It’s been five years since Gray Television launched CBS-19 and ABC-16 here in Charlottesville. (Here’s the original cvillenews.com story.) If asked, I would have guessed it’d been, like, a week and a half. We were all relatively fresh off the C-Ville Weekly / Hook split then, seeing some of the results of competition in our weeklies, and I think hopes were high that the new stations would have a similarly beneficial on the staid NBC-29. Five years later, I’d be curious to hear what folks think about CBS-19, ABC-16, and Fox-27, especially their news coverage, and how they’ve affected NBC-29 and the overall news coverage in town. I can’t get local TV stations—there’s a mountain between me and town—so I’ve never actually seen any of their broadcasts, only online excerpts.
Monthly Archive for September, 2009
Page 3 of 4
The Board of Supervisors has OKd charging for ambulance service, Sean Tubbs reports for Charlottesville Tomorrow. Strictly speaking, the county isn’t charging for ambulance service, they’re simply giving permission to the Hollymead and Monticello fire stations to charge for service if they see fit, as well as the volunteer rescue squads. The county anticipates that the costs will be picked up by people’s health insurance, with Dennis Rooker saying that this allows the county to “obtain some fees for services that are generally picked up by third parties other than our citizens.” About a third of the state’s localities have similar arrangements. The BoS hasn’t specified how much that may be charged. This is only the first of a series of steps necessary to put the fees into place, so there’s no charge right now.
City Council has unanimously agreed to ask the General Assembly to prohibit discrimination against state employees based on sexual orientation, the Progress reports.
Right now state law makes it perfectly legal for state agencies to fire somebody for being gay (or, for that matter, straight), although both Gov. Tim Kaine and his predecessor, Mark Warner, have issued executive orders enacting such prohibitions, though the current executive order will expire with Kaine’s term in January. (Kaine’s executive order was his first action in office, in fact.) The Republican candidate for governor, Bob McDonnell, opposed Kaine’s executive order, and issued an opinion against it in his capacity as attorney general in 2006. Executive orders don’t have the legal strength of a law—in March Martinsville’s Virginia Museum of Natural History fired a man for being gay.
The General Assembly is no stranger to debates over the topic. I sat in on a debate over a bill that would prohibit such discrimination back in February of 2006 and, while it was hilarious, it made it pretty clear to me that a bill like this won’t pass so long as Republicans control the House of Delegates, regardless of what Charlottesville City Council wants Richmond to do.
The state prison system has shut down the locally-based Books Behind Bars program, Maria Glod writes in tomorrow’s Washington Post, because they’ve deemed it a security threat. As first reported by Bryan McKenzie in Monday’s Daily Progress, the twenty-year-old program has been banned by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Operated out of and funded by the Quest Bookshop on West Main, the program functions without taxpayer dollars, for the purpose of allowing prisoners to better themselves through literacy and education. They’ve provided an estimated one million books to prisoners over the years, according to the Post. Prisoners make requests for books—the dictionary and the Bible are especially popular—which Quest fulfills by mailing books directly to the prisoners, free of charge. The books are treated like anything materials mailed to prisoners, inspected by officials for contraband before being given to prisoners. After prison officials found a CD left in one book and a paperclip in another, they deemed the program both a security threat and a waste of prison employees’ time, and informed Books Behind Bars that they could not send books to prisoners.
Note that prisoners can purchase both books and CDs from approved vendors, and they are permitted to keep up to thirteen books in their cell. So they can receive books, and they can keep books, but they just can’t receive books from Books Behind Bars.
The program’s founder—Quest owner Kay Allison—has asked the Department of Corrections to reconsider their decision, but lacking some sort of pressure other than that of a 78-year-old woman asking nicely, there’s no good reason to think that they’ll change their mind.
More budget cuts are hitting UVA, Bryan McKenzie writes in the Progress, with the state cutting its funding by 8% and requiring university employees to take a day of unpaid leave next spring. Only something like 6% of UVA’s funding now comes from the state—awfully low for an ostensible state college—with this cut coming to about $7.7M. Gov. Tim Kaine’s budget reduction plan (2MB PDF) makes cuts across state government, including layoffs of nearly 600 employees, though none at the university. This is just the latest in a series of such cuts in the past year and a half. Though there have been no layoffs at UVA yet, there’s speculation among many employees that they’re coming.
Disclosure: I’m a UVA employee though, oddly, not a state employee.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
-
Archive for Sideblog »
Recent Comments