IN THE NEWS:

Solitary Fail: Advocates who want to ban solitary confinement were hopeful they were finally going to see a victory when Republican Delegate Glenn Davis signed on. The bill sailed through committees and reached the House floor--but Davis then substituted a version that stripped out the maximum of 15 days in solitary confinement.

Playing the Odds: Virginia's betting and casinos are currently overseeen by a patchwork of agencies--an approach that has some lawmakers bothered. A new bill would lay the groundwork for creating a Gambling Commission that would oversee all gambling instead of the patchwork approach.

At the Watercooler:

Virginia says ‘human’ error led to $200 million shortage in local school funding – The Virginian-Pilot (pilotonline.com)

How Delegate Holly Siebold deftly handled her hazing during her first bill through the General Assembly.

Trivia: Our first episode was titled “ERA, Guns and Marijuana.” Who was the FIRST GUEST?

Episode Transcript

Patrick Hope 

There are some people that are put into solitary confinement for not a good reason. And that's what this bill is supposed to go after is to make sure... because once you put things in regulation, it's just a regulation.

 

Michael Pope 

Coming back to the thing that the bill does now. I want you to get to react to something that's not in this bill, which is in the Senate Bill, which is the cap of 15 days.

 

Patrick Hope 

I think I'm responding to that 50-day. I wish the 15 days were in there. Then you ask yourself, if it's not going to be in there, then what is the point of having a law at all? Taking away this exception swallows the whole branch.

 

Michael Pope 

On this episode of Pod Virginia.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Solitary politics

 

Glenn Davis 

The forceps that we have in front of us are essentially the outcome of what happens when I go to prison with the minority leader.

 

Michael Pope 

A casino bet that fails.

 

Thomas Bowman 

That's why they're called gray, and they're in that gray area. We read your tweets and play a round of trivia. Yeah, I don't know if I can go into detail about no pitfalls.

 

Michael Pope 

You are listening to pod Virginia. Stick around.

 

I'm Michael Pope.

 

Thomas Bowman 

I'm Tom Bowman.

 

Michael Pope 

And this is Pod Virginia podcast that is celebrating a big birthday this week. Sunday, February 12. It is the third birthday of Pod Virginia. Thomas, can you believe it has been three years since that first episode?

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yes. And we are now in the middle of our fourth season. That's crazy. I can't believe we've been doing it this long.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, it's some in some ways. It seems like yesterday that the first episode happened. But then, on the other hand, that was like before the pandemic, and things were very different back then, too. So it also feels like a very long time ago.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Oh, yes, it's been a time warp ever since. But, Michael, let's get to the news.

 

Michael Pope 

Solitary fail, advocates who went to ban solitary confinement from Virginia prisons were hopeful that they were finally going to see a victory when Republican delegate Glenn Davis signed on. His bill sailed through committee and reached the House floor.

 

Glenn Davis 

The forceps that we have in front of us are essentially the outcome of what happens when I go to prison with the Minority Leader.

 

Thomas Bowman 

House Minority Leader Don Scott went with Glenn Davis to visit a prison in Sussex before session. But by the time the Delegates were ready to vote, Davis had a substitute version that stripped out the maximum 15 days in solitary confinement.

 

Glenn Davis 

Not being able to account for every exception of why we may have to be there in excess of 50 days opened up for litigation potentially. So that's the only piece I believe that we could not resolve between the initial bill and what we see today.

 

Michael Pope 

 Well, Davis was hearing from the Department of Corrections and the Attorney General's Office on this, and they were arguing that holding someone in solitary for longer than 50 days would open them up to lawsuits. Well, yeah, I mean, if you break the new law, and you violate the 15-day maximum, which many people say is torturing someone, this law would, in fact, make it so that there was some kind of accountability? So yes, people might get sued if they break the new law. So after the vote, I asked delegate Patrick Hope about this. And he said it's disappointing that the law to ban solitary confinement no longer actually bans solitary confinement, but he said he's pleased that the bill requires that all incarcerated people have some time out of their cell each day. Plus, it requires that prisons document why they put people in solitary confinement.

