You’ll have to pry my gun from… More than 90 governing bodies in Virginia have voted to declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, reports WDBJ. Ninety! Unbelievable. Thousands of citizens have appeared at board meetings across the state to demonstrate their support for the resolutions. Virginia Citizens Defense League President Philip Van Cleave said the sanctuary movement is unlike anything he has seen in his years of advocacy. “It’s like the difference between driving a car and being in a rocket ship.” Sigh. I personally don’t have a problem with these resolutions. But if only rural Virginians cared as much about pocketbook issues.
More transportation cross subsidies in the works. Virginia officials and the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission are negotiating a proposal to dedicate a portion of toll revenues on Interstate 66 inside the Beltway to construction of new Metro facilities near Rosslyn and construction of a second freight/commuter rail span between Virginia and Washington, D.C. The toll revenues would back the issuance of bonds to pay for construction of the rail projects, reports WTOP. Virginia drifts further and further away from a user-pays transportation funding system. This idea can be justified only on the grounds that mass transit can provide more mobility than a comparable investment in other road projects. I wonder what light VDOT’s Smart Scale ranking system could shed on this.
Evictions down. Since a New York Times article highlighted the high rate of evictions in Virginia cities, state and local officials have been allocating resources to reduce the number. Through September of this year, the incidence of evictions has dropped about 19% in the City of Richmond, where it was the worst, and 14% across Virginia, according to a Capital News Service analysis of court data. This is encouraging news… as long as it doesn’t have the unintended consequence of dampening the supply of low-income rentals.
— JAB
