All results / Stories / Kenneth R. “Ken” Plum, State Delegate (D-36)
Column: Virginia’s Crooked Road
Jane and I are about to embark on an extended weekend visiting one major venue on Virginia’s Heritage Music Trail, The Crooked Road (www.thecrookedroad.org).
Circus Comes to Town
I am going to be taking two of my grandchildren to the Barnum and Bailey Circus at the Richmond Coliseum tonight. It is really amazing how quickly the circus can move into its venue; amaze, entertain and hold in suspense its audience; and then pack up and move on. Just a few blocks from the Coliseum, the General Assembly opened at the State Capitol the second week in January and will pack up this week and members will go back home. For the last six weeks the 140 members of the House of Delegates and State Senate along with their staff and about a thousand lobbyists have been holding forth on Capitol Square for the annual legislative session. The agenda is serious, and the activities over the past several weeks have been humorous, suspenseful and in a term used by the circus ringmaster, “unbelievable.”
Commentary: General Assembly 2016 Session Underway
After the usual business of organizing for a new legislative session, the General Assembly got underway without major incident.
Column: Wind Energy
Wind energy needs to be a part of the renewable mix of energy sources in Virginia and the nation.
With the federal Clean Air Act requiring higher air quality standards, many fossil-fuel power plants will be closing or converting to other fuel sources.
Commentary
Endorsements
About 70 percent of Virginians voted in the last two presidential elections when President Barack Obama carried the state as the first Democrat to do so since Lyndon Johnson won the Old Dominion. In the gubernatorial election in 2009 voter turnout was half that number with the expectation that voter participation in the election on Nov. 5 will also be light. While the presidential elections get a lot of attention and high participation, statewide elections do not attract as many voters. In many ways, voters who stay home are pushing off their responsibility in voting to a group of people unknown to them who do bother to vote. Such a situation can lead to a small group of highly motivated voters swinging the outcome of an election. Please encourage your family, co-workers and neighbors to participate as the consequences of the election are critically important to the future of the commonwealth, and we each need to take part in the decision.
Opinion: Commentary: Celebrating Black History
There are ample reasons to be celebrating Black history in Virginia this month and throughout the year.
One of the meaningful traditions that has evolved in the Virginia House of Delegates over the last couple of decades has been the celebration of Black History Month by having a speech each day on the House floor about famous Black persons and their struggles and accomplishments in the Commonwealth.
Column: Institutional Stress
The ship of state of the Old Dominion that traces its beginnings to a meeting of the colonists in the church at Jamestown in 1619 showed some stress lines last week as the legislative body, the General Assembly, turned a one-day reconvened session to consider the Governor’s amendments into two days of meetings with incomplete results.
Column: Term Limited
In a couple of days Governor Bob McDonnell will present a proposed budget to the General Assembly for the next two years. Early announcements about what it contains have been good: critically needed funding for mental health and restoration of funding to education programs. What is unique about the budget is that Governor McDonnell will not be around to defend or to implement it. The Constitution of Virginia limits the governor to one term. A governor can run a second time as Mills Godwin did in the 1960s, but the terms cannot be successive.
Commentary: Balancing the Budget
One of the responsibilities of the Governor of Virginia dictated by the State Constitution is to propose a budget for a biennium.
Column: Medicaid Expansion Lite
Virginia’s first governor, Patrick Henry, was elected to four one-year terms. Henry’s reputation as a leader was well established before he became governor with his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech made in St. John’s Church in Richmond before the Revolution.
Column: A Bloodless Revolution
About this time of year in 1966 I wrote a letter to my hometown newspaper, The Page News and Courier, suggesting that Virginia had just undergone one of the “bloodless revolutions” that Thomas Jefferson had suggested would be good for society periodically.
Opinion: Commentary: Redistricting Underway
The Constitution requires that after the federal census every ten years there is to be a reapportionment of legislative districts based on population growth and shifts reflecting “one-man, one-vote.”
Opinion: Commentary: Insurrection
Last Thursday’s one-word headline in the Richmond Times Dispatch was in such a large font that it extended across the entire width of the newspaper: INSURRECTION.
A Breach of Trust
In a Tom DeLay, Texas-style move, Republicans in the Virginia State Senate re-drew the legislative district lines without public notice or involvement. This action in the 20-20 divided body came on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday when Democratic Senator Henry Marsh who is one of Virginia's most prominent civil rights leaders was away attending President Obama's inauguration. The new map, if passed by the Republican-controlled House of Delegates and signed by the governor, would give Republicans an advantage in taking back control of the Senate which they hold now only by virtue of the lieutenant governor who is the presiding officer and tie breaker being a Republican. "Count this as a new low for hyper-partisanship, dirty tricks, and the unaccountable arrogance of power," is the way one newspaper editorial described the action.
Much Remains to Be Done
Commentary
I grew up in my early years in a racially segregated Virginia. The State Constitution had a provision stating, “Mixed schools prohibited. White and colored children shall not be taught in the same school.”