 

Patrick Hope 

that are thrown in because they don't like maybe a smart at off, or they didn't stand up in time for morning when they were doing the checkups. We don't want people thrown into solitary confinement for no reason.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah. So there is a version of this in the Senate. It's Joe Morrissey's bill that's probably going to get out of the Senate and come back over to the House. So I mean, I guess ultimately, it might end up in a secret closed-door conference committee. But it seems like, for now, the efforts to ban solitary confinement are over.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, this is disappointing. But Michael, I can't say I'm entirely surprised it fits a pattern we've seen year in and year out now. Of Law Enforcement not wanting to hold itself accountable.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, well, there were quite a lot of criminal justice reform efforts that were done in 2020 and 2021. That created a bunch of new accountability for law enforcement. This bill was not successful in that time period. Morrissey has been trying to do this for years. And so he tried unsuccessfully over and over and over again. People thought that things might be different this year because of Delegate Davis, but Apparently, the forces from the Department of Corrections and the Attorney General's office were persuasive to him. And so I guess the effort in solitary confinement is over for now.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, I got a couple of things here. Because, one, this is a practice that's been widely criticized by human rights organizations, and we should be moving toward a more compassionate and effective approach to Criminal Justice. And that would mean providing access to things like education, mental health resources, which solitary confinement makes worse, and of course, rehabilitation programs to those individuals. But, Michael, one of the things I don't buy is this concern that it would open the Department of Corrections to lawsuits; there would be a lot fewer lawsuits if AG Miyares had told Department of Corrections that it would not represent them if they violated this law. Yeah,

 

Michael Pope 

I mean, if you violate the new law, you could be held accountable if you held somebody in solitary confinement for longer than 15 days. Yeah. I mean, like, that's the point of the law to create some accountability for violating this particular, you know, limit. So it's almost like a chicken and egg sort of thing. Like, yeah, of course, yes. It would open people up to lawsuits. True.

 

Thomas Bowman 

And so then they would have to change their behavior. And that's what I'm saying at the beginning of this, they just don't want to hold themselves accountable. Because this bill now allows for indefinite solitary confinement under the nebulous term, that doesn't actually mean anything, if necessary, to protect someone. Right. So protect whom, certainly not the prisoner unnecessarily, because of mental health concerns that get exacerbated from extended stays in solitary confinement. So, you can always make something up. Certainly, this is this could be rife with opportunities for abuse from the vindictive department of corrections officers who just say that they need protection for themselves.

 

Michael Pope 

One more thing on this is that the advocates have wanted to ban solitary confinement for many years and now recognize that's not going to happen this year. But they are hopeful that this watered-down version of the bill actually does some incrementally good things to things, for example. So it requires that everybody who is incarcerated gets a specific amount of time out of their cell every day. So that's an improvement. That's a good thing. It's the according to the advocates, who are, you know, hopeful that even the watered down version could help some people in some circumstances, and the other is, document why people are thrown into solitary confinement, this is an important step here, that we would at least have a base of knowledge to know why people are thrown into solitary confinement. You heard from Delegate Patrick Hope there that there's a concern that maybe somebody just had an attitude. And that's why they got thrown into solitary confinement. I mean, keep in mind, for more than 15 days, this is torture. So you're going to torture somebody because you didn't like their attitude, or that they didn't stand up in time, you know, that sort of thing. We would have a better understanding of why these people are thrown into solitary confinement, which might be important in the future when this debate comes up again which it will.

 

Thomas Bowman 

So Michael, what's the outlook for this bill? Obviously, it's watered down. And certainly not as good as it once was, from many people's perspective. But it's not, as you say, entirely bad. So what should we expect moving forward?

 

Michael Pope 

Well, I'll tell you, what the advocates are telling me is that the seat of the politics of ending solitary confinement this year just doesn't seem tenable. And that they're happy that there are some good things in the watered-down version of the bill and hope that it'll pass. So let's move on to our next story.

