Good morning, RVA! It's 50 °F, and welcome to day two of our three-day streak of warm weather. Today you can expect highs in the mid 60s and a decent chance for rain later this afternoon. I think, if you time it right, you can still find plenty of chances to get outdoors without getting soaked.
Water cooler
We’ll look at this! City Council has hired a manager for the Civilian Review Board! I can’t remember when this was originally supposed to happen, but it feels like we’ve been waiting a long time for the CRB to get off the ground and to get started reviewing. The new manager, Joseph Lowery, has a deep background in law enforcement, with time spent at the Department of Justice, FBI, and Chesterfield County Police Department. On the one hand, in order to have any sort of success in this role, the person filling it must be able to build at least some sort of trust with the Richmond Police Department. You’d think someone with this much law enforcement experience would definitely have a head start in doing just that. On the other hand, is an ex-police officer really the best person to help keep police officers accountable? I honestly don’t know but am willing to give Lowery the benefit of the doubt, and I am thankful we’ve now got someone in this role. According to Council’s release, “Mr. Lowery’s first order of business in office will be to draft Board Policies and Procedures,” which I’m sure we’ll get our hands on in just a bit.
As foretold, last night City Council passed all of the bills I had on the GMRVA Legislation Tracker. In fact, every bill I’ve added to the Tracker this year, seven in total, has passed; this particular Council does not like to take a bill all the way through the process unless they know they’ve got the votes. Anyway, I love a tracker—or, now that I’m thinking about it, I think I love organizing information in a way that makes sense to me and that I hope will be helpful to other people. That’s kind of what this newsletter does, too, I guess!
P.S. If you have any feedback for me on this one or the new Big List of Richmond 2024 Candidates tracker, please let me know!
Em Holter and Colleen Curran at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report that “[Richmond] restaurant owners with delinquent meals tax balances will not be charged additional late fees while their cases are under review.” This seems fair, and, honestly might help the City more than the impacted restaurants, because Department of Finance staff will need to review each delinquent account manually to figure out who owes what and why. I bet it’s way harder to do that with accounts continuing to accrue penalties each and every month.
RIC Today answers a question I’ve had for a couple of years but have been too lazy to look up: How does one become a certified Master Gardner? I think Master Gardner is probably my final form—you know, after I accrue massive and sustaining wealth from writing a daily zoning and rezoning email.
Tonight, at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street) from 6:00–7:30 PM, Housing Opportunities Made Equal will host a panel discussion with a great title: “The Intersection of Evictions and Fair Housing: What Has Changed and What Must Be Done.” Ben Teresa from RVA Eviction Lab will join Laura Dobbs and Michelle Jones from HOME of VA, and I bet, should you attend, you’ll learn an absolute ton. The event is free, but make sure you register ahead of this evening to give them a heads up.
This morning's longread
It’s Not as Easy as Just Getting Biden to Drop Out
As promised, here’s Jamelle Bouie’s response to that Ezra Klein piece about getting Biden to drop out of the presidential race and finding a new nominee to replace him at the Democratic Convention, as they did in this country up until the late 1960s. With his deep knowledge of America’s history, Bouie easily throws some ice cold water on the idea. Honestly, at this point, Bouie’s email is, like, 75% of the reason I subscribe to the New York Times (NYT Cooking is the other 25%!).
I should say that I am a strong skeptic of the idea that there is a viable path to replacing Biden as the nominee as long as he is capable and competent. Ezra’s case was persuasive, but I think he underrated the real odds that a brokered convention would end in political disaster for the Democratic Party. Yes, the convention process still exists. There are still delegates and voting, and it continues to be possible to have a contested convention where the party chooses a nominee. The fact that we call this modern process a convention, however, does not mean that it is the same process as the one that chose nominees from roughly 1831 to 1968. A large reason: The American party system of the past half-century is not the same system as the half-century before that. The political parties themselves were different, and their relationship to democratic legitimacy was different as well.
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Picture of the Day
Just a normal way to sit in a car.
