Podcasts about fourth circuit court

This Day in Legal History: Maryland Toleration Act PassedOn April 21, 1649, the Maryland Assembly passed the Maryland Toleration Act, a landmark piece of colonial legislation that granted freedom of worship to all Christians in the colony. Also known as the Act Concerning Religion, it was one of the first legal efforts in the American colonies to protect religious liberty through statutory law. The act was enacted under the leadership of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, who sought to maintain peace in Maryland's religiously diverse population, which included both Catholics and Protestants.The law's preamble acknowledged the dangers of religious coercion, stating that "the inforceing of the conscience in matters of Religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence." To preserve harmony, it declared that no Christian should be "troubled, Molested or discountenanced" for practicing their faith, provided they did not threaten the colony's civil government or the authority of the Lord Proprietor.While progressive for its time, the Act's protections were limited to those who professed belief in Jesus Christ, excluding Jews, atheists, and other non-Christians. Violators of the law's religious tolerance provisions faced harsh penalties, including fines, public whipping, or even death for blasphemy.The Act was repealed just five years later during a period of Protestant ascendancy, reflecting the fragile nature of religious tolerance in colonial America. Nonetheless, it remains significant as an early attempt to codify the principle that faith should not be a basis for persecution.A federal judge has ruled that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) can no longer direct the termination of probationary federal workers based on performance-related justifications that were, according to the court, misleading. U.S. District Judge William Alsup called OPM's use of standardized termination letters citing performance as the reason for firing thousands of employees a “total sham.” He emphasized that falsely attributing the dismissals to performance could harm the affected workers' reputations and career prospects for years to come.The ruling affects employees at six federal agencies and prohibits further terminations under these pretenses. Judge Alsup's decision underscores that these workers were dismissed under false narratives while still in their probationary period—either newly hired or recently promoted—and should not have been labeled as underperformers without proper evaluation or process.Though Alsup's ruling offers protection against future actions, he declined to issue a preliminary injunction requested by the state of Washington, stating the state lacked standing because it could not show concrete harm from the federal firings, such as a clear loss of federal services.This legal challenge comes amid a broader judicial tug-of-war. In March, Alsup had initially ordered the reinstatement of 16,000 workers pending resolution of a lawsuit. However, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked that injunction on April 8, suggesting that nonprofit organizations representing federal workers may lack the legal standing to sue on their behalf. Following that, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals also halted a separate injunction from a Maryland judge that would have reinstated probationary employees in 19 states and Washington, D.C.Despite the limits imposed by the higher courts, Alsup's decision focuses on the reputational harm caused by labeling the dismissals as performance-based, rather than procedural or administrative. He signaled that the government must correct the record for those terminated workers.Performance-Based Federal Worker Layoffs a ‘Sham' Judge RulesThe U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a major challenge to a provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as Obamacare, that mandates insurers cover certain preventive medical services—like cancer screenings and diabetes testing—without cost-sharing by patients. The case centers on the constitutional validity of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), a panel of medical experts that identifies which services should be covered. The panel's 16 members are appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) but are not confirmed by the Senate.A group of Texas-based Christian individuals and businesses filed the lawsuit in 2020, arguing that the USPSTF wields too much authority and must therefore comply with the U.S. Constitution's Appointments Clause. This clause requires that significant federal officers—known as "principal officers"—be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The plaintiffs claim the task force has evolved from a purely advisory body to one that effectively imposes binding legal obligations on insurers, all without proper accountability.In 2024, the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the plaintiffs, ruling the task force's structure unconstitutional. The federal government appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court. The Biden administration originally filed the appeal, and it was later continued by the Trump administration. Government lawyers argue that the task force should be classified as comprising "inferior officers," since their recommendations are only made binding when approved by the HHS Secretary, who can remove task force members at will.The plaintiffs, however, maintain that the Secretary lacks actual power to stop recommendations from taking effect, making the task force's authority effectively unchecked. They also argue that this lack of oversight elevates the members to principal officer status, necessitating Senate confirmation.Before narrowing the lawsuit to the appointments issue, the plaintiffs also challenged the ACA's requirement to cover HIV prevention medication on religious grounds, asserting it promoted behaviors they opposed. The appeals court declined to sever portions of the law that might otherwise save the provision, another aspect now before the Supreme Court.If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court's decision, key preventive healthcare services could become subject to out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and co-pays, potentially deterring millions from accessing early detection and prevention tools. The Court's decision, expected by the end of June, could reshape how health policy is implemented under the ACA and may further weaken one of its core patient protections.US Supreme Court to hear clash over Obamacare preventive care | ReutersIn a rapidly unfolding legal confrontation, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an emergency order halting the deportation of a group of Venezuelan migrants from Texas, sparking a strong dissent from Justice Samuel Alito. The court intervened early Saturday morning, acting on urgent filings by detainees' lawyers who said the migrants were already being loaded onto buses for imminent deportation to El Salvador. The migrants were accused of gang affiliation, but their legal team argued they hadn't been given fair notice or time to challenge their removal. The administration attempted to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law, to justify these expulsions.Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, sharply criticized the majority's decision, calling it "unprecedented and legally questionable." He argued that the Court acted without giving lower courts adequate time to review the claims and issued its order with limited evidence and no explanation. The justices' ruling paused deportations “until further order of this Court,” leaving room for future legal developments.The Trump administration quickly responded, filing a motion urging the Court to reverse its stay. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the detainees' lawyers bypassed proper procedure by going directly to the Supreme Court and that lower courts had not yet had a chance to establish key facts. He maintained that the migrants received legally sufficient notice, though reports suggested the notices were in English only and lacked clear instructions.The administration's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members is highly controversial. Originally passed in 1798 during hostilities with France, the law has been used sparingly and almost exclusively during wartime. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether its application in this immigration context is constitutional. Migrants' advocates, including the ACLU, maintain that many of the men deported or at risk of deportation are not gang members and were denied due process.The legal conflict reflects a broader tension between Trump's immigration enforcement efforts and judicial oversight. Last month, Trump ordered the deportation of more than 200 men to a Salvadoran maximum-security prison, reportedly ignoring a judge's oral order to halt at least two flights. The White House has not signaled any intent to defy the current Supreme Court stay but remains committed to its immigration crackdown.The case, A.A.R.P. v. Trump, now becomes a focal point in ongoing disputes about executive authority, due process rights for detainees, and the scope of immigration enforcement under rarely invoked legal provisions. As the Court weighs further action, the lives of dozens of migrants hang in the balance, caught between legal technicalities and broader political pressures.Supreme Court's Alito Calls Block of Deportations ‘Questionable' - BloombergAlito criticizes US Supreme Court's decision to 'hastily' block deportations | ReutersTrump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Lift Deportation Halt - BloombergA federal judge in Boston ruled that the Trump administration's passport policy targeting transgender and nonbinary individuals is likely unconstitutional. The policy, which followed an executive order signed by President Trump immediately after returning to office, required passport applicants to list their biological sex at birth and allowed only "male" or "female" markers. This reversed prior policies that permitted self-identification and, under the Biden administration, had allowed the use of a gender-neutral "X" option.U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick issued a preliminary injunction that bars enforcement of the policy against six of the seven plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. She held that the policy discriminates based on sex and reflects a bias against transgender individuals, violating the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. Kobick described the administration's approach as rooted in "irrational prejudice" and said it runs counter to the Constitution's promise of equality.Despite finding the policy likely unconstitutional, Kobick declined to issue a nationwide injunction, stating that the plaintiffs did not justify the need for broad relief. Still, the ruling marks a significant legal setback for the administration's broader effort to redefine federal gender recognition policies.The executive order at the center of the case mandated all federal agencies, including the State Department, to recognize only two sexes—male and female—based on biology at birth. The State Department then revised its passport application process to align with this directive.The case is part of a wave of legal challenges to Trump's rollback of gender recognition policies. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, vowed to continue fighting to expand the ruling's protections to all affected individuals.Trump passport policy targeting transgender people likely unconstitutional, judge rules | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Friday, April 18th, 2025Today, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejects Trump's bid to vacate Judge Xinis' order to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia; Marco Rubio kills the State Department's anti propaganda shop; Palantir's plans to help ICE deport people have been leaked; Musk and DOGE are now setting their sights on the GSA; a judge rules that Google Is a Monopolist in online advertising technology; the Trump administration is suing Maine over participation of transgender athletes in girls' sports; the Supreme Court agrees to hear Trump's birthright citizenship case after arguments end for the term; multiple patients have been hospitalized after an active shooter was reported at Florida State University's campus in Tallahassee; and Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Thank You, Fast Growing TreesGet 15% off your first purchase.  FastGrowingTrees.com/dailybeans.POLITICAL VOICES NETWORK PRESENTS:  Not The White House Correspondents' Dinner Live PPV April 26, 2025 9pm | MeetHook.liveGuest: John FugelsangTell Me Everything — John FugelsangThe John Fugelsang PodcastSiriusXM ProgressJohn Fugelsang (@johnfugelsang.bsky.social) — BlueskyPre-order Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds by John FugelsangStories:Florida State shooting live updates: 2 dead, sheriff's deputy's son in custody | NBC NewsMarjorie Taylor Greene Town Hall Turns Chaotic as Protesters Get Tased | Rolling StoneHow a Judge Tells a President to F**k Off - by Allison GillLeaked: Palantir's Plan to Help ICE Deport People | 404 MediaMarco Rubio Kills State Department Anti-Propaganda Shop, Promises ‘Twitter Files' Sequel | WIREDSupreme Court keeps hold on Trump's restrictions on birthright citizenship but sets May arguments | AP NewsTrump administration sues Maine over participation of transgender athletes in girls sports | AP NewsGoogle Is Illegally Monopolizing Online Advertising Tech, Judge Rules | The New York TimesGood Trouble:Find Your Representative | House.gov and demand that Ryan White Care Act funding is maintained for all parts (A-F).Ryan White Care Act | HRSA.govFind Upcoming Actions - 50501 MovementFederal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen. From The Good NewsWE, WHO WALKED BENEATH THE STARS | AmazonIllinois Eaglefloridabar.org/uploads/2024/12/2025_06-DEC-Chapter-4-RRTFB-12-30-24.pdf(Maybe rule 4-8.4 (d) applies)Planned Parenthood*Screening for Colorectal CancerDana is in Los Angeles Opening for Gina Yashere - Sat: April 19Reminder - you can see the pod pics if you become a Patron. The good news pics are at the bottom of the show notes of each Patreon episode! That's just one of the perks of subscribing! Federal workers - feel free to email me at fedoath@pm.me and let me know what you're going to do, or just vent. I'm always here to listen.Share your Good News or Good Trouble:https://www.dailybeanspod.com/good/ Check out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Subscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on Substackhttps://muellershewrote.substack.comFollow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Substack|Muellershewrote, BlueSky|@muellershewrote , Threads|@muellershewrote, TikTok|@muellershewrote, IG|muellershewrote, Twitter|@MuellerSheWrote,Dana GoldbergTwitter|@DGComedy, IG|dgcomedy, facebook|dgcomedy, IG|dgcomedy, danagoldberg.com, BlueSky|@dgcomedyHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/ Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?Supercasthttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/Patreon https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr subscribe on Apple Podcasts with our affiliate linkThe Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts

Hey there, it's your favorite legal correspondent coming to you live from the heart of New York City. What a whirlwind these past few days have been in the world of Donald Trump's legal battles. Let me catch you up on all the drama.Just last week, on March 14th, we saw a major development in the ongoing saga of Trump's diversity, equity, and inclusion executive orders. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the nationwide injunction that had been blocking these controversial EOs. This means the Trump administration can now move forward with enforcing these orders while the legal challenges continue. It's a significant win for the former president, but the fight is far from over.Now, let's talk about the big one - Trump's criminal trial in New York. On March 15th, Justice Juan Merchan made a crucial decision regarding the upcoming sentencing, which is set for January 10th, 2025. The judge ruled for an unconditional discharge, essentially meaning Trump won't face jail time or probation for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. It's a surprising turn of events, considering the gravity of the charges.But hold on to your hats, folks, because the legal rollercoaster doesn't stop there. Just yesterday, we got word that Trump's legal team is gearing up to file an appeal. They're chomping at the bit to challenge the conviction, but here's the kicker - they can't do it until after the sentencing takes place in January. Talk about a legal cliffhanger!Meanwhile, over in Washington D.C., things have gone eerily quiet on the federal election interference case. After the Supreme Court's decision back in August to remand the case, Judge Chutkan granted the government's motion to dismiss in December. It's a stark contrast to the media frenzy we saw surrounding this case just a few months ago.And let's not forget about the document mishandling case down in Florida. That one's been in limbo since Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the federal indictment last July, citing improper appointment and funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith. The Justice Department's appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals was ultimately dismissed in late November, leaving many legal experts scratching their heads.As we sit here today, on March 19th, 2025, it's clear that Donald Trump's legal battles are far from over. With appeals pending and new developments seemingly around every corner, you can bet I'll be here, keeping you up to date on all the twists and turns. Stay tuned, folks - something tells me we're in for quite a ride.

(Note: Due to technical issues, only part of this interview is available.)The case of Jeff MacDonald has been infused with controversy since the murders took place, almost 39 years ago. Through it all, Jeff has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Over the many years since trial, thousands of pages of government reports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that prove the existence of outside assailants, have been obtained. In fact, not only do these documents show Jeff's claim of outside assailants to be true, they also show how the prosecution deliberately set out to suppress evidence supporting these claims before, during, and after his trial. The MacDonald case has served as an example of malfeasance in the investigation of the FBI Crime Lab's misconduct, and the case has been featured in numerous congressional hearings and in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and The New Republic. In January, 2006, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel of three unanimously agreed that the affidavit of Jimmy Britt, a respected former US Marshal, was sufficient grounds to propel a rare fourth appeal (successive habeas petition) forward for review to the District Court in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jimmy Britt died in October, 2008. In November, 2008, the District Judge denied relief. The defense will appeal to the 4th Circuit. The MacDonald case is one of the most enduring and haunting legal cases of our time, and a torturous example of injustice and wrongful conviction. It continues to endure and weigh heavily on the public consciousness because the right conclusion has never been has never been issued in a court of law- that Jeff MacDonald is an innocent man and must be released. If guilt was so clear, its hard to imagine that the interest and emotion this case continues to proliferate would still exist nearly 40 years later.http://themacdonaldcase.org/index.htmlBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-opperman-report--1198501/support.

Jonathan Byrne and Alicia Penn of the District of South Carolina Federal Public Defender Office discuss recent Fourth Circuit and Supreme Court news.

Jonathan Byrne and Josh Carpenter of the Western District of North Carolina Federal Public Defender Office discuss recent Fourth Circuit Court news.

  Antonio L. Ingram II is Senior Counsel at the NAACP LDF. He is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law.  He served as a law clerk for the honorable Ivan L. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana and for Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Antonio also completed a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship in Malawi where he did anti-corruption work. Talking to Antonio Ingram II, someone I met when he was a first year law student and I was the Director of Employer Outreach and Career Counselor, left me feeling inspired to focus on doing social justice work sustainably. In this episode with Antonio, we discuss:  How his background growing up as a Black American in Oakland instills his passion for justice and drives his purpose to make the world better than what he inherited. Why as the descendants of slaves, he believes it's important to clerk for two Black federal judges and change the laws that once held his ancestors in bondage to now protect marginalized communities.   What it felt like to be the only non-White law clerk out of 20 law clerks even when clerking in very diverse states, and why it's important to diversify clerkships.   What we can do to improve the education system, and make public schools a place of integration and learning.   What you can do to have hope, especially during dark times like the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, by focusing on the progress we've made.   How growing up poor makes us afraid of poverty and keeps us as indentured servants in corporate America, and what we can do to let go of that fear and focus on finding happiness.   How to overcome what seems like insurmountable obstacles by sustaining yourself with wonder and gratitude.   What we learn from Black men who were the first to go to high profile jobs like Goldman Sachs dying prematurely compared to their peers.  How to make the world a better place and not be a martyr and succumb to powers literally trying to take you out and force you to overwork yourself to prove yourself.  How completing a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship in Malawi where he did anti-corruption work allowed him to get away from White Supremacy and grow in a way that was life empowering.   How to maintain perspective, and know that where you grow up and where you come from does not have to be your entire world, and your world can be boundless.   Want to connect with us? Connect with on Twitter @antonioingram and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonio-l-ingram-ii-esq-473b6930/.   Follow Samorn on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/samornselim/. Get a copy of Samorn's book, “Belonging: Self Love Lessons From A Workaholic Depressed Insomniac Lawyer” at https://tinyurl.com/2dk5hr2f.  Get weekly career tips by signing up for our advice column at www.careerunicorns.com.  Schedule a free 30-minute build your dream career consult by sending a message at www.careerunicorns.com.   

OA1104 - America's Dismayor, and other great stories to help close out 2024 on a positive note! Rudy Giuliani's long, greasy slide from the heights of New York power seems to be ending in the same Manhattan federal courthouse in which he made his career as the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY. We take a closer look at the often hilarious lengths America's former mayor has gone to in the past year to avoid paying the $148 million judgment he earned by casually defaming two hardworking Georgia election volunteers. Also discussed: why the House Ethics Committee decided to release its report on Matt Gaetz, Biden's commutation of 92% of the federal death row, and a legitimately good decision from the Supreme Court that we meant to talk about earlier. Finally, Matt drops a footnote with what he is promising will be the last time that he talks about fonts this year. Freeman v. Giuliani docket Giuliani's written stipulation to making per se defamatory statements (7/25/23) Judge Liman's “turnover” order (10/22/24) Judge Howell's default judgment order (8/30/23) Giuliani's 55-page response to the plaintiff's motion for sanctions (12/19/24) The America First Warehouse (America's Most Patriotic Venue) U.S. v. Rahimi (June 21, 2024) “Preferred Typefaces for Briefs,” Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (12/9/24) Check out the OA Linktree for all the places to go and things to do! If you'd like to support the show (and lose the ads!), please pledge at patreon.com/law!

After accused killer Lee Gilley appeared in court in Houston, Texas supported by lead defense attorney Dick DeGuerin, investigative journalists Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell dive in to what happened to Christa Bauer Gilley of Summerville, South Carolina. Court documents in the case reveal shocking details of how Lee Gilley acted after his wife's death at their Houston Heights home. You'll hear the latest on Lee Gilley's bond agreement and what's next to get Justice For Christa. And affidavits filed in Christa's children's custody case show the horrible way her family found out about her death … and about how she died. We also take a look at the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to vacate the conviction and sentence of one of Alex Murdaugh's alleged co-conspirators — bank enabler Russell Laffitte. Why did the court do this? When will Russell be released from prison? What about all the money he still owes his attorneys? And will Murdaugh trial superstar Creighton Waters — with that Big Creighton Energy — step in to prosecute Russell on his pending 21 state charges for allegedly helping Alex steal clients' money?  Plus an update on a trial date in the Sara Lynn Colucci case and the latest in Buster Murdaugh's defamation lawsuit. Stay Tuned, Stay Pesky and Stay in the Sunlight...☀️ Episode Resources Man charged with capital murder in pregnant wife's death first reported as suicide in Heights: Houston man accused in wife's death considered fleeing, relatives say The Yum Yum Snack Shop on Instagram Christa Gilley's Obituary Information on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Recap on the Colucci Case Join Luna Shark Premium today at Lunashark.Supercast.com. Premium Members also get access to searchable case files, written articles with documents, case photos, episode videos and exclusive live experiences with our hosts on lunasharkmedia.com all in one place. CLICK HERE to learn more: https://bit.ly/3BdUtOE. If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. What We're Buying... Hungry Root - https://hungryroot.com/mandy to get 40% off your first delivery and get your free veggies.. Hungry Root is the easiest way to eat healthy. They send you fresh, high-quality groceries, simple, delicious recipes, and essential supplements. Task Rabbit - Use promo code "mandy" at https://www.taskrabbit.com/ for 15% off your task. Task Rabbit connects you with skilled Taskers to help with cleaning, moving, furniture assembly, home repairs, and more. Peloton - onepeloton.com Find your push. Find your power with Peloton at onepeloton.com. Here's a link to some of our favorite things: https://amzn.to/4cJ0eVn And a special thank you to our other amazing sponsors: Microdose.com, PELOTON, and VUORI. Use promo code "MANDY" for a special offer! *** ALERT: If you ever notice audio errors in the pod, email info@lunasharkmedia.com and we'll send fun merch to the first listener that finds something that needs to be adjusted! *** For current & accurate updates: TrueSunlight.com facebook.com/TrueSunlightPodcast/ Instagram.com/TrueSunlightPod Twitter.com/mandymatney Twitter.com/elizfarrell youtube.com/@LunaSharkMedia tiktok.com/@lunasharkmedia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After Alex Murdaugh's banker buddy Russell Laffitte was given a new trial, investigative journalists Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell — and attorney Eric Bland — take a look at what went into the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to vacate the conviction of Alex Murdaugh's banker buddy Russell Laffitte and discuss what they expect to see in the future. When will Russell's retrial be held? Will Judge Richard Gergel — whose error led to this mess — still be the judge in the case? And what does this mean for the victims? Also on the show, the Egg Lady Juror asks the court to reconsider her request to be part of Alex's murder conviction appeal. Plus, Mandy, Liz and Eric start their preparations for the Lee Gilley case in Houston, Texas. Lee — who originally told police that his wife died by suicide, according to reports — has been charged with capital murder for the strangulation death of Christa Bauer Gilley, who was nine weeks pregnant at the time. This past week, we broke the news that Lee had hired Dick DeGuerin to be the lead attorney on his defense team. Dick — much like another Dick we know — has a reputation that precedes him, and not just because of his reported skills in the courtroom. Dick DeGuerin has represented the likes of David Koresh and — of all people — Robert Durst, who famously confessed to three murders during the making of the docuseries “The Jinx.” Stay posted on Eric Bland's New Book Anything But Bland on his website here: https://bit.ly/blandbook

Produced by KSQD 90.7, 89.5 & 89.7FM "Be Bold America!" Sunday, November 3, 2024 “A vote for Trump is a vote for fascism and a betrayal of American democracy and for everything it stands.”  - Judge J. Michael Luttig (R), Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, retired Listen to this fast-paced interview that covers Congress, Fox News, the Media, Mass Deportation, the Climate Crisis, Voting,  and Oligarchs as they relate to: What will our lives be like in our country if Trump wins?  What will our lives be like in our country if Harris wins?  And, if Harris wins, what will life be like after the voters rejected the billionaire-funded Republican candidate and their rightwing Agenda 47 and Project 2025 plans?    It has come to this. After fifty years of implementing a velvet coup, Tuesday (election day) we have been forced into deciding between two very different Americas. Elect Harris/ Walz and we continue with a democracy and the Rule of Law our founders designed. Elect Trump/Vance and our original form of government is gone and an authoritarian regime supplants it as being Above the Law. As Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, recently stated: “If Trump wins; America ends.”  INTERVIEW GUEST: Bette Dangerous, also known as Heidi Siegmund Cuda, is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, filmmaker, and bestselling author. She writes about American politics, culture, and Russian active measures at her Bette Dangerous substack magazine and is a political columnist and US correspondent for Byline Supplement and Byline Times. Her column Hot Type appears weekly in Byline Supplement. She is the co-host and producer of RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, an investigative show about disinformation and radicalization. https://www.bettedangerous.com https://www.bylinesupplement.com https://youtube.com/@radicalizedpod  

Jonathan Byrne and Jeremy Thompson of the District of South Carolina Federal Public Defender Office discuss recent Fourth Circuit Court news.

