Monthly Archive for January, 2013

Somebody whose name you didn’t know is going to retire from a position that you didn’t know existed, despite that it’s a position that you may well have cast a vote for just a few years ago. In a press release, Charlottesville has announced that Lee Richards, the Commissioner of the Revenue, will not be running for reelection. Richards has held the position for twenty years. As soon as people figure out what the Commissioner of the Revenue actually does, no doubt we’ll muster a candidate or two to vie to replace Richards, and we’ll cast our votes based on our finely honed ability to judge which candidate will better commission revenue their party membership.

Oh, democracy.

There’s a couple of local angles on Senate Republicans’ surprise redistricting of Virginia on Monday. The first is that they’ve managed to redraw the lines such that the Charlottesville area is split between two far-right districts, to make it impossible for the area to elect a Democrat, effectively neutering Charlottesville’s political power in the state senate. The second is that, amidst all of the Senate redistricting, there’s a curious addition:

In Albemarle County, blocks 510030105001015, 510030105001016, 510030105001017, 510030105001021, 510030105001022, 510030105001023, 510030105001024, 510030105001031, and 510030105002007 are reassigned from District 57 to District 58.

What are these census blocks? Why, they’re the Key West neighborhood, on 20 North, the very neighborhood where Albemarle Supervisor and erstwhile congressional candidate Ken Boyd lives. This redistricting bill moves Boyd out of Delegate David Toscano’s very liberal district and into Delegate Rob Bell’s very conservative district. (Bell is currently a candidate for attorney general.)

The redistricting bill still has to pass the House of Delegates and be signed into law by Governor Bob McDonnell, but there’s little cause to expect that both of those things will not happen.