Episode Notes

This year, the average price of a single family home in Virginia crossed the $400 thousand dollar mark. Virginia’s urban populations are expanding without the housing supply to keep up. Staring down skyrocketing prices, many people are forced to accept that homeownership won’t be in their future.

Confronting this goes beyond building more housing... that’s only one arrow in a quiver full of policies that could make housing more affordable. And we need to consider all of those policy arrows in the quiver. 

One such arrow is Community Land Trusts, or CLTs. CLTs trace their origins back to the Civil Rights era and are grounded in a philosophy of racial justice. We talk with Erica Sims, CEO of the Maggie Walker CLT in Richmond, about CLTs’ radical vision of "permanently affordable housing."

But first, we talk with Wyatt Gordon, a reporter covering housing, transportation, and land use at Virginia Mercury. He breaks down the "missing middle” housing debate going on in Arlington, and how "missing middle" housing reframes visions of homeownership.  

Click here to learn more about Charles Sherrod, co-founder of the first Community Land Trust "New Communities."

Episode Notes

From the school board meetings in Loudoun County to pushes to ban "racially divisive" books in schools, conservatives have been relying on one concept in particular: “parents' rights.” Glenn Youngkin latched onto parents’ rights during his campaign and rode it to victory over Terry McAuliffe. Other Republican candidates across the country have taken note. During the midterms, many GOP candidates have declared themselves strong supporters of moms and dads.

But this catch-all phrase "parents rights" is being used much more broadly than its legal precedent. Youngkin typically cites a 2013 Virginia law that stemmed from a court ruling regarding sperm donors and custody issues. So how did we get from a case about in vitro fertilization to parents rights being the basis for all sorts of stuff? And what does Youngkin's rhetoric portend for the political future?  

To help us figure this out, we speak with Bekah Saxon, a UniServe director at the Virginia Education Association, and Graham Moomaw, a state-house reporter for Virginia Mercury. 

Find Graham Moomaw’s article covering the history of parents’ rights here.

Episode Notes

Here at Bold Dominion, we typically focus on the machinations of power, money, and lawmaking in Richmond. But Virginia also sends 11 lawmakers to the U.S. House of Representatives. And all of them are on the ballot on Tuesday, November 8th.

That means Election Day is less than two weeks away. If you're a Bold Dominion fan, you probably already know that. Maybe you even voted early. But if not, make sure you vote. You can even do same-day registration at the polls, thanks to recent changes to Virginia voting rules.

Today, we're joined by fellow politics podcasters Michael Pope from Pod Virginia and Chaz Nuttycombe from CNalysis. They help explain how the midterm races are going and what they mean for our country.

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Episode Notes

Here at Bold Dominion, we pubish a new episode every two weeks. We have seventy something episodes under our belt, and still so much more to talk about. Keeping up with politics is a year-round job.

But for Virginia legislators, it’s not actually year-round. In odd numbered years, lawmakers are in Richmond for 60 days, and in even years, just a month. That’s often extended by a few more weeks. But in most years, Virginia legislators start in mid-January and are packed up and ready to head home by March.

Why so short? And what does that mean for Virginia politics?

To unpack this, we'll be talking with Randolph-Macon politics professor Richard Meagher, as well as Richmond Times Dispatch reporter Charlotte Rene Wood (we'll discuss reporting she did with Charlottesville Tomorrow). We'll also get to hear from Virginia Delegate Kelly Fowler, representing the Virginia Beach area in District 21.

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Episode Notes

You're listening to this show thanks to high speed internet. And as awesome as this podcast may be, there's a whole lot more that makes high speed internet indispensable for modern life. During the pandemic, school, work, health, and social life all moved online. Access to the internet was, and still is, a must. That made life awfully challenging for families where high-speed internet was not available.

Some good news on this podcast, for once! The 2021 Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act allotted $65 billion dollars to expand internet access across the country. That's through a program called Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD.

In this nationwide push, Virginia has emerged as a leader. Our commonwealth was prioritizing broadband access way before BEAD. As governor, Ralph Northam set a goal to get all Virginia communities online by 2024, and that has been continued by Glenn Youngkin. As other states receive BEAD funding, experts are advising to follow Virginia's footsteps.