This commonsense ruling by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals protects a fundamental religious liberty of faith-based organizations to employ people who align with their mission. Constitutional expert, lawyer, author, pastor, and founder of Liberty Counsel Mat Staver discusses the important topics of the day with co-hosts and guests that impact life, liberty, and family. To stay informed and get involved, visit LC.org.

Jonathan Byrne and Jackie Tarlton of the Eastern District of North Carolina Federal Public Defender Office discuss recent Fourth Circuit Court news.

Wednesday, August 7th 2024Today, Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate; Republican Representative Andy Ogles has been hit with an FBI search warrant; the en banc Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds Maryland's assault weapons ban; now the North Carolina election board is investigating Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC after a voter data complaint; Donald hikes his Mar-a-Lago membership to $1m, raising concerns of selling access; union workers at Crooked Media stage a walkout to protest ‘anti-union negotiating tactics'; plus Allison and Dana deliver your Good News.Promo Code:For a limited time, HomeChef is offering you 18 Free Meals, plus Free Shipping on your first box, and Free Dessert for Life. At https://www.HomeChef.com/DAILYBEANS.Our GuestsRick Smiththericksmithshow.comThe Rick Smith Show (freespeech.org)twitter.com/RickSmithShowThe Rick Smith Show Podcast (Apple Podcasts)Dave Aronberghttps://twitter.com/aronberghttps://www.youtube.com/@TrueCrimeMTNhttps://linktr.ee/davearonbergStoriesFBI agents execute search warrant on Tennessee Congressman Andy Ogles, NewsChannel 5 confirms (NewsChannel5 Nashville)North Carolina election board investigates Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC after voter data complaint (CNBC)Trump hikes Mar-a-Lago membership to $1m, raising concerns of selling access (The Guardian)Workers at ‘Pod Save America' Producer Crooked Media Stage Walkout to Protest Alleged ‘Anti-Union Negotiating Tactics' (Variety)Give to the Kamala Harris Presidential CampaignKamala Harris (MSW Media Donation Link) — Donate via ActBlueCheck out other MSW Media podcastshttps://mswmedia.com/shows/Subscribe to Lawyers, Guns, And MoneyAd-free premium feed: https://lawyersgunsandmoney.supercast.comSubscribe for free everywhere else:https://lawyersgunsandmoney.simplecast.com/episodes/1-miami-1985Subscribe for free to MuellerSheWrote on Substackhttps://muellershewrote.substack.comFollow AG and Dana on Social MediaDr. Allison Gill Follow Mueller, She Wrote on Posthttps://post.news/@/MuellerSheWrote?utm_source=TwitterAG&utm_medium=creator_organic&utm_campaign=muellershewrote&utm_content=FollowMehttps://muellershewrote.substack.comhttps://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrotehttps://www.threads.net/@muellershewrotehttps://www.tiktok.com/@muellershewrotehttps://instagram.com/muellershewroteDana Goldberghttps://twitter.com/DGComedyhttps://www.instagram.com/dgcomedyhttps://www.facebook.com/dgcomedyhttps://danagoldberg.comHave some good news; a confession; or a correction to share?Good News & Confessions - The Daily Beanshttps://www.dailybeanspod.com/confessional/From The Good NewsKamala Harris (MSW Media Donation Link) — Donate via ActBlueAntiretroviral Prophylaxis for HIV Prevention in Heterosexual Men and Women (the New England Journal of Medicine)www.nanustudio.coinstagram.com/nanustudiocoCheck Your Voter Registration!! (Vote.org) Live Show Ticket Links:https://allisongill.com (for all tickets and show dates)Friday August 16th Washington, DC - with Andy McCabe, Pete Strzok, Glenn Kirschner https://tinyurl.com/Beans-in-DCSaturday August 24 San Francisco, CA https://tinyurl.com/Beans-SF Listener Survey:http://survey.podtrac.com/start-survey.aspx?pubid=BffJOlI7qQcF&ver=shortFollow the Podcast on Apple:The Daily Beans on Apple PodcastsWant to support the show and get it ad-free and early?Supercasthttps://dailybeans.supercast.com/OrPatreon https://patreon.com/thedailybeansOr subscribe on Apple Podcasts with our affiliate linkThe Daily Beans on Apple Podcasts

Investigative journalists Mandy Matney and Liz Farrell — and everyone's favorite attorney Eric Bland — give a recap of last week's strange press conference after Myrtle Beach Pastor JP Miller settled with Mica Francis' family in their ongoing disputes in Family and Probate courts.  Eric breaks down what the family might have given up in agreeing to drop their fight against JP getting to be personal representative of Mica's estate … but also what they might have gained by settling now. The three also discuss how JP's inner circle — and those still attending his church.  Are they enablers of JP's alleged bad behavior or are they victims of coercive control? What makes them continue to stand by his side? Also on the show, a date has been set in Alex Murdaugh's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals hearing — where he plans to argue that Judge Richard Gergel engaged in cruel and unusual punishment by giving Alex a 40-year sentence in his financial crimes earlier this year. Plus, the 2024 Olympics and the overwhelmingly positive messaging coming from this year's slate of top athletes. Visit our new events page Lunasharkmedia.com/events where you can learn about the upcoming in-person and virtual appearances from hosts or submit your own ideas at lunasharkmedia.com/newevents Check out Luna Shark Merch With a Mission shop at lunasharkmerch.com/ What We're Buying... Lumen - https://www.lumen.me/coj for 15% off your purchase. Your metabolic health, in your hands. Understand your unique metabolism, promote fat burn, lose weight, and boost energy naturally. CBDistillery - https://cbdistillery.com with code “COJ” for 20% off. No fluff. No fillers. Just pure, effective cannabinoid products. Over 43,000 Verified Reviews. 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee. Free Shipping Over $75. Subscribe & Save Up To 30% Sono Bello - https://sonobello.com/summer - #1 Specialist based on the most locations nationwide and largest group of practicing board-certified doctors. **Summer Savings Offer valid for a limited time. Here's a link to some of our favorite things: https://amzn.to/4cJ0eVn Find us on social media: Twitter.com/mandymatney - Twitter.com/elizfarrell - Twitter.com/theericbland https://www.facebook.com/cupofjustice/ |  https://www.instagram.com/cojpod/ YouTube SUNscribe to our free email list to get alerts on bonus episodes, calls to action, new shows and updates. CLICK HERE to learn more: https://bit.ly/3KBM *** Alert: If you ever notice audio errors in the pod, email info@lunasharkmedia.com and we'll send fun merch to the first listener that finds something that needs to be adjusted! *** *The views expressed on the Cup of Justice bonus episodes do not constitute legal advice. Listeners desiring legal advice for any particular legal matter are urged to consult an attorney of their choosing who can provide legal advice based upon a full understanding of the facts and circumstances of their claim. The views expressed on the Cup of Justice episodes also do not express the views or opinions of Bland Richter, LLP, or its attorneys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls Headlines and Sound Bites! 28 Mins In five years as counsel, senior counsel, and chief counsel to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Alex Aronson led Senate investigations, oversight, and legislative campaigns to confront anti-democratic judicial influence, ethical misconduct, and abuse of power. A political organizer, civil rights lawyer, and judicial ethics expert, Alex's work on judicial accountability and right-wing judicial influence has helped elevate these issues to national prominence, laying the groundwork for today's headlines exposing the Supreme Court's corruption and extreme judicial activism. Alex most recently served as the Managing Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law Center. He was previously an attorney in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP, and a law clerk to Judge Albert Diaz on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before attending Stanford Law School, Alex helped lead a nationally prominent state-based nonprofit focused on improving voting access for underrepresented communities in Oregon, culminating in the nation's first statewide automatic voter registration law.  56 Minutes Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming, became a media contributor to NewsNation in March of 2023. He is also  a former Creative Director who launched iHeartRadio's original video offering. Check out his pieces at Mediaite  The Stand Up Community Chat is always active with other Stand Up Subscribers on the Discord Platform.   Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Follow and Support Pete

How might the example of Christ as a servant shape the field of law and those who have made justice their profession? These is the types of questions Robert Cochran addresses in his most recent book titled The Servant Lawyer: Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice. Listen in as Bob shares insights from his career, encourages Christians working in this field, and frames the importance of law for the common good. Robert F. Cochran Jr. is the Brandeis Professor of Law Emeritus at Pepperdine University and a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. Following law school, he clerked for Judge John A. Field on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and practiced with the law firm of Boyle & Bain in Charlottesville, Virginia.   Resources:  Check out Bob Cochran's book The Servant Lawyer.

The Dean's List with Host Dean Bowen – Conservative leaders actively resist the Biden Administration's reinterpretation of Title IX, which redefines sex and expands definitions of sexual harassment. With significant opposition from multiple states, the redefinition by the Fourth Circuit Court and Biden's rules could dramatically alter educational and legal landscapes. This issue escalates tensions in ongoing cultural and political conflicts.

The Job Judge podcast discusses the negative reputation that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs have been receiving due to being hijacked by individuals wanting to replace white men with women and people of color. However, DEI was never meant to be an affirmative action program, but rather a tool to help individuals succeed in their job. The podcast cites a case from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in March 2024 where a white man, David Duval, sued his former employer, Novent Health, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act for being fired solely to achieve racial and gender diversity targets. The court found that Novent Health had no record of any documented criticism of Duval's performance or reasons for termination, and that he had performed exceptionally well in his role. Therefore, the court ruled in favor of Duval and awarded him with $10 million in damages. The case serves as an important example for corporations implementing DEI programs to understand that it is illegal to fire individuals in the name of DEI to achieve equity. The podcast stresses that DEI is about inclusion and belonging and not about replacing one group with another. "I'll be the judge of that!" The Job Judge Podcast is a podcast for anyone who works. This is not legal advice! Engaging and informative, it's a must-listen/watch for any manager, business owner, HR professional, or anyone who works. Relying on three decades of experience as an employment law attorney and HR Executive, Karen Michael uses real case studies in the news and navigates through the legal landmines and workplace dysfunction that we know is probably happening right now in your organization.

GET TICKETS TO SUPD POD JAM IN LAS VEGAS MARCH 22-23 Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 700 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls In five years as counsel, senior counsel, and chief counsel to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Alex Aronson led Senate investigations, oversight, and legislative campaigns to confront anti-democratic judicial influence, ethical misconduct, and abuse of power. A political organizer, civil rights lawyer, and judicial ethics expert, Alex's work on judicial accountability and right-wing judicial influence has helped elevate these issues to national prominence, laying the groundwork for today's headlines exposing the Supreme Court's corruption and extreme judicial activism. Alex most recently served as the Managing Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law Center. He was previously an attorney in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP, and a law clerk to Judge Albert Diaz on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before attending Stanford Law School, Alex helped lead a nationally prominent state-based nonprofit focused on improving voting access for underrepresented communities in Oregon, culminating in the nation's first statewide automatic voter registration law.  The Stand Up Community Chat is always active with other Stand Up Subscribers on the Discord Platform.   Join us Thursday's at 8EST for our Weekly Happy Hour Hangout!  Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on YouTube  Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Follow and Support Pete

This week, we are discussing a number of legal developments. So, we've got one of the preeminent pro-gun legal minds on the show. Mark W. Smith, host of the Four Boxes Diner and member of the Supreme Court bar, joins me to talk about some complicated but fascinating cases. First and foremost, Smith explains why the case against Maryland's "assault weapons" ban has been moved on to be heard before the full Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals without the lower court panel that already held arguments issuing any decision. Smith predicted that might happen. He said it was done to try and delay the case further. He argued the intent was to keep the Supreme Court from getting ahold of the case and potentially overturning the ban. Smith said that tactic was becoming more common among liberal-leaning courts in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark Bruen decision. But he also explained the Court may take up an AR ban case sooner than later anyway. He said it doesn't even necessarily need a circuit split, which is unlikely to happen anytime soon, to weigh in on the case. Smith also weighed in on the Department of Justice's surprising brief in the NRA's First Amendment case at the Supreme Court. Plus, Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman and I talk about how a board member's letter brought the NRA's internal turmoil back out into the open. Special Guest: Mark W. Smith.

Andrew is the Owner and Managing Partner of the Salinas Defense Law Firm, PLLC where he specializes in Criminal Defense and Immigration law. Since recording this episode, he has also started his own firm in Houston, Texas! He has  secured many dismissals and favorable plea deals for clients charged with serious crimes, many of whom were facing deportation if they plead guilty to certain convictions.  Prior to starting his own firm, Andrew was an attorney at a prominent Criminal Defense and Immigration law firm in Austin, TX that specialized in "crimmigration". Andrew handled hundreds of cases, including misdemeanors like Driving While Intoxicated and Assault Family Violence and felonies like Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon and Engaging in Organized Crime. He also has experience as an Assistant District  Attorney at the Kings County District Attorney's Office and as a Managing Attorney in charge of a brand-new Immigration Department at a boutique law firm in Brooklyn. Andrew graduated from Baylor University from the Baylor Interdisciplinary Honors Program with a B.A. in History and a minor in Rhetoric & Argumentation. He graduated from the Washington and Lee University School of Law where he actively competed and coached in several national  moot court competitions. He had the pleasure of serving as a law clerk for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a civil rights organization, in Washington, D.C., as a legal intern for the most  respected non-profit immigration legal aid organization in the  D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region,  Ayuda, and as a Summer Fellow at the New York County District Attorney's Office in Manhattan. While in the Immigrant Rights Clinic in law school, Andrew and a fellow student attorney fought for their client to be granted asylum in an uphill  battle case – and won. He also got a taste for federal appellate work  when his team filed an appeal before the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for a Stateless client who had been fighting to remain in the  U.S. for 20 years. In addition to being an editor for the Washington  and Lee Journal for Civil Rights and Social Justice, he also proudly formed the leadership board  of the Latin American Law Students' Association, serving as Moot Court Director and Vice President. https://salinasdefense.com/  https://www.instagram.com/abogadotejano https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553453914861 #leducentertainment #SpaghettiOnTheWall #newpodcast #trailer #LegalJourney #AndrewSalinas #CrimeAndImmigration

(Note: Due to technical issues, only part of this interview is available.)The case of Jeff MacDonald has been infused with controversy since the murders took place, almost 39 years ago. Through it all, Jeff has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Over the many years since trial, thousands of pages of government reports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that prove the existence of outside assailants, have been obtained. In fact, not only do these documents show Jeff's claim of outside assailants to be true, they also show how the prosecution deliberately set out to suppress evidence supporting these claims before, during, and after his trial.The MacDonald case has served as an example of malfeasance in the investigation of the FBI Crime Lab's misconduct, and the case has been featured in numerous congressional hearings and in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and The New Republic. In January, 2006, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel of three unanimously agreed that the affidavit of Jimmy Britt, a respected former US Marshal, was sufficient grounds to propel a rare fourth appeal (successive habeas petition) forward for review to the District Court in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jimmy Britt died in October, 2008. In November, 2008, the District Judge denied relief. The defense will appeal to the 4th Circuit.The MacDonald case is one of the most enduring and haunting legal cases of our time, and a torturous example of injustice and wrongful conviction. It continues to endure and weigh heavily on the public consciousness because the right conclusion has never been has never been issued in a court of law- that Jeff MacDonald is an innocent man and must be released. If guilt was so clear, its hard to imagine that the interest and emotion this case continues to proliferate would still exist nearly 40 years later.http://themacdonaldcase.org/index.htmlThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1198501/advertisement

Insurance Agent Defrauded Clients by Taking Premium Money and Keeping it for Personal Expenses When a criminal defendant's valid guilty plea includes a waiver of the right to appeal, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals generally enforces the waiver by dismissing any subsequent appeal that raises issues within the scope of the waiver. However, even if an appeal waiver is valid and applicable, the Fourth Circuit will review a claim that a district court's sentence or restitution order exceeded the court's statutory authority. In United States Of America v. Glenda Taylor-Sanders, Nos. 21-4136, 20-4604, United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit (December 12, 2023) the Defendant sought a change of the sentence and restitution order. FACTS From February 2017 through May 2019, Taylor-Sanders took advantage of her role as a licensed insurance agent to defraud several trucking companies and the insurance finance company BankDirect Capital Finance. She defrauded the trucking companies by misappropriating funds that the companies provided her to pay for their insurance policy premiums and BankDirect Capital Finance by obtaining loans under the guise of nonexistent insurance policies. Instead of using the funds she obtained to pay insurance policy premiums or to pay back BankDirect Capital Finance for the legitimate loans it made to the trucking companies, Taylor-Sanders spent the funds on personal expenditures including cars, football tickets, and mortgage payments. Predictably, some of the trucking companies' insurance policies ZALMA OPINION Fraud perpetrators have no honor. Even after obtaining a plea agreement that saved her years in prison, Taylor-Sanders took up the time of the District Court and the Fourth Circuit to hear a spurious motion to withdraw her guilty plea after knowingly entering into the plea agreement and waiving her right to appeal. She will pay restitution and spend an appropriate time in jail. (c) 2023 Barry Zalma & ClaimSchool, Inc. Please tell your friends and colleagues about this blog and the videos and let them subscribe to the blog and the videos. Subscribe to my substack at https://barryzalma.substack.com/publish/post/107007808 Go to Newsbreak.com  https://www.newsbreak.com/@c/1653419?s=01 Follow me on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/comm/mynetwork/discovery-see-all?usecase=PEOPLE_FOLLOWS&followMember=barry-zalma-esq-cfe-a6b5257 Go to the Insurance Claims Library – http://zalma.com/blog/insurance-claims-library. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/barry-zalma/support

On this episode of No Straight Path, Ashley interviews civil rights attorney Antonio Ingram. Antonio serves as Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is a graduate of Yale College and UC Berkeley School of Law. He served as a federal judicial law clerk for the honorable Ivan L. Lemelle in the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans and for Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. He also completed a Fulbright Public Policy Fellowship in Malawi where he worked for the Malawian government and served in their Anti-Corruption Bureau. Antonio shares his inspiring journey and how he became a civil rights attorney. Ashley and Antonio also delve into a number important topics, including faith, racial justice, authenticity, and joy. Tune into another inspiring episode! Links Mentioned in Today's Episode: Antonio Ingram Antonio Ingram on LinkedIn NAACP Legal Defense Fund Ashley Menzies Babatunde Ashley Menzies Babatunde on Instagram Hubspot Podcast Network Rate & Review: If you enjoy listening to No Straight Path, please make sure you write a review and rate the show. It helps other listeners find the podcast. You can rate and review the show here. Thank you! 

In Fall 2022 the Montgomery County Board of Education (MCBOE) revised its literature/ language arts curriculum for Pre-K to eighth grade to include new books centered around LGBTQIA+ issues, including pride parades, gender transitioning, same-sex marriage, and pronoun preferences. Although this concerned some parents, initially parents were notified when the books were being read and could opt their children out of those lessons. However, in March 2023 the MCBOE issued a statement alerting parents that they would no longer be notified when these books were being taught and requests to opt-out would not be honored. In light of this new statement, a coalition of parents of elementary school children in Montgomery County from a variety of faiths, including Islam, Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity, brought suit in the U.S. District Court for Maryland. They argued that the MCBOE's refusal to alert parents when potentially objectional books on sex education & related topics were being taught and to deny them the option to opt their children out of such education was violative of their free-speech, free-exercise, and substantive-due-process rights under the U.S. Constitution and under Maryland law. The parents sought a preliminary injunction against the MCBOE. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland heard oral argument on August 9, 2023. Soon after it ruled against the parents, who appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral argument at the 4th Circuit is set to occur on December 5. Please join us for a Litigation Update on Mahmoud v. McKnight with Eric Baxter, who is VP & Senior Counsel at Becket and is representing the plaintiffs in this case, as he gives a breakdown of this important case concerning religious liberty, free speech, education policy, and parental rights.Featuring: Eric Baxter, Vice President & Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty(Moderator) Emilie Kao, Senior Counsel, Vice President of Advocacy Strategy, Alliance Defending Freedom

Parental rights isn't just a hot topic in Virginia. One Maryland county has gone as far as integrating LGBTQ-inclusive books in their English language curriculum as young as kindergarten. That school system was sued by religious families, and Tuesday morning the fight came to Richmond's Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.  That's where Virginia, via Attorney General […]

Jonathan Byrne and Jackie Tarlton discuss recent Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decisions.

