts Draft can still elect the Republican candidate of their choice (maybe) but the voters in Churchville and Craigsville would find themselves casting useless ballots.

7. The locality whose voice now gets amplified the most is Charlottesville

This is an 88% Democratic locality that’s been “stuck” (from the Democratic point of view) in a Republican 5th District. Now it would be in a 6th District that would trend Democratic most years. Harrisonburg, a 72.1% Democratic city, also finds itself moved from a Republican 6th into a generally Democratic 6th. 

8. One of the state’s least-populated counties gets split three ways

The two localities split the most are Fairfax County and Prince William County; both get carved up between five different congressional districts. That was necessary to draw these elongated districts out of Northern Virginia to reach out and grab Republican areas. 

Augusta County, as we’ve seen, gets split three ways. Augusta, though, is a populous county so there were voters there that mapmakers needed or wanted — or, perhaps more accurately, they needed to take some to get to the Democratic voters they wanted in Staunton and Waynesboro. As a result, some parts of Augusta would now be in a district that stretches to coal counties; other parts would be in a district that stretches to Northern Virginia. Perhaps no other county has such a contrast.

But then there’s Buckingham County, population just 16,736. It’s also split three ways. Most of it stays in the 5th, but pieces get sliced off for the 6th and 7th. Voters in Buckingham’s New Canton district wind up in a district that would go all the way to Arlington, a heretofore unrecognized community of interest. 

9. This was an incomplete gerrymander 

Democratic mapmakers could have gerrymandered more than they did. 

They could have stretched the 4th District a little farther west to pick up Martinsville, a 63.5% Democratic city, but did not — probably because the tradeoff would have been to put part of Republican-voting Pittsylvania County into the new 5th District, and that would have brought down the Democratic margin.

Likewise, mapmakers who were trying to connect Democratic-voting college towns into an elongated 6th District could have drawn a line across the mountains to pick up Lexington, a 68.1% Democratic city. They did not. It’s possible that had they done so, it might have been a net loss because they’d have to take in some Republican voters in Rockbridge County to get there. Still, we saw some unofficial maps floating around that would have drawn Lexington into that district.

10. This map could be open to a new constitutional challenge 

The mapmakers were careful, at least on the surface, not to run afoul of the Voting Rights Act as it relates to the 3rd District; that’s why so few changes were made in the Richmond-Hampton Roads corridor, where so much of the state’s Black population lives. The U.S. Supreme Court (which may yet significantly alter its interpretation of the Voting Rights Act) has been loath to get into ruling on purely political gerrymanders as long as there’s not a racial dimension. This map would seem to be impregnable to a Voting Rights Act challenge.

However, there’s still the matter of the state constitution. A Tazewell judge has already ruled against this redistricting; that case now jumps straight to the Virginia Supreme Court. However, this proposed map could add another wrinkle to that case. Even if the Virginia Supreme Court overrules the Tazewell judge’s order, there’s still the matter of other language in the state’s contitution: “Every electoral district shall be composed of contiguous and compact territory …”

Are these districts compact? Some clearly are not, particularly when compared to the ones they’d replace. There’s a whole body of law out there on what “compact” means and what it doesn’t mean, so don’t be surprised if some Republican lawyer doesn’t show up at a courthouse with a lawsuit that contains that constitutional language as Exhibit A and the new map as Exhibit B. I assume the mapmakers believe all this is legally defensible and maybe it will be, but it’s also open to challenges from anyone with a decent lawyer and a court filing fee. The proposed 7th District, which has been variously described as looking like a frog, a lobster or a scorpion, seems to defy the notion of compactness by stretching from western Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley to Arlington County in Northern Virginia and then down through the Piedmont to pick up some counties in Southside. 

There, 10 more observations about the proposed map. Anyone want to bet whether I can find 10 more? Or, perhaps even 56 more?

I can’t promise 56 more observations on the map but I can promise that we’ll have more political news and insights in West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Friday afternoons. Who knows what all will have happened by then?

The post 10 more things to know about the Democrats’ proposed redistricting map appeared first on Cardinal News.

On Monday, the Salem City Council will consider the appropriation of $1.5 million from the Virginia Department of Transportation for downtown improvements on Roanoke Boulevard.

The awarded Revenue Sharing funds require a 100% local match. The city set aside $250,000 in the fiscal year 2026 budget for this project, and is able to fund the other $1.2 million through the capital projects reserve, agenda documents state.

According to VDOT’s website, the Revenue Sharing Program provides funding for localities for “the construction and/or improvement of highway systems” for participating localities.

The improvements will be completed on Roanoke Boulevard from the intersection of Market Street and East Main Street to the intersection of Roanoke Boulevard and College Avenue. This includes replacing and widening sidewalks, improving crosswalks, installing streetscaping and new lighting.

These changes are noted in Salem’s Downtown Plan to improve pedestrian and motorist safety, the agenda report reads. 

Monday’s council session will be held at 6:30 p.m. in City Hall, 114 North Broad Street. The council will consider a number of rezonings and other appropriations of funding during Monday’s meeting. Those who are interested in seeing the full agenda can find it here. 

The post Salem City Council to consider appropriation of $1.5 million from VDOT for downtown improvements appeared first on Cardinal News.

A bill proposing to review whether the Virginia Military Institute should remain a state-sponsored college passed in the House of Delegates in a 71-24 vote Thursday, with changes that reduce the severity of its plans to scrutinize the institution.

HB 1377 proposed creating a task force to evaluate the quality of education received by students, known as cadets, at VMI and to determine whether the state-run senior military college should keep its state funding.

The amended version of the bill establishes a task force to “examine higher education” at VMI. It no longer asks that task force to make a recommendation on whether to strip VMI’s state funding.

Del. Dan Helmer, D-Fairfax County, filed the bill. He has expressed concerns that VMI is stuck in “lost cause” ideology, honoring the Confederacy, particularly since the institute’s board decided in 2025 not to renew the contract of its first Black superintendent.

The original version of Helmer’s bill proposed revisiting a 1928 report ordered by the General Assembly on the state of higher education in Virginia that had recommended closing the Lexington college. 

The amended version strikes references to the 1928 report.

Del. Terry Austin, R-Botetourt County, voted in favor of the amended bill. Ahead of the vote to approve the amendments Wednesday, Austin explained he had spoken with Helmer and helped arrange a meeting between Helmer and VMI’s superintendent, Ret. Lt. Gen. David Furness.

In a statement posted to VMI’s website, Furness said: “We are appreciative to the House of Delegates for their bipartisan efforts to amend the bill to remove references threatening VMI’s state funding. We are confident that an impartial task force will find that VMI is a Virginia treasure that produces citizen-soldiers ready to serve selflessly as military officers or civilian leaders.”

The statement continued, “While no institution is perfect, VMI is open to improvement in our constant pursuit of excellence.” 

The bill will now go to the Senate for its consideration.

The post Bill to establish VMI task force clears House, with changes appeared first on Cardinal News.