Bacon's Rebellion

  • Stuck in the Secretary’s Office

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Andrew Wheeler, Director, Office of Regulatory Management

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    The Youngkin administration is sitting on regulations needed to implement important legislation enacted by the General Assembly in 2020. The delay constitutes a violation of that law.

    In its 2020 Special Session, the General Assembly expanded the grounds for decertifying law-enforcement and jail officers. The background of this legislation was described in detail on this blog in a previous article, so there is no need to repeat that information here.

    The legislation required the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), under the direction of the Criminal Justice Services Board (CJSB), to adopt statewide professional standards of conduct for law-enforcement and jail officers. The timeline set out in the legislation would have required the standards of conduct to go into effect by mid-December 2021, two years ago. DCJS missed the deadline. The CJSB approved the regulations on June 16, 2022. The Attorney General certified the regulations on Aug. 2, 2022. The Department of Planning and Budget completed its review of the economic impact of the regulations on Aug. 22, 2022. The regulations have been under review in the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security’s office since then—470 days, more than a year and a quarter. (more…)

  • The Governor’s Chronic Absenteeism Task Force – Part One – Failed Advice

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Lisa Coons, Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction

    by James C. Sherlock

    Governor Youngkin, in response to the real crisis in our schools, has established a Chronic Absenteeism Task Force led by the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction.

    The Task Force is supported by the non-profit Attendance Works.

    Attendance Works so dominates VDOE’s Attendance & School Engagement page that it can be deemed a key component of the home team.

    That organization has teamed with FutureEd to write an updated Attendance Playbook (Playbook). The version at the link is a post-Covid update of an earlier edition that has been followed by VDOE in policy development since at least 2015.

    The resulting complex and school-resource-heavy multi-tiered approach to improving attendance has proven inadequate to the task.

    • Using a baseline year of 2015-16, chronic absenteeism among all students statewide did not decline in a statistically significant way under the new program;
    • Group-to-group ratios and gaps in absenteeism statistics remained the same; and
    • Absenteeism rates doubled together for all groups after COVID.
    A compilation from https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

    Home team policies have failed.

    That is possibly because no Playbook policies provide evidence for improving attendance that has met the standards of the federal Department of Education’s (DOE) Institute of Education Sciences (IES) What Works Clearinghouse (WWC).

    Which is DOE’s home team.

    The rigorous standards of WWC are required by DOE guidance Using Evidence to Strengthen Education Investments (Using Evidence) for a reason.

    “The Department emphasizes the use of evidence-based activities, strategies, and interventions (collectively referred to as “project components”) in the design of education programs from pre-kindergarten through adult education.”

    “The Department’s WWC uses rigorous standards to review education research, offering evidence of effectiveness on a wide range of project components.”

    “Organizations should select project components that are supported by the most rigorous evidence
    available, consider the needs of the learner population being served, and consider the ability and
    capacity of the organization to implement.”

    They work.

    (more…)

  • Musical Chairs

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Del. Don Scott (D-Portsmouth),  Speaker-designate

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    One of the most potent powers of the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates is the assigning of members to committees and designating the chair of each committee. He has sole prerogative over this important function.

    Speaker-designate Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) has broken a little with tradition (in addition to the other ways he is a “first”).  In the past, a Speaker would wait until a day or two after the Session had convened to release the committee appointments list. In recent days, Scott has been releasing the names of committee chairs, one by one. Perhaps he is hoping to get some publicity for the new chairs, but, so far, the press has taken notice of only one, Sam Rasoul of Roanoke.

    These are the chairs named so far:

    • Sam Rasoul (Roanoke)–Education
    • Vivian Watts (Fairfax)–Finance
    • Patrick Hope (Arlington)–Courts of Justice
    • Jeion Ward (Hampton)–Labor and Commerce
    • Mark Sickles (Fairfax)–Health and Human Services
    • Luke Torian (Prince William)–Appropriations

    With one exception, none of these appointments is a surprise. (more…)

  • Williamsburg Street Festival Engages in Ugly Antisemitism

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    A monthly street fair in Williamsburg is making national headlines for all the wrong reasons: over the weekend news broke that the organizers banned a rabbi from a menorah-lighting ceremony. Unless the rabbi would light the candles under a banner demanding a ceasefire in Israel, that is.