On July 27, the Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling in favor of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), allowing the controversial West Virginia gas project to continue construction. The MVP is a 303-mile under-construction natural gas pipeline from northwestern West Virginia to southern Virginia, with a possible 75-mile extension to North Carolina.  Following years of broken laws, failed permit applications, and courtroom losses, Congress included a provision in the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) that demanded the completion of the pipeline and stripped all courts of jurisdiction to hear any cases questioning pipeline approvals. The Fourth Circuit Court, which oversees appeals in the West Virginia/Virginia region, issued a stay, halting pipeline construction while they reviewed this provision. Construction resumed, however, when the Supreme Court affirmed Congress's right to strip this jurisdiction and bar the court from getting in the way. And it appears that the Supreme Court may have been right in that decision purely from a legal perspective, but the reason why points to a bizarre loophole Congress found to skirt the spirit of the Constitution's separation of powers clause, a tactic reminiscent of one used to strong-arm court decisions during the Reconstruction era. Ethan explores some of the history around jurisdiction stripping, how it relates to the MVP, and why regardless of one's feelings about the pipeline itself, Americans ought to understand the legal theory behind Congress's gambit in this week's “Tip of the Iceberg.” The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise. Support the show and unlock exclusive merch, bonus content, and more for as little as $5/month at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin. CREDITS Writer: Ethan Brown, Velina Georgi, Mo Polyak, Emma Quarequio Fact Checker: Mikaela Gonzalez Editor: Ethan Brown Producers: Ethan Brown, Hallie Cordingley, Shannon Damiano, Owen Reith Ad Voiceover: Velina Georgi Music: Brett Sawka The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Peril and Promise or The WNET Group.

Good Morning, #LALiens! Thank you for joining, giving this stream a thumbs-up, subscribing to Law and Legitimacy. Yesterday was a lot of fun. Mike felt the love on his first solo LAL flight. Norm rejoins Mike in the cockpit this morning and the two navigate the turbulence of a western culture in crisis. . On the agenda: . › Norm updates on the conditions of confinement for J6 detainees in DC detention facilities. . › Mark Rutte, the former Netherlands Prime Minister, has resigned, after the Dutch government failed to reach an agreement that would have tightened immigration policy in a country that has seen a dramatic rise in migrant arrivals over the last several years. Is the Netherlands the canary in the metaphorical coal mine for the whole of the West? . › The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a split 2-1 decision sided with North Carolina State University in a lawsuit brought forth by a former tenured doctoral professor in the institution's education department which claimed violations of his first and fourteenth amendment rights and unlawful retaliation. The opinion cites Professor Stephen Porter's lack of collegiality as the lawful basis for his termination. What is going on in higher education? . Join us. . For the rest of the year, creators will receive 100 percent of the revenue from the purchase of monthly subscription badges, which Rumble recently launched for the price of $5 per month. Please consider purchasing a subscription badge to LAL and be assured that LAL will receive every penny of that subscription through the end of the year. Your consideration and patronage is most sincerely appreciated! . Daily livestreams beginning at 8:00 am EST on: › Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/LawandLegitimacy › Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lawandlegitimacy › Twitter: https://twitter.com/PattisPodcast . Subscribe and turn on notifications! . Support Law and Legitimacy: . - Locals: https://lawandlegitimacy.locals.com/ - Twitter: @PattisPodcast, @PattisNorm, and @MichaelBoyer_ - Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Audible, Spotify, or wherever you receive podcasts and rate LAL 5 stars. - Subscribe here on our Rumble and Youtube channels, give us a Rumble, and join our active community of free-thinkers, contrarians, and the unafraid on Locals!

Good Morning, #LALiens! Thank you for joining, giving this stream a thumbs-up, subscribing to Law and Legitimacy. Yesterday was a lot of fun. Mike felt the love on his first solo LAL flight. Norm rejoins Mike in the cockpit this morning and the two navigate the turbulence of a western culture in crisis. . On the agenda: . › Norm updates on the conditions of confinement for J6 detainees in DC detention facilities. . › Mark Rutte, the former Netherlands Prime Minister, has resigned, after the Dutch government failed to reach an agreement that would have tightened immigration policy in a country that has seen a dramatic rise in migrant arrivals over the last several years. Is the Netherlands the canary in the metaphorical coal mine for the whole of the West? . › The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a split 2-1 decision sided with North Carolina State University in a lawsuit brought forth by a former tenured doctoral professor in the institution's education department which claimed violations of his first and fourteenth amendment rights and unlawful retaliation. The opinion cites Professor Stephen Porter's lack of collegiality as the lawful basis for his termination. What is going on in higher education? . Join us. . For the rest of the year, creators will receive 100 percent of the revenue from the purchase of monthly subscription badges, which Rumble recently launched for the price of $5 per month. Please consider purchasing a subscription badge to LAL and be assured that LAL will receive every penny of that subscription through the end of the year. Your consideration and patronage is most sincerely appreciated! . Daily livestreams beginning at 8:00 am EST on: › Rumble: https://rumble.com/user/LawandLegitimacy › Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lawandlegitimacy › Twitter: https://twitter.com/PattisPodcast . Subscribe and turn on notifications! . Support Law and Legitimacy: . - Locals: https://lawandlegitimacy.locals.com/ - Twitter: @PattisPodcast, @PattisNorm, and @MichaelBoyer_ - Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Audible, Spotify, or wherever you receive podcasts and rate LAL 5 stars. - Subscribe here on our Rumble and Youtube channels, give us a Rumble, and join our active community of free-thinkers, contrarians, and the unafraid on Locals!

Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 740 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous souls. In five years as counsel, senior counsel, and chief counsel to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Alex Aronson led Senate investigations, oversight, and legislative campaigns to confront anti-democratic judicial influence, ethical misconduct, and abuse of power. A political organizer, civil rights lawyer, and judicial ethics expert, Alex's work on judicial accountability and right-wing judicial influence has helped elevate these issues to national prominence, laying the groundwork for today's headlines exposing the Supreme Court's corruption and extreme judicial activism. Alex most recently served as the Managing Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law Center. He was previously an attorney in the Appellate Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, a litigation associate at Covington & Burling LLP, and a law clerk to Judge Albert Diaz on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before attending Stanford Law School, Alex helped lead a nationally prominent state-based nonprofit focused on improving voting access for underrepresented communities in Oregon, culminating in the nation's first statewide automatic voter registration law.  Check out all things Jon Carroll Follow and Support Pete Coe Pete on YouTube Pete on Twitter Pete On Instagram Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page

In this week's episode, Glenn and Amber meet with Jeff Martinovich, a man with an incredible story. When running a business, there are many mistakes to be made. Instead of accepting defeat, Jeff realized the incredible power of choice and used his unfortunate situation to help others. Hear more of Jeff's story and find out how you can improve yourself, help others and change your mindset. Jeff Martinovich founded and was CEO of MICG Investment Management, a billion dollar wealth management firm. Following the 2008 financial crisis, MICG's proprietary hedge funds experienced regulatory scrutiny and allegations. As CEO, Jeff vigorously defended his firm, refusing multiple settlement offers and instead choosing to defend his employees and himself in federal court. He was convicted and sentenced to 14 years in federal prison. His case was reversed twice by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, two separate U.S. District Court Judges were removed and his successful federal suit liberated him from a higher-security, violent prison. In May 2020, after nearly 7 years, Jeff was released to home confinement and began his journey of rebuilding, restoring and turning disadvantages into advantages.

What you'll learn in this podcast episode “Thirty years of innovation and influence” is the subtitle of the recent report issued by the United States Sentencing Commission. But what does that really mean in the context of the organizational sentencing guidelines? In this episode of LRN's Principled Podcast, Eric Morehead, LRN Director of Advisory Services Solutions, is joined by one of the report's authors: Kathleen Grilli, the General Counsel for the US Sentencing Commission. Listen in as the two discuss how the commission impacts business leaders and the creation of compliance programs.    Read LRN's takeaways from the report here.  Principled Podcast Show Notes coming soon   Featured guest: Kathleen Grilli Kathleen Cooper Grilli is the General Counsel for the United States Sentencing Commission, having been appointed to the position on October 7, 2013. Ms. Grilli has been on the staff of the Commission since 2003, serving as an assistant general counsel from 2003-2007 and deputy general counsel from 2007-2013. As the General Counsel, Ms. Grill provides legal advice to the Commissioners on sentencing issues and other matters relating to the operation of the Commission. Ms. Grilli is the agency's Ethics Officer and has conducted training on white collar crime and the organizational guidelines at numerous training events.Prior to working for the Sentencing Commission, Ms. Grilli was with the Office of Staff Counsel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before relocating to Virginia, Ms. Grilli was a partner in a small firm in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, handling civil and criminal litigation. Her previous work experience includes serving as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Southern District of Florida and as an associate at Akerman, Senterfitt and Edison, handling commercial litigation. Ms. Grilli is a member of the Bars of Florida and Virginia. She received a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, with honors, from Florida International University. She graduated cum laude from the University of Miami School of Law.   Featured Host: Eric Morehead Eric Morehead is a member of LRN's Advisory Services team and has over 20 years' experience working with organizations seeking to address compliance issues and build effective compliance and ethics programs. Eric conducts program assessments and examines specific compliance risks, he drafts compliance policies and codes of conduct, works with organizations to build and improve their compliance processes and tools, and provides live training for Boards of Directors, executives, managers and employees.    Eric ran his own consultancy for six years where he advised clients on compliance program enhancements and assisted in creating effective compliance solutions.  Eric was formally the Head of Advisory Services for NYSE Governance Services, a leading compliance training organization, where he was responsible for all aspects of NYSE Governance Services' compliance consulting arm. Prior to joining NYSE, Eric was an Assistant General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission in Washington, DC. Eric served as the chair of the policy team that amended the Organizational Sentencing Guidelines in 2010. Eric also spent nearly a decade as a litigation attorney in Houston, Texas where he focused on white-collar and regulatory cases and represented clients at trial and before various agencies including SEC, OSHA and CFTC.     Principled Podcast Transcript Intro: Welcome to the Principled Podcast, brought to you by LRN. The Principled Podcast brings together the collective wisdom on ethics, business and compliance, transformative stories of leadership, and inspiring workplace culture. Listen in to discover valuable strategies from our community of business leaders and workplace change makers.   Eric Morehead: 30 Years of Innovation and Influence is the subtitle of the recent report issued by the United States Sentencing Commission, but what does that really mean in the context of the organizational sentencing guidelines?   Hello, and welcome to another episode of LRN's Principled Podcast. I'm your host today, Eric Morehead, Director of Advisory Service Solutions at LRN. Today, Kathleen Grilli, the General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission is joining us. She's one of the authors of this recent report, and we're going to be talking about how the commission impacts business leaders and the creation of compliance programs across the world. Kathleen is a real expert in this space and is a guest of ours last season where we talked about the seven hallmarks of an effective ethics and compliance program enshrined in the US Sentencing Commission's federal sentencing guidelines. Kathleen Grilli, thanks for joining us again on the Principled Podcast.   Kathleen Grilli: Well, thanks for inviting me, Eric. I appreciate it.   Eric Morehead: The commission just released this new report, The Organizational Sentencing Guidelines: 30 Years of Innovation and Influence. Even after more than 30 years, there are still, I think, at least from my perspective, many people who, when they start their career in compliance, are confused a little bit about why the Sentencing Commission is involved in corporate compliance. Can you talk just a little bit about how the US Sentencing Commission came to assume the role it has regarding compliance standards?   Kathleen Grilli: Sure. You say that people in compliance are confused about it, but the truth is, even in the criminal justice arena where the commission operates... Our guidelines are used in federal courts for sentencing organizations and offenders. Even in that arena, there's not really widespread knowledge about Chapter 8 and the hallmarks for an effective compliance and ethics program. That's because there aren't a lot of organizational cases sentenced every year.   But the reason the commission got into the business of corporate compliance has to do with its statutory mission. The commission was created in 1984 through a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Sentencing Reform Act, and that act did a couple of things as it related to sentencing of organizations. It provided that organizations could be sentenced to a term of probation, sentenced by way of a fine, and it required that at least one of those be imposed. This was something new.   It also subjected organizations to orders of criminal forfeiture, meaning the proceeds of the criminal activity could be taken from them, order of notice to victims, and orders of restitution. That act also created the commission, which is a bipartisan agency and tasked the commission with developing guidelines for use in criminal cases for sentencing. It told us what the purposes of sentencing are, which is just punishment, deterrence, protection of the public, and rehabilitation of the offender. The commission had to decide what to do for sentencing of an organization. Obviously, you cannot put an organization in prison. Unlike individual offenders where sentencing ranges in terms of incarceration are something of the norm, you had to figure out what to do to sentence organizations.   With an organization, as we know, the bottom line is they're in business to make money. In developing the organizational guidelines, the commission came up with its notion that it should use fines to incentivize self-policing. It would punish organizations who were not self-policing or not trying to prevent a crime or commit the offense with certain aggravating factors more severely than those who were trying to prevent and detect crime. That's how we got into the business of corporate compliance.   Eric Morehead: Yeah. And it is interesting that the original writ was from the statute that you examine this. Can you talk a little bit about how the commission got specifically to those hallmarks, those programmatic pieces that we talked about a little bit on our last podcast a while ago? What was the process for the commission to get to those standards, those specific compliance pieces of the puzzle, if you will?   Kathleen Grilli: The commission started its work in 1986 on organizational guidelines with a public hearing at which it received testimony from a variety of witnesses across various different wakes of the world: academics, people in business, government agencies, and the like. Over about a five-year period, because as I said, the Commission started its business in 1986 and didn't actually promulgate the organizational guidelines until 1991. During that period of time, there were numerous public hearings attended by a wide range of witnesses from different areas of the law, academics, government agencies, business owners, representatives of just different industries, and the like. The Commission had these hearings, they heard testimony, the Commission went back and developed drafts with proposals for how organizations would be sentenced. They published those drafts. The process of publishing is really a solicitation for public comment, so they got public comment on the drafts. This went on for a good period of time.   In the meantime, the Commission was doing research. We had academics writing proposals and giving us ideas on how to implement the purposes of sentencing, which again, as I said, were just punishment, deterrents, protection of the public, and rehabilitation. Eventually, it came back to how does an organization get in trouble to begin with? An organization doesn't act alone. We have this theory in the law called vicarious liability where an organization is held responsible for the acts of its agents, meaning its employees. If the employees are the bad actors, everyone finally came to the conclusion that the best way to incentivize or prevent corporate crime was for the organization itself to self-police and to direct its employees and talk about what is and is not appropriate. That's how we ended up with compliance standards.   At the time that they started all this work, compliance and ethics was not widely accepted in the industry. There was a little bit of compliance in the context of antitrust and then there was, in the defense industry, there was an initiative relating to that. Those ideas got floated before the commission and it generated a lot of interest. That's how they started developing the standards.   Again, the standards were included in proposed guidelines that were published and they got public comment and not long before the actual vote where they adopted these guidelines. Even folks who were skeptical about whether this was going to work or not thought that the Commission had gotten the hallmarks of a compliance program right. They thought that they made sense and that they gave sufficient guidance to folks on what would and would not work.   Eric Morehead: That's a really important point too, and I often will say this when I'm talking to people and I talk about my background. Full disclosure, I'm a former employee of the US Sentencing Commission, so I have a strong belief in the mission of the organization. But oftentimes, I will say, "Well, they were first," and part of being first is you've tried different things and maybe you don't know exactly what's going to work and what is going to be successful. But I think over time, and this report really homes in on that, this notion that the direction that the Commission took from '86 to '91 really has paid off a lot of benefits.             One of the conclusions, one of the key conclusions from the report is that perhaps one of the biggest wins for the organization over the years is the widespread of adoption of the guidance and, in particular, the standards for what makes an effective compliance program.   I have a two-parter here. Do you think the Commission recognized in '91 how important that might be? And does the Commission today understand the overall importance of the organizational guidelines, and in particular, 8B2.1, those compliance hallmarks? Did they understand it then and what's the understanding of the Commission now of the relative importance of these?   Kathleen Grilli: Well, let me just back up a minute and just say that the commissioners who promulgated the organizational guidelines in 1991 no longer serve on the Commission. Commissioners have term limits. It's a different group then. It was a different group in 2004 that made the changes that brought ethics into the standards for compliance and ethics programs. As we were talking about before we started this podcast, we have a brand new group of seven new commissioners recently nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. You have different folks working on it. I can say that in the process of doing the research for this publication and others that I've worked on in this area, the Commission I don't think ever expected what we see today 30 years later. This widespread influence not only in terms of its use in the criminal justice arena, but how it has impacted other agencies.   And we'll talk about that and the global reach. The Commission itself said, "This is an experiment." They had hopes that it would lead to better actors in the corporate world, but those were hopes and there was a lot of skepticism from the business community when this process was ongoing about whether this was going to work or not. I think we're always blown away when we realize the impact of it, and I say that from a personal point of view, too. Because when I came to the Commission and I've been on the staff for some time, I was not aware of Chapter 8. I had never represented in court an organization, but only individuals.   And the first time I went to a compliance and ethics program where I saw and understood how well received and well regarded and what an impact we had had outside of the criminal justice arena, it sort of blew my mind that I know Judge Murphy and her Commission in 2004 or just before 2004, when they adopted the changes, they learned about it too when they came on board and it sort of blew them away. And I don't know with my current new bosses how well informed they are about this. This is really one of the reasons why, before they came on board, the staff and the then Commission, the one member, Judge Brier wanted to put this report out, memorializing the 30-year anniversary of the organizational guidelines. We're very excited about it, I have to say.   Eric Morehead: No, it is an amazingly effective rubric that the Commission put together and that the Commission is taken a measured approach from my opinion, both in 2004. And then I had an up-close look in 2010 when I was on staff through that process. I think that its impact is pretty incredible 30 years later, looking back.   One of the other things that's incredible... And I talk about new things when you come to the Commission. I had never really paid much attention to sentencing data until I joined the Commission in 2007. And the majority of the actual pages of this report have a lot of really interesting data about the organizations that have been sentenced over 30 years. Some key takeaways include trends that many of us, for those of us who are sentencing nerds, have seen over the years about the impact on small organizations, for example, versus larger organizations, making up the vast majority of defendants in that data set.   To me, a lot of looking for what makes... Because compliance professionals that are listening to this podcast and that are not necessarily interested in sentencing per se, but interested in the sentencing guidelines because of compliance, they're looking for what makes a successful compliance program from sentencing data. To me, a lot of it is what you don't see. It's sort of like looking for... I liken it to looking for a black hole when you're an astronomer. You can kind of tell the telltale characteristics of a black hole existing because of how it affects everything else. And we don't really see organizations that have successful programs in this data. There were just 12 organizations out of those 5,000 or so in 30 years.   Kathleen Grilli: 11.   Eric Morehead: 11. See? I even increased the number. It's just 11 organization out of 5,000 or so, 4,900 and some change, that have ever been deemed to have a successful program. What are some other striking things that you and the team noticed looking over this data and these trends for 30 years?   Kathleen Grilli: Let me just first say what this data is and what it is not so that listeners can understand why they may not find what they're looking for as to what makes a successful compliance program from the data. This data is for organizations, whether it be a corporation, a closely held corporation, partnership, whatever, but organizations that a federal prosecutor has decided to charge and gets convicted of a federal crime. It doesn't include organizations that the prosecutors decide, "Oh, we're going to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement or a non-prosecution agreement." It doesn't include organizations where a regulatory agency has seen that they violated some of the regulations, but they've decided not to proceed against them criminally but to pursue civil adjudications. I mean, in some ways, this data is about the folks that prosecutors decided were the worst of the worst organizations. You don't see what makes a successful compliance program in this data, but I like to say what we do see is that some of the things that the Department of Justice says to you about what they're looking for in deciding whether to prosecute an organization or not might find support in this data. We concluded that the lack of an effective compliance and ethics program might be a contributing factor to criminal prosecutions against organizations. And what specifically led us to that?   Well, in the 30 years that we've been collecting data, overwhelming majority of the organizational offenders in our data set didn't have any program at all, much less an effective program. 89.6%, as you said, as you mentioned and asked me the question, there were only 11 sentences in fiscal year 1992 that got a culpability score reduction for having an effective compliance and ethics program. And I want to stop on those 11 because we went back. Everybody's always interested in what happens with those organizations or why was their program effective? And we were not able to suss a lot of information from the documentation to sort of tell people what it was. There wasn't a lot of descriptive information in the documents we received that would answer that question, but there's only 11 of them. And most of those 11 were very small organizations. It means they didn't have to have a very complex type of program.             More than half, 58.3%, of organizational offenders sentenced under the fine guidelines got a culpability score increase for involvement in or tolerance of criminal activity by upper management would suggest to you. If the management or the substantial authority personnel are in on it, they may well end up sentenced before a federal court. I think that's an important point, too. And very few of these organizations, we'd only saw 1.5% overall that did the three things that get you the maximum reduction off your culpability score, which is self-report, cooperate, and accept responsibility. There were very few organizations, even though there were many that pleaded guilty and accepted responsibility, that actually self-reported. That's important because you hear the Department of Justice talk about why that matters. And this data sort of offers support for the fact that it does.             And then the other thing we saw is that courts are now ordering organizations to implement effective programs in about 20%, one-fifth of the cases that come before them when they impose probation. This was the kind of data that we thought would help fuel the discussion or the debate on the importance of having an effective compliance and ethics program. The other thing you should note about our data, I think it's important too, is that a good percentage of the organizations that have been sentenced over the last 30 years are smaller organizations. It's not large publicly-traded Fortune 500 companies. It's smaller, less number of employees. I think that matters too.   Eric Morehead: That's a trend that I think we've noted in the data, because the size of organizations, the number of employees has been a data point that the commission has released over the years on an annual basis. And by the way, as it's worth mentioning for people who are interested, there'll be a link in the show notes here for this particular report we're talking about. But the Commission puts out data all the time. And at least on an annual basis, there's the Sentencing Commission's Sourcebook on sentencing, which has discussion on organizational cases and includes some of this data. You don't have to wait 30 years to see the trends again. You can keep up with it at the Sentencing Commission website.   Yeah. The small organizations... I think a big surprise to people who have first heard about this because we see the headlines all the time about the Enrons and, I'm going to date myself here, World Comps and Volkswagen and some of the other organizations. Some of those aren't actually even criminal sentences, as you point out. Those are deferred prosecution agreements or civil settlements of some sort, but those are the companies that make the headlines. It's the little guys, small and medium-sized organizations, that take these big hits more frequently than the larger organizations. That, I think, is surprising to people who aren't familiar with the data, but that's a consistent trend throughout the entirety of the enforcement, at least throughout the 30 years that the Commission's been keeping track.   Kathleen Grilli: Yeah. It may change now, given what the Department of Justice said last week.   Eric Morehead: Yeah. You never know. Yeah never know. We'll have to pay attention and then look at the Sourcebook next year and see what the differences are. The other impact beyond our friends at the Department of Justice and the courts throughout the United States is the impact that the Commission and the organizational sentencing guidelines and these standards have had on other enforcement agencies besides the criminal enforcement and also internationally, which I think is very interesting.   Can you talk a little bit... And that's documented in chapter three of this report. The first chapter is talking a little bit about the history. The second chapter is the data that we were just discussing. And then chapter three talks about how the USSC has encouraged other enforcement agencies and regulators to focus on good governance and compliance. Can you discuss a little bit about what the team found when you researched that?   Kathleen Grilli: Yeah. I think that using the word that the USSC has encouraged suggests that there's some sort of active work going on by the Commission. Let me just say that I don't think that is a fair statement. The Commission did its work and let its work speak for itself, and it has sort of spread throughout regulatory agencies and/or the globe just because it makes sense, I think. Anyway, that's my personal opinion. But I made reference to the Department of Justice, and so I'll start with a Department of Justice if I could.   The Attorney General, where it's his designee is an ex-officio member of the Commission, a non-voting member. Obviously, the Attorney General Department of Justice were actively involved in the development of the chapter eight itself and then the subsequent amendments in 2004 and 2010. But you see the impact of the guidelines in their evaluation of corporate compliance programs and all of the information that they release and discuss on how they focus on compliance in deciding how to prosecute an organization.   Just last week, the Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco, talked about changes that they're going to make. There was sort of an oblique reference to our data, which is that there's been a drop in corporate prosecutions that we see in the data. I think there were less than a hundred last year, and they talked about sort of reversing that trend and looking at that, that the department thinks this is important. And they've placed a lot of importance recently on compliance programs because she said companies need to actively review their compliance program to ensure that they adequately monitor for and remediate misconduct or it's going to cost them down the line.   Kenneth Polite, who is the... I think it's Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division. He's a former chief compliance officer and they've made a lot of emphasis in the department on active review of programs and true independence for the chief compliance officer. That's the Department of Justice who obviously are actively involved in using the guidelines in federal courthouses, but then you have other regulatory agencies.   I'm going to run through them real quick and just say the SEC, HHS, EPA, FERC, which is Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the FAR all have requirements built into them about compliance programs. And most of them say that they're looking to the guidance on the guidelines. Some of them adopted them full scale, some of them may have modified them a little bit. And all of that came after chapter eight in 1991. All of those agencies look to the guidelines.             And then we see that if you look internationally at what's happening around the world in terms of anti-corruption, anti-bribery, and all the like, that elements of the hallmarks for an effective compliance and ethics program found in the guidelines are making their way into legislation, into programs, into initiatives that foreign governments are releasing. And I can't even keep track of it, truthfully, but it seems to be coming up more and more and more.             When the Commission promulgating the guidelines in 1991, they described them as an experiment. We wanted in this publication to sort of show, did the experiment bear fruit? And I think all of that suggests that it did. These changes and everything that goes back to those original seven steps laid out in the guidelines and elevated in 2004 to give them a little more prominence. It really is very, very exciting. I feel bad. I sound sort of like I'm patting myself on the back, and so I want to make it really clear to the listeners. I was not on this staff in 1991. I wasn't working on this. I did not have anything to do with the 2004 amendments. I came into it after the fact, but it's just really exciting to see it and to see the impact and how well regarded the Commission's work is.   Eric Morehead: No, I think that's right. I think the report really sums up what I think a lot of us have felt. Again, I'm probably biased, but a lot of us have felt this way for a while, that the standards, really, have set the bar and provided kind of a North Star for compliance programs for that whole generation, that whole 30 years. And it's made a difference in millions of people's daily lives in their working lives, because it affects how their company operates for the good or for the bad. And that really makes all the difference to us. I think you guys can successfully pat yourselves on the back a little bit.   Well, last thing, again, knowing that we're talking to a lot of compliance officers who hopefully have, if they're new, have a little bit more appreciation as to why the US Sentencing Commission is involved in their lives, are there other takeaways from the research and work that the team put into this report that you think are particular importance for compliance professionals or things they should be aware of? Kathleen Grilli: Well, one of the things that I hear when I intend conferences and one of the things that I think folks [inaudible 00:26:26] is the fact that there's not enough investment in compliance. The bottom line in business is money and making money, and you can't necessarily provide metrics that show how your work is going to add to the bottom line. Then it's hard to make the case. Now, I know these days, in recent years, folks have come up with ways to measure how compliance and ethics does contribute to the bottom line, and I really believe it does. But this data can offer you the picture of what happens if you don't.   Eric Morehead: Yeah.   Kathleen Grilli: Because since 1992, courts have imposed nearly $33 billion in fines on organizational offenders. The average fine was over $9 million. Although the median was a little lower, it was only $100,000. But for a small mom and pop organization, a hundred grand is a lot of money. And the other thing is that courts will sentence organizations to probation. Over two thirds of the organizational offenders in the last 30 years have been placed on probation with an average term of 39 months, where you're going to have to be reporting to a probation officer and complying with all these requirements. And that's time consuming and costly, too, when you think about it. There's a little bit there that can answer the mail in terms of why am I going to invest in compliance and ethics.   Eric Morehead: I'm a big believer in making the positive business case, but you also need to make the "everybody's going to go to jail" case too.   Kathleen Grilli: Well, especially in light of the recent guidance that the Department of Justice, I mean, where they're going to be looking at individuals and they're going to be requiring organizations to give up all individuals who might be involved, I think that's something that folks should keep in mind as well. It's important because it's not just going to be the company, it's going to be the employees too.   Eric Morehead: Yeah. And again, that's important data. That's in chapter two of this report, that over 50% of the time over the period, you've got at least one living, breathing human being who's also faced charges consistent with the charges that the organizations faced. It includes actual human beings in this process, not just the organization.   Kathleen Grilli: I think we're only going to see an increase if the department's guidance holds true that those numbers may go up.   Eric Morehead: Yeah. We'll have to check. We'll check in next year after the Sourcebook comes out and see if the trend has moved. Kathleen Grilli, it's been a tremendous honor again to have you on our podcast and really appreciate you taking the time.   Kathleen Grilli: Oh, it's an honor for me to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me.   Eric Morehead: No problem. My name is Eric Morehead and I want to thank all of you for tuning in once again to the Principled Podcast by LRN. Outro: We hope you enjoyed this episode. The Principled Podcast is brought to you by LRN. At LRN, our mission is to inspire principled performance in global organizations by helping them foster winning ethical cultures rooted in sustainable values. Please visit us lrn.com To learn more. And if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen, and don't forget to leave us a review.  

This week, Attorney Daigle reviews the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case, US v. Faruq Rose. The case involves a Fourth Amendment claim to suppress evidence of cocaine found through a search of packages addressed to a deceased person.

In a bizarre narrative, Jeff Martinovich was convicted and sentenced to 14-years in federal prison, then released on home confinement after seven years. He stops by today to share his amazing story as well as the details of his new book “Just One More: The Wisdom of Bob Vukovich”.   Guest Bio: Jeff was Founder and CEO  of MICG Investment Management, a billion dollar wealth management firm nationally recognized for its rapid growth, WoW service and A-Player culture.  Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, MICG's proprietary hedge funds experienced regulatory scrutiny and allegations.  As CEO, Jeff vigorously defended his firm, refusing multiple settlement offers and instead choosing to defend his employees and himself in federal court.  In a bizarre narrative, Jeff was convicted and sentenced to 14-years in federal prison.  His case was reversed twice by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, two separate U.S. District Court Judges were removed, and his successful federal suit liberated him from a higher-security, violent prison.  In May 2020, after nearly 7 years, Jeff was released to home confinement and began his journey of rebuilding, restoring and turning disadvantages into advantages.   Guest Contact Info: WEBSITE: https://jeffmartinovich.com/ FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/jeffrey.martinovich.1 TWITTER: https://twitter.com/JeffMartinovich INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jeffmartinovich/ LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-martinovich   Thanks for listening to the show! It means so much to us that you listened to our podcast! If you would like to continue the conversation, please email me at allen@drallenlycka.com or visit our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/drallenlycka.    We would love to have you join us there, and welcome your messages. We check our Messenger often.   If you loved the podcast, be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform, share it with friends and leave a review! Dr. Lycka wants you to live your best life. Visit coachingwithdrlycka.com and book your Discovery call today. His bestselling book, "The Secrets to Living a Fantastic Life" can be found on Amazon.com. Get your copy today!    We are building a community of like-minded people in the personal development/self-help/professional development industries, and are always looking for wonderful guests for our show. If you have any recommendations, please email us! Dr. Allen Lycka's Social Media Links Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/drallenlycka Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/dr_allen_lycka/ Twitter:  https://www.twitter.com/drallenlycka LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenlycka YouTube:  https://www.YouTube.com/c/drallenlycka   Subscribe to the show We would be honored to have you subscribe to the How to Live a fantastic Life show – you can subscribe to the podcast app on your mobile device. Leave a review We appreciate your feedback, as every little bit helps us produce even better shows. We want to bring value to your day, and have you join us time and again.  Ratings and reviews from our listeners not only help us improve, but also help others find us in their podcast app. If you have a minute, an honest review on iTunes or your favorite app goes a long way! Thank you!

There are two weeks left before the next solstice, with fourteen more days of the sun springing above the horizon just a little bit higher each sunrise before the march to fall begins once more. I will not mention that other season for I know that may trouble some readers and listeners. It is June 7, 2022, and this is the matching installment of Charlottesville Community Engagement. I’m Sean Tubbs, planning for a summer of content.  Sign up for free, but if you opt to help support the work with a paid subscription, Ting will match your initial payment! On today’s program:A panel of federal judges has dismissed a lawsuit seeking an election for the House of Delegates this yearThe Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority turns 50 today, and both Albemarle and Charlottesville have agreed to extend its existenceVarious updates from Charlottesville City Manager Rogers, as well as an update on why consideration of a seven-story building on Jefferson Park Avenue has been delayedFirst shout-out to Camp AlbemarleToday’s first subscriber-supported public service announcement goes out to Camp Albemarle, which has for sixty years been a “wholesome rural, rustic and restful site for youth activities, church groups, civic events and occasional private programs.”Located on 14 acres on the banks of the Moorman’s River near Free Union, Camp Albemarle continues as a legacy of being a Civilian Conservation Corps project that sought to promote the importance of rural activities. Camp Albemarle seeks support for a plan to winterize the Hamner Lodge, a structure built in 1941 by the CCC and used by every 4th and 5th grade student in Charlottesville and Albemarle for the study of ecology for over 20 years. If this campaign is successful, Camp Albemarle could operate year-round. Consider your support by visiting campalbemarleva.org/donate. Federal judges dismiss Goldman’s lawsuit seeking 2022 House of Delegates electionThere are 518 days until the next time voters will decide on who will sit in the Virginia House of Delegates. That’s a year later than the 154 days that Richmond attorney Paul Goldman had wanted, but a panel of three federal judges have ruled that he did not have standing to bring the lawsuit either as a voter or a potential candidate. (read the opinion)In his original complaint filed June 28 of last year, Goldman alleged that the legislative boundaries at the time of the 2021 House of Delegates elections scheduled for that November would be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution. He argued the population of some districts were much larger than others due to the outdated districts.The case made its way up to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals before being sent back to the lower court this past March. Attorneys for the state filed a motion to dismiss the case on April 1, 2022, and yesterday’s opinion granted their request.“The current Motion to Dismiss follows a convoluted, months-long procedural history involving multiple complaints, motions to dismiss, motions to intervene, various hearings, as well as the appointment of a three-judge court and an interlocutory appeal to the Fourth Circuit of Appeals on sovereign immunity,” reads the introduction to the opinion. The opinion is also a history of the delays experienced by the U.S. Census Bureau in delivering data from the 2020 count due to pandemic-related issues as well as the failure of the bipartisan Virginia Redistricting Commission to reach consensus last October. The opinion notes that Goldman opted to not file paperwork to actually run in 2021, and notes Goldman resisted proving that he even voted that year. That means he could not prove he personally suffered an “injury” that would grant him the right to sue. “Plaintiff bears the burden of proving that he has standing, but he has not properly supported his assertion that he voted in November 2021,” the opinion continues. “If Plaintiff did not vote in November 2021, he lacks standing, as he cannot claim injury to a right that he voluntarily failed to exercise.” Goldman later did file an affidavit stating he did vote, but the opinion notes this was filed improperly. Still, the ruling goes on to state Goldman had not sufficiently explained why he was personally disadvantaged by voting in 2021 in the older district. “Virginia has 100 House of Delegates districts, making the ideal district population 86,314,” Judge Novak writes in the opinion. “Plaintiff’s House of Delegates District, District 68, had an adjusted population of 85,344.” The case is now closed, according to the order, with no possibility of appeal. City Manager report: Utility disconnections, city leases, building permits, and more One innovation to come with the tenure of interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers is a written report that is produced once a month to address items that come up at City Council.  He also read from the report at the beginning of last night’s meeting and provided an update on the city’s current pause on issuing new building permits. No new inspections or permits will take place through June 13. (read the report)“We have made multiple offers for a new building official and have to restart the process again with the most recent candidate changing their mind about relocating here at the last minute after we thought they accepted the position,” Rogers said. “We had previously contracted with a firm to help us with the inspections to offset our shortage. The two employees signed by that firm also left us recently so we are scrambling to catch up.”In his written report, Rogers said the city is working with the University of Virginia on a solution. Rogers also said an award should be made soon for a firm to help the city write a collective bargaining ordinance and that should be before Council in September with a draft ready in August. The interim city manager also reported that the city has been once again awarded a AAA bond rating from both S&P and Moody’s. A $26 million sale of bonds to fund capital projects is expected to be made today. Council also got an update on the city’s resumption in April of disconnecting utility customers for non-payment. A moratorium was in place for nearly two years due to the pandemic. “The utility billing office notified 282 accounts of pending disconnections by hanging cards on their doors,” said Deputy City Manager Ashley Marshall. “To date, 246 of those accounts have made payment arrangements.” The written report contains several other pieces of information that touch on previous stories:The June 21 Council work session will resume the discussion of city-owned properties and whether the city is getting the most out of current arrangementsA request for proposals for $178,394 in remaining Community Development Block Grants will be released this week Final design of a parking and pedestrian access for the Dogwood Memorial in McIntire Park has been reviewed and a budget and scope of work is being drafted, as well as a fundraising plan Rogers’ employment by the city is through a contract with the Robert Bobb Group, and Council extended that contract until the end of this year. Council action on seven-story building on Jefferson Park Avenue delayedCharlottesville City Council had been expected to consider a special use permit for a seven-story building on Jefferson Park Avenue  at their meeting last night, but the item was delayed until a further meeting. The Planning Commission voted 4-3 on May 10 to recommend approval, with some members expressing concerns about the massing and scale of the project. Mayor Lloyd Snook addressed the delay. “There were a number of issues raised at the Planning Commission and the approval that the Planning Commission gave was in some ways was conditioned upon ‘you all go figure ways to moderate this, to mitigate some of the harmful effects of the way it was appearing to be so massive and so on,” Snook said. Snook said the Department of Neighborhood Development Services requested more time to work on the proposal before it gets to City Council. The item will be rescheduled. Second shout-out goes to a Livable Cville eventIn today’s first subscriber supported shout-out, Livable Cville wants you to know about an online presentation coming up on June 7. The Community Climate Collaborative and Livable Cville are presenting a talk on what they consider Climate-Smart Zoning. Executive Director Susan Kruse and Director of Climate Policy Caetano de Campos Lopes will be the presenters. This is happening on Tuesday, June 7, from 5:30 p.m to 6:30 p.m. Sign up for the free event on EventBrite. Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority will get to turn 100Fifty years ago today, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority was incorporated as a public body, pursuant to what was known as the Virginia Water and Sewer Authorities Act. The body was created at the request of both Charlottesville and Albemarle County. “That was for the purpose of managing our reservoirs and dams, our public drinking water, treating that and distributing it, and also treating our sewage,” said Lance Stewart, the director of Facilities and Environmental Services for Albemarle County. Under the terms of the incorporation, a term limit of 50 years was imposed but extension could be granted if its member bodies pass resolutions to allow it to continue. Bill Mawyer has been the RWSA’s executive director for the past five years and he appeared before both bodies in the past week to make the case for continued existence.“Our staff works very hard to diligently, professionally, and economically provide water for the greater region of the city and the county, including Crozet, Scottsville, in Red Hill we have a small system,” Mawyer said. “We operate and manage six water supply reservoirs, five water treatment plants, and four wastewater plants.” No one spoke at the public hearing in Albemarle and the resolution passed. Last night, it was City Council’s turn, but before that public hearing, City Council Clerk Kyna Thomas read the consent agenda which included this item:“Approving the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority northern area projects allocation agreement, one reading,” Thomas said. Consent agenda items are resolutions that are not controversial for which a public conversation isn’t deemed necessary. Capital projects are paid for by ratepayers and each locality pays a share. In this case, the agreement lays out that the Albemarle County Service Authority will pay the full costs of new service to increase capacity in the area north of Hollymead Town Center, with the exception of a future storage tank that will hold one million gallons. By the terms of the agreement, the city will pay ten percent of that project because it adds to the system’s overall capacity. The city will pay 48 percent of the $2.425 million cost to decommission a water treatment plant on the North Fork of the Rivanna River. After holding a public hearing on rates for water, wastewater, and natural gas, it was time for Council to adopt their resolution extending the existence of the RWSA. “It’s been 50 years, it expires tomorrow, and so this action is placed here for renewal,” Rogers said. No one spoke at City Council’s public hearing, either, and Council concurred with Supervisors to keep the RWSA in business. The RWSA next meets on June 28. Did you learn something new? I learned something new writing it. Share this post with others to keep the learning going! Town Crier Productions has a sponsorship thing with Ting!For over a year one year now, Town Crier Productions has had a promotional offering through Ting!Are you interested in fast internet? Visit this site and enter your address to see if you can get service through Ting. If you decide to proceed to make the switch, you’ll get:Free installationSecond month of Ting service for freeA $75 gift card to the Downtown MallAdditionally, Ting will match your Substack subscription to support Town Crier Productions, the company that produces this newsletter and other community offerings. So, your $5 a month subscription yields $5 for TCP. Your $50 a year subscription yields $50 for TCP! The same goes for a $200 a year subscription! All goes to cover the costs of getting this newsletter out as often as possible. Learn more here! 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After today, there are only two more days in April. After today, there are 247 days left in 2022. But for now, it is still April 28 and this is the appropriate Charlottesville Community Engagement. After this installment, is it my hope that you will know slightly more than you did before. I cannot quantify precisely. I am Sean Tubbs, the host and producer.Charlottesville Community Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts in your email, become a free subscriber. To keep them coming, become a paid one! On today’s program:The Jefferson Madison Regional Library is celebrating National Poetry Month today with a series of scrolls The General Assembly takes action on Governor Youngkin’s vetoes and recommendations More documents filed in the Goldman v. Brink case to force a 2022 House of Delegates electionThe Virginia Film Festival is taking submissions and Virginians get a breakCharlottesville City Council approves a rezoning for 170 units in the Fry’s Spring areaAn update on the elevators at Midway ManorFirst-shout is for the Saturday premiere of Raised/RazedIn today’s first subscriber-supported shout-out, Preservation Piedmont wants you to know about this Saturday’s premiere of Raised/Razed, a film by filmmaker Lorenzo Dickerson and Jordy Yager about the life and destruction of Vinegar Hill, one of the oldest African American neighborhoods in Charlottesville. The Maupintown Media production charts the lives of residents over nearly a century as they built prosperity in the face of racially discriminatory policies at every level. The film will be willl be shown outdoors at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center at 8 p.m. Tickets are available on the center’s website with donations to be divided between seven Black-led organizations. Visit https://jeffschoolheritagecenter.org/ to learn more. General Assembly convenes for veto session Virginia legislators returned to Richmond yesterday to continue the 2022 regular session of the General Assembly by responding to vetoes and recommendations from Governor Glenn Youngkin. Before both the House of Delegates and Senate convened at noon, the House Democratic Caucus met and ousted minority leader Eileen Filler-Corn. Brandon Jarvis of the Virginia Political Newsletter reports a secret ballot motion to remove Filler-Corn passed with 25 votes. That’s the minimum required by caucus by-laws. There are 48 Democrats in the 100-member House of Delegates. Jarvis reports a motion to remove Delegate Charniele Herring failed. There was no vote for a new leader. In total, Youngkin had vetoed 26 bills and made recommended changes to 117 others. David Blount, legislative liaison for the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission, reports in his update to area officials that none of the vetoes were overridden. Blount reports that no action was taken on the state budget, but the chair of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee had an update. “We’re working to resolve our differences while also maintaining the Senate position as it relates to the importance of funding core services, especially in the areas of education and health and human services,” said Senator Janet Howell. For a full recap of the action on the vetoes and recommendations, check out the Virginia Mercury’s coverage.We’ll hear more from Howell in tomorrow’s installment of Charlottesville Community Engagement. Attorney General’s office files briefs in 2022 House race caseThe final round of briefs in a federal case to force a House of Delegates race this November may have been filed this week. Richmond Attorney Paul Goldman filed suit against the Board of Elections last year claiming the certification of winning candidates in the 2021 race was not valid because the districts are outdated because they are based on the 2010 Census.In March. the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to the Eastern District of Virginia to answer the question of whether Goldman has the right to have filed the suit. In a new brief filed on Monday, Solicitor General Andrew Ferguson argues Goldman does not have standing. “Goldman’s brief is long on rhetoric but falls short on standing—the only question the Fourth Circuit authorized this Court to answer,” reads the motion. “He offers no explanation of how he has suffered the sort of particularized injury-in-fact that Article III requires for any plaintiff who wants to invoke federal jurisdiction.”The brief goes on to argue that the action by the Virginia Supreme Court to adopt new legislative boundaries in late December did nothing to invalidate the elections of 2021. “The Supreme Court merely drew the maps for the next election,” the motion continues. “The Commonwealth of Virginia’s conduct of the 2021 election did not violate the United States Constitution.”The brief also argues that a federal judicial order to hold a state election this year would be intrusive and would lead to “judicially created confusion.”  The state also argues that oral argument on this question is not necessary.In response, Goldman filed a surrebuttal arguing that the state’s latest motion introduced new matters that he deserves to have the right to respond to. On Tuesday, Judge David Novak issued an order supporting Goldman’s request to consider a case called Avery v. Midland County as he reviews how to proceed with the case. JMRL celebrating Poem in Your Pocket DayIf you happen to be on the Charlottesville Downtown Mall today, you may have someone approach you with a small scroll. If so, take it, and rejoice that you have been handed an item of poetry. The Jefferson Madison Regional Library is once again celebrating Poem in Your Pocket Day at several locations throughout the area.“On this annual international day honoring the power of poetry to inspire and delight, children, teens and adults are invited to stop by any JMRL library branch to pick out a poem scroll tied with a bow,” reads the information release for the day. “Unwrap it, and possibilities unfold: read it to yourself, share it with someone close (or even a stranger), or just tuck it in your pocket for a rainy day.” The library system has teamed up with local businesses and other organizations for this occasion. Partners include: 2nd Act Books, Botanical Fare, Chaps, Mudhouse (Downtown), Splendora’s Gelato (Shops at Stonefield), UVA Medical Center, and Virginia Discovery Museum.There’s also a virtual program at 2 p.m. with “An Afternoon with Laura Shovan.”  The poet and children’s author will discuss her work with Supervising Children’s Librarian Tasha Birckhead. Shovan is the author of The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary. Tonight at 7 p.m. there will a Poetry in the Park at Market Street Park next to the library. Everyone is to read their favorite poem at an open mic event. That goes through 8:30 p.m. Virginia Film Festival waiving fees for Virginia filmmakersThe Virginia Film Festival is six months away but time is running shorter to enter your submission. If you live within the Commonwealth or attend a school here, you can send in your work without having to pay a fee. “The VAFF showcases celebrated new narrative and documentary features, independent and international projects, fresh perspectives on timeless classics, and local filmmakers from throughout Virginia,” reads the submission webpage.For those outside Virginia, the Early Bird Deadline is June 6, 2022 and you can submit a feature for $30 or a short for $10. For reference, features are anything over 31 minutes. The regular deadline is June 27, 2022 and those fees go up to $50 and $25 respectively. Students from all over the world can submit their work, regardless of length, for $10. The 2022 Virginia Film Festival begins November 2 and runs through November 6. Second shout-out is for the Rivanna River Fest and an E-Bike demoIn today’s second Patreon-fueled shout-out, did you know we are now in the middle of the Rivanna River Fest? A host of partners including the Rivanna Conservation Alliance and the Nature Conservancy are holding a series of events this week to celebrate that waterway that helps define urban Albemarle and Charlottesville. This all culminates in the main event this Sunday, May 1, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Rivanna River Company on the banks of the Rivanna. This includes the Rivanna River Paddle Race, the virtual Fix a Leak Family 5K, There will also be Water Quality Monitoring Demonstrations, City Nature Challenge, Pop-up Environmental Education Activities, and a Guided Bird Walk at Riverview Park. Learn more at rivannariver.org!In the same area on the same day, there will be an ebike demo day at Meade Park this Sunday, May 1, from 2:00-4:00. A pair of interested ebike owners in town will be bringing their bikes, and anybody who's interested can stop by, ask questions, and take test rides. They will have some ebikes with seats for children. If you’re going, drop them a line in this form. Council considering amendment of Friendship Court agreementThe current Charlottesville City Council had the chance this month to check in with the redevelopment of Friendship Court. The Piedmont Housing Alliance came before Council on April 18 with a request to amend an agreement that governs a $6 million forgivable loan granted in November 2020 for the first phase. The amendment is a technical one because the full amount had not been allocated by Council in a subsequent budget cycle. Brenda Kelley is the redevelopment manager for the city of Charlottesville, a position currently housed in the Office of Community Solutions. “This request is not asking for additional funding,” Kelley said. “This funding is already approved in this current budget.” Council had no issue with the amendment. “This was kind of staggered mostly because of COVID,” said City Councilor Sena Magill. “Friendship Court was really trying to help ease some of the potential future unknown burden that we might be facing with COVID.” The item will require a second reading and it will be on the consent agenda for the May 2 meeting. Construction of the first phase of Friendship Court is now underway. See also: Council approves agreement for Friendship Court funding, October 30, 2020 Council approves rezoning for 240 Stribling, new agreement to pay for sidewalksCharlottesville City Council has voted to rezone nearly 12 acres of land in the Fry’s Spring neighborhood in order for Southern Development to build 170 units. They also voted for the first time on a proposal that would tie a specific infrastructure project to increased revenues that will be generated by higher property taxes. “This is going to allow us to get infrastructure that we need in that part of the city that we would not have otherwise done,” said Councilor Brian Pinkston. Approval came at the April 18, 2022 meeting. Last year, the City Planning Commission recommended approval of the rezoning but only if Stribling Avenue would be upgraded as part of the development.Southern Development agreed to loan the city $2.9 million to pay for sidewalks and drainage on Stribling Avenue. Interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers recommended against the agreement as it was written at Council’s first reading on March 21. “We did have discussions with the developer, [Charlie] Armstrong, and we did come to agreement, a funding agreement,” Rogers said The amended agreement would keep the loan at $2.9 million. The idea has always been that Southern Development would be paid back through the tax revenue generated by higher assessments based on the new development. The initial agreement would have given Southern Development 100 percent of the new tax revenue, but that would have been against the city’s policy to allocate a percentage of new real estate tax funds towards education. “We negotiated that it would be 60 / 40 and 60 percent would go to repay the loan,” Rogers said. “And we agreed for that arrangement, it would be a longer financing agreement.” The city will also allocate $1.3 million funding in the Capital Improvement Program for the project as well to cover the costs and possible overruns. “And from discussions with the engineer, that should be enough to cover the project,” Rogers said. Armstrong said the $2.9 million will be available to the city shortly.“The agreement stipulates that we would have those funds available and drawable by the city before we can pull a land disturbing permit,” Armstrong said. City engineer Jack Dawson said he did not have a timeline when the roadway would be upgraded, but said planning work on Stribling would commence on July 1 if not before. “Which means finding a consultant, doing the planning, community outreach, all of the things that go into development of a project of this size,” Dawson said. Charlottesville Mayor Lloyd Snook was persuaded to proceed. “If the neighbors’ concern is that somehow the developer is going to withhold the construction of the community assets until everything else is done, that’s not going to be happening,” Snook said. Armstrong said he is hoping to be under construction within 12 to 18 months. The project will be constructed in 20 phases. Snook said the intersection of Stribling and Jefferson Park Avenue Extended also needs to be improved. “That’s the kind of thing it strikes me as a manageable problem and one that we can continue to work toward for solutions,” Snook said. “It doesn’t seem to me to be an insurmountable problem.” Deputy City Manager Sam Sanders said Council would get an update in the future on how Stribling would be maintained at a time when construction of both 240 Stribling and the upgrade to the street are underway.“We will bring back to you more details on how we will manage this project unlike maybe how we’ve done other projects in the past because this one is such a significantly complicated and somewhat controversial project,” Sanders said. Councilor Michael Payne said the city should be able to better analyze how much economic value a developer gets for lots that are rezoned. “So that we can understand our position vis-a-vis the developer in a situation like this when we are in a way going to be informally negotiating,” Payne said. “I will say I don’t think that we were perhaps were careful in our analysis in setting ourselves up for this.” Payne voted in favor of the rezoning and the agreement, which passed unanimously. Midway Manor Elevator updateFinally today, in Tuesday’s program, there was a section on Council’s approval of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s approval of $23 million in tax-exempt bonds to cover the costs of purchasing and renovating Midway Manor. Councilor Michael Payne had expressed concern about a faulty elevator. I checked in with Standard Communities and received this statement yesterday.“We continue to plan for a comprehensive renovation and upgrade of Midway Manor, which is expected to begin later this year in conjunction with the implementation of extended affordability protections for the property. Recognizing that the elevators were in need of more immediate attention, we have accelerated the modernization of both elevators at the property, with on-site work currently underway. In efforts to minimize disruption to residents, one elevator car is being worked on at a time, with the entire project expected to be complete within the next 8 weeks.” - Steven Kahn, Director, Standard CommunitiesTing will match your initial paid subscription to this newsletter!For one year now, Town Crier Productions has a promo with Ting! Are you interested in fast internet? Visit this site and enter your address to see if you can get service through Ting. If you decide to proceed to make the switch, you’ll get:Free installationSecond month of Ting service for freeA $75 gift card to the Downtown MallAdditionally, Ting will match your Substack subscription to support Town Crier Productions, the company that produces this newsletter and other community offerings. So, your $5 a month subscription yields $5 for TCP. Your $50 a year subscription yields $50 for TCP! The same goes for a $200 a year subscription! All goes to cover the costs of getting this newsletter out as often as possible. Learn more here! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Admittedly, it is quite difficult to get the hang of Thursdays, but many of us endeavor to try. April 14 is the 15th such day of the year, and this is the equivalent edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. Both the sonic version and its the textual counterpart seek to bring you to up to date on things you may not yet have known. I’m your host, Sean Tubbs. On today’s program:A Charlottesville minister has become the Democrat’s de facto candidate in the race for the 5th District seat in the U.S. House of RepresentativesMore documents have been filed in a lawsuit seeking to force a House of Delegates race this year Trees have come down on Garrett Street to make way for the redevelopment of Friendship Court Nelson County Board of Supervisors are asked to allow a mobile home park in the rural area to help provide more affordable housing opportunitiesFirst shout-out goes to the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority for e-waste collection dayIn today’s first subscriber supported public service announcement, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority wants you to know about Electronic Waste Collection Day coming up on April 23, 2022. Residents of both Albemarle County and Charlottesville have the opportunity to drop off old electronics from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Ivy Material Utilization Center. Permissible items include computers, printers, VCRs, stereos and televisions and people can dispose of up to ten items. Only two tube-style monitors or televisions per person! You must register in advance online where you will be give a time slot. Registration is limited to 110 people per hour. Visit rivanna.org for more information.Throneburg becomes Democrat’s default nominee for 5th DistrictOnly one candidate in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District has correctly filed the paperwork required to be on the ballot for the June 21, 2022 statewide primary. That means Democrat Josh Throneburg will face the winner of the May 21 Republican convention in the general election.Neither Warren McClellan nor Andy Parker turned in enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, as Throneburg announced on Twitter on Tuesday. “We just received word a couple of hours ago that I am officially a Democratic nominee for Congress in Virginia’s 5th District.” Throneburg is an ordained minister and small business owner who lives in Charlottesville. He grew up in a small town in Illinois. The candidate raised $270,154 in 2021, according to data collected by the Virginia Public Access Project. Candidates seeking to be in the June 21 primary had until April 7 to turn in ballots to their party for verification. To get on the primary ballot, a candidate needed 1,000 registered voters in the district to sign a petition. A source in the Virginia Democratic Party confirmed a Washington Post report that Parker turned in 1,093 ballots, but only 937 of them were verified as valid. Democrats in all eleven of Virginia’s Congressional districts chose to hold a primary, whereas Republican Committees in only seven chose that route. The other four will hold a convention, including the 5th District. The Republican convention will be held in the Kirby Field House at Hampden-Sydney College. Incumbent Bob Good faces Charlottesville attorney Dan Moy (convention details).As of the end of 2021, Good had raised $518,278 and Moy reported no funds. The next set of campaign reports to the Federal Election Commission are due tomorrow. In his announcement, Throneburg said he believes he can win.