IN THE NEWS:

Return of the Payday Lenders: A new app allows users to get quick cash based on hours they've already worked, and the emergence of this new financial technology is leading lawmakers in Richmond to start thinking about state regulations for this growing market. But some worry that earned wage access looks a lot like a loan, and may get consumers caught in a debt trap.

Ending Solitary Confinement: Republican Delegate Glenn Davis and Democratic House Leader Don Scott are working together to ban solitary confinement at state prisons. They say it'll improve the lives and mental health of people who are incarcerated--though it may face difficulties as it moves forward through the House Appropriations Committee.

Thermostatic Politics: People who have smart thermostats in Virginia can sign up for a rebate program that allows them to save money if they allow utility companies to reduce the drain on the power grid during the hottest part of the summer. Some lawmakers are looking to prohibit utilities from making any adjustments.


At the Watercooler:

• Not an anomaly: 2020's red states have higher murder rates (axios.com)

• The latest on the effort to build another casino somewhere in Virginia--and what casinos mean for the local area.

Trivia: What is the origin of Virginia's lynch law?

Episode Transcript

Michael Pope 

On this episode of Pod Virginia.

Thomas Bowman 

The return of payday lending.

Dana Wiggins 

The biggest problem that people had with payday loans back in the day was that everything was due all at once.

Michael Pope 

Ending solitary confinement.

Glenn Davis 

People who are not allowed outside of his cell and have no human interaction for, let's say, a month could develop significant mental health challenges that they don't already have to go in.

Thomas Bowman 

Just how smart are smart thermostats?

Jill Vogel 

They can act on your behalf. Without you having said, yes, I'm setting my thermostat at this temperature.

Michael Pope 

Plus, we read your tweets and play a round of trivia.

Thomas Bowman 

You're listening to Pod Virginia didn't stick around.

Mark Obenshain 

I'm Michael Pope.

Thomas Bowman 

I'm Tom Bowman.

Michael Pope 

And this is Pod Virginia, a podcast that's looking forward to budget weekend. So this weekend, Thomas, is the big day when the money committees release all the budget details. I would imagine that's a pretty long weekend for all the staffers, right?

Thomas Bowman 

All of session is a marathon of work. So working on the weekend, it's par for the course for the General Assembly session for the staffers and also leading up to session. So yeah, it is a strange tradition, though.

Michael Pope 

Not the most pleasant thing to do over the weekend, dipping into all those budget details. But that's the weekend that's on the horizon here for many people.

All right, let's get to the news. The return of payday lenders now gets quick cash based on hours you've already worked. Hey, there's an app for that. And now, the emergence of this new financial technology product is leading lawmakers in Richmond to start thinking about state regulations for this growing market. Republican Delegate Amanda Batten from James City County has a bill to create new FinTech regulations.

Amanda Batten 

The employee could use this service to access the wages that they've earned but have not yet been paid during the current pay cycle. So this is not alone. These are wages that have already, in fact, been earned.

Thomas Bowman 

The idea is that earned wage access is not a loan. That's not a view that everyone shares. Dana Wiggins at the Virginia Poverty Law Center says she's worried about people getting caught in a debt trap.

Dana Wiggins 

The biggest problem that people had with payday loans back in the day was that everything was due all at once. When you had to repay it, it was seen as an advance on your payday.

Michael Pope 

So the concern there from Dana Wiggins and many organizations that are concerned about low-income people, vulnerable people, and people who have found themselves in situations where they need quick cash is that they might download this app and then suddenly get caught in a debt trap that they can never get out of kind of. Sounds like payday lending to me. But then you talk to the people who are involved in this industry, heard Delegate Batten say, hey, this doesn't even really qualify as a loan. So is it, or isn't it a question here, something lawmakers are really gonna have to get their heads around?

Thomas Bowman 

Well, it is a loan; it's called a bridge loan; specifically, those are for small amounts of cash, usually, and just to float you until you have more money in your account. And you do have to return that money. It's not a gift. And so, regardless of whether or not there is an interest rate on that, it's still a loan. Like, there's got to be a string attached. It's not free money.

Michael Pope 

The strings attached are they make money. I mean, they make money off of people who are desperate for quick cash.

Thomas Bowman 

Right. So what happens if you don't pay it back in a timely manner?

Michael Pope 

Then you might take another loan. This is part of the cycle of debt here. The Virginia Poverty Law Center is saying, hey, let's take a real hard look at these this app, this specific app, and any of its competitors, to see exactly how this works and how low-income people, vulnerable people might be taken advantage of by this new technology.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, and so this is just the next evolution for payday lending. We got rid of car title lenders at one point; they were all over the place. The point is that these are predatory loans. They are preying on wage workers who need quick cash to pay a bill. And so we absolutely have a society of vested interest in making sure that these new financial products just are not another way for wealthy investors to profit on the backs of working people. We've got to ensure access to capital, regardless of income level, and it's got to be transparent and fair and not trap people and another cycle of debt.

Michael Pope 

All right, let's get to our next story. Ending solitary confinement, Republican Delegate Glenn Davis and Democratic House Leader Don Scott are working together to ban solitary confinement at state prisons. And the effort is already moving forward in the House. Now, Davis and Scott even worked together to tour a prison in Sussex County together. And now the Democratic leader says it's time to end this practice, which some advocates call torture.

Don Scott 

Want to make sure that folks are not put into a situation that exacerbates any mental health issues want to make sure people get treated humanely, make sure people have human contact. And we wanted to make sure that we put that in the statement of our values in the Virginia code.

Thomas Bowman 

Glenn Davis says this bill will improve the lives of people who are in prison.

Glenn Davis 

People who are not allowed outside of his cell and have no human interaction for, let's say, a month could develop significant mental health challenges if they don't already have them going in. This assures that no one is in a cell more than 20 hours a day and ensures no one's in an environment where they're restricted more than 15 days consecutively unless there are severe exceptions.

Michael Pope 

The involvement of Delegate Glenn Davis is really significant here, Thomas, because he is a Republican in the House. And we've talked about ending solitary confinement on the podcast several times. But the problem is it never went anywhere because the face of this effort is Senator Joe Morrissey. So he was able to get it out of the Senate, but the Republican House would kill it. Now we've got something a little different here with Republican Delegate Glenn Davis leading the effort in the Republican-controlled House, that bill got out of a subcommittee with a unanimous vote.

Thomas Bowman 

Good. I'm glad to see this. Thank you, Glenn Davis and Don Scott, for carrying these bills. It is so important because solitary confinement is a form of torture. And it's shown to have devastating effects on people's mental health. And a growing number of states, by the way, Michael are starting to ban this practice. Because we know that keeping people in isolation for extended periods it's not only inhumane but it's also ineffective. And so we've got to be looking at all of this to determine whether or not a system we've created actually meets our stated goals. And if the stated goal is to make sure that these people never commit another crime, which is gonna be tough, given the Criminal Code, but it's just not going to be effective, you're going to cause more mental health problems. Often people with mental health problems find their way into prisons.

Michael Pope 

So the politics are different this year because there's some Republican buy-in. However, even after I got out of that subcommittee with unanimous votes, Thomas, guess where the bill is heading now?

Thomas Bowman 

I don't want to ruin your narrative, Michael. So tell me.

Michael Pope 

I don't have a narrative. But the bill is headed toward the appropriations committee, where they can see if they can afford to do that. This is not free; this is not free. You would have to you have to pay to make this happen. And it's a pretty hefty price tag.

Thomas Bowman 

So anytime you make an adjustment like this, there's a default fiscal impact that they assume whether or not it actually does it. I would think something like this is actually kind of unquantifiable because the staff is getting paid no matter which room the person is in. But voting unanimously to send something to appropriations is actually a very, can be, I should say, a soft way to kill a popular bill.

Michael Pope 

I hear ya.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, so Michael, call me when this gets out of appropriations and makes it into the budget.

Michael Pope 

Thermostatic politics, so people who have smart thermostats in Virginia can sign up for a rebate program that allows them to save money if they allow utility companies to reduce the drain on the power grid during the hottest parts of the summer. So Senator Jill Vogel's Republican from Fauquier County introduced a bill to prohibit utilities from ever making any adjustments to your smart thermostat.

Jill Vogel 

They can act on your behalf without you having said yes, I'm setting my thermostat at this temperature.

Thomas Bowman 

Amanda Cox at Appalachian Power says people can opt into the program, and they can also opt-out.