 

Playing the odds now, your local convenience store might have gambling, and then there's the bingo night to help off a nonprofit. And, of course, on a larger scale, Virginia now has sports betting and casinos. And some of the gambling is overseen by the racing commission. And some of it is overseen by the Department of Agriculture. Some of it is overseen by the Virginia lottery. So that's a patchwork approach that bothers Senator John Bell of Loudoun County. This is what he had to say about that on our podcast last week.

 

John Bell 

Gambling operations are places where people launder money. So we need to have protections that would come with this, and I think we're entering this, like it or not, in a big way, and in a few years, it is going to be a gigantic industry in Virginia, and we need to prepare for now.

 

Thomas Bowman 

After that episode aired, Senator Joe Morrissey's spelled to allow a casino referendum in Petersburg was rejected by Senate Finance Delegate Kim Taylor of Dinwiddie still has a bill on the House side, but if her bill can get through crossover, it still has to come back to Senate Finance eventually so the separate bill would lay the groundwork for creating a gambling commission that would oversee all gambling instead of the patchwork approach. Here's what Delegate Paul Krizek had to say about it last week.

 

Paul Krizek 

The bill that we have progressing through the General Assembly is to create a study to figure out what kind of a system we should have next year, it could still very well be a lottery that takes on that role, or it could be a new entity altogether.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah. Last week, Thomas, we heard from Senator Bell, who wants this Gambling Commission. Because I mean, I think, in fact, he said, lottery is just not up to the task here, for overseeing casino gambling, and then to have the racing commission regulate some of this stuff that involving historical horse racing, and then the agriculture department overseeing the charitable gaming. I mean, it just makes no sense to have all these different agencies do this sort of thing. So I know Bell was really hoping to have a Gambling Commission with the cabinet-level secretary; that sounds like from Krizek just now was interesting because he said it still might end up being a lottery that oversees all of this gambling, or at least the casinos. So I guess we will have to stay tuned. But for now, it looks like that effort in Petersburg might be in some serious trouble.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah. And the entity that actually oversees this, at least in my opinion, is less important than the regulatory framework. And the principle behind having a consolidated regulatory structure overseeing all these different types of gambling. So whether there's a specifically created casino gaming commission, whether they find room under a pre-existing government entity, and then fund operations for that existing entity. That's the second part. I don't think that part necessarily matters so much. And I think that's what Chris Sacca is getting at when he says he doesn't necessarily know the way it should be regulated at this point in time. And I didn't interpret that so much as him splashing cold water on this; I interpreted what he said as saying, hey, there might be more than one way to do this; it is certainly easier to create a sub-organization within something that's already in the code than it is to create something new. That isn't yet in the code. So I actually agree with John Bell, in principle here, that there should be a centralized authority. And then, to Paul's point, we don't necessarily know the best way to do that. And I think that is case in point of why we need the study.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, I mean, I think the study is probably going to receive a lot of support. And I think that's kind of the trail that I guess people are going to go down this year to figure out what is the best way to do this. But you know, Senator Bell made a really good point on our last episode last week, which was that look, this is already a huge industry. And it's only going to get bigger; this is going to be one of the biggest industries in Virginia. And it is already a huge industry. And it's, it's going to be one of the top industries. And so it's probably a really good idea to make sure money laundering is not happening or that the mafia is not involved. And so you really need a commission that has eyes everywhere, including horse racing, the historical horse racing games, including charitable gaming; there are all kinds of scandals that happened with charitable gaming. And so, you know, you need a centralized commission that has eyes on all the different kinds of gambling. And so I think that's certainly what Senator Bell was arguing for. And, you know, crazy thing that logs the lottery might end up regulating the casinos. I guess, under that scenario, we would keep the patchwork approach. But all these things will, I guess, come out in this study,

 

Thomas Bowman 

it is a great point from Senator Bell that money laundering and other organized crime operations happen when you bring in casinos and things like casinos; I would point out that that would mean that whichever entity is tasked with overseeing this, whether it's a newly created entity or a pre-existing one, it's going to need both the expertise to police, these things and the manpower to police these things but also enforcement authority, right? So not just pointing out that it's happening, but then doing something about it. So now you're talking about something that looks almost like a new police agency as part of their powers, and there is precedent in the code for this. This is actually how the ABC works.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, well, if you're a restaurant owner, the last thing that you want is the ABC police showing up at your door. I tell you, I want to. I remembered years ago, I did a series of stories about a restaurant owner in Old Town, and here came to ABC police and made her dump out all her Sangria because it was mixing, illegally mixing brandy with wine. And so she had to throw it out. So yeah, like that. It would be similar, and I think if you're a casino owner or operator casino operator you the last thing you want is for the Gambling Commission police to show up at your door.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yes. That can put somebody out of business very quickly or make them untouchable. You know, a lot of restaurants don't make that much margin on the food that they sell, and they need to sell alcohol at that markup in order to be profitable. So if all of a sudden you can't sell alcohol, well, guess what? You're not gonna be able to pay your bills.

 

Michael Pope 

All right, let's play a round of trivia. All right, so last week, we asked you about the origin of the lynch law.

 

Thomas Bowman 

So, Michael, I had to look this up. What's the answer?

 

Michael Pope 

Well, the phrase comes from Charles Lynch, who was a justice of the peace in Bedford County back in 1780. So that was a time when people were concerned about roving gangs of British loyalists, so the judge and a group of his buddies rounded up suspected loyalists and conducted mock trials. So these rump court sessions Sentence these suspected British loyalists to whip and seize your property and conscription into the military and coerce pledges of allegiance. And one of the defendants was an enslaved Black man accused of poisoning his master's wife. So he was hanged, and the term lynching eventually came to mean a hanging, essentially without a trial.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Michael, this is fascinating. Obviously, lynching took on a very dark, extra-judicial summary judgment and mob rule, a context that, in the beginning, was a way for the revolutionaries in Virginia to dole out actually illegally authorized enforcement, and it didn't also murder at the beginning. They would put people in trees, but they wouldn't necessarily hang them yet.

 

Michael Pope 

Well, I mean, I've clearly seen a lot of people celebrate the idea of vigilante justice. And I think that's kind of the name Lynch has become associated with that brand of, you know, racist vigilante justice.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah. And today, lynching is the act of killing someone through mob violence without a trial or due process. So in Virginia, lynching did end up becoming a very common occurrence during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the period of racial segregation, with the most discrimination against Black Americans. So Michael, some other facts, during that time, Virginia actually had a high number of lynchings, many of them taking place in rural areas and small towns. And they were often carried out in public with large crowds gathering to watch, and I shudder to think about the generational trauma that caused the violence and what happens to the people who witnessed this stuff.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, I mean, it was horrible. I mean, you're talking about PTSD here, generational PTSD, from the, you know, racist mob violence that plagued this part of the country for many, many, many years. You know, there were several lynchings that happened here in Alexandria. I mean, the city government is just now getting around to making formal apologies to the victims of the lynching that happened here in Alexandria. But I people increasingly recognize this horrible chapter of Virginia's history, you kind of wonder if it's going to be in the textbooks of our public school students.

 

Thomas Bowman 

It wasn't that long ago, either. There are people alive today who witnessed this because despite the efforts of anti-lynching activists, Virginia, and of course, much of the country in the south at least saw very little progress in addressing this issue until the Civil Rights movement came around, certainly in the mid-20th century. So these are our grandparents and our great grandparent's generation. So many of our grandparents certainly are still alive today. Plenty of our parents were children in the early 60s and late 50s that witnessed perhaps some of this violence occurring. So when we pretend like it doesn't matter today, it does because the people in power, and the generation in power, I should say, were exposed to this collectively. And if not, direct witnesses of it. They got the information, served them in headlines of newspapers and sometimes the evening news, you know, depending on, you know, where in the country they were.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, well, so that was our trivia question for last week. So we've got another trivia question for next week. Thomas?

 

Thomas Bowman 

If you haven't been a listener to pod Virginia the entire time and we picked up, we've had a ton of listener growth in the last year. Michael,

 

Michael Pope 

In the last month, we've had the last listener room.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, our best month ever. So if you were to go back all the way to the very first episode, not of Pod Virginia, but of our original name Transition Virginia, our first episode was titled ERA, guns, and marijuana. Who was that first guest?

