State and National Government

Rep. Ben Cline

6th District Republican Congressman Ben Cline supports the two rounds of federal relief funds authorized to date – in large part to protect small businesses and their employees – but he also said live on air yesterday its time to think about opening more doors. WFIR’s Gene Marrano has that story:

Hear the complete conversation with Ben Cline below:

Gov. Ralph Northam

FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said Monday he is open to the idea of opening businesses in southwest Virginia before the rest of the state as he weighs when coronavirus restrictions can be lifted. WFIR’s Evan Jones has more:

Northam said at a press conference that the situation in the border city of Bristol illustrates why a regional approach might be necessary.

Bristol, a city that sits on both sides of the Virginia-Tennessee border, now faces a situation where restaurants on the Tennessee side of the border can provide dine-in services to patrons, while those on the Virginia side cannot.

“To try to be consistent, is it really fair for Tennessee’s businesses to be open and Virginia’s not to be?” Northam asked. “I’m open-minded to all of that. I would say, ‘Stay tuned.’”

Northam faced increasingly skeptical questions at Monday’s press conference about his justification for continuing his executive orders closing nonessential businesses and requiring Virginians to stay at home, particularly as other Southern states are beginning to ease restrictions.

Northam said he’s trying to be guided by the science, but he acknowledged Monday that the science is in a state of flux. One computer model, for instance, suggests that Virginia may have reached its peak of COVID-19 cases. Another model, prepared by the University of Virginia, suggests that keeping stay-at-home restrictions in place through the duration of Northam’s current order of June 10 will only delay an inevitable surge of cases, and result in a sharp peak of cases in August.

“It’s not a perfect science and I would be the first as a scientist to agree with that,” said Northam, a physician. “They call this a novel COVID-19, novel meaning new to the world. So there a lot of things that we don’t know about the virus that we’d like to know.”

Also Monday, Northam said he worked with the governors in Maryland and Delaware to request federal help to deal with an outbreak of COVID-19 cases connected to poultry plants on the Delmarva peninsula. He said workers from the federal Centers for Disease Control arrived in Virginia on Monday. Teams include epidemiologists, contact trace workers and translators who speak Haitian Creole, a language commonly used among the region’s poultry workers.

“The poultry economy on the Delmarva peninsula is so interconnected that a coordinated approach is critical,” Northam said.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Plans to convert three convention centers across Virginia into field hospitals as part of the state’s coronavirus response have been put on hold, according to Gov. Ralph Northam’s office.

Current trends suggest Virginia has sufficient hospital bed capacity to deal with the pandemic in the short term, Northam’s spokeswoman, Alena Yarmosky, said in an email.

Work has not begun to build the alternative care sites, which Northam announced in early April would be put in place within about six weeks at convention centers in Richmond, Hampton and Fairfax County. The sites were intended to free up capacity in the existing health care system, and Yarmosky said they remain a possibility if things change.

The Norfolk District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has worked with state officials and health care providers on the design of the sites, said spokesman Patrick Bloodgood

“From the Corps’ perspective, we are ready to go as soon as the state says execute,” he said.

Dr. Danny Avula, who as director of the Richmond and Henrico County health districts was involved in planning conversations about the Richmond alternative care site, said the health systems he’d heard from didn’t think it was necessary to pursue such a huge overhaul. Instead, a projected surge in patients can likely be handled by overflow the systems can create on their own, he said.

In New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S., an alternative care site set up at the Javits Center has had fewer patients than expected.

The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Virginia surpassed 9,600 on Tuesday, with 324 deaths, according to the latest information available from the Department of Health.

Nearly 5,500 hospital beds were available, according to a report published online by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, which reported 1,331 hospitalized patients who have either tested positive for COVID-19 or who have test results pending.

Northam directed Virginia’s hospitals in late March to postpone elective surgeries, a move aimed at freeing up bed space and preserving personal protective equipment that’s in short supply.

Deaths and infections are still rising around the world. The virus has killed more than 175,000 people globally, including more than 43,000 in the United States, according to a count from Johns Hopkins University.

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Photo: Public Domain

Congressman Morgan Griffith says he and his colleagues should vote in person on all matters before the House of Representatives — and not do so by proxy  with just a few House members present in Washington. The House is considering a rules change that would permit this practice, but Griffith, ever the history buff,  says his colleagues should emulate Caesar Rodney, who overcame several serious challenges to cast a key vote for the Declaration of Independence:

Griffith joined us for a live telephone conversation on the Roanoke Valley’s Morning News ahead of Thursday’s expected vote on a second stimulus package that totals close to a half trillion dollars. Here is the full conversation:

 

Gov. Ralph Northam

RICHMOND (from Governor’s office release) —Governor Ralph Northam has signed the Virginia Clean Economy Act and amended the Clean Energy and Community Flood Preparedness Act that requires Virginia to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. It requires new measures to promote energy efficiency, sets a schedule for closing old fossil fuel power plants, and requires electricity to come from 100 percent renewable sources such as solar or wind. Energy companies must pay penalties for not meeting their targets, and part of that revenue would fund job training and renewable energy programs in historically disadvantaged communities.

Governor Northam has also signed nearly two dozen new laws to support working Virginians, including legislation to combat worker misclassification and wage theft, ban workplace discrimination, and prohibit non-compete covenants for low-wage workers. The Governor proposes to increase the minimum wage starting May 1, 2021, and to advance prevailing wage, collective bargaining, and project labor agreement legislation then as well.

House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert commented on the minimum wage hike and the clean energy bill: the following statement: The actions taken by the Governor fail to provide long-term certainty for Virginia’s businesses and their employees. A thirty-one percent increase to operating costs — plus a 25 percent hike in power bills — would be tough in a great economy, they will be potentially devastating as Virginia looks to rebuild.”

Northam also signed new laws to repeal Virginia’s voter ID law, make Election Day a state holiday in Virginia, and expand access to early voting. Also signed: criminal justice reform legislation includes measures raising the felony larceny threshold; permanently eliminating driver’s license suspensions for unpaid fines, fees, and court costs; raising the age of juvenile transfer to adult court; and reforming parole. It includes decriminalizing simple possession of marijuana and sealing the records of prior convictions. The Governor proposed that a study be completed by to assess the impact of fully legalizing marijuana in the Commonwealth.