Amanda Cox 

And you can stop any of these events, which we only do in hot weather in Appalachian powers territory, and if you decide that you do not want to purchase debate, all you have to do is set your thermostat to what's comfortable in your home, and you opt out of that event.

Michael Pope 

So this Senate panel actually killed this bill. It's not going anywhere. But it is worth thinking about some of these issues here, Thomas, because what we really see here is kind of a fear of technology of Big Brother changing the temperature in your House. There was even some discussion from some of these senators about using this kind of smart technology to work with other smart devices in your House and controlling your lives. You know, we live in an era when there are all kinds of discussions about Jewish space lasers and using smart thermostats to change vote totals with Italian satellites, and this is actually a concern for people out there. And so this Vogel bill, actually, has a little bit of that undercurrent to it.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, I'm not such a big fan of trafficking and that kind of conspiracy stuff. That said, with any kind of smart technology thermostat, or whatever, there's always a string attached there. Anything that is smart is collecting data on, of course, usage and user data. And it could, hypothetically, if it's connected to wi-fi, take a lot more data than that. I will say that when this data is being sent to a local American company, that's not nearly as concerning as when the data packets are going overseas to another country, usually China, where they make these things. The logic behind this program is that when the power grid is about to, hypothetically, get to a point where there's so much load on the grid that the grid can't keep up, and it is at risk of failure, they could find a way to reduce it remotely without just shutting down people's power, which is going to be the alternative.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, I mean that the heart of the rebate program is that if you have a smart thermostat and you want to participate in this program, you can sign up for it. So the only people whose thermostats are changed are people who signed on the dotted line here. The issue is a lot of people sign up for things; they have no idea what it actually means, right? So they hear the rebate program, hey, I want a rebate. That sounds good. I'll take some money not knowing that eventually, one day, the hottest day of the year, your thermostat might change. And it might be really hot in your House to prevent the entire power grid from going down in a disaster.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, and it's important to note that this is an opt-in and opt-out program, right? If you don't want it, don't be signed up for it.

Michael Pope 

But there is this fear here of Big Brother coming into your House and changing the temperature in your thermostat and even, maybe even your refrigerator. So Senator Mark Obenshain chain is worried about Big Brother changing the temperature in his refrigerator; check out this part of the discussion.

Mark Obenshain 

They're gonna be in the House controlling my refrigerator and my freezer. And I'll tell you, I like my beer cold, okay, not lukewarm cold.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, that seems like a pretty disconnected concern. But again, it's important to point out that programs like this, regardless of how you feel about the invasiveness of some of this smart technology because it is certainly more invasive than we're used to. Again, it's to prevent the grid from failing on the like hot days when it doesn't happen so much here. But sometimes, in New York, California, you'll hear about rolling blackouts because it's gotten so hot. And they have to shut down power for various reasons, I guess. And this is also going to be a situation that happens more often when it comes to manmade climate change, leading to global warming. So we're already predicting one and a half to two degrees Celsius rise in temperature. And this is going to start hitting, well, it's already hitting; we're already in some of the warmest years on record. But it's going to only get worse as time goes on. And so we do need to be proactive at addressing things like this. And if the concern is that you like your beer cold and you don't want on the hottest day of the year, your refrigerator, potentially spoiling not just your beer, I would be more concerned about the food in my fridge. Again, the alternative is for the grid to go out entirely, and then no power means there is no refrigeration, not reduced refrigeration.

Michael Pope 

Well, the Europeans like to drink their beer warm. So I mean, maybe it was an anti-European slam that open shame was getting there. I don't know. But why don't we play a round of trivia?

All right, so last week, we asked how many Indian tribes there are in Virginia. So Thomas, what's the answer? How many Indian tribes does Virginia have?

Thomas Bowman 

Well, how many do they have, and how many? The actual question is how many Virginia Indian tribes the state recognizes, and there is a distinction because there are 11 Indian tribes recognized by the Commonwealth of Virginia. So they are, in order of recognition, the Mattaponi, the Pamunkey, Chickahominy, the Eastern Chickahominy, the Rappahannock, the Upper Mattaponi, the Nansemond, the Monacan, the Cheroenhaka, the Nottoway and the Patawomeck. And the Patawomeck, by the way, were recognized as recently as 2010. But again, there used to be a lot more, and only seven of them have federal recognition, and the Mattapan just asked the BIA (the Bureau of Indian Affairs) to recognize them federally as well,

Michael Pope 

And that federal recognition comes with big money. So if you're an Indian tribe, you have a lot to gain by getting federal recognition, not state recognition. I mean, you went through the 11 that have state recognition, and there's really actually not a lot that comes with state recognition. There's a program where you could get money to help you buy back part of your ancestral lands. So that's good. The federal recognition opens up the spigots to, you know, like...