“We currently have a Freshman incumbent who is deeply out of touch with the people in this district,” Throneburg said. This will be the first election under the new boundaries of the Fifth District, for which Albemarle County is the northern boundary. New documents filed in Goldman suit to force 2022 House of Delegates electionThe current plan is for the new legislative districts for the Virginia General Assembly to go into effect with next year’s state races, but a lawsuit seeking a race this year is still alive in the federal court. Richmond attorney Paul Goldman sued the Department of Elections last year alleging the results of the 2021 House of Delegates should only be certified for one year because otherwise they would be unconstitutional. In March, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sent Richmond attorney Paul Goldman’s suit back to the Eastern District of Virginia to determine whether he has the standing to bring the case. On March 25, Goldman submitted a detailed statement that documents his potential candidacy for the 68th House District in 2022 as well as a potential bid for Lieutenant Governor. Paragraph 22 points out that he now lives within the 78th District. (Notice of Additional Facts Relevant to Standing)“The old 68th District no longer exists as a legal entity recognized under the Constitution of Virginia as pointed out by Article II, Section 6 [of the Virginia Constitution],’” reads paragraph 27.“Accordingly, Plaintiff has no representative in the General Assembly that is constitutionally required to represent his interests or been constitutionally selected to be his said representative,” reads paragraph 28.  The Virginia Supreme Court finalized new legislative maps on December 28. On April 1, the Virginia Attorney General’s office filed a motion to dismiss the case once again for lack of standing. Goldman has until April 18 to respond and the defendants have until April 25 to make their reply. Trees come down on Garrett Street to make way for Friendship Court’s first phaseCrews removed several decades-old White Oak trees on Garrett Street this morning as part of a Piedmont Housing Alliance project to redevelop Friendship Court. The trees were removed as part of the first phase of the development, which got underway with a groundbreaking in January. Phase one is being constructed on a former open field. Piedmont Housing CEO Sunshine Mathon said the trees’ removal ended up being necessary due to complex topography involving a waterway that travels below the site.“We were not 100 percent sure until meeting with City staff to finalize sidewalk replacement, utilities, etc. along Garrett,” Mathon wrote in an email to Charlottesville Community Engagement this morning. Mathon said the removal of the trees is an example of a trade-off related to the need for new buildings to be set back from the street. Accommodating the channeled Pollocks Branch reduced the amount of buildable area. “The residents and the rest of the design team were balancing building footprints, number of total units, housing typologies (multifamily + townhomes), a new Community Center and Early Learning Center, ample amounts of open green space (including existing and new tree cover), parking needs, and interconnection with future phases,” Mathon continued. Mathon said the remaining phases should not have similar constraints related to Pollocks Branch and that more of the mature tree canopy in those sections could be preserved. Phase one is expected to be completed by the end of 2023. Mathon also said the wood from the trees will be used to make furniture and other products in the future. Second shout-out goes to CBIC for the WeFunder Pitch nightIn today’s second subscriber supported shout-out, the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council wants you to know about a unique event coming up on April 19 that aims to provide investment opportunities for regular people. CBIC is teaming up with WeFunder for live equity based financing for local start-ups who need capital. Recent changes in regulations allow for the event, where people can invest directly in these companies in exchange for early equity. The event will take place at 4:30 p.m. April 19 at the Irving Theater in the CODE building. Nelson County Supervisors consider Ridgecrest Mobile Home ParkThe Nelson County Board of Supervisors heard from the public Tuesday on a proposal to build a mobile home park near the Ridgecrest Baptist Church on U.S. 29 north of Lovingston. Civil engineer Justin Shimp needed a special use permit for the project. Shimp said he was pursuing the project to help provide more housing that can be affordable to households with lower incomes. “Five years ago, I would not have thought about this and didn’t think it would be needed because of affordability, but such are the increases in cost that achieving housing for folks who don’t make $100,000 a year is very difficult,” Shimp said. Shimp said mobile home parks can be a good way to provide housing at a lower cost.“One can buy a new mobile home so as little as $60,000 to pay to set it up,” Shimp said. “You could then rent a mobile home pad for around $400 a month. That is a much different sort of price point for folks than typical housing stock.”Shimp said under his arrangement, the people who would live there would own a share of the common areas and could sell those shares in the future. “I think this park investor opportunity will be a way for people who historically haven’t been able to set anchor somewhere would be able to buy in and take ownership of that and it will be good for the community,” Shimp said. The Planning Commission voted 4-1 in March on the proposal but set 33 conditions for Supervisors to consider in their review. Several neighbors of the proposed park spoke at the public hearing. One person wanted to know what Nelson County’s standards are for mobile homes and how wastewater would be handled. “Has there or will there ever be done a study on the effects of 51 additional homes on the water source?” asked Larry Shelton. Another person was concerned about the entrance off of U.S. 29. “You have to be very careful with any kind of proposals about how you’re going to get the trailers in there, how is this going to happen, how this is going to affect the residents that are there,” said Tonya Bradley. Another person was concerned that allowing 51 units in the rural area was not acceptable under the Comprehensive Plan. The debate got heated as South District Craig Barton peppered Shimp with questions about the cost of housing. Barton said he was skeptical the trailer park would work. “Have you thought about ways to figure out how to get it so people who live in this country can be able to afford a house?” Barton asked. “What could be done as a builder to help you build a house that a person will know will increase in value in his lifetime?” Shimp said there was little that the Nelson County Board of Supervisors could do. The conversation broke down as West District Supervisosr J. David Parr tried to establish order. Barton said he did not think it was likely that the trailers would increase in value. “The problems of housing are real and we need to deal with those problems,” Barton said. “Whether or not a mobile home will help in solving this problem, I don’t know. I think probably not.” Shimp said there was ample water on the site, and that many of the neighbors would be on the other side of Muddy Creek, which would mean any wells would not affect their groundwater. There were only four Supervisors present when it was time to take a vote as North District Supervisor Tommy Harvey was not in attendance. “There are aspects of this project that I think are positive and admirable, but the density concerns me,” said Central District Supervisor Ernie Reed. Parr supported the project, as did East District Supervior Jesse Rutherford. He is chair of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and sits on the Regional Housing Partnership. “More often than not the struggle always comes down to how to make something affordable, Rutherford said. “Question always comes down to where is the appropriate place. I’ve found if you put it near an area that’s meant for high density, folks usually may not like it. And if you put it in the middle of nowhere folks might not like it and you’re going to get that perspective no matter which way you look at it.” Rutherford said the only way to attain affordability is through density. He said the Comprehensive Plan update needs to consider this as Nelson considers how to make housing attainable for more people. Given Harvey’s absence, Supervisors opted to continue the matter to the next meeting. That will give Shimp more time to respond to some of the questions asked. Watch the video:Support Town Crier Productions through Ting!Special announcement of a continuing promo with Ting! Are you interested in fast internet? Visit this site and enter your address to see if you can get service through Ting. If you decide to proceed to make the switch, you’ll get:Free installationSecond month of Ting service for freeA $75 gift card to the Downtown MallAdditionally, Ting will match your Substack subscription to support Town Crier Productions, the company that produces this newsletter and other community offerings. So, your $5 a month subscription yields $5 for TCP. Your $50 a year subscription yields $50 for TCP! The same goes for a $200 a year subscription! All goes to cover the costs of getting this newsletter out as often as possible. Learn more here! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Is today the day where we drive out the snakes, or is the the one where one can be pinched for a lack of verdant clothing? Perhaps neither is true, and it’s simply March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, and good wishes for whatever that means for you. It is true this is Charlottesville Community Engagement and I’m fairly certain I’m Sean Tubbs, the producer and host of this and all of the other editions of the show. On today’s program:UVA President Jim Ryan speaks to business leaders in the final segment of our look at the Chamber of Commerce’s State of the Community Forum Charlottesville City Council holds its first budget work session and agrees to advertise a half-percentage point increase in the meals tax rateAlbemarle County gets a new planning director who will come here from another Virginia locality A federal appeals court sends a lawsuit seeking a 2022 House of Delegates election back to a lower court First shout-out goes to the Rivanna Conservation AllianceIn today’s first Patreon-fueled shout-out, the Rivanna Conservation Alliance wants wildlife and nature photographers to enter their first-ever photography contest! They want high-resolution photos related to the Rivanna watershed and the winning entries will be displayed at the 2022 Riverfest Celebration on May 1. The two categories are 16 and under, and those over the age of 17. You can send in two entries, and the work may be used to supplement Rivanna Conservation Alliance publications. For more information, visit rivannariver.org.Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sends 2022 House election case back to lower courtA federal appeals court has sent a Richmond attorney’s lawsuit seeking a House of Delegates race in 2022 back to a lower court so that the question of his legal ability to bring the suit can be answered. “Upon careful consideration of the submissions of the parties and the oral argument conducted on March 8, 2022, we are satisfied to remand this case back to the district court for it to determine – in the first instance – whether [Paul] Goldman possesses Article III standing to sue,” reads the unpublished opinion issued by the Fourth Circuit Court on Tuesday. Goldman told ABC8 News that he believes there will still be time for the issue to be sorted in time for a legislative race to be held this year. See also:Fourth Circuit hears arguments in case challenging Virginia House of Delegates election, March 8, 2022, Courthouse NewsFederal appeals court hears oral arguments in suit to force 2022 election, March 9, 2022, Information Charlottesville Federal appeals court sends Virginia election calendar lawsuit back to lower court, ABC8 News, March 15, 2022New Albemarle Planning Director starts work in AprilA planning official from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia will be the next planning director in Albemarle County. Candace Perkins has recently served as assistant director of planning and development in Frederick County to the northwest of Albemarle. “The Director of Planning is a key leadership role within the Community Development Department, serving as the liaison to the Planning Commission and providing management and leadership for our Planning Division, which manages Albemarle County's Comprehensive Planning program and coordinates the development review process in cooperation with the Zoning and Engineering divisions,” reads a press release for the announcement. The previous occupant of the position has moved up to be Deputy Director of the Community Development Department. Charles Rapp has only been with Albemarle County since March 9. 2020. His boss, Jodie Filardo, has only been in Albemarle since September 9, 2019. Previous occupants of all three jobs had been with the county for decades before retirement. According to the release, Perkins has over twenty years in local government. She’ll begin work as the department continues its work on the first phase of the Comprehensive Plan review. Perkins’ first day is April 11, 2022. UVA President Ryan addresses Chamber of Commerce at State of the CommunityIt has now been a month since the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce held its first ever State of the Community to allow officials from Albemarle County and Charlottesville to present themselves to members of the business community. Ryan attended UVA’s School of Law and served on its faculty in 1998. He returned to Charlottesville as UVA President in 2018 after serving as Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “Since he returned to returned to UVA in 2018 to serve as President, Jim has continued to emphasize the important of educational opportunity, especially for underrepresented students and first generation college students,” said Collette Sheehy, the senior vice president for operations and state government relations. Sheehy said one of Ryan’s central goals is to strengthen the relationship between the University, Albemarle and Charlottesville. He appeared at the Irving Theater in the CODE building via Zoom. “The relationship between UVA, Charlottesville, and Albemarle County is incredibly important, and although strong I thought there areas for improvement,” Ryan said. “And part of this is about being a University that is Great and Good and I think part of being a great university is taking seriously the obligations of an anchor institution in our community.”Let’s take stock of some population numbers. In the fall of 1991, the University of Virginia had an on-Grounds student enrollment of around 18,000, a figure that includes both graduate and undergraduate students. Thirty years later, the total on-Grounds enrollment increased to over 26,000. (UVA enrollment statistics)In 1990, the U.S. Census Bureau counted 68,040 people in Albemarle and 40,341 in Charlottesville. Albemarle’s population has increased to 112,935 as measured in the 2020 Census, and Charlottesville’s official count increased to 46,553 that year. The Weldon Cooper Center at UVA believes that last figure is higher due to an undercount of college towns. Their 2021 estimate puts Charlottesville at 51,079. So that’s the total size of the community. When he got here, Ryan put together a working group of community leaders, staff, faculty, and students. He asked them to report back on what the biggest issues are facing the community. “One, jobs and wages,” Ryan said. “The second is affordable housing. Third is access to public health. And fourth, youth education.”Since then, UVA raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour, including a requirement for contractors to do so. That working group became the President’s Council on UVA Community Partnerships. The pandemic put much of the process on hold but the working groups are back. There’s a recent report from the Pipelines and Pathways group which is intended to make jobs at UVA more accessible to people in the community. There’s a Local Economy group seeking ways to improve connections with area businesses. “Some of it is just about making that local businesses know about the opportunities to engage in business with UVA so that’s looking at everything from how we select vendors to how we advertise what we’re looking for and what requirements we have,” Ryan said. “But some of it is just making sure that local businesses understand the process and understand that we are very much interested in working with them.”UVA has also pledged to build between a thousand and 1,500 affordable housing units over the next decade on properties owned by the University or the University of Virginia Foundation. Three sites have been selected and they are the North Fork Discovery Park in Albemarle County, property on Wertland Street in Charlottesville, and the Piedmont housing site off of Fontaine Avenue. “We have an obligation to contribute but it’s also in the interest of UVA just as its in the interest of Charlottesville and Albemarle County,” Ryan said. “If you want to attract and retain a talented workforce, you need to make sure that there are places where people can live affordably.”Under this arrangement, UVA will supply the plan and a private developer will build the housing. Ryan said he would also like to see second-year students living on Grounds and there are plans to proceed, but it will take more construction.“Right now we have housing for upper-class students but we don’t have enough housing to house all of the second years,” Ryan said. UVA’s economic impactIn 2016, University hired a firm to review its economic impact on Virgina and found that there had been $5.9 billion generated by activities across the Commonwealth and 51,653 jobs. President Ryan said it had been some time since that report but the numbers are believed to be holding up. (read the report)“Visitors coming to UVA and students spend nearly $200 million annually and that in turn supports roughly 2,000 jobs locally,” Ryan said. “It’s not an insignificant contribution to the local economy. It’s obviously not the only thing and we’re not the only game in town but we are a pretty big economic actor in town.” The answer to this next question is worth hearing in full. City Councilor Michael Payne has argued that the University of Virginia should directly pay the city of Charlottesville a form of taxes. Here he is at a budget work session in early February before Interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers introduced his budget. “It’s longer term but it seems like a discussion we should engage the University on,” Payne said. “I know that’s something that the University of Michigan, Yale, Harvard, and many other institutions have done.”Here’s the question:“Will UVA consider payment in lieu of taxes to the city or the county?” Sheehy asked. “We’ll consider it,” Ryan said. “This came up just the other day. I think there are likely restrictions on our ability to do this because we are a state agency. So there are all sorts of restrictions on what we can with state funds. Because we are a state agency, when we receive money from Richmond it’s money that they are delegating to us and whether we can turn around and delegate that or allocate that to a locality seems unlikely to me.” Another change made during the Ryan administration has been the elimination of a public body known as the Planning and Coordination Council in favor of a closed-door body called the Land Use and Environmental Planning Committee. That group next meets on Friday. (agenda)Watch the entire State of the Community event on the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce’s website. Second shout-out goes to an event happening at MorvenIn today’s second subscriber supported shout-out, the Morven Summer Institute at Morven Farm wants you to know about a seminar coming up on March 29. How are UVA students, faculty, and community partners collaborating to tell the stories of Morven? Researcher Scot French has spent over ten years studying Morven’s history and will provide glimpses into a course he’ll be teaching this summer on Recovering the Stories of Morven’s Enslaved and Descendant Communities.  The March 29 event is a chance for the public to get a preview of the four week course. The presentation will be available for viewing online, but there are some in-person positions! If you’re interested, visit morven.virginia.edu to fill out an interest form. Council holds first work session on FY23 budgetThere are a lot of numbers involved in this next story so grab a pencil or open up a spreadsheet to follow along.  There’s less than a month left before the Charlottesville City Council will adopt a budget for FY2023 and four days away before the first public hearing. The five elected officials began their detailed review of the budget. “We’re presenting a balanced  budget of $216,171,432,” said interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers. “This represents a 12.46 percent increase over 2022.”Resources for this story:Presentation from the March 10, 2022 Council work sessionInterim City Manager Rogers’ proposed FY23 budgetTechnically, Rogers’ budget does include the ten cent increase in the property tax rate that Council agreed to advertise, but does not indicate how it should be spent. “In this budget we have presented unallocated those revenues so there is flexibility for you to decide how much of an increase will be required based upon your programmatic decisions,” Rogers said. That means the expenditures in the budget as introduced by Rogers are built on the current rate of 95 cents per $100 of assessed value. But Council’s review was built on the assumption that the rate will be increased to $1.05 per $100. Budget staff estimate that would bring in $97,770,160, an increase of $17,492,718 over the revised budget for the current fiscal year. That would be due to both the proposed tax increase as well as an increase of over ten percent in property assessments. Krisy Hamilll, the senior budget management analyst, told Council that staff already believes tax collections in the current year will be $3 million over what was expected. The surplus for FY22 would be as much as $5 million higher because the tax increase is for the calendar year, not the fiscal year. And that’s not the only potential for revenues to come in higher than budgeted. “We continue to see increases and improvements in sales taxes and meals and lodging along those same lines,” Hammill said. “And it’s very likely as we continue through the month of March, we will have another month of those projects and we probably will be coming back to you with some amendments for the FY23 budget as well.”Hammill said the additional money that would come from the tax increase have been left unallocated because there are still many scenarios for funding the construction costs to renovate Buford Middle School as part of an overall school reconfiguration. “There is still question about the construction and the funding options for that project,” Hammill said. “Additionally we know that the construction dollars themselves are not needed until [fiscal year] 2024.”As you heard in the last segment, Councilor Michael Payne has called on the city to require the University of Virginia to pay a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT. Currently Charlottesville utilities pay such a charge, budgeted at $6.27 million in FY23. These are included in city utility bills.“It’s a payment as if the utilities were a private utility provider within the city,” said finance director Chris Cullinan. “It emulates the tax burden that they if they were a private corporation what they would owe the city. It’s an expense of the utilities, included in the utility rates, and it’s remitted to the city each year from the water, sewer, and natural gas utilities.” Now, onto expenditures. There is an across the board eight percent increase in salaries for city employees, building off of a two percent cost of living increase that went into effect on July 1, 2021 as well as an additional six percent increase granted to Council in late December that was paid for the surplus from fiscal year 2021. There’s another 3 percent cost of living adjustment scheduled for July 1, 2022. That’s a total of $5.2 million for salary increases for city employees. There are also seven new proposed employees, including a Freedom of Information Act coordinator for the city attorney’s officer, a new transportation planner, and a new building inspector.  The budget also reflects changes to tax relief programs. “We’ve added nearly a million dollars in new funding for the tax, rent, and grant relief,” Hammill said. “We will be merging all the tax relief programs into one program. We will also be increasing the income threshold from $55,000 to $60,000.”If the tax rate increase goes forward at the full rate of ten cents, Hammill said there will need to be an additional $500,000 spend on the program to cover the costs. How to pay for a $75 million renovation of Buford Middle School? The biggest question about that tax increase relates to the funding of $75 million for school reconfiguration. The current draft budget recommends $2.5 million toward the project in FY23 and $72.5 million in FY24. Hammill said there are funding sources the School Board are suggesting.“They also have additional [American Rescue Plan Act] federal dollars that they have offered up as a potential use to buy down some of the school-related projects in the [Capital Improvement Program] and that totals to about $7.5 million.”That would leave Council needing to identify $65 million in revenue. A bill to allow Charlottesville to hold a referendum on a school-related one percent increase in the sales failed to make it out of a divided General Assembly. See also: House Subcommittee kills schools sales-tax bills, Information Charlottesville, February 25, 2022“We’re sort of at a crossroads about next steps,” Hammill said. “I know that we started with a $50 million project, we got up to a $75 million project. I know there have been multiple construction options that have been presented with varying dollar amounts and additional questions. And so we need to figure out what next steps are so we can get to a decision factor for that amount.”Charlottesville currently pays about $11.6 million in debt service on existing bonds for existing projects, according to Rogers. “We’ve looked at including the $75 million and bonding that, and that would have the effect of increasing debt service to $22 million [annually] over the course of the project,” Rogers said. The Council last year agreed to reallocate $18.25 million that had been allocated to the first two phases of West Main Street to the school reconfiguration project as well as $5 million from the parking garage. “And those were already built into our projections so that’s how we got from $50 million to $75 million,” Hammill said. “We still have the issue of how we’re going to pay for $50 million.” Councilors weigh in Councilor Brian Pinkston said he would like to see scenarios based on rate increases lower than ten cents. “My initial sort of assessment of the city as I have been getting to know it is that it still feels like its underfunded operationally and in terms of capital projects, based off what people in the community have made clear what they want,” Pinkston said. “Now, obviously it’s one thing to say we need these things and it’s another to fund it.”Pinkston said a reduced scope for the reconfiguration could be found, such as delaying construction of an auditorium at Buford. He thought the project should be reduced to at least $65 million, including the school system’s ARPA money. In his day job, Pinkston is a project manager for facilities at the University of Virginia. Vice Mayor Juandiego Wage said he wanted the City Council to be able to pay as much toward the project as possible, and that the School Board’s option should be the one that moves forward. Wade spent 16 years on the School Board before becoming a Councilor.“Brian has a unique insight because its his day job but I think we leave it to the School Board to determine which alternative to use,” Wade said. City Councilor Sena Magill said she was personally lobbying for more funds at the federal level to avoid bonding the project which would mean local taxpayers would pay for most of the tab. “I’ve actually got appointments with people in D.C. next week to talk about how to try to get Build Back Better money for this project,” Magill said. “I am using every single connection I can build, find, or not burn to find money for this project.”The Build Back Better Act is an infrastructure spending bill that passed the U.S House of Representatives on a 220 to 213 vote, but is not likely to pass the Senate. Councilor Michael Payne said he was struggling with the numbers and the message from city budget staff that the debt service for the school would mean no new capital projects for several years. “Our draft budget, where it is, if you’re talking about a ten cent real estate tax increase and freezing our budget for several years, taking all politics aside, is that good public policy?” Payne asked. “To me it seems like it is just not.” Payne said the city needs to be able to have the flexibility to further increase wages, fund firefighter positions that are currently covered by a federal grant, funding for further subsidized housing to be built by the Piedmont Housing Alliance project, and more. Payne also suggested continuing to pursue a PILOT with the University of Virginia, implementing a plastic bag tax, and lobbying the General Assembly again for the sales tax referendum  Mayor Lloyd Snook suggested for this year leaving some tax rates the same. “Why don’t we simply leave personal property tax rates where they are,” Snook said. “Let’s leave real estate estate taxes where they are, leave personal property tax rates where they are. I as a general proposition am not a fan of trying to change the tax rate based on whether the underlying values have gone up or down by a commensurate amount.” Snook also suggested increasing the meals tax by an additional half of a percentage point. “Those two sources would give us $3 million,  roughly,” Snook said. Pinkston agreed with leaving the personal property tax rate the same, as well as the half-percent increase on the meals tax. This paragraph was amended on March 19, 2022 to clarify Wade’s position on the meals taxPayne said he would be open to both. Wade said he would support keeping the personal property tax rate the same, but was flexible on changing the meals tax. Commissioner of Revenue Todd Divers said leaving the rate at $4.20 of assessed value would likely yield $2 million this year in additional revenue due to the sharp increase in the value of used vehicles. “I can tell you some of these bills are going to curl people’s hair and so you need to be ready for that,” Divers said. Council directed staff to advertise the half-percent increase in the meals tax. Snook said he wants to hear from the public about how to proceed. “Get that advertisement in and get the public hearing on it held and let’s hear from the public and let them weigh in,” Snook said. “If they’ve got thoughts that they would rather see their personal property tax go up rather than real estate taxes. Obviously some of these are issues that they’ve elected to deal with.” Councilor Magill made clear she wants property owners to pay more this year in order to build up the capacity to pay for debt service.  “I am interested in raising our [real estate] property tax one or two cents this year,” Magill said. Pinkston was in agreement. “My sort of sense is two cents this year, two cents next and sort of spread it out,” Pinkston said. The next work session is tonight and will be on funding for outside agencies. There will be another work session on the Capital Improvement Program on March 31. There is a public hearing on the real property tax rate on March 21 followed by one on April 4 on the meals tax increase and the budget. What do you think? Do you know someone or a group that needs to know this information? Please send it on! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