 

Michael Pope 

Good times. That was actually a really fun episode to record. And we have our first guest, and yeah, really exciting times.

 

Thomas Bowman 

All right. Well, Michael, I think we should move to our favorite segment and talk about what we hear around the water cooler.

 

Michael Pope 

Thomas, what's the latest you're hearing about the watercooler

 

Thomas Bowman 

Well, localities are up in arms because the Governor is telling them that they're going to have to make do after his administration made a $200 million mistake.

 

Michael Pope 

Oops, 300 million here, 200 million there. It's a human mistake, at least that this was what the communications guy at the Department of Education said it's a human mistake.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yes, specifically, it was supposed to be money that went toward local public schools. And so this $200 million, that now the localities throughout the Commonwealth are going to have to make do without the Governor has asked for this money to be restored or not restored. But to find that money in the budget this year, which we do technically have it. And I'm sure that they will find a way to add it up. But there's a lot of skepticism and chatter on social media sites right now about this, Michael, because people don't trust that this administration didn't do it on purpose.

 

Michael Pope 

Never fear about the $200 million mistake because the General Assembly is on the case. So you know, they're in the process now of putting together a budget. And so last week, the appropriations chairman, Barry Knight, took to the House floor to say, look, no school division is going to have reduced expenditures in this current fiscal year. And there is no crisis that's going to impact any Virginia students. So it was a mistake. And it was, clearly, a $200 million large-scale mistake. But you know, human error, and they've already been working to solve it basically, is the message that you're getting from Republicans. So Democrats have countered that by criticizing Youngkin. And this administration of being distracted by, you know, like trying to change history standards or remove inherently divisive concepts from the classroom. So, one of the people who spoke about this was Delegates Schuyler van Valkenburg; he said that you know, even if they fix this $200 million mistake, the Governor's budget still does not do enough for education. So this is what he had to say about on the House floor this week.

 

Schuyler VanValkenburg 

If you look at the proposed budget, there's nothing that we're not fully funding the literacy program. We're not adding school counselors. We're not doing teacher pay raises. We're not adding to the so accuse; we're not adding to the support cap. We're not doing any of that.

 

Michael Pope 

So yeah, even if they fix that $200 million mistake, Van Valkenburg is saying, Look, you probably should be pumping some more money into education instead of, you know, having a $200 million mistake.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, Michael, I want to make this point very clear. This is what you can expect when Governors appoint partisan ideologues to very important bureaucratic positions. Normally, you want people rising in the ranks who are not necessarily political. But instead, what we're getting is a bureaucracy that's distracted by BS vendetta is like critical race theory. And whether or not trans kids, the 26 of them that exist in Virginia sports, are allowed to participate in high school sports, right? So that's what we're getting out of these incompetent ideological bureaucrats. And because of that, they're distracted, and they're making mistakes that are way worse than the math mistake I made in a previous episode where I got corrected, of course, by a fifth-grade student at FCPS. Good times. Yeah. So this is why you get incompetent governance when you have ideologues appointed to very important bureaucratic positions. Okay, let me call down. Get off my soapbox now. What about you, Michael? What's the latest you hear about the water cooler?

 

Michael Pope 

Well, people are buzzing about Delegate Holly Seybold, who brought down the House during her hazing. So her first bill to reach the House floor last week was to help Fairfax county courts have Interpreters for the Deaf. And so the House engaged in this kind of bizarre ritual of hazing the new Delegate when her first bill gets to the floor, so guess who stands up to ask a bunch of trick questions? None other than delegate Marcus Simon, so check out part of this exchange.

 

Marcus Simon 

Mr. Speaker, I noticed that this bill references supreme court rule two colon 507. And I would ask the Delegate if she is familiar with the supreme court rule to call in 507.