Thomas Bowman 

 Well, the COVID relief funds, for one.

Michael Pope 

COVID relief funds, the infrastructure spending

Thomas Bowman 

Health care.

Michael Pope 

Health cares the through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Thomas Bowman 

That's an important humanistic concern here when Indian tribes don't have federal recognition, the Mattaponi being among them, so they're a tribe that John Smith made first contact with the Mattaponi, and they still don't have federal recognition. And so when COVID hit, they were blocked out of the COVID funds, in addition to the regular health and infrastructure spending. And by the way, the Mattaponi and the Pamunkey. Indians are the only two Indian tribes in Virginia that have reservations.

Michael Pope 

All right, well, let's get to our trivia question for next week. So we want to ask, what is the origin of the lynch law? So we'll get to that next week.

Thomas Bowman 

So if you think you know the origin of Virginia's lynch law, hit us up on Twitter at Pod_Virginia.

Michael Pope 

Thomas, what's the latest you're hearing about the water cooler?

Thomas Bowman 

Alright, so there's a really interesting Axios story from Alexia McCammon, "Not an anomaly: 2020s red states have a higher murder rate". So the point of this story, Michael, was that somebody did the math and found that the murder rates in states that voted for Donald Trump are higher than the states that voted for Joe Biden.

Michael Pope 

Crime stats can tell you all kinds of really interesting points. In fact, you know, in more recent years, there has been a concern about rising crime rates. In fact, you hear this all over right-wing media, rising crime, rising crime, rising crime, but in reality, the crime rates are actually going down and have been going down for some time with one exception, the murder rate. So it's interesting. The one exception here to lowering crime trends is a crime statistic that you see more in Trump's states than in Biden's states. Yeah, so pretty fascinating.

Thomas Bowman 

This isn't directly related to this point. But I saw an interesting fact that a lot of the reduction in crime could be attributed to removing lead from our environment. And you know, lead used to be everything we know about paint, and don't eat the paint chips. But pretty much everybody in this country, if you're over a certain age, has lead poisoning because it was a cumulative impact on your body, and it never leaves. So that explains, like, the minute we got rid of leaded fuel. Within years, people's IQs started rising. And because lead makes you stupid, and also violence went down because the lead makes you violent.

Michael Pope 

Well, as a longtime heavy metal fan, I would say that it's probably time to get the lead out.

Thomas Bowman 

Michael, that joke was ironclad.

Michael Pope 

Thank you. Thank you.

Thomas Bowman 

Alright, what about you, Michael? What's the latest you've heard about the water cooler?

Michael Pope 

Well, people are talking about casinos. So the Virginia casino Act allows for five casinos in Virginia. And we've already got four of them already open or about to be open soon. So the real debate is where's the fifth and final Casino. And so there's a lot of competition between Petersburg and Richmond. So Richmond has already denied having a casino, voters in Richmond said thank you, but no thanks, we don't want a casino here. And that's really opened up an effort for Petersburg. And so the General Assembly is now considering this legislation from Senator Joe Morrissey that would allow Petersburg to have a referendum to see if they want to open a casino. And man is there an army of lobbyists on this one because Richmond also wants to Casino, so it's kind of a Petersburg versus Richmond fight. And then you talk to people who will tell you casinos take advantage of vulnerable people. So do we really want a fifth Casino? So I mean, it's a pretty complicated story.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, if you want to see a case study of why casinos don't belong and most communities, just look at Atlantic City, right? They dropped in a bunch of casinos on the waterfront of Atlantic City on the boardwalk and instantly siphoned up all of the local wealth. And that town has a lot of issues. I mean, if you're concerned about violent crime, casinos going in communities that people lived in, as opposed to Las Vegas, where nobody lived before they built those casinos. It can cause a lot of problems. And it does siphon up wealth mostly from your grandma and grandpa, who are gambling away their social security checks at the slot machines. Michael, there are really only two places in Virginia that would be at least not detrimental to stick to a casino because you want to a place that already has a lot of tourists. And so the two places are anywhere in the DC area to compete, with some of the ones in Maryland and then Virginia Beach. That's it.

Michael Pope 

You know, Thomas, one of the people who expressed concern about casinos during this very long subcommittee meeting, was a religious person. Belinda Ba is a pastor who worries that gambling harms vulnerable people.

Belinda Ba 

They take their last $25, trying to turn it into $500. And then they're knocking on the church's doors, or they're knocking on the nonprofit organizations and asking us to help them. I'm asking you, please reconsider and rethink.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, they're being asked to reconsider and rethink. And man, this is a difficult topic. I was in the room when the subcommittee was hearing all these different bits of testimony, conflicting testimony, and then they finally took a vote to move this bill forward. But these senators are, wow, they've got a lot; they've got a balance here. There's the interest of Richmond versus the interest of Petersburg versus the interest of people who are concerned about the ill effects of gambling, as you just heard that Pastor mentioned right there. I mean, there's, there's a lot they've got to consider here.

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah. And Michael, count me and with this lady because maybe it was because I was raised Southern Baptist, but I don't like casinos. And I really wasn't pleased with Democrats when they went to the mat to make it easier for people to lose their money in a casino. This is a predatory industry, which we don't really want in this state anyway. And there wasn't really a high demand for it; there wasn't a need for it. Certainly, nobody actually wants them in their neighborhoods; just look at that vote in Richmond. Now, there are like Bristol thinks that their Casino is going to bring people to Bristol.

Michael Pope 

They think that they all think this is going to be a huge driver of tourism, that they're going to get lots of employment and it's true that they're gonna get money for their schools, they're gonna get money for the teachers and their firefighters, and a lot of money is going to be pumped into their local economy.

Thomas Bowman 

Yep. And then all of the small mom-and-pop shops go under because when you're visiting a casino, you don't like you don't leave the Casino. That's literally how they're built to keep you in. So they've got all the stuff right there on the inside. You don't need to leave and go walk down Main Street.

Michael Pope 

All right, let's head over to the listener mailbag. Thomas, go ahead and open up that Pod Virginia mailbag. What are our listeners saying about the podcast?

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, Zach Lincoln @ZachLincolnVA says the best way to spend a long flight is by downloading and listening to copious amounts of Pod Virginia. So we agree.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, totally. And safe travels. Bryant Atkins was thrilled that we read his tweet on the air last week about people who are incarcerated being hit up for $1.25 for a packet of mayonnaise. Think about how corrupt that contract has to be. Thomas, $1.25 for a packet of Manny's alright. So Bryant Atkins wrote, "wow, that made my day." He posted that on Twitter, "just getting caught up with all the episodes to a hidden treasure of Virginia media." So he also says that he'll encourage all of his friends to listen in. So welcome to Pod Virginia.

Thomas Bowman 

And then our guest from last week, Harry Godfrey, posted a link to our previous podcast and said catch me with Michael Pope and Thomas Bowman. On the latest episode of Pod Virginia about why the affordable energy act from Rip Sullivan, Lee Ware, Jennifer McClellan, and Creigh Deeds is a good electric rate policy while the Dominion bill is problematic.

Michael Pope 

Yeah, you know, I was at Thursday night caucus last week, Thomas, and that episode with Harry Godfrey was the talk of the town people were really interested in utility regulation and what Harry Godfrey had to say about it on our podcast.

Thomas Bowman 

It's good to know people are listening, and I hope you have a nice rest of your legislative session.

Michael Pope 

All right, one more thing before we go. We've got two birthdays to celebrate this week. Friday, February 3rd, is the birthday We have Congressman Rob Wittman, and then Sunday, February 5th, is the birthday of Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw. So Salaw currently has his last session ever. I mean, he's like the most senior guy in the building and has been around since the late 70s; that is when he was first elected to the House. So he is the guy who's basically in charge of the Senate, and this is his last session ever; this weekend is his birthday, so if you see Leader Saslaw tell them a happy birthday.

Thomas Bowman 

Oh, very good; happy birthday to Congressman Wittman and Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw. It will certainly be the end of an era when he retires Michael, but that's it for this week's episode of Pod Virginia. Don't forget to check out our website and follow us on social media for more updates and discussions on Virginia politics.