EP 035 - This episode of BURKEFILE features the courtroom audio of oral arguments on March 8, 2022 to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond on the Paul Goldman (minute 20) lawsuit (21-2180) that could decide whether or not elections for the House of Delegates are held again in Virginia in 2022, prominent attorney Paul Goldman argues on standing in front of a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Judges: Robert King (Clinton), James Wynn (Obama) and Alison Rushing (Trump). Sponsored by virginianationts.com/

The only constant is change, a dynamic that frustrates many but a phen upon which others thrive. Charlottesville Community Engagement is intended to document as much of what’s coming as possible in the hopes that more people can affect outcomes if they simply have information. It’s March 9, 2022, and I’m your host, Sean Tubbs. Charlottesville Community Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.On today’s program:The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments in a case that could require the Virginia Board of Elections to hold a House of Delegates race this NovemberAnother church in Charlottesville wants to build housing on its propertyAlbemarle’s top official explains to business leaders how the county works And one of Charlottesville’s former city managers has dropped a suit against the City Council ‘And singer songwriter Michael Clem talks about his upcoming appearance at the Center at Belvedere First shout-out goes to the Rivanna Conservation AllianceIn today’s first Patreon-fueled shout-out, the Rivanna Conservation Alliance wants wildlife and nature photographers to enter their first-ever photography contest! They want high-resolution photos related to the Rivanna watershed and the winning entries will be displayed at the 2022 Riverfest Celebration on May 1. The two categories are 16 and under, and those over the age of 17. You can send in two entries, and the work may be used to supplement Rivanna Conservation Alliance publications. For more information, visit rivannariver.org.Community meeting for 72-unit apartment complex on Locust Grove church propertyThe Mount View Baptist Church on St. Clair Avenue in the Locust Grove neighborhood is seeking a rezoning to allow for the construction of up to 72 units on their lawn. “With this rezoning request, Mount View Baptist Church seeks to remain operational on the property and expand opportunities to serve the community by requesting to have the ability to establish a day care on their property,” reads the announcement for a community meeting tonight. Shimp Engineering has been hired to oversee the land use application process for the 3.4 acre property. Sixty of the units would be built in a series of “linked townhouses” and the rest would be for the church to build in the future should they want to do so. The property has potential road connections onto several roads in the neighborhood. Not all of the property is connected to the church. An entity called Route 250 Homes purchased two single family homes that front onto Otter Street last June, and these two properties are being added to the church’s property. A community meeting for the rezoning begins at 6:30 p.m. tonight. (register) (more information)Former City Manager Richardson withdraws suit against the cityAn attorney for former Charlottesville City Manager Tarron Richardson has filed a motion with the United States Western District Court ending a lawsuit against his former employer. Richardson had filed a civil rights suit against the City Council and the city attorney in November alleging his rights were violated by the terms of his severance agreement. However the suit was not formally served to the city until late December, and the individual defendants were never served. The motion from attorney Kevin French is a voluntary dismissal with prejudice. For more information, read Ginny Bixby’s story in the Daily Progress. Federal appeals court hears oral arguments in suit to force 2022 electionA three judge panel of the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has heard arguments in a case that could force the state of Virginia to run elections for the House of Delegates this year, and then again in 2023. Richmond attorney Paul Goldman has argued those elections in 2021 are unconstitutional because the districts are based on Census data from 2010, and he sued the state Board of Elections. However, the 40-minute session largely dealt with procedural issues such as whether Goldman has the legal standing to bring the case forward or whether the appeals court was the appropriate venue. (hear the arguments on Youtube) Andrew Ferguson is the Solicitor General for Virginia, and he inherited the case from the previous administration. “The plaintiff in this case contends that Virginia broke the law when it failed to hold the 2021 election on the basis of Census data that did not exist when the electoral process began,” Ferguson said. “We strongly disagree, but the question before the court today is whether it has Article 3 jurisdiction to decide this case at all.”Article 3 refers to the U.S. Constitution which lays out how the nation’s courts systems should work. Ferguson argued that Goldman could not demonstrate how he was personally harmed by the elections. Last week, he filed a motion to return the case back to a lower court in order to get a ruling on that issue before taking up Goldman’s underlying claim. Ferguson argued the court should not even weigh in on what is referred to as a “sovereign authority” claim. “I think that the reason that sovereign immunity shouldn’t be addressed before determining standing is that if the court were to issue an opinion on sovereign immunity but subsequently determined there had never been any standing in this case, that sovereign immunity opinion is effectively an advisory opinion because the court never had jurisdiction to issue it in the first place,” Ferguson said. After a long and legally nuanced discussion about this issue, Goldman was asked to go ahead and make his argument which is built upon a 1981 federal case called Cosner v. Dalton that forced Virginia to hold House of Delegates’ elections in 1982. Goldman argued that the current districts are not balanced by population, a violation of the “one-person, one-vote principle.” “I am asking and am here for an election in 2022,” Goldman said. “They say there won’t be an election in 2022. I want to run in 2022 and the state says they’re not going to hold an election in 2022. I say Cosner says I have a right to run in 2022. They say it doesn’t.” Goldman said the legal remedy should be a new election to ensure that people are properly represented as is their Constitutional right. But he said his standing is based on being a potential candidate. “I gotta wait until 2024 before my new district kicks in,” Goldman said. “I am still represented by the people picked in the old districts and that’s the harm, that’s why you can’t do it. That’s the unusual circumstance in this case.” Goldman cited data that shows the imbalance. “There’s one district that’s got 130,000 people in it and there’s another district with 67,000,” Goldman said, “They propose that doesn’t change until 2024. That blatantly unconstitutional and I’m in this courtroom today to try to get justice,” Goldman said In rebuttal, Ferguson continued to press on the question of Goldman’s legal standing, but said the Commonwealth would not be afraid to argue against his claims.“If the courts conclude that Mr. Goldman has standing to maintain his claim, we will vigorously defend the constitutionality of the 2021 election,” Ferguson said. “We do not think the 14th amendment requires states to reapportion on the basis of Census data that don’t exist when the electoral process has begun.”The three judges will take the matter under advisement and will issue an opinion at a later date. For more on the topic:Fourth Circuit hears arguments in case challenging Virginia House of Delegates election, March 8, 2022, Courthouse NewsSecond shout-out goes to an arboreal event at the Virginia Festival of the Book In today’s second subscriber-supported Public Service Announcement, the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards wants to draw your attention to a Virginia Festival of the Book event coming up on March 16. Michelle Nijhuis will lead a virtual conversation on “Seeing Trees, Saving the Great Forests”. Nijhuis will speak with forest scientists and preservationists Meg Lowman and John Reid. Lowman is the author of The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Planet in the Trees Above Us. Reid is the co-author of Ever Green: Saving Big Forests to Save the Earth. The event on March 16 begins at noon. To register, visit vabook.org. Albemarle County officials address business community at Chamber eventOn February 18, the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce held the first ever State of the Community forum, where leaders from Charlottesville, the University of Virginia, and Albemarle got the chance to introduce themselves to business leaders. Yesterday’s edition of this program featured comments from city officials, and today we’ll hear from county leaders.Emily Kilroy is the director of community and public engagement for Albemarle County. She said she wondered why there had never before been a gathering with city, county, and UVA officials.“It felt like such a natural convening of our community’s leaders,” Kilroy said. “And of course being together today, we are reminded that the community is not just our individual pieces of the pie, but we all do together to grow the entire pie.” County Executive Jeff Richardson said the event was a chance to discuss what he called community opportunities and to introduce his leadership team to the Chamber. “The most effective leaders anticipate where the community is headed and they see changes before others do,” Richardson said. Richardson recently put that statement out to community leaders and there were some common threads about what they thought was needed.“Three basically said equity, access, [and] affordable housing, which means good paying jobs and access to health,” Richardson said. “So it’s keeping the community affordable at all economic levels, that was three out of six.”Richardson said one person said there was a need to find a “new normal” post pandemic and  another said shoring up support for public safety first responders. Richardson said local government needs to be working in all of these areas. “It’s not just one thing,” Richardson said. “It’s so many things.” The county’s strategic plan is intended to prioritize where county investments should go. For Richardson, that means making sure his employees are stable and that there is investment in economic development.  (read the strategic plan)“Recently at the end of our past budget year, we closed the year our better expected financially so an example of this working in real time is that we put $5 million in our economic development fund, $4.1 million was transferred to capital to move infrastructure along, $3.1 million into a dedicated housing fund, and $1 million went to our workforce stabilization which made our human resources director very happy,” Richardson said. Richardson urged people to apply for vacancies on various boards and commissions. There’s a list on the county website if you’re interested. The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors will hold its first budget work session today beginning at 3 p.m. (meeting info)See also: Richardson presents $565M “Transform Albemarle” budget to supervisors, Information Charlottesville, February 23, 2022Michael Clem to kick off The Center’s Thursdays around Five series This next piece is more of a podcast piece, but I advise clicking on the songs below as you read! The Center at Belvedere opened in June 2020 to offer a gathering space for people of all ages with a new facility with much more room than the former facility on Hillsdale Drive. The relatively new Center has a performance space, and this Thursday singer songwriter Michael Clem will kick off a concert series for the press. “For over 30 years, Michael Clem has been playing bass, singing, and writing songs for the national touring act he co-founded, Eddie from Ohio,” reads the event listing on the Center’s website. “Since relocating to Charlottesville, he’s established quite a foothold in the musical scene.”It’s a return performance for Clem, who appeared there last fall. “This is a very well-attended event,” Clem said. “People from the community come out and they bring their lawn chairs, and I’m playing in basically like a theater-type of environment. This wasn’t just me playing incidental white noise music while people were gabbing and socializing. They were there focused, facing forward, giving the singer songwriter exactly what a singer songwriter would want! An attentive crowd!” Clem said the last show was an artistically satisfying event where he got to play original songs and he’s looking forward to playing Thursday’s show. I spoke to Clem two years ago at the beginning of the pandemic. Like so many others, he began performing online to people at home, and contributed the proceeds to restaurants. “I felt really bad for these businesses that were taking such a hit, specifically the ones who butter my bread, the restaurants and the music venues,” Clem said. “And a number of them didn’t survive the shutdown which is really sad.” One of them that survived is the Local, where Clem hosts a singer-songwriter open mic night on Mondays, though that’s currently on what he called Omicron hiatus. The downtime also allowed him to take on a personal challenge. “I decided I would dedicate the month of April to writing one song a day, and I did!” Clem said. “I’m not saying that every song was great but just having that exercise was important to battle the hypocrisy because I teach a songwriting class and that was another thing that moved online. My songwriting class is through the Front Porch, and I did a number of them on Zoom.”Clem said he would play some of these songs, some of which are on an album he produced with Rusty Speidel. You can hear some of them tomorrow night at the first Thursdays Around Five. The website states the event begins at 5:01 p.m. The event is free, but registration in advance at the Center is required. (register)Support the program!Special announcement of a continuing promo with Ting! Are you interested in fast internet? Visit this site and enter your address to see if you can get service through Ting. If you decide to proceed to make the switch, you’ll get:Free installationSecond month of Ting service for freeA $75 gift card to the Downtown MallAdditionally, Ting will match your Substack subscription to support Town Crier Productions, the company that produces this newsletter and other community offerings. So, your $5 a month subscription yields $5 for TCP. Your $50 a year subscription yields $50 for TCP! The same goes for a $200 a year subscription! All goes to cover the costs of getting this newsletter out as often as possible. Learn more here! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Seven days into March and we finally encounter a Monday. Will this day be any different from the six that have come before it? Certainly there is more light and green shoots from yesterday are a little bit longer. There are more bird songs in the air than this time last month. The perfect soundtrack for to begin another week of Charlottesville Community Engagement! I’m your host, Sean Tubbs. On today’s show: The University of Virginia’s Buildings and Grounds Committee gets an update on the next round of construction projectsUVa students vote to change the one punishment for an honor code violationMore examples of divided government as the Virginia General Assembly meets in its final regularly-scheduled week. Today’s first shout-out goes to LEAPYou don’t need the “luck of the Irish” to be safe and comfortable in your own home. To see what you can do to get the most out of your home, contact LEAP, your local energy nonprofit, to schedule a home energy assessment this month - just $45 for City and County residents. LEAP also offers FREE home weatherization to income- and age-qualifying residents. If someone in your household is age 60 or older, or you have an annual household income of less than $74,950, you may qualify for a free energy assessment and home energy improvements such as insulation and air sealing. Sign up today to lower your energy bills, increase comfort, and reduce energy waste at home!Charlottesville’s FY23 Budget posted - Rogers does not recommend a property tax rate increase Just as I was about to hit send today, interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers’s $216.17 million budget was posted on the city’s website. Rogers does not recommend an increase in the real estate tax rate at this time. However, Council can still decide to move forward with a ten cent tax increase, which would generate $9.2 million. “While the funding from that additional 10-cents assessment is in the presented budget for City Council to consider, the City Manager’s budget does not utilize thosefunds as part of the presented balanced budget,” reads Rogers’s letter to the Council. This budget is presented almost two years after the pandemic altered the economic situation. Rogers said there has been a rebound. “Sales tax is up 8.33 percent, meals and lodging tax are up 19.3 percent and 30 percent respectively,” Rogers said. “While the City’s unemployment rate was at acalendar year high in June 2021 at 4.1 percent, by year end it had plummeted to 2.35 percent.” The Commissioner of Revenue is recommending a decrease in the personal property tax rate due to the increased valuation, but the budget currently recommends that being kept at $4.20 for now. Senior Budget Analyst Krisy Hammill said the recommended rate would be unveiled during the budget process. Bond proceeds to cover the cost of the $75 million reconfiguration would not be authorized until FY24. The budget will be presented to the City Council tonight and the first work session will be held virtually Thursday beginning at 6 p.m. More details in a future installment of the newsletter. UVA students vote to end expulsion for honor violationsStudents at the University of Virginia have voted to end a long-standing tradition where people can be kicked out permanently for violating the honor code. Instead, the new single-sanction punishment will be a year’s suspension rather than the traditional expulsion. According to UVA Today, over 6,000 students voted on the proposal with around 80 percent in favor of the change. The University Board of Visitors met last week and President Jim Ryan told the group that he would not have voted to make the change. He also spoke of the enhanced community involvement UVA has made during his tenure. Ryan established the President’s Council on UVA-Community Partnership and a report was completed in February 2019. (read the report)“It has been in the spirit of what we can do together and the approach on affordable housing is a great example of that,” Ryan said. UVA has pledged to work with a private developer to build up to 1,500 below-market units and has selected three sites on land owned by the UVA or its real estate foundation. One of them is at the North Fork Discovery Park, and a rezoning for that project is making its way through Albemale County’s land use application process. “All of it going a long way to changing the narrative about UVA and about UVA’s relationship to Charlottesville and Albemarle County and I think that that’s a very good thing for the University,” Ryan said. “There’s still plenty of work to do but the conversation is different than it was four years ago.” Ryan also sought feedback on the University’s strategic plan and some of the initiatives within. One of them is to “Be a strong partner and good neighbor to the Charlottesville region.” (See all of the articles tagged Land Use - University of Virginia on Information Charlottesville) UVA committee gets update on construction On Thursday, the BOV’s Buildings and Grounds Committee met and discussed several matters of interest. There are several major construction projects underway with the most impact likely coming from the Emmet - Ivy Corridor where the School of Data Science is well underway heading toward a December 2023 completion date. The committee was briefed on some changes coming to UVA’s Capital Plan which has a budget of just over $3 billion, according to Colette Sheehy, Senior Vice President for Operations and State Government Relations. “We’ve actually completed quite a bit of work in the last year, $700 million worth of projects,” Sheehy said. “Some of the more notable ones include the University of Hospital expansion, the orthopedic center, and the Student Health and Wellness Center.”Sheehy said staff are proposing adding $411 million in new project, with $20 million of that just to plan projects. The proposed 2022 Capital Plan would be $2.67 billion. They’re also proposing removing a standalone project to construct a $60 million new building for the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. “We now are pursuing a partnership between the Karsh Institute for Democracy and the Batten School to provide some space for Batten within the Karsh Institute,” Sheehy said. That building will also be within the Emmet - Ivy precinct along with a new hotel and convention center. Construction of that building is expected to begin in late spring or early summer. Projects under construction are the renovations of Alderman Library, a new residence hall on Brandon Avenue, and the Contemplative Commons near the Dell stormwater pond. Projects in the planning stages include a football operations building, an Olympic sports complex, the Karsh Institute, and a new building for the McIntire School of Commerce. There are three new projects that will be added to the planning pool. “One is the Center for the Arts,” Sheehy said. “The planning authorization was included in Governor Northam’s introduced budget allowing us to actually use our money to do the planning. But that is a good signal the state is interested in funding that project in the future.”This authorization remains within the budget bill currently being negotiated in the General Assembly. UVA has an $11 million gift to cover the cost of the design work. There’s also a $4 million gift to begin planning work for a Center for Design for the School of Architecture and a $5 million gift for an academic building for the Engineering School.“We’ve done some planning already for both of those schools and there is a need for additional space,” Sheehy said. Four projects would be added for construction, with one of them being a $350 million Institute for Biotechnology. “It is a research facility with a manufacturing facility included in it that would allow us to produce research through to clinical trials for new drug therapies,” Sheehy said. “The intention is that it would attract many biotechnology companies that would want to work with our faculty and to locate in and around Charlottesville.” This project is also within both the House and Senate versions of the budget. Other new projects are additional landscaping on Ivy Road, HVAC work at Monroe Hall, and infrastructure at Memorial Gym to make it more accessible as well as ADA compliant. There is also funding for a study of childcare needs as well as a space study for nursing to accommodate more instructional space. The changes to the Capital Plan will be voted upon in June. Sheehy also said there will also be an update of the 2019 Parking and Transportation Study post-COVID. (read the 2019 study)“The president has asked us to go back and do a more comprehensive kind of broad-based look at the need for parking overall across the institution,” Sheehy said. One member of the Buildings and Grounds Committee suggested building additional parking on the other side of the railroad tracks south of the University of Virginia Health System. Sheehy pushed back. “We have to be careful that that’s a residential neighborhood and there are lot of issues to consider,” Sheehy said. “Traffic, neighbors, the needs of the health system. We will look at all of that.” The next meeting of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors is in June.Shout-out to the Piedmont Master GardenersThe second shout-out today goes to the Piedmont Master Gardeners to announce their 2022 Spring Lecture Series featuring leading experts on sustainable landscaping, indigenous gardening wisdom and small fruit production at home. For all four Thursdays in March, you can buy a virtual ticket for these informative events. On March 10, Renée Gokey and Christine Price-Abelow of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian will discuss  “The Three Sisters: Indigenous Origins and Best Growing Practices.” On March 24, Jayesh Samtani will discuss “Home Garden Berries—Selection, Cultivation, and Growing Alongside Ornamental Plants”. To purchase a ticket and for the rest of the sessions, visit piedmontmastergardeners.org/events.General Assembly updateThere are only a handful of days left in the 2022 General Assembly, and there are several bills that are now in conference. I’ll try to track the progress as many of those as possible, but for now, here are some more bills that originated in the Republican-controlled House of Delegates that did not make it out of the Democrat-controlled Senate.A bill to delay the requirement of the State Air Pollution Control Board to implement federal Clean Car regulations failed to make it out of the Senate Agriculture, Conservation, and Natural Resources Committee on a party-line 7 to 8 vote. The House of Delegates had passed the Bill 52 to 48. (HB1267)A bill to allow hunters to go onto other people’s property to retrieve the animals they’ve killed also did not make it out of that Senate committee on a 10 to 5 motion to pass by indefinitely. (HB1334)A bill that would have required people seeking an abortion to provide written consent and undergo counseling was passed by indefinitely in the Senate Education and Health Committee on a 10 to 5 vote. (HB212)A bill related to abortion that would have made it a Class 4 felony to not treat an “infant born alive” passed the House on a 52 to 48 vote but was passed by indefinitely by the Senate Rules Committee on an 11 to 4 vote. (HB304)The Senate Education and Health Committee also defeated a bill to allow the Commissioner of Health to allow people to be exempt from vaccine mandates for religious reasons. That was defeated on a 9 to 6 vote. (HB306) Also passed by indefinitely is a bill that would have directed the Board of Education to provide alternate pathways for people who want to attain an advanced high school diploma. (HB340)Another would have created Parental Choice Education Savings Accounts. HB1024 passed the House of Delegates on a party-line 52 to 48 vote but was passed by indefinitely by the Senate Education and Health Committee on a 9 to 6 vote. A bill to prohibit the teaching of moral dynamics of race and sex had passed the House of Delegates on a 50 to 49 vote, but the Senate Education and Health committee passed this by indefinitely on a 9 to 6 vote. (HB787)A bill to require the Department of Planning and Budget to establish a program to reduce regulations and to limit spending by state government agencies made it out of the House of Delegates on a 51 to 47 vote, but the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee voted this down on a 11 to 4 vote. (HB244)That committee also killed a bill to lower the state’s gas tax rate for a one-year period. This was on a 12 to 4 vote. (HB1144)A bill to eliminate permanent lists for absentee voters passed the House of Delegates on a 52 to 46 vote but the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee voted to pass it by indefinitely on a 9 to 6 vote. (HB175)A bill that would allow some school security officers to carry a firearm passed the House on a 52 to 46 vote but was passed by indefinitely by the Senate Rules Committee on a 13 to 3 vote. (HB8)A bill that would have allowed high school students to be arrested for disorderly conduct on school property also was killed by the Rules Committee on a 13 to 3 vote. The House of Delegates had passed that 52 to 48. (HB89)The Senate Rules Committee also passed by indefinitely a bill that would have created a Commission on Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the Commonwealth. The vote was 14 to 2 on a bill that had passed the House of Delegates unanimously. (HB1057)Oral arguments scheduled for tomorrow in House 2022 race appealTomorrow afternoon, a three judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals will hold oral arguments for a lawsuit in which one party seeks an election in the House of Delegates this year. Richmond attorney Paul Goldman sued the Virginia Board of Elections last summer that argued the boundaries for the House of Delegates in the 2021 election were unconstitutional because they are out of date. For more on the case and how we got to where we are, I recommended reading Brad Kutner’s March 5 story on Courthouse News. Support the program!Special announcement of a continuing promo with Ting! Are you interested in fast internet? Visit this site and enter your address to see if you can get service through Ting. If you decide to proceed to make the switch, you’ll get:Free installationSecond month of Ting service for freeA $75 gift card to the Downtown MallAdditionally, Ting will match your Substack subscription to support Town Crier Productions, the company that produces this newsletter and other community offerings. So, your $5 a month subscription yields $5 for TCP. Your $50 a year subscription yields $50 for TCP! The same goes for a $200 a year subscription! All goes to cover the costs of getting this newsletter out as often as possible. Learn more here! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

We’re now over a month past the solstice and I can assure you that there’s more light in our day and there will be an end to winter. For now, there certainly is a lot of cold and it’s a shame there’s no way to conduct a harvest. I’m Sean Tubbs and I spend my time indoors with the curtains drawn pouring through meetings and agendas to bring you Charlottesville Community Engagement, a newsletter and podcast that wants you to keep track of the sky. On today’s show:Legislation to allow Charlottesville to hold a referendum on a one percent sales tax  increase for education has passed the SenateCharlottesville needs more time to respond to a lawsuit from a former city managerAlbemarle County begins the redistricting process and may accelerate it due to a pending federal lawsuit that could force House of Delegates races this NovemberCharlottesville’s public housing body is briefed on back rent owed by a third of tenants, and the city wants proposals for three quarters of a million dollars in affordable housing moneyFirst Patreon-fueled shout-out:With winter weather here, now is the time to think about keeping your family warm through the cold Virginia months. Make sure you are getting the most out of your home with help from your local energy nonprofit, LEAP. LEAP wants you and yours to keep comfortable all year round, and offers FREE home weatherization to income- and age-qualifying residents. If you’re age 60 or older, or have an annual household income of less than $74,950, you may qualify for a free energy assessment and home energy improvements such as insulation and air sealing. Sign up today to lower your energy bills, increase comfort, and reduce energy waste at home!Pandemic updateAs Virginia policy on COVID mitigation strategies continues to change with a new Governor, the numbers continue to come in. Today the Virginia Department of Health reports another 10,699 new cases and the seven day-percent positivity is at 29.5 percent. While the trend this week is downward, these numbers are still higher than at most points during the pandemic. In the Blue Ridge Health District, there are another 350 new cases reported today and the seven-day average for new positive tests is at 25.1 percent. There have been four new fatalities reported since Friday in the district. Augusta Health and the University of Virginia Health System are pleading with members of the public to get a COVID vaccination and a booster to reduce strain on the medical infrastructure. “After two years and four surges, COVID-19 has tragically claimed the lives and health of too many in our communities,” reads a joint press release from both entities. “Our care teams are exhausted, both physically and mentally.”The release points out that the vast majority of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated and urges people to get the booster. It also asks people to continue wearing a mask in public but to upgrade to one that is medical grade as opposed to a cloth mask.Richardson lawsuit updateThe city of Charlottesville has asked for more time to respond to a federal lawsuit from former City Manager Tarron Richardson. Richardson filed a civil rights suit in November in the Western District of Virginia against Council and four individuals claiming he was discriminated against after members of Council broke a non-disparagement clause. He was also barred from publishing an op-ed in the Daily Progress. Charlottesville asked for an extension to respond to the argument, and Judge Norman K. Moon has given them until February 16.  See also: Former City Manager Sues Charlottesville, November 24, 2021Chamber of Commerce welcomes new membersThree new people have been added to the Board of Directors for the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce.Eric Mayberry is the president of the Daily Progress as well as director of sales and local marketing. Jonathan Chasen is a private wealth financial advisor with Wells Fargo Advisors. Rebecca Ivins is a client solutions manager for Hourigan, a construction company that has worked on several projects in Charlottesville including the Dairy Central building, the CODE building, and the Apex building. Charlottesville sales tax bill clears Virginia SenateHere’s a snapshot of where the General Assembly was at the close of business yesterday. The Senate has passed 37 bills, and the House of Delegates of Delegates has passed three, all three of which deal with insurance. So let’s focus today on the 40-member Chamber, where Senator Chap Petersen’s bill to permit hunting on Sunday passed the full Senate on a 29 to 11 vote (SB8). Both Charlottesville and Isle of Wight County are one step closer to being able to hold a referendum for a one percent sales tax increase to support education. SB37 for Isle of Wight County passed on a 27 to 12 vote. SB298 for Charlottesville passed on a 28 to 12 vote. Another bill would allow all localities in Virginia to hold such a referendum also passed on a 28 to 12 vote (SB472). Other bills that have passed the Senate:Legislation to allow employers to offer rewards to people who get the COVID-19 vaccine through their health insurance wellness program has passed on a 19 to 17 vote (SB42)A bill to direct the Department of Health to create a prescription drug awareness program in conjunction with the Board of Pharmacy passed unanimously. (SB14)A locality’s planning commission would have up to 100 days to make a recommendation on a Comprehensive Plan amendment under a bill that passed the Senate on a 26 to 14 vote. (SB35)Candidates for constitutional officers for localities would be required to identify their party registration if the House agrees to (SB39) and Governor Youngkin signs it. The Senate voted 25 to 15.  The Senate unanimously approved a bill to float $101 million in bonds for projects at Virginia Tech and James Madison University (SB93).Juvenile and Domestic Courts could waive the requirement for the ceremonial occasion when a minor gets a driver’s license if SB139 if the House agrees. The Senate passed it unanimously. (SB139)Candidates for public office would have to file campaign finance reports electronically under SB222, which passed the Senate unanimously. Another bill to expand required disclosures for who pays for campaign advertisements also passed the Senate on a 23 to 15 vote (SB318). Finally for the Senate, a bill to allow Arlington County to appoint an independent police auditor passed on a 21 to 19 vote (SB388). Second Patreon-fueled shout out goes to WTJUAlgorithms know how to put songs and artists together based on genre or beats per minute. But only people can make connections that engage your mind and warm your heart. The music on WTJU 91.1 FM is chosen by dozens and dozens of volunteer hosts -- music lovers like you who live right here in the Charlottesville area. Listener donations keep WTJU alive and thriving. In this era of algorithm-driven everything, go against the grain. Support freeform community radio on WTJU and get ready for the Folk Marathon, beginning on February 7. Consider a donation at wtju.net/donate.Public housing agency owed $100K in unpaid rent At last night’s meeting of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, one Commission noted that there is a great deal of unpaid rent on the agency’s books.“We have roughly a third of our public housing residents not paying their rent,” said John Sales, the CRHA’s executive director. In all, the CRHA is owed about $100,000 in back rent but Sales said that’s not the only financial hit public housing takes as a result because a federal match cannot be made. “And CRHA is not receiving the rental subsidy on it which negatively impacts the overall financial standing of the housing authority,” Sales said. The CRHA has been redirecting other funds towards covering the shortfall with grant funding covering April, May and half of June from last year. Sales said continuing lack of rent payment continues to trouble the federal government.“[The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] is calling it out at every meeting and asks where we are doing to address it,” Sales said. The CRHA’s fiscal year ends on March 31. Sales said the agency is hiring an eviction prevention coordinator and housing stabilization position soon to work with families.“There is a policy now where the housing authority has to work with the families before moving forward with any eviction proceeding to at least get them to attempt to get the rent relief program,” Sales said. Sales said eviction is a last resort. The average rental payment is $247 a month and the monthly operating expense to run CRHA is currently $265,927. HUD considered CRHA to be a “troubled” agency and there will be an audit on March 16. At the meeting, former Charlottesville Mayor Nikuyah Walker was officially appointed to serve on the CRHA’s redevelopment committee in an at-large capacity.City seeking affordable housing proposals Since 2007, Charlottesville has had an affordable housing fund to help create and preserve affordable housing units. Today they’ve begun the process of soliciting proposals for how to use $750,000 from the current fiscal year’s capital budget. The notice for funding availability (NOFA) refers to the affordable housing plan adopted by Council last March. “This Plan recommends that the City make a strong and recurring financial commitment to address housing needs in Charlottesville in order to increase the number of subsidized affordable homes by 1,100 homes, preserve existing 600 existing subdidized affordable homes, and stabilize 1,800 to 2,000 owner and renter households facing housing instability,” reads the application.The application comes at a time when the firm HR&A continues to work on an audit of how the housing fund has been used. They gave a preliminary report to Council on December 20 that states the city has not tracked how the $38 million in local funds have been used to date. The current capital improvement program budget for this year includes $1.5 million for CHRA redevelopment, $900,000 for the supplemental rental assistance program, and over $3 million for the redevelopment of Friendship Court. The budget actually shows a line item of $925,000 for the housing fund this year. Questions are out but the answers will come in a future edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. See also: Council briefed on affordable housing funds, December 31, 2021Goldman lawsuit prompting Albemarle to consider expedited redistricting scheduleThe redistricting process in Albemarle County got underway last night with an information session on how it will work out. Guidelines require magisterial districts to be contained with Virginia’s legislative and Congressional lines. Under the new maps approved in late December by the Virginia Supreme Court, Albemarle falls entirely within the new 11th Senate District.“Albemarle County falls into two different Virginia House of Delegates districts, the 54th which is basically the urban ring around the city of Charlottesville and then the 55th which is the majority of the county,” said Anthony Bessette, the Senior Assistant County Attorney.There’s a slight glitch when it comes to the new House of Representatives maps.“Almost all of Albemarle County is in the 5th District but there is a tiny sliver up [north] that is in the 7th District,” Bessette said. There’s even a Twitter account for the sliver. Since 2010, Albemarle’s population grew by 13,385 people according to the Census but the growth isn’t even.“Rio and White Hall grew a great deal whereas on the other hand Scottsville did not grow at the same pace,” Bessette said. That means the Rio District and White Hall districts will need to be reduced in size and others will need to be expanded. In December, Supervisors approved preliminary guidelines that would keep their number at six. “The determination of whether to have six supervisors, five, four, seven, eight, etc, is a local decision that the Board of Supervisors gets to make,” Bessette said. Because of a federal lawsuit that may force an election for the House of Delegates this year, staff is now recommending an accelerated schedule in order to prepare for potential primaries in June. “Long story short on that is that timeline would see the process compressed further to begin on February 2 and end on March 23,” Bessette said. Attorney Paul Goldman has filed suit against the state Board of Elections arguing that the current districts for the House of Delegates are unconstitutional because they are out of date. Goldman filed a brief on January 18 in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and attorneys for the Board of Elections have until January 28 to file additional materials. Public comment on redistricting will be taken at their February 2 meeting. The maps that have been developed so far were not shown to the public at the information session. Registrar Jake Washburne said three maps are being proposed. “We are planning to send those to the Board of Supervisors so they can be placed on the Board of Supervisors’ agenda for February 2,” Washburne said.  If you want to submit written comments:Richard J. WashburneGeneral Registrar Albemarle County Department of Voter Registration and Elections 1600 5th Street Charlottesville VA 22902 rwashburne@albemarle.orgThanks for reading!For ways to support this newsletter visit Information Charlottesville. Please send this on to someone else so we can grow the audience. Please let me know if you have questions! This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

