News
Business down at Virginia Papa John’s amid fallout from founder’s slur
Alexandra Cline at the Richmond Times Dispatch reports that a Virginia Papa John’s franchiser with 21 locations in Richmond, Hampton Roads and Charlottesville is taking steps to distance itself from its corporate parent after the pizza company’s founder used a racial slur in a conference call. “We’re of all walks and creeds,” Matt Sanders, a […]
State board clears local jails of responsibility in 23 deaths but won’t release details of investigations
The Virginia Board of Corrections wrapped up its first batch of inmate death investigations Wednesday, voting unanimously to clear about a dozen jails in 23 deaths that occurred in 2017 and 2018. The new review process was established by the General Assembly last year in a bid to increase oversight of local jails following the […]
With annexation off the table, officials studying ways to prod struggling cities to merge with counties
Residents of Martinsville are slowly coming around to the idea that the best thing for the city might be for it to cease being a city at all. Off-and-on discussions have been ongoing for decades about whether the shrinking, 13,500-population city in southern Virginia should revert to town status and be absorbed by surrounding Henry […]
Local and state cops have already spent nearly $126,000 policing pipeline protests
Construction has begun on one of two major natural gas pipelines in Virginia and state and local officials have already reported spending almost $126,000 responding to protests aimed at halting work. It’s a number that is only likely to rise this year as construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline progresses and work on the Atlantic […]
Follow the money
The Virginia Public Access Project has the breakdown of mid-year campaign finance reports that were due in by midnight Monday. With a whole year to go before the 2019 state Senate and House elections, Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment, a Republican from James City County, who has been in the Senate since 1992, had $843,596 […]
Virginia’s health care-acquired infection rates mirror national averages, but is that good enough?
Jimi Suwaiti doesn’t remember much of the first few months of 2017, but her mother, Sharon Blackwell, does. Blackwell watched her 48-year-old daughter shake in her hospital bed in Virginia Beach because the pain from a bacterial infection was so terrible, and hallucinate, in her feverish state, that people were coming into her room. Suwaiti […]
VCU president is highest-paid public college president in the state
The Chronicle of Higher Education released its annual ranking of executive compensation of the country’s public and private colleges universities over the weekend. The highest-paid public college president in the state, Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao, came in at 43 on the list with a compensation package totaling $690,943. Behind him on the list […]
Members of Va. gun rights group call for leader’s resignation after he was tricked into recording training video for toddlers
Philip Van Cleave says he suspected he was being set up just five minutes into a multi-hour interview earlier this year with a supposed Israeli anti-terrorism expert. But the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, the state’s top gun advocacy group, said he pressed on, ultimately agreeing to record a firearms-training video for toddlers […]
A long walk off a short bridge?
Dominion Energy, Virginia’s biggest utility with about 2.5 million customers, is banking big on natural gas, in the near future at least. The company has two big new combined cycle gas plants in Greensville and Brunswick counties, one already finished and the other scheduled to begin operation this year. Another eight smaller gas plants were […]
From the state government to the ‘shadow government’
Mega-lobbying firm McGuireWoods Consulting added a major player to their formidable bench Tuesday, signing up former GOP House Speaker Bill Howell. “Since it was founded 20 years ago, McGuireWoods Consulting has earned a well-deserved reputation for consistently delivering successful outcomes for clients. Many of my new colleagues there have been friends for years, and I […]
Virginia, ‘do not eat this cereal’
Five of the 100 people recently sickened in a salmonella outbreak are Virginia residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only four of the 33 states affected by the outbreak — tied to Kellogg’s Honey Smacks, the 65-year-old sweetened puffed wheat cereal — have more cases. “Do not eat this cereal,” the […]
Southwest Virginia school district is first in state to approve program to arm teachers. Is it legal?
Members of the Lee County School Board voted unanimously last week to buy some teachers guns and have them designated as “conservators of the peace” as part of a new school security program. “We’ve realized we can not afford to put the number of school resource officers in Lee County that we would like to,” […]