Good morning, RVA: Budget session #2, pot holes, and weed vetoes

Good Morning, RVA!

Good morning, RVA! It's 49 °F, and, while we’ve got a decent chance for rain this afternoon, the temperatures look downright amazing. Expect highs in the 70s for today and the next two days until more seasonable weather moves back in. You know, despite the rain, I’m really feeling Richmond’s current weather patterns, mostly because my yard is absolutely exploding with springtime action: hostas, apple blossoms, red buds, coreopsis, and clematis—every dang thing!

Water cooler

Happy, April 1st! Just a quick reminder that some of the things you see on the internet today may be fake—although brands spending their time making up entirely fake product lines seems like a less successful marketing strategy these days. You can, of course, be assured that the thrilling content below about budgets, legislation, and potholes is as real as real gets!

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City Council will hold their second budget session today at 1:00 PM and will focus on the Richmond Public Schools portion of the budget and the “Children’s Funding Project” (which I’m not exactly sure to what that refers). RPS accounts for an enormous chunk of the budget, $529 million out of $1 billion, so this seems like a great place for City Council to start.

Also, this is the first time the City of Richmond has ever dropped a billion-with-a-B budget—up about $180 million from just three years ago. If you want to scroll through it yourself, and you should!, you can download the entire proposed budget, both operating and capital, here.

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I’ve got two thrilling roads updates for you this morning.

First, starting today, the City will embark upon a “3-week Pothole Blitz” and will attempt to work through a backlog of 439 service requests for pothole repairs. Those request get pulled directly from the City’s 3-1-1 system, so if you have a favorite/hated pothole make sure you actually submit a 3-1-1 ticket. You can do that via RVA311.com or through the RVA311 app. The latter is probably a little easier, and now I just need to work on trying to replace my initial reaction of “complain about this infrastructure online” with “submit a 3-1-1 ticket first (and then maybe complain about it online).”

Second, starting tomorrow, VDOT will close the ramp from southbound Chamberlayne Avenue onto eastbound I-95 as they work to rejigger that entire interchange. Part of me is like, finally, because the current merge right there is absolutely bonkers unsafe. The (much safer) detour will route folks over to Brook Road and up through Gilpin Court, and I do wonder if morning bus service on the #1 will get caught up in rush hour traffic. We’ll see tomorrow, but keep it in mind if you’ve got somewhere to be and need to move through that part of town.

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A bunch of folks at VPM report that Governor Youngkin has officially vetoed the legislation that would have set up a legal retail market for marijuana in Virginia. They headline the story with “Gov. Glenn Youngkin smokes cannabis, minimum wage bills,” which, great work headline writers. Did the governor whip out his red veto pen (or is it a stamp, maybe?) on this legislation as retaliation for the scrapping of GlennDome? Probably not, but I do think he kept the possibility of signing this bill around as a potential bargaining chip for his pro stadium deal. Now, with both the deal and the bill dead, we’ll most likely have to wait until the next time Democrats control both the General Assembly and the Executive Mansion before we can pass some legislation to sort out the commonwealth’s existing messy weed gray areas.

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This past Friday, Chesterfield County kicked off its own Restaurant Week and includes enough locally-owned restaurants that you’re bound to find something new-to-you and worth trying out. You could, of course, just default to La Milpa for a guaranteed excellent meal, but maybe do that and pick something new to try off the aforelinked list of spots. As with most restaurant weeks, you eat for a good cause as your meal will support the Chesterfield Food Bank Outreach Center.

This morning's longread

Two retracted studies at the Supreme Court this week

Katelyn Jetelina, who you may remember as Your Local Epidemiologist, writes about the mifepristone case recently heard by the Supreme Court. She details why the publisher of the studies used to bring this case forward had them retracted just a couple months ago. Tap through to see some truly heinous—and dangerous!—manipulation of a y-axis.

After these concerns were raised, SAGE asked for a review of the articles post-publication. They had two subject matter experts and one independent statistical reviewer take a look. Then SAGE retracted the paper based on three major factors: Methodological and statistical concerns. Specifically, “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors,” and “misleading presentations” of data that “demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and invalidate the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part.” Ethical considerations. The authors were members of three pro-life advocacy organizations, despite declaring no conflicts of interest in the study. More ethical considerations. The peer reviewer (who is supposed to be an unbiased third party) didn’t disclose their conflict of interest— that they know the authors personally. SAGE did not publish the experts’ peer review, which is normal practice. However, given the stakes of this case, it could be coming.

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Picture of the Day

City Hall in the morning light.