Good morning, RVA! It's 50 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday which turned out to be a real stunner. Expect highs in the upper 60s, some sunshine, and, for at least three minutes, not a care in the world. Enjoy it, because this weekend's starting to look real wet.
Water cooler
It's Tuesday, and the COVID-19 Community Level in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is low...kind of. The 7-day case rate per 100,00 people for each locality sits at 142, 245, and 193 respectively. Assuming hospitalization rates and capacities stay the same, the magic case rate threshold for Community Level to flip from low to medium (green to yellow) is 200. Henrico's already there and Chesterfield's knocking at the door. The CDC updates their Community Level indicator once per week on Thursdays, so, technically, the region remains in low today, but if we were to run the numbers this morning, we'd have a split decision with Henrico medium, while Richmond and Chesterfield remained low. There's more disease out there than previously, so maybe start to think through your own actions and risk levels.
Here's a quick piece from Henry Graff at NBC12 about bike lanes and bike share. Two interesting tidbits worth noting: 1) The City has 15 miles of bike lanes ready to roll out with the current street paving schedule (which I think you can find listed here), and 2) the new Southside bike share station(s) opens the week of May 23rd (🤞). Actually, looking at the bike share map for the first time in a while, and I see five new stations planned for the Southside and four new stations on the Northside, and, gasp, even one in Carytown. I've been burned before, RVA Bike Share, so I'm not holding my breath, but several of those proposed stations would create useful trips for me and my family!
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Chris Suarez reports on City Council's final budget meeting last night. No big surprises for those of you following along for the past couple of months: Council passed the budget without issue. Now on to passing interesting legislation—like the Civilian Review Board, land value tax, ranked-choice voting, and collective bargaining.
Speaking of, Chris Suarez also has the update on the City's two dueling collective bargaining ordinances. Not a ton of update here, honestly, other than Councilmember Lambert removed her name from the Everyone Gets A Union paper (ORD. 2021-345). I'm not sure that really matters, though, because the paper still has five co-patrons. I don't know why Council has hesitated on moving forward with this one, seems like they could just vote to pass it today with the existing co-patrons.
Ben Paviour at VPM reports that Del. Danica Roem will run for State Senate. She's the first openly transgender person elected to any state legislature, and, as such, has a huge, national platform for raising money and winning elections. She's also a pretty great legislator focused on passing nuts-and-bolts legislations that has real impacts on her constituents. Taking this seat and maintaining a majority in the Senate next year is absolutely critical to preventing implementation of the Governor's agenda—especially after the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.
Finally, to close, these great shots of Downtown, Brown's Island, Tredegar, and the river via /r/rva.
This morning's longread
Of Course the Constitution Has Nothing to Say About Abortion
It shouldn't surprise anyone, especially not a Supreme Court Justice, that we lack great historical example of laws protecting women's rights.
This will be, in large part, because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses, vaginas, fetuses, placentas, menstrual blood, breasts, or breast milk. There is nothing in that document about women at all. Most consequentially, there is nothing in that document—or in the circumstances under which it was written—that suggests its authors imagined women as part of the political community embraced by the phrase “We the People.” There were no women among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were no women among the hundreds of people who participated in ratifying conventions in the states. There were no women judges. There were no women legislators. At the time, women could neither hold office nor run for office, and, except in New Jersey, and then only fleetingly, women could not vote. Legally, most women did not exist as persons. Because these facts appear to surprise Alito, abortion is likely to become a crime in at least twenty states this spring.
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