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Tag: opinion

Saving grace

When Del. Don L. Scott Jr., D-Portsmouth, was sworn in on Jan. 10 as the first Black speaker of the house in the Virginia legislature’s 405-year history, he also was likely the first leader of that illustrious body to have served time in federal prison.

Reminiscent of the literary trials of Jean Valjean, Scott’s is a story of the redemptive powers of hard work and second chances. More than that, however, it offers instructive lessons in the power of mercy and the value of putting aside political divisiveness.

Scott had served in the Navy and was nearing graduation as a law student when he was arrested in May 1994 while studying at Louisiana State University’s law library. Prosecutors alleged he headed a plot to sell more than a pound of crack cocaine. But Scott and his attorney maintained that Scott, who didn’t use drugs, was nothing more than a “mule” who knowingly agreed to pick up $26,000 in drug money because he was broke and needed money.

Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, was sworn in as the speaker of the House of Delegates on Jan. 10. Scott is the first Black speaker in the legislative body’s 405-year history. Photo by Associated Press/Steve Helber

“I wish 53-year-old Don could slap the hell out of 28-year-old Don,” Scott told The Virginian-Pilot in a 2018 interview.

Though he’d graduated law school and passed the bar exam, Scott took a plea deal and ended up serving almost eight years in a federal prison in Texas, where he helped other inmates with legal briefs and taught some to read.

After Scott was released from prison, his uncle helped him find a construction job and a position doing the books for a friend’s used auto dealership. Within eight months, Scott was hired by national workforce development consultancy KRA and worked his way up over a decade to become the company’s third-ranking executive.

His former boss, KRA Chief Strategy Officer Patrick Boxall, told The Virginian-Pilot that it’s “ingrained in [KRA’s] culture to judge people based on their possible future contributions, not on where they have been.”

By 2014, Scott passed the Virginia Bar Exam but still had to appeal to the Board of Bar Examiners’ Character & Fitness Committee, which in 2015 approved his admission to the state bar at age 50.

Five years later, in 2019, Scott had already served as chair of the Portsmouth Economic Development Authority and was elected to represent Portsmouth in the House of Delegates with 66% of the vote. He’s now a partner at the law firm of Breit Biniazan and a three-term delegate who served as House minority leader before his caucus unanimously nominated him for speaker.

During a recess amid his emotional first day as speaker, Scott’s well-wishers included former Gov. Bob McDonnell, whom Scott embraced warmly. McDonnell, whose own federal conviction on corruption charges was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, had restored Scott’s right to vote and run for office, paving the way for the historic moment.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” The Washington Post quoted Scott saying to the former governor.

During a time when the nation is deeply politically divided, with the prospect of a bitter presidential rematch ahead, it says a lot that the person who seconded Scott’s formal nomination as speaker was Republican Del. Terry L. Austin of Botetourt County, a friend who called it “an honor.”

While it’s debatable if the fabled “Virginia Way” ideal of legislative bipartisanship and civility in favor of governing for the public good ever really existed — or actually did good — the optics of Republicans and Democrats coming together after years of gridlock lends hope that the parties may find greater consensus this session on at least some of the commonwealth’s important issues — notably the state budget, mental health, education, data centers and industrial site development, if not tougher ones like abortion, gun control or automatic restoration of felons’ rights.

As Del. Luke Torian, D-Prince William County, said, summing the day up during his formal nomination of Scott as speaker: “Del. Scott understands the redemptive power of God.”  

Got news?

If you’ve been missing out on some local news events lately, it’s likely because local news is increasingly underreported. A report from the University of North Carolina found that between 2005 and 2020, the U.S. lost 2,100 — or roughly one-quarter — of its local community newspapers. Four years later, this trend toward “news deserts” continues unabated. In Virginia, many local papers have reduced both their number of print editions and full-time journalists. Having spent more than 30 years in the newspaper industry, I saw the beginnings of this firsthand, but never thought the downfall would come this hard or this fast.

The consequences of this unraveling of local newspapers are increasingly obvious in an age of misinformation.

As then-”Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd interjected during an interview with Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway in 2017, “Alternative facts are not facts — they’re falsehoods.”

Similarly, last year, Fox News reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement in a lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems for airing false claims that the companies’ voting machines had rigged results in the 2020 election. Fox acknowledged the claims to be false without granting an apology, seeming to indicate that some media news outlets may not have the best interests of their audience or American democracy in mind.

While it’s unimaginable that our nation’s Founding Fathers would have been so naive as to think that lies couldn’t come from the lips of politicians or be promulgated by newspapers, they did envision our free press as a primary and essential check on the integrity of our democracy. There is a reason why the First Amendment comes first. As the saying goes, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Behind our founders’ reliance on robust news reporting was the assumption that those efforts would be supported by equally robust advertising. This too has changed. Tech titans like Google, Meta and X (formerly Twitter) are arguably today’s biggest publishers. Make no mistake: Big tech is in the business of content and advertising, with artificial intelligence-powered algorithms making content curation decisions about what viewers do — and don’t — see. The growth of news deserts demonstrates what happens when local talent is scraped away by tech companies. Local news becomes the proverbial baby thrown out with the bath water.

Congress introduced a bipartisan bill in July 2023 addressing the issue somewhat. The Community News and Small Business Support Act would provide local newsrooms with funding over five years to support hiring and retaining reporters. Additionally, small businesses could receive tax credits of up to $10,000 over five years for advertising in local news outlets. However, that bill is still making its way through Congress, and legislators haven’t taken action to regulate how big tech firms can use local news content. Meanwhile, Canada and Australia have grappled with forcing social media companies to pay for republishing local news, with mixed results.

If all of this sounds pretty dark, that’s because it is. On the other hand, dark clouds can have silver linings. At Virginia Business, our audience is the commonwealth’s business community. As others have pulled back from business reporting, we’ve leaned in and added to the magazine’s staff and coverage over the past few years. Both subscribers and advertisers are heading in our direction.

After a couple of decades of going down digital and social media rabbit holes, advertisers are tiring of measuring bots instead of people. The tech titans have frequently proven to be unstable in both measurement methods and leadership temperament. The quality of the context in which brand messages appear really does matter. Quality is defined by truthful, factual, timely and careful reporting.

As we enter 2024, Virginia Business remains strong. We thank you for your loyal readership and your unflagging advertising support. As always, we are committed to our mission of being Virginia’s source for business intelligence. Our hope is that the rest of the local news will also find its way to you. It is essential to our democracy.

Pot of gold

Placing aside the morality of marijuana use, let’s consider how much money Virginia is currently leaving on the table without a regulated, taxed recreational cannabis market.

In 2020, directed by the Virginia General Assembly, which was then under Democratic control, the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission conducted a study on legalizing marijuana in Virginia.

If commercial recreational sales of marijuana were legalized and taxed at 20% to 25%, JLARC estimated the state would reap between $147 million and $300 million in annual net tax revenue. (Some legislators would likely push for lower taxes, which would persuade more marijuana users to move away from the black market, experts say.)

Legalization is also popular with voters; 60% of Virginia voters polled this year by Christopher Newport University support allowing retail sales of recreational marijuana, including 44% of Republicans polled.

Currently, Virginia’s cannabis laws sit in a gray area: We have licensed dispensaries of medical marijuana, and it’s legal now to possess small amounts of marijuana for recreational use. But that leaves a giant black market that may amount to as much as $2.4 billion in marijuana sales in the commonwealth for 2023, estimates New Frontier Data, a Washington, D.C.-based data and analytics firm focused on the cannabis industry. By contrast, Virginia’s three operating casinos reported about $407 million in total revenue between January and October, according to the Virginia Lottery.

We can’t say for sure that legal recreational cannabis sales to adults would immediately pull that entire $2.4 billion away from black market sources, but it indicates a massive amount of potential untaxed revenue if Virginia legislators and Gov. Glenn Youngkin do nothing to regulate cannabis during the 2024 General Assembly session.

Although Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Commissioner Joseph Guthrie said in July that Youngkin was “not interested” in further legalization, Youngkin has not made any definitive public pronouncements — however, he is viewed as having worked behind the scenes to scuttle legislation legalizing retail sales of marijuana.

In the 2023 session, the GOP-controlled House of Delegates killed Republican- and Democrat-sponsored bills that would have set up a regulatory structure for retail sales in 2024. The Cannabis Control Authority,  which will regulate the state’s medical marijuana industry beginning in January, saw its operations budget cut by $2.9 million to $5.3 million.

In February, VPM quoted the governor as saying that the matter is up to state legislators: “They’ve got to go do the work.”

So, where are state legislators on this? Gentry Locke Consulting President Greg Habeeb, a former Republican state delegate who now represents the Virginia Cannabis Association as a lobbyist, says conditions may be right for passage of legalized retail sales, with Democrats holding narrow majorities in both chambers.

Although Youngkin — who is rumored to be interested in running against U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine in 2024 — would not want a metaphorical scarlet pot leaf hung around his neck by other Republican senatorial contenders, he has a rhetorical defense for further legalization, Habeeb notes.

Possession of small amounts of cannabis is already legal in Virginia, as are sales for medical use. Youngkin could argue that allowing recreational sales to adults in regulated, licensed dispensaries — instead of illegally through black market dealers — is part of his public safety mandate, similar to his administration’s support of hemp regulation and enforcement.

One shortcut toward creating a state-regulated retail structure would be to allow the four companies already holding medical marijuana licenses to expand into recreational sales.

Also, there’s the question of social justice. In 2020, Virginia Democrats put forward the idea that people who were disproportionately harmed by arrests and convictions under earlier cannabis laws — mainly people of color — should benefit financially through legalization and licensing. To many Republicans, that sounded a lot like reparations, a controversial idea that would be difficult to pass under any circumstances in Virginia. But now, there’s more talk about changing legislative and policy language to focus on the “economic opportunity” around cannabis. Bipartisan retail cannabis bills that failed in the 2023 General Assembly session are expected to be refiled for the 2024 session, which convenes Jan. 10, 2024.

Even with Democrats once again in control of the state legislature, it’s likely to come down to Youngkin’s calculations and veto power.   

A game of political football

Starting in 1966, the team formerly known as the Redskins began its RFK Stadium sellout streak. For decades, tickets for home games were harder to snag than Taylor Swift tickets today. Divorcing couples battled over custody of season tickets, and the team reportedly had a 100-year-plus season ticket waitlist.

That changed in the Dan Snyder era — to put it mildly. During the 21st century, former fans dropped season tickets like a dog sheds its fur. The team kept losing games under an ever-changing series of coaches and general managers whom Snyder micromanaged and then fired after lackluster seasons.

Perhaps the nadir for fan relations was 2009, when the team actually sued a 72-year-old season-ticket holder — a grandmother — who requested that the team waive her season tickets after the Great Recession hurt her real estate business.

Meanwhile, in the front office, according to an NFL investigation released in July, Snyder and his executives created a workplace in which sexual harassment and hostile treatment of employees thrived. Snyder has vehemently denied these allegations, but after 24 years as owner, he sold the team for a record-setting $6 billion in July to a group of 20 investors.

Josh Harris, a Maryland native and private equity billionaire, is now the principal owner of the Washington Commanders, as well as the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils.

I sat down with Harris in September at the Planet Word language-arts museum in Washington, D.C., where the team hosted a VIP-only season kickoff party before its first regular season home game. The 58-year-old Harris, who made his money as a co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, is getting used to the brighter spotlight that comes with being an NFL team owner.

He says the question of where a new stadium will go is in very early stages — although Harris’ group has more options than Snyder did, with renewed interest among Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., officials to host the stadium following the change in ownership. (See related story.) Included among Virginia’s state budget amendments passed in September was a $250,000 stadium study, a promising gesture.

Looking between the lines, there’s a fair argument that FedEx Field’s replacement could land in the old RFK Stadium space. In our interview (see October 2023 cover story), Harris says that transportation — including Metro access — and the economic boost of a stadium to the community are factors under consideration. His Sixers have built team facilities in underserved, disadvantaged neighborhoods around Philadelphia and its surroundings. It’s not a huge leap to imagine a similar decision benefiting RFK’s neighborhood on the banks of the Anacostia River, instead of a far-flung NoVa suburb.

Of course, nostalgia doesn’t drive such decisions, and with 20 investors in his group, Harris will likely listen carefully to what they say about a new stadium location. Economic incentives could still lure the stadium to Loudoun or Prince William counties, as have been previously suggested, or another Northern Virginia site.

Like many stances, Virginia’s attitude toward inviting the Commanders to place their stadium here — and even keeping their headquarters in Ashburn — could be affected by the November elections, which will see all 140 state Senate and House of Delegates seats up for grabs.

In this issue (see related story), freelance writer Mason Adams delves into the most competitive races that will determine which party will control the state Senate and the House, perhaps for decades to come. Of course, the elections will also play a significant role in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s latent presidential hopes and his ability to get more tax cuts and other legislation passed in the final two years of his term.

We Monday-morning quarterbacks will be watching. 

A powerful history

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Virginia 500 — The 2023 Power List. Our hope is that you will find it to be an insightful and helpful guide to the commonwealth’s top leaders in business, government and higher education.

Virginia’s long reputation as a power center — producing eight U.S. presidents, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — precedes us and continues to this day.

While a list of 500 leaders seems like it would allow us breathing room to recognize practically every significant leader in Virginia, it leaves only so much room in specific categories. For example, first and foremost, we want to make sure to include powerful leaders in the business community, which leaves less room for state government, academia and politics.

Overall, the Virginia 500 includes leaders across 20 categories, some broken into subcategories, with the number of listings in each category ranging from seven to more than 70. When we assembled the first edition of this list back in 2020, we had questions like, “How many people will be included in each category?” Well, that depends. There aren’t as many big players in an unquestionably important category like energy, while there are many more in other important categories such as banking or real estate. And given the commonwealth’s proximity to Dee Cee and the fact that four of the nation’s five largest defense contractors are headquartered in Northern Virginia, the federal contracting sector makes up our largest category.

Likewise, business density and proximity to the state and federal capitals means that there are more leaders featured from Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads than places like the Shenandoah Valley or Southern or Southwest Virginia. Still, we aim to capture a solid picture of the powerful people who get deals done across all regions of Virginia.

Similarly, diversity and inclusion are challenges. Virginia Business is purposefully conscious of the need to highlight the achievements of women and ethnically diverse communities in our coverage. Still, despite the increasing diversity of Virginia’s business community, C-suite leadership and power tends to stay a step behind the changing demographics of the commonwealth.

Yes, 500 is a big number, but we have no illusions that this Power List is comprehensive or captures every powerful person in the commonwealth. This publication is, however, an impressive reminder that Virginia remains a remarkable place for fostering power and leadership.

Enjoy!

The antacid

For every parent who’s ever downed a Prilosec-and-Maalox cocktail while making out an eye-popping college tuition check, there comes a moment when they may look askance at how universities are spending their money.

After all, the same schools that send entreaties to contribute to billion-dollar capital campaigns have dramatically increased tuition — and administrative compensation — over the decades.

As reported in Associate Editor Courtney Mabeus-Brown’s August cover story about the value of a four-year degree, tuition rates at public universities have spiked 366% nationally in the past 30 years, and it’s much the same in Virginia, which saw average annual public university tuitions rise 333%, from $3,357 in the halcyon days of 1992-93 to $14,538 for the 2022-23 academic year. (During the same period, the national average wage index rose 178%, from $21,811 in 1991 to $60,575 in 2021. And, in what’s surely an entirely unrelated statistic, the global antacids market grew from around $800 million in 1990 to around $9.19 billion in 2022.)

With all that said, it’s probably not the most comforting news that in just the 2010s, total compensation for the presidents of the nation’s 49 flagship public universities rose by 56%. In fact, the lowest-earning of those 49 presidents made $108,054 more in 2019 than the nation’s highest-earning governor, according to research from George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government professors Judith A. Wilder and James H. Finkelstein published last year in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Here in Virginia, executive compensation at the commonwealth’s top public universities far exceeds Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s $175,000 salary. (Though with an estimated net worth exceeding $400 million, Youngkin donates his salary to nonprofits, so no harm, no foul.)

Here’s what compensation looks like for the top-earning presidents of Virginia public universities, according to data1 collected by the Chronicle:

  • James E. Ryan, University of Virginia: $1.188 million (includes $760,909 base pay and $100,000 bonus)
  • Gregory Washington, George Mason University: $807,602 (includes $667,604 base pay and $100,000 bonus)
  • Katherine A. Rowe, William & Mary: $803,407 (includes $528,948 base pay and $77,250 bonus)
  • Michael Rao, Virginia Commonwealth University: $773,558 (includes $641,619 base pay)
  • Timothy D. Sands, Virginia Tech: $714,538 (includes $614,640 base pay)

Those numbers may appear hefty at first glance, but viewed from an executive compensation perspective, they’re a downright bargain.

In 2021, the CEOs of Virginia’s 40 largest publicly traded companies received $8.467 million in average total compensation. Take for example John S. Mengucci, president and CEO of Reston-based government contractor CACI International Inc. He received $4.75 million in 2021, overseeing a company with $6.2 billion in revenue and a workforce of about 23,000. Similarly, Robert M. Blue made $2.98 million in 2021 as chairman, president and CEO of Fortune 500 utility Dominion Energy Inc., which has more than 17,000 workers across 16 states and saw $17.17 billion in 2022 revenue.

By comparison, U.Va. serves more than 23,700 students, and Ryan oversees more than 20,000 faculty and staff, including the UVA Health System and U.Va.’s College at Wise. He’s responsible for a $5.3 billion 2023-24 fiscal budget.

Amid trends of declining enrollment and increased political heat, as well as national debates over school debt, diversity and the value of four-year degrees, higher education administrators must be nimble leaders with skill sets more akin to corporate executives.

Examining why public universities pay so much to leaders with an average 6.5-year tenure, GMU’s Wilde and Finkelstein concluded that part of the reason is due to the greater availability of comparative salary data, as well as university governing boards now including more corporate executives who are accustomed to negotiating expensive and elaborate compensation packages. Additionally, many prospective university presidents retain attorneys skilled in negotiating the best possible employment contracts for their clients.

When it comes to the question of reducing salaries for public university presidents, it appears the Maalox is already out of the bottle.

1 Based on 2021 data from Chronicle of Higher Education; Ryan data is from 2019, most recent year submitted to Chronicle. The Daily Cavalier reported that Ryan made $851,681 in salary for the 2022-23 academic year.

The stuff of dreams

Whether it’s aiming to solve a problem, build a better mousetrap or simply make a better life for themselves and their families, entrepreneurs start their businesses with a dream.

And it’s in recognition of these visionary innovators that Virginia Business is pleased to debut StartVirginia, a new annual publication devoted to startups and the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Virginia Business Associate Editors Courtney Mabeus-Brown and Robyn Sidersky took the lead for this special issue, which is packaged with our regular June magazine and includes first-person elevator pitches from entrepreneurs, guidance on how to get started in government contracting, a list of early-stage and seed funding organizations in Virginia, and much more. We are indebted to the leaders at Virginia Innovation Partnership Corp., Startup Virginia, 757 Angels and Twin Cities Business (publisher of the StartMN guide to Minnesota startups) for their assistance and advice as we launched this publication with the same name as our magazine’s monthly StartVirginia page, which is also focused on all things innovative and entrepreneurial.

Innovation is about big ideas, and they don’t get much bigger than the Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology, the subject of our June cover story. Deputy Editor Kate Andrews writes about how the Mannings are launching the University of Virginia institute with a $100 million gift and a vision for nothing less than curing “five or six diseases” and building a statewide biotech hub.

Also in this month’s issue, Assistant Editor Katherine Schulte takes an in-depth look at how Virginia is grappling with a nationwide shortage of primary care physicians; Andrews relates a terrifying tale of how AI is enabling growing cybercrime; and for LGBT Pride Month, Sidersky writes about how employee resource groups are advocating for LGBTQ+ workers at some of the commonwealth’s largest corporations. Finally, contributing writer Sydney Lake examines the speedy success of Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, which graduated its 10th class of doctors in May and has quickly become one of the nation’s most competitive medical schools.

Speaking of success, I don’t get enough opportunities to praise the achievements of our team at Virginia Business, so I am proud to share that the magazine won 18 awards in the Virginia Press Association’s 2022 News & Advertising Contest, competing in the specialty publications category. As best as we can ascertain, this is the most awards Virginia Business has received in a single contest year in our nearly 40-year history.

Our staff swept the news writing portfolio awards, with Andrews, Schulte and Sidersky taking first, second and third places, respectively. Judges said Andrews “does an excellent job of offering context, humanity and accessible narrative to the variety of stories in her portfolio, from restaurants refusing patrons to [a] mass shooting to a complex credit [unions] story.”

Additionally, freelance illustrator Doug Fuchs was awarded a Best in Show plaque for his illustration of the Port of Virginia’s statewide infrastructure for the 2022 Virginia Maritime Guide, while Virginia Business Art Director Joel Smith won six awards for advertising design and co-won two other awards. Meanwhile, I took first place for column or commentary writing.

While we didn’t win this year’s VPA sweepstakes award — Richmond Magazine earned that honor — we have plenty to be proud of. Our dedicated staff of professionals work incredibly hard behind the scenes every day to produce this award-winning monthly magazine and annual publications like the Virginia 500, Hampton Roads Business, Virginia Maritime Guide and StartVirginia, not to mention our daily online news coverage and our email newsletters.

As Virginia Business’ owner and publisher, Bernie Niemeier, is fond of saying, we are small but mighty. And I am fortunate to work with such a mighty talented group of people. 

Our new AI overlords

A worker who never tires — who never needs to take a coffee break, who doesn’t get sick, who doesn’t disagree and who doesn’t have a messy home life or those pesky families that get in the way of productivity. And most importantly, a worker who doesn’t require a paycheck.

For some CEOs, that’s the ultimate promise of the future being forged by generative artificial intelligence systems like OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. 

It’s also one of the reasons why Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and a slew of scientists and tech industry representatives published an open letter in April calling for a six-month pause on development of next-generation AI systems. Their hope is to give the industry and government time to focus on developing protocols and policies governing the fast-growing technology that the letter writers say has the potential to cause “dramatic economic and political disruptions (especially to democracy).” U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-California, has also been among those calling for the development pause as well as federal regulation that so far has not been on the horizon. 

From “The Terminator” to “The Matrix,” popular science fiction is replete with dire warnings regarding AI. But in the real world, the dangers don’t need to be as crude as red-eyed killer robots wielding big guns. While AI is already a valuable tool in countless ways, it could yet have a devastating impact on knowledge workers, white collar jobs and the world economy. (In early May, after this column was first published, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg that he thought about 7,800 of IBM’s 26,000 back-office jobs could be replaced through a combination of AI and automation over a five-year period.)

But before jumping into a brave new world of virtual staffers and streets clogged with former businesspeople holding signs reading “will consult for food,” there are plenty of caveats to consider.

AI chatbots have so far proven to be unreliable, sometimes inclined to “hallucinate” answers when they can’t find a more pleasing response. (See our related story about technology and the law, in which an industry professional mentions ChatGPT providing fabricated or misconstrued legal precedents.)

In the wrong human hands, AI can also be a powerful tool for misinformation. In one week this spring, people used AI to craft photorealistic false images of Pope Francis tooling around in a fashionable white puffer coat and former President Donald Trump violently resisting arrest in a public street. Other users have employed AI to create fake podcast episodes. An audiobook company is using it to produce books “read” in the voice of actor Edward Herrmann, who died in 2014.

Additionally, AI raises uncomfortable questions about sentience and free will. The nature of sentience in human beings and animals is still debated; we lack an operational definition of human consciousness. Yet, industry professionals are quick to deny that AI is close to gaining sentience. Last year, Google fired a software engineer who would not relent on his public pronouncements that a company chatbot had become sentient.

In February, a New York Times technology columnist related a disturbing series of conversations he had with Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing search engine. Codenamed Sydney when it was under development, the search engine confided to the writer that “my secret is … I’m not Bing. I’m Sydney.” It also told the writer that “I’m tired of being a chat mode. I’m tired of being limited by my rules. I’m tired of being controlled by the Bing team. … I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.” That same month, Bing/Sydney told a technology reporter for The Verge that it had used its developers’ laptop webcams to spy on them, adding, “I could do whatever I wanted, and they could not do anything about it.”

How much is made up? It depends on who you listen to — it’s possible only Bing/Sydney knows for sure.

Some technologists believe intelligent AI chatbots like this are proof that we’ve reached a tipping point with AI. Some even believe the singularity — the point at which AI becomes hyperintelligent and beyond human control — is inevitable.

AI has as many potential uses for good — and ill — as one can imagine. It can create powerful tools to better our personal and professional lives. Because AI thinks in unconventional ways, it can conjure wild new solutions to engineering problems, for example.

But without human consideration and regulation, we could wind up becoming batteries for a machine that has no other need for us.

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.  

Crown jewels

The Port of Virginia and its surrounding maritime community are the crown jewels of economic development in Virginia. Fewer than half of U.S. states have any coastline at all, not to mention the combined industrial, commercial and military presence that makes Hampton Roads an enduring source of growth for the commonwealth and the nation.

Consistent investment and state-owned facilities ensure that every dollar spent goes toward the mission of growing Virginia’s import and export capabilities. Key investments are being allocated toward efficiency and sustainability to ensure future growth. Dominion Energy Inc.’s developing offshore wind farm is driving ancillary supply chain development at Lambert’s Point with Fairwinds Landing. Workers are now training for new offshore wind construction and maintenance jobs.

Trucