Good morning, RVA: 904↗️ • 2↗️; RPD's new external advisory committee; and surplus funds

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and we now, apparently, live in Fogtown, USA. After the fog burns off, expect highs in the 60s and a generally pleasant day. We’ve got at least another one of these on deck before hurricane remnants move in and give us a pretty good chance of rain on Thursday.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 904↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 2↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 93↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 49, Henrico: 20, and Richmond: 24). Since this pandemic began, 410 people have died in the Richmond region. Locally, the seven-day average of new reported cases sits at 113. I don’t think we’ve had a combined Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield seven-day average over a hundred since back in August. Mostly Chesterfield and Henrico have driven that increase, an increase which started around the second week of October when the local combined seven-day average was just 57. VDH’s pandemic dashboard (which updates on Mondays) reflects the local increases in case counts we’re seeing and puts the Central Region at “substantial community transmission,” the highest level, for the week ending October 24th. Keep in mind 1) the Central Region is massive compared to Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield, and 2) we’re just, just, just over the thresholds for substantial community transmission and the trend is fluctuating. I don’t love when I statdump like this without giving any guidance about how this new information impacts your life. So…keep wearing your masks?

Here’s a weird article by Reed Williams at the Richmond Times-Dispatch about a new “External Advisory Committee” established by Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith. The committee will focus on “community involvement, officer recruitment, and transparency.” However, Chief Smith “declined to name all but one of the new committee’s 15 members and balked when asked if a reporter could cover one of the meetings.” This is…not super transparent? The Chief say he has concerns about members of the committee getting doxxed and harassed for working with the police, which, I dunno. I’m sure the FOIAs are already flying. If the police want to create an external advisory committee—to help them with community involvement and transparency—maybe the first step is being transparent about who from the community is involved? We’ll see how this committee is used in future discussions about police procedures, but in no way should it replace or prevent the work to establish a Civilian Review Board.

Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury writes about the increase in pedestrian deaths on Virginia’s streets over the last couple of years. Just last week a 16-year-old girl was killed by a driver on Richmond’s Southside. Maybe this happens—I have no idea—but every time someone dies or is seriously injured on our streets, the Department of Public Works should do an immediate investigation, figure out what happened, and deploy rapid-response infrastructure to address the problem. Cones, barrels, and signal timing can do a lot to narrow roadways, decrease speeds, and prevent a “6,000 pound Nissan Titan spiraling up and onto the sidewalk.”

City Council meets today at 2:00 PM for a special meeting to decide what to do with the surplus funds from last year—and it’s a lot of surplus, something like $14 million. ORD. 2017–215 (PDF) takes a lot of the fun out of those decisions by boringly and automatically earmarking where any general fund surpluses end up: 50% goes into the Rain Day Fund, 40% to the Capital Maintenance Reserve, and 10% to special projects. It’s that 10% Council has been trying to figure out over the last couple weeks, while the Mayor’s administration has been trying to figure out exactly how much surplus exists. RES. 2020-R059 (PDF) sets out Council’s priorities: $780,000 for post-employment benefits, $110,000 for an equity study (described in RES. 2020-R013as costing $221,770), and $500,000 for COVID-19 contingencies. I think I said a million weeks ago that if it we’re me, I’d sock away the vast majority of any surplus to prepare for the upcoming and probably terrible budget season. Looks like that the City already has laws on the books to make that happen automatically!

I don’t have much to say about the inevitable, under-the-cover-of-darkness swearing in of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. I am, however, looking for your smartest longreads on SCOTUS reform or expansion.

This morning’s longread

Bail Out Parents

I almost sent this article in the Atlantic about government issued per-child stipends (which were passed in the House as part of the HEROES Act yet never even given a vote in the Senate) to local early-childhood policy expert Elliot Haspel. But, turns out, he is the author of this very piece!

Parents, taken collectively, are an underrecognized yet vital economic interest. According to the Brookings Institution, 41.2 million workers, a third of the entire workforce, have a child under age 18. Nearly 34 million have a child under age 14 who is likely to require some kind of supervision during virtual schooling, a task that disproportionately falls on mothers’ shoulders. COVID-19, unsurprisingly and infuriatingly, is already driving women out of the workforce. According to a recent Census Bureau report, “Around one in five (18.2%) of working-age adults said the reason they were not working was because COVID-19 disrupted their childcare arrangements,” with women three times as likely as men to report this barrier.

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