    Which raises the question, what is WRONG with the organizers of 2nd Sunday Art and Music Festival in Williamsburg?

    According to its website, 2nd Sundays are street celebrations held on the second Sunday of every month from March through December.

    These fairs feature about 150 musicians, artisans and entertainers and until now appeared to steer clear of controversy.

    Rabbi Mendy Heber of Chabad Williamsburg said he had already been a part of the festival, offering loaves of challah as a vendor, and that plans for the menorah lighting were suddenly scrapped last month.

    The Daily Press reports:

    According to Heber, the planning for the original event to be held Dec. 10 was well underway when organizers abruptly reversed course in November, informing him that they would not move forward.

    “We had started the discussion and they showed extreme interest and excitement in moving forward with it” until they pulled back, he said. (more…)

  • Slasher Ordered to Reimburse Medical Bills of his Victim

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Kerry Dougherty

    Several things strike me about this crime and restitution story out of Patrick County.

    First, after Larry Puckett nearly stabbed Justin Hawkes to death in the fall of 2019, Mr. Hawkes  incurred about $120,000 in medical bills.

    Because the injured man was indigent, Medicaid stepped in and negotiated the price down to $22,000.

    If this former English major’s math is correct that’s just under 20% of the original bill.

    Does this suggest there’s some padding in medical bills? You bet it does. In fact, receiving any medical procedure is a lot like buying an airline ticket. Everyone on the flight pays a different amount for the privilege of squeezing into a tiny seat and arriving at the exact time. Some folks spent a fortune for their tickets. Others got a cut-rate price.

    Same goes for medical bills, although many of those are accompanied by an emergency that leaves no time to shop around for a better price.

    Face it, medical care is a racket. Dare to ask why that Tylenol they gave you in the hospital cost 15 bucks and you’ll get a verbal tsunami of indignation and gibberish. Just pay it, they say. You have insurance.

    In this case, according to the Virginia Mercury, the judge ordered Larry Puckett to repay Medicaid for the injuries he inflicted on Mr. Hawkes once he completed his prison sentence:

    Puckett was convicted by Patrick Circuit Court of malicious wounding. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, with eight years suspended, and ordered to complete five years of probation and pay … the cost of the medical services as restitution. The restitution was to be paid in $50 increments each month following his release from prison.

    I like it! (more…)

  • While Harrisonburg Slept, a Gadfly Arose

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Joe Fitzgerald

    Laura Dent is not a stupid person. She’s probably an honest person. But those aren’t qualifications enough to help run a city. You also have to know what’s going on. Frankly, she’s missed that boat a couple of times.

    Two issues I’ve written about repeatedly are uncontained school growth, which the Harrisonburg City Council has ignored, and Bluestone Town Center, where a majority of council members, including Dent, believed every flimsy rationalization from the Mississippi developers while dismissing without comment the measured, statistical, scientific objection by the citizens of Harrisonburg.

    That last part is not surprising. Dent may live in the city, but too often she seems to be representing ideas and ideologies that are out of sync with the city. If the good of the city or the good of her ideology are at odds, it’s fair to ask which she’d choose, and it’s obvious which she chose in her votes in favor of  Bluestone Town Center.

    There’s one thing ideological leftists have in common with the MAGA people, the Tea Party people, or whatever we’re calling them this year. They’re so certain of their positions that they meet any opposing ideas with dismissiveness, hostility, or bafflement. To Dent’s credit, she usually goes with the latter. (more…)

  • Jeanine’s Memes

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From The Bull Elephant

  • Follow-up on Sen. Hashmi

    Posted on

    by

    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D-Chesterfield)
    Photo credit: VPM

    by Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Kerry Doughtery has evinced a certain amount of outrage on this blog about state Sen. Ghazala Hashni (D-Chesterfield) not living in the district in which she ran and won re-election. (See here and here.)