It has been one year since the last time it was January 20, and this time around many things are different. Does anything ever stay exactly the same? That is not a question directly before us on this installment of Charlottesville Community Engagement, a constantly changing compendium of challenges, choices, and charged chatter. I’m your host, Sean Tubbs. Charlottesville Community Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.In this edition:Charlottesville City Council approves two housing projects intended for those with lower incomesScottsville Town Council defers a vote on two clustered developments within town limitsGovernor Youngkin issues two more executive orders, including a removal word “equity” from his Cabinet diversity chiefA new brief is filed in a lawsuit seeking a House of Delegates election in 2022 And an update from the General Assembly update. Two shouts-outs to start the programYou’re listening to Charlottesville. Community Engagement. Let’s begin today with two more Patreon-fueled shout-outs. The first comes a long-time supporter who wants you to know:"Today is a great day to spread good cheer: reach out to an old friend, compliment a stranger, or pause for a moment of gratitude to savor a delight."And this is where I wish my mother a Happy Birthday! The second comes from a more recent supporter who wants you to go out and read a local news story written by a local journalist. Whether it be the Daily Progress, Charlottesville Tomorrow, C-Ville Weekly, NBC29, CBS19, WINA, or some other place I’ve not mentioned - the community depends on a network of people writing about the community. Go learn about this place today!Pandemic updateToday the number of new COVID-19 cases increased over yesterday, but the seven-day percent positivity has declined once again. There are 14,803 new cases and the percent positivity is at 31.6 percent. The number of hospitalizations is currently at 3,868 patients with 635 of them in intensive care units and 388 are on ventilators. The Blue Ridge Health District reports another 512 new cases today and the percent positivity is at 26 percent. Just before publication, Governor Glenn Youngkin has announced a limited state of emergency in Executive Order 11 that is related to the pandemic. This is similar to one enacted earlier this month by former Governor Ralph Northam which provides flexibility to health care providers related to staffing. This will expire on February 21. Read the order for more details on the 18 provisions within. Request for 2022 General Assembly election still alive in federal courtA new motion was filed this week in the federal lawsuit seeking the Virginia Board of Elections to hold a new election this November for all 100 seats in the House of Delegates. Attorney Paul Goldman filed the suit in the Eastern District of Virginia last year arguing that the current boundaries are invalid because they are based on 2010 Census data. Goldman also sought a temporary injunction to stop the Board in November from certifying the 2021 election results in the House of Delegates for a period of two years. That motion was denied. Goldman appealed and this week filed a brief in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that applies the same legal arguments that led the Eastern District Court in 1981 to order House of Delegates elections that year for a one year term with a new election in 1982. (learn more on Wikipedia)“The failure of the federal government to timely provide 2020 U.S. Census Data created delays in the Virginia reapportionment process,” reads the summary of the argument. “But this federal failure doesn’t provide a constitutional ‘free pass’ for state officials to arbitrarily decide to violate Appellee’s constitutionally protected voting rights.” Goldman argues the districts in place last November violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because some districts had many more voters than others because the reapportionment had not happened yet. He’s asking the three judge panel to take up the case. In late December, The Supreme Court of Virginia approved maps drawn by two special masters. More 2022 General Assembly legislation ends in committeeMeanwhile, the work of the General Assembly continues with 1.4 percent of the 2,078 bills filed so far listed as failing. At least, as of 8 a.m. this morning. All but one of them are in the Senate. One such bill from Senator Bill Stanley (R-20) would have required a mandatory minimum of life imprisonment for a Class 1 felony. It was “passed by indefinitely” in the Judiciary Committee on a party line vote of 8 to 7. (SB79)A bill from Senator Ghazala F. Hashmi (D-10) would have allowed “credentialed newspersons” to cross police lines, perimeters, and barricades. Hashmi asked for it to be stricken. (SB240)Senator Amanda Chase (R-11) has a bill (SB548) that would have prohibited any discrimination of people based on vaccination status. That one “failed to report” from the General Laws and Technology committee on a party-line vote. A second bill (SB582) from Chase would have prevented any discrimination against people who don’t want to wear a mask. That one was “passed by indefinitely” by an 8 to 6 vote, with Senator Siobhan Dunnavant (R-12) not casting a vote.A bill from Senator Jeremy McPike (D-29) (SB606) would have required smoke detectors in all new residential units, equipped with a battery that can last ten years. The request was stricken at the request of the patron. A bill from Senator Jill Vogel (R-27) would have added a sixth member to the Board of Elections and extend their terms to six years. SB610 would also have required photo identification to vote and require registrars to audit the voter rolls more frequently. The bill was stricken at Vogel’s request in the Privileges and Elections committee.One piece of legislation has already been continued to 2023. SB59 from Senator Travis Hackworth (R-38) would require the police chief in a dissolved city to relinquish records over to the sheriff of the county that would take over authority of the jurisdiction.  But it’s not all failure. Forty House Joint Resolutions have passed the House of Delegates, as well as four House Resolutions. Most of these are organizational or commendations for various individuals and organizations across Virginia. View the full list of passed bills here on the Legislative Information System. Youngkin drops “equity” from title of new diversity chiefGovernor Youngkin has selected a top official of the Heritage Foundation to serve as his director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Angela Sailor is the vice president of the Feulner Institute, a wing of Heritage. Youngkin also signed Executive Order #10 which elevates Sailor to his cabinet as the Chief Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion officer.  “We acknowledge that too many of our citizens have not received the equal opportunity they deserve, and we recognize that diversity when genuinely embraced strengthens our Commonwealth,” reads the order, which also establishes that Sailor will be “responsive to the rights of parents in educational and curricular decision-making.” Third shout-outThis past Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society heard from their newest board member at a meeting beginning at 7 p.m. Now you can catch up with the event on YouTube. (watch here)Gayle Jessup White is the first Public Relations and Community Engagement Officer for Monticello and the first descendant of Thomas Jefferson and the enslaved community to work for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. Gayle Jessup White will talk about her book Reclamation: Sally Hemmings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant’s Search for her Family’s Lasting Legacy. The recording is available on YouTube and you can learn more about the historical society as albemarlehistory.org. Council approves MACAA rezoning for Piedmont Housing Alliance and Habitat for HumanityCharlottesville City Council has given final approval to two separate rezoning requests for new housing projects on Park Street in Charlottesville, just north of the U.S. 250 bypass. At Council’s first meeting of the year, they reached consensus to place rezoning of land at the Park Street Christian Church was approved on the consent agenda for the January 18 meeting, but the rezoning at the Monticello Area Community Action Alliance property was further discussed. Dannon O’Connell is a city planner. “The proposed [Planned Unit Development] development calls for preservation of two existing single-family homes, 28 new townhome or duplex units, 65 multifamily units in two buildings, and a maximum of 7,500 square feet of commercial child care space,” O’Connell said. The land use designations for both properties were changed in the 2021 Future Land use Map to allow more density. (review the Future Land Use Map on the Cville Plans Together) Nearby resident John Hossack argued that data supplied by the developer was faulty and a new sample should be taken. “The traffic analysis was based on data collected in June 2021, in the middle of COVID, middle of summer, and outside of school and University term time,” Hossack said. “This is really significant because this potentially could sink the project or at least justify a reduction in scale which is really what the community is looking for.” Traffic engineer Brennan Duncan acknowledged the traffic study may have been affected by COVID but defended its use. “The applicant was on a pretty strict timeline to get their stuff submitted so I did say that if they were going to do it and wanted to move forward, they would have to do the correcting factor,” Duncan said.Duncan said the applicant was asked to compare their traffic study with a previous one conducted for a previous rezoning for the MACAA property and to traffic counts from the Virginia Department of Transportation. “Both of the traffic studies that have been done do fall in line with the VDOT estimate for Park Street so I am confident in both the VDOT estimate and the numbers that came through,” Duncan said. Duncan acknowledged traffic would increase in the area above the average of 10,000 vehicles that use it today. That’s down from the more than 20,000 vehicles a day that used to use the roadway before the John Warner Parkway opened. (read the 2020 estimated traffic counts for Charlottesville)“The theoretical maximum is around 18,000 vehicles per day and that’s at the point where you start seeing pretty severe traffic backups during peak hours,” Duncan said. “The 1,200 vehicles per day between both this project, the MACAA site and the Park Street Church is not insignificant. I also do not believe it will severely hurt or have severe detrimental effects on the network.”Duncan also acknowledges that there are site distance issues with the existing entrance, but that the development will meet the minimum requirement with a new intersection that will align Maaca Drive with Davis Avenue. “I have worked with the applicant to achieve what I believe to be the safest intersection that we can hope for given the topography of the area,” Duncan said. Duncan said he would be requesting a left hand turn lane onto Macca Drive from northbound Park when the project goes to site plan approval. Mayor Lloyd Snook said he has had a concern about the existing MACAA site for years and that the existing conditions with site distance are not good. “And it just seems to me that the changes that will be coming to eliminate a lot of those obstacles are going to make life a lot easier,” Snook said. “Whether that has anything to do with the accident rate, I don’t know.”Snook said a Charlottesville with more residential density will mean development on what he called more problematic parcels. “One of the things we’ve got to do as Councilors, Planning Commissioners, and city planners, and so on is to attempt to recognize when the problem is something that is manageable versus when it is not manageable,” Snook said.Snook said in this case, the problems are manageable. He added Council will be called on to manage those problems. Councilor Michael Payne said he walked through the sight and acknowledges the problems. He gave some insight into how he made his decision.“A heuristic I use is just if a development is appropriate and safe, is would I feel comfortable explaining to everyone who could have lived there the reasons I voted no, and likewise, would I feel comfortable explaining to every individual who lives in the neighborhood why I voted yes,” Payne said. “In this case the tradeoffs to me seem clear for the benefit of at least 76 families who will have access to affordable rentals and homeownerships is worth it.” The vote was unanimous. Scottsville Town Council defers on density requestsMeanwhile in Scottsville, the Town Council on Tuesday night took up two special use permits to allow for additional residential density for projects on Bird Street and Blenheim Road. The Blenheim Heights projects would see 24 houses on 9 acres and the Bird Street project would be 48 houses on 12 acres. Both take advantage of provisions in an updated zoning code that allows for clustered development. Before the meeting, the town put on three informational meetings at which the details were given. The public hearing opened without a presentation from the applicant. Several speakers asked for Council to deny the request. One of them was Kim Schmitt, who moved to Scottsville in 1995. “We moved from Florida and one of the reasons was to get away from development,” Schmitt said.Schmitt said she wanted to see what the by-right development would look like.  Another speaker mentioned a petition calling for “responsible” development and she asked this be entered into the record.“There are a total of 299 signatures from the paper and online petition,” the woman said. “This petition shows that there are many people who want development and that’s what the petition says. We want development but we want responsible growth commensurate with the size of our town.” Others were supportive. Thomas Unsworth who lives on Bird Street. He supported a project that would give him new neighbors.  “And I cannot stress how excited I am to see it happen,” Unsworth said. “The historic downtown area is already a dense settlement that encourages people to get out and walk to enjoy local amenities like the library, parks, and the farmers’ market and the many businesses that we have. Building new housing in this part of town is the perfect way to allow Scottsville to grow without putting an undue stress on the parking and traffic situations downtown.”However, he said he did not support the Blenheim Heights project because it is a cul-de-sac, more common in suburban development. The majority of speakers asked for a denial or more time to come up with conditions. When the matter came before the Town Council, Scottsville Mayor Ron Smith suggested taking time for a vote later. “Technically we could vote on this right now but with all that information that came out of this weekend’s meeting I feel like Town Council needs to have a special session to discuss all that information before they take a vote,” Smith said. The items will return to the Town Council for a vote on February 22, with a special session to be scheduled between now and then. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

“We have to get out of this notion that revenge is going to heal us in any way.” Mercedes Montagnes grew up wanting to be an actress. Instead, she found herself taking the LSATs on a whim and, eventually, becoming a lawyer. As the Executive Director of The Promise of Justice Initiative, Mercedes and her litigation team are challenging racist laws and practices in prisons in Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world. In our conversation, we explore what meaningful healing looks like (including for survivors), her continuing fight for justice for those convicted by the Jim Crow era practice of nonunanimougs juries, prison plantation labor, Covid—and, of course, change. “There is hope,” she told me. “It's hard,” but change is possible. Mercedes Montagnes is the Executive Director of The Promise of Justice Initiative. Mercedes jumped into her legal career feet first by litigating prison conditions throughout Louisiana. Her first impact litigation case challenged the alarming heat conditions on Death Row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. Today, her litigation team is tackling a myriad of issues ranging from medical care to over detention. In addition to leading the litigation team, Mercedes oversees the projects at PJI. In the last year, this has included exposing corruption and violence in law enforcement in Jefferson Davis Parish, building the Jim Crow Juries Project on behalf of people incarcerated from non-unanimous juries, establishing and building Louisiana Survivors for Reform—a group of justice minded survivors, and coordinating litigation and policy responses to COVID-19 for those in prisons and jails throughout the state. Mercedes' work is rooted in the belief that our criminal court system must be reformed in order to keep our communities, both inside and outside prison, safe. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Carl Barbier in the Eastern District of Louisiana and Chief Judge Roger Gregory on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Connect with Promise of Justice Initiative: Website: https://promiseofjustice.org Instagram: @justicespromise Twitter: @justicespromise Facebook: @promiseofjustice --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ashley-asti/message

Last September on BreakPoint, we told you about the constitutional challenge to a World War I memorial in Bladensburg, Maryland, known as the “Peace Cross.” The Cross was erected on private land in 1925 by the American Legion. It was to be a memorial to 49 men from that area who died in the Great War. Their names are listed on the plaque at the base of the monument. In 1961, the state assumed control of the land, and therefore responsibility for the memorial's maintenance. For more than fifty years, no one protested the Cross's presence on public land or the state paying for its maintenance. But in 2014,  the American Humanist Association challenged the constitutionality of the Peace Cross in federal court. They lost the initial case in Federal District Court, but they prevailed at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. In October, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and this past Wednesday heard the oral arguments. There was a lot at stake. If the American Humanist Association prevails, the implications would reach far beyond this memorial in Maryland to any and all memorials on public land everywhere in the country. Any of them with anything resembling a cross or religious symbol of any kind would be fair game. The justices, or at least most of them, seemed aware of the stakes and a bit skeptical that after all this time the Peace Cross suddenly presented an immediate threat to our republic. Still, some of the justices' comments were less than a ringing endorsement of the place of religion in the public square. Most notably Justice Elena Kagan, who as Solicitor General defended the presence of a cross in the Mojave National Monument, emphasized the historical context. At the time of its erection in 1925, she pointed out, crosses were common in war memorials and were not intended to convey a specific religious message. As she put it, “All the words on the memorial are words about military valor and so forth. So why in a case like that can we not say essentially the religious content has been stripped of this monument?” For Kagan, crosses were “the preeminent symbol for how to memorialize the war dead at that time.” In a somewhat ironic twist, it was the lawyer for the American Humanist Association who then insisted that “a large Latin cross can't be stripped of its religious meaning. I don't think it needs special words to . . . announce that this is . . . a religious symbol,” he said. We should be sincerely grateful that, as The New York Times and the Washington Post both agreed,  a solid majority of the justices seem to be for allowing the Peace Cross to remain on this public land. If the case were to go the other way, we could be looking at a scenario raised by Justice Breyer: wholesale demolition of suspiciously-religious historical monuments across the country, possibly starting with Arlington Cemetery across the Potomac and its hundreds of thousands of crosses. But the argument, like the case itself, underscores the allergy to religion that permeates Establishment Clause jurisprudence, especially from the left. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, apparently the only kind of godliness  that's “acceptable” these days is one that denies the power thereof. So religious symbols must be, as Justice Kagan put it, “stripped” of “their religious content” if it's to pass constitutional muster. That would mean that the image of Moses found on the walls of the Supreme Court, must be nothing more than equivalent to the images of Augustus, Hammurabi, John Marshall, and Napoleon — a grouping that would surprise many rabbis, not to mention Moses himself. So I pray that the New York Times and the Washington Post are correct in their reading of the justice. But we shouldn't break out into our best end-zone celebrations just yet. Even a victory in this case could still leave the public square a little more naked. http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/03/breakpoint-the-peace-cross-and-the-supreme-court/   Resources Supreme Court seems to seek narrow way to uphold cross that memorializes war dead Robert Barnes | Washington Post | February 27, 2019 Supreme Court appears inclined to let 40-foot ‘Peace Cross' stand on public land Bill Mears | Fox News | February 27, 2019 First Liberty website

(Note: Due to technical issues, only part of this interview is available.)The case of Jeff MacDonald has been infused with controversy since the murders took place, almost 39 years ago. Through it all, Jeff has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Over the many years since trial, thousands of pages of government reports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that prove the existence of outside assailants, have been obtained. In fact, not only do these documents show Jeff's claim of outside assailants to be true, they also show how the prosecution deliberately set out to suppress evidence supporting these claims before, during, and after his trial.The MacDonald case has served as an example of malfeasance in the investigation of the FBI Crime Lab's misconduct, and the case has been featured in numerous congressional hearings and in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and The New Republic. In January, 2006, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel of three unanimously agreed that the affidavit of Jimmy Britt, a respected former US Marshal, was sufficient grounds to propel a rare fourth appeal (successive habeas petition) forward for review to the District Court in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jimmy Britt died in October, 2008. In November, 2008, the District Judge denied relief. The defense will appeal to the 4th Circuit.The MacDonald case is one of the most enduring and haunting legal cases of our time, and a torturous example of injustice and wrongful conviction. It continues to endure and weigh heavily on the public consciousness because the right conclusion has never been has never been issued in a court of law- that Jeff MacDonald is an innocent man and must be released. If guilt was so clear, its hard to imagine that the interest and emotion this case continues to proliferate would still exist nearly 40 years later.http://themacdonaldcase.org/index.htmlThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1198501/advertisement

(Note: Due to technical issues, only part of this interview is available.)The case of Jeff MacDonald has been infused with controversy since the murders took place, almost 39 years ago. Through it all, Jeff has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Over the many years since trial, thousands of pages of government reports, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that prove the existence of outside assailants, have been obtained. In fact, not only do these documents show Jeff's claim of outside assailants to be true, they also show how the prosecution deliberately set out to suppress evidence supporting these claims before, during, and after his trial. The MacDonald case has served as an example of malfeasance in the investigation of the FBI Crime Lab's misconduct, and the case has been featured in numerous congressional hearings and in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and The New Republic. In January, 2006, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals panel of three unanimously agreed that the affidavit of Jimmy Britt, a respected former US Marshal, was sufficient grounds to propel a rare fourth appeal (successive habeas petition) forward for review to the District Court in Raleigh, North Carolina. Jimmy Britt died in October, 2008. In November, 2008, the District Judge denied relief. The defense will appeal to the 4th Circuit. The MacDonald case is one of the most enduring and haunting legal cases of our time, and a torturous example of injustice and wrongful conviction. It continues to endure and weigh heavily on the public consciousness because the right conclusion has never been has never been issued in a court of law- that Jeff MacDonald is an innocent man and must be released. If guilt was so clear, its hard to imagine that the interest and emotion this case continues to proliferate would still exist nearly 40 years later. http://themacdonaldcase.org/index.htmlThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1198501/advertisement