Monthly Archive for September, 2009

Page 6 of 9

Council Asks Legislature for Gay Employment Protections

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 10, 2009 in Government and Law and Justice. 10 Comments

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.

Armed Student at CHS

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 10, 2009 in In Brief. 12 Comments

A 16-year-old took an unloaded .32 to CHS today, found on him after an officer broke up a fight. He’s in jail.  #

Downtown Fountains’ Idleness Coming to an End

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 10, 2009 in In Brief. 1 Comment

The Mall fountains are still idle because the city is waiting on replacement parts. They hope to have ’em working next week.  #

Books Behind Bars Nixed by State Prison System

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 9, 2009 in Law and Justice. 18 Comments

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.

State Cuts UVA Funding by 8%

Published by Waldo Jaquith on September 9, 2009 in Government and UVa. 21 Comments

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.