Good morning, RVA! It's 28 °F, and we're under a Winter Weather Advisory until 10:00 AM tomorrow. You can expect whatever snow that's headed our way to start later this evening and continue on through early Saturday morning. NBC12's Megan Wise has downgraded our accumulation totals to 1–2 inches. Boooo!
Water cooler
Ian M. Stewart at VPM talked to a couple of Chesterfield County Public School parents about how they've prepared their children to deal with a school enviornment where masks are no longer required. Obviously, I disagree pretty strongly with parents who think their own individual choices outweigh what's best for the public health—thus, I am a Democrat. That said, though, I found it pretty interesting to hear parents talk through concerns on either side of the issue. I'm still thinking about that final line in the piece from Slate I shared earlier this week: After the governor issued his anti-mask Executive Order #2, "teaching just became significantly harder in Virginia."
The Commonwealth Institute, one of our local policy think tanks, put out this depressing report about the wages of Richmond City employees: "One in 8 general Richmond city workers who work full-time and year-round do not make enough to support themselves, and 4 out of 5 do not make enough to support a family." TCI also says the problem is widespread, not confined to any one department, and has exacerbated an increasingly high turnover rate. They also point to unionizing as one of the ways out of this situation, which is timely as Council will consider two collective bargaining ordinances next week! ORD. 2021-346 would authorize a handful of City departments to unionize, while ORD. 2021-345 would authorize everyone (cops included) to unionize. From TCI's report, "Overall, public-sector collective bargaining tends to boost pay by 5% to 8%." Council's Organizational Development committee could/should take up both of these papers on February 7th (assuming they don't get continued).
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Mel Leonor reports on Governor Youngkin's early moves to flood Virginia's educational landscape with charter schools. I'm not smart enough to know the full impact of standing up charter schools all over the place, but two quotes from this piece raise bright red flags for me. First, "While Youngkin said the bill is centered on colleges and universities, it would also allow private, for-profit businesses to open charter schools using public dollars.", and second, "Other Youngkin-backed legislation would allow the state Board of Education and regional charter agencies to approve applications for new charter schools." Our public schools, especially in Virginia's cities, are already underfunded, and creating a ton of charter schools—possibly run by for-profit businesses!—funded from the same pot of money seems like a great way to increase the disinvestment in our existing public school system. Also, dang, so much for local control, right? Removing local school boards' authority to create and approve charter schools seems like a big, terrible overreach likely to make me feel hopeless in the future. To quote Sen. McClellan, "I would also remind everyone that the last time the state tried to step in and override local school boards on decisions that were made was Massive Resistance."
Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury reports on a great example of how centering a policy platform on "making liberals angry" can have real, unintended consequences. The Governor plans to "increase state funding for local [police] departments by $26 million, 'but only in localities that are increasing funding for their police departments.'" This is, presumably, a sick burn to liberal cities where protestors chanted "defund the police" yet whose subsequent police budgets remained mostly unchanged. In fact, 40 of 48 localities that dropped funding for their police departments (83%), voted for Youngkin and are mostly tiny, small towns that have tiny, small, and fluctuating budgets. Oops.
This morning's longread
How Putin Is Using Russia’s Military as a Tool for Foreign Policy
I'm trying to learn more about what's going on with Russia and Ukraine at the moment, and a reader sent me this piece that helped provide some of the historical/military context.
And instead of socks, poorly trained soldiers often wrapped their feet in swaths of cloth, the way their Soviet and Tsarist predecessors had. Two decades later, it is a far different fighting force that has massed near the border with Ukraine. Under Mr. Putin’s leadership, it has been overhauled into a modern sophisticated army, able to deploy quickly and with lethal effect in conventional conflicts, military analysts said. It features precision-guided weaponry, a newly streamlined command structure and well-fed and professional soldiers. And they still have the nuclear weapons.
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