To help us understand what Virginia's doing right, we talk with Christopher Ali, Professor of Telecommunications at Penn State University, and Dr. Tamarah Holmes, Director of Broadband at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development.

Find out more on our prior episode on broadband expansion.

Episode Notes

This time of year, climate change is particularly hard to ignore. We’ve just made it through another scorching summer. Virginia’s coastal regions are grappling with sea water rise. And on some days, that haze covering the Blue Ridge is smoke from California wildfires.

Despite this, the U.S. government’s response to climate change has long been… tepid. Years of kicking the can down the road, or in some circles, denying the problem altogether.

But this year, that changed.

Last month, U.S. Congress passed the biggest climate law in US history … under the unassuming name, Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is the smaller version of last year’s Build Back Better bill, with a number of compromises made to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. So now, the IRA will provide strong incentives for people to choose clean energy through their consumer choices.

To help us understand the ins and outs of the IRA and what it means for Virginia, we’re talking with writer and lawyer Ivy Main and environmental economist Bill Shobe.

For further reading, check out Ivy Main's article on the IRA here. Also check out the 2021 report on carbon neutrality in Virginia, co-written by Bill Shobe: Decarbonizing Virginia's Economy: Pathways to 2050

Episode Notes

Virginia is home to four of the ten richest counties in America -- all in Northern Virginia. Virginia is also home to some of the most economically distressed counties in America -- all in Southwest Virginia. 

And of all fifty states, Virginia has the largest gap between the minimum wage and the bare minimum needed to support a family of four.

That's according to the Commission Examining Racial Inequity in Virginia Law, set up during Ralph Northam's administration back in 2019. The commission released three reports covering the consequences of structural racism in Virginia. Later in the show, we sit down with the Vice-Chair of the commission, Andrew Block. He'll share what they found and what progress has been made since.

But first we talk with sociologist Lawrence Eppard. He co-authored the 2021 study, “Social and Economic Costs of Inequality in the State of Virginia.” Turns out there are big disparities in social mobility across Virginia. Which is to say... in some counties, it’s a lot harder for people born in low-income families to escape poverty. Eppard breaks down what inequality of place looks like... and its consequences.

Eppard also hosts the podcast Utterly Moderate, the official podcast of the Connors Forum for a Healthy Democracy. Listen here!

The Commission Examining Racial Inequity in Virginia Law released three reports from 2019-2022. Check them out below:

From Virginia's Law Books

Identifying and Addressing the Vestiges of Inequity and Inequality in Virginia's Laws

Identifying Virginia's Racially Discriminatory Laws and Inequitable Economic Policies

Episode Notes

What does a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" actually look like in practice?

If you listen to Bold Dominion, you probably vote every November, call your lawmaker about issues you care about, maybe have attended a protest or two. But sometimes it's hard to see how those actions affect the legislation coming out of Richmond. If the GA feels a bit like a black box or a magic show, we don't blame you. Why do some bills make it all the way into law, and others die in committee? Who brings bill ideas to the table in the first place, and how can citizens have a hand in that process?

Today we crack open that black box and figure out how citizens can help craft legislation. We talk with Sally Hudson, who represents the 56th District in the Virginia General Assembly, and Dan Holmes, Legislative Policy Director at the environmental nonprofit Clean Virginia.

Episode Notes

This week, we revisit the terrible anniversary of August 11th and 12th, 2017. Five years after the Unite the Right Rally,  "Charlottesville" is still a shorthand for Nazis and fascists invading a community. As we look at Virginia politics and American politics today, where are we now?

To answer that question, we talk to Larycia Hawkins, a professor in both the department of Politics and department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Later in the show, we hear from data scientist Emily Gorcenski, UVA professor Jalane Schmidt, and Virginia Delegate Sally Hudson.

Episode Notes

Longtime Richmond Times-Dispatch journalist Jeff Schapiro has a sort of shorthand on Twitter that I appreciate. When he tweets about the consulting firm McGuireWoods, he refers to it as The Shadow Government. Such is the influence that McGuire Woods holds over policymaking in Virginia.

Virginia may have a new governor this year, but the Shadow Government remains the same.

(Interviews for this episode were originally recorded in April 2021.)