 

Holly Seibold 

Mr. Speaker, I would respond to the Delegate from Fairfax with that question. It's outside the scope of this bill. And I would remind the Delegate that he is a co-patron of this bill and that given and that given he's a lawyer by trade, he should probably read the fine print before he signs on to a bill and also remind Delegate from Fairfax that he was also on the subcommittee and committee that approved this bill so he could have asked those questions during those committees. And finally, remind the Delegate from Fairfax that we are running out of time.

 

Marcus Simon 

I thank the Delegate

 

Michael Pope 

All right. Yeah, so Holly Seybold really had some strong words for Marcus Simon there, and wow, that really got people buzzing. Holly Seybold, after this, told me that she had Republicans come over and give her a hug because they can't stand Marcus Simon so much. They were happy. Someone was finally sticking it to him, you know?

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah. And even Speaker Gilbert was like, stop, stop. He's already dead. Yeah, that was actually really funny to watch. And this is a practice. Of course, that happens. The tradition when a new Delegate gets to pass their first bill, the House Hayes's them on their bills way through the chamber, and I saw once, I can't remember who, and it was a few years ago under Speaker Bill Howell, that everybody voted no speaker just passed it through unanimously. It was a joke, or near-unanimously jokingly voted no. So this is a time-honored tradition of hazing. The new freshmen are usually freshmen when they pass their first bill, but boy, did Holly Seybold turn the tables on Marcus Simon; that was fun to watch, no matter where you sit on the political spectrum.

 

Michael Pope 

And a big victory for Holly Seybold, too, because I mean, she's actually kind of shy, Thomas, and so public speaking is something that she is not entirely comfortable with. So you know, the thought of like standing up on the House floor and giving a speech is attractive to people like Marcus Simon, they live or stuff like that. But for Holly Seybold, it's, it's more of a challenge. It's something she has to work on. And so for her to have such a successful, like, knock it out of the park here hazing experience actually is really good for her, you know, in terms of building what she needs in order to present bills in the future and that sort of thing. So, congratulations to delegate Holly Seybold.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Yeah, congratulations on your first bill.

 

Michael Pope 

All right, let's head over to the mailbag. Thomas. Let's open up that pod Virginia mailbag. What our listeners saying

 

Thomas Bowman 

on Twitter, yolo billy at Trump 45_Maga, which is a tongue-in-cheek account for him, says, I always enjoy listening to you guys. You're rock stars. Oh, thanks, yolo Billy.

 

Michael Pope 

Oh yeah, thanks. So Buckingham County Supervisor Thomas Jordan miles responded to our birthday shout-outs by wishing a Happy Birthday to Senate Majority Leader Dick Salaw, which was last weekend, so I'm sure that the majority leader had a happy birthday. Maybe he'll come to the Capitol in a better mood this week.

 

Thomas Bowman 

We'll find out soon enough. And Michael, shout out to our communications director, Nicole Tardif, who put together a list of legislative staffers' social media accounts specifically to make Twitter lists. And so that now is up online. If you go to Pod Virginia's Twitter account and look at our lists, you can find we've got a breakdown both by chamber and partisan affiliation of Democratic staffers in the House and in the Senate and Republican staffers in the House and in the Senate. So four lists total; you can follow him, and we'll try to keep them up to date. Of course, not everybody is on Twitter or has a publicly identifiable Twitter account. So if you know of somebody who should be on that list, or if we left you off, hit us up on Twitter, send us a DM, and we'll add you to it.

 

Michael Pope 

Yeah, shout out to Nicole; thank you for taking all that time and effort to put that together. And I'm sure that will be very helpful to many of our listeners. All right. So finally, let's celebrate some birthdays. We've got a trail of Republican birthdays this week. So Wednesday, February 8, is the birthday of Delegate Mike Cherry of Colonial Heights. Saturday, February 11, is the birthday of Attorney General Jason Miyares, and then Sunday, February 12, is the birthday of Delegate Robert Bloxom of Accomack. So happy birthday all around.

 

Thomas Bowman 

Well, let's leave it there, Michael. That's it for this week's episode. Pod Virginia. Don't forget to check out our website and follow us on social media for more updates and discussions about Virginia politics.