    The recent redistricting had placed Sen. Hashmi’s long-time residence just outside the district which she represented. In order to be able to run in her old district, the senator rented an apartment in that district and listed it as her primary residence. A group of residents filed a petition with the court claiming that she had not abandoned her longtime residence in which her husband still lived. They monitored the movement of the family’s vehicles and claimed that Hashmi still spent time there.

    A retired judge has ruled that the evidence showed that Sen. Hashmi had established a domicile at the apartment and thus met the requirements of the law and had not falsified her residency in papers she filed with the Board of Elections. In her testimony, Hashmi said that she had moved furniture and personal effects to the apartment, established an office there, and changed her voting registration and driver’s license to reflect her new address. She did not deny spending some nights at her former home, partly to help care for her husband, who was dealing with a medical issue. She said that she and her husband plan to buy a home in the new district.

    My Soapbox

    The actions taken by Sen. Hashmi to deal with being redistricted out of her legislative district are not unusual; other legislators have resorted to similar moves in the past. They may not seem right, but they are not illegal. It is amazing that legislators will go to the hassle and expense of renting apartments and then moving, and perhaps uprooting their families, just to remain in the General Assembly.

  • Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part Four – Chronic Absenteeism, Social Promotion, VTSS and UVa’s Ed School

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    by James C. Sherlock

    There is a rule: nothing else schools do will matter much for kids who are chronically absent.

    In Charlottesville, it is the Black children who dominate the chronic absenteeism statistics.

    Their SOL performance validates the rule.

    The process for preventing and dealing with chronic absenteeism within the school system is so lengthy, bureaucratic and “progressive” (literally and figuratively) that it has failed Black children starting in kindergarten.

    Absenteeism and social promotion are recipes for educational failure.

    They also contribute directly to the breakdown of order and discipline in schools, as kids who are frustrated and lost in class act out first in disruptive, and then destructive ways.

    Yet CCS schools allow runaway Black chronic absenteeism without truancy charges and engage in wholesale social promotion of Black students who do not have the academic skills to learn in the next grade.

    Lest they be labeled racist.

    What they get are racist outcomes. (more…)

  • Bacon Meme of the Week

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

  • Fear and Loathing of Youngkin’s Higher Ed Policy

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    by James A. Bacon

    In early October Governor Glenn Youngkin asked Attorney General Jason Miyares for a formal opinion on a seemingly innocuous question: whose interests are members of Virginia’s public university governing boards supposed to represent? Miyares responded that the “primary duty” of the boards of visitors is to the commonwealth, not to the institutions themselves. The conclusion would seem to be so obvious, so clearly the intent of the state code, that it doesn’t warrant discussion.

    But some people espy a vague but malign intent behind the finding.

    Speaking to the higher-ed trade journal, Inside Higher Ed, Claire Gastañaga, former director of Virginia’s ACLU and a former deputy attorney general overseeing Virginia’s public colleges and universities, said Miyares’ opinion is a threat to the autonomy of public institutions. In the publication’s words, she “fears it signals an attempt by the governor to justify the removal of board members whose actions don’t align with his priorities” and replace them with appointees who share his priorities. Gastañaga pointed to the Bert Ellis bogeyman as evidence that Youngkin is scheming something nefarious. (more…)

  • Open House Races in NoVa Already Crowded

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    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Jeanine Martin

    Here are the candidates so far in the 2024 election for open seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 7th District, currently held by Democrat Abigail Spanberger, and in the 10th District, currently held by Democrat Jennifer Wexton:

    Virginia’s 10th district

    Del. Michelle Maldonado (D-Manassas) is the latest to announce her candidacy in the crowded Democrat field competing for the nomination for Congress in the 10th district.

    Other Democrats running in the 10th are:

    Eileen Filler Corn (D-Fairfax), former Speaker of the House of Delegates. (She does not reside in the 10th district but that is not necessary to run for Congress.)

    State Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-Fairfax)

    Del. Suhas Subramanyam (D-parts of Loudoun and Prince William). He was elected to the state Senate earlier this month.

    Del. Dan Helmer (D-part of Loudoun and Prince William)

    Del. David Reid (D-Loudoun)

    Atif Qarni, former Secretary of Education under Ralph Northam. (more…)

  • Virginia Beach Nixes Kitty Hawk Wind Cables

    Posted on

    by

    Steve Haner

    Site map for the first phase and cable connection route for the proposed Kitty Hawk Wind project.

    by Steve Haner

    The political leaders of the City of Virginia Beach have informed an offshore wind developer that they oppose its plan to bring power cables ashore at Sandbridge Beach. No formal vote was taken on the application, however, according to media reports.

    The story appeared in The Virginian-Pilot and on local television station WAVY around Thanksgiving. When Bacon’s Rebellion last visited this matter, Virginia Beach City Council had conducted a May public hearing at which most speakers strongly opposed the power cable location. (more…)

  • Tough Question: What’s Going On at the Virginia General Assembly?

    Posted on

    by

    Bob Rayner

    by Gordon C. Morse

    Forty years ago, I wrote an essay for the Richmond Times-Dispatch — “The Long and the Short of the Assembly” — that noted “a growing sense that the Virginia General Assembly is not performing satisfactorily,” that it had “devolved into an unhappy spectacle.”

    Revisiting that essay recently immediately gave me a headache. The question then and now is whether Virginia’s process for considering proposed new laws or enacting changes to existing laws provides sufficient opportunity for the public, as well as the legislative membership, to understand what’s happening at any given moment and, at some level, participate?

    It has long been the habit in Virginia – based on 18th, even 17th century inclinations – to simply get lawmaking done, and as quickly as possible. Having sufficient public “access” was not a major hang-up.

    To put it another way, doing legislative work in Virginia was always regarded as important, but there were always other, equally important, things to do. Growing and harvesting crops, for instance. Well into the middle of the 20th century, Virginia remained an agrarian economic/social construct. The legislative calendar reflected that reality.

    That changed (sort of) with the 1970 revisions to the Virginia Constitution and there’s no need to dive deep on that subject here, except to say that there were, even then, lingering doubts about the efficacy of unrestrained democratic institutions. This concern was most dramatically expressed when, during the 1901-02 Virginia Constitutional Convention, a proposal to hold the General Assembly to a single meeting once every four years was only narrowly defeated.

    But a growing state has growing needs — as my prior boss Gov. Gerald L. Baliles once liked to put it — and the remedies enacted more than 70 years ago, which go to the specific lawmaking structure, may no longer be adequate. (That’s an understatement.) (more…)

  • Charlottesville, Its Public Schools and UVa – Part Three – CCS Abandons Truancy Filings, Absenteeism Soars

    Posted on

    by

    sherlockj

    Courtesy of wallpaper.com

    by James C. Sherlock

    The effects of public policies can be murky.

    Not this one.

    The subject in this Part 3 is alarming chronic absenteeism of Charlottesville City Schools (CCS).  

    At issue is the virtual abandonment by that division of the use truancy filings with the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, removing parental consequences.  

    That change has been accompanied by enormous increases in absenteeism and everything, all bad, that comes with it.

    The numbers are stark. (more…)

Now Available

Book cover of 'Dust Mites: A Second American Revolution' by James A. Bacon, featuring astronauts planting a flag with a blue and white emblem on a lunar landscape, with Earth visible in the background.
For sale on Amazon.com

The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….

This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.

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Bacon’s Rebellion is Virginia’s leading politically non-aligned portal for news, opinions and analysis about state, regional and local public policy. Read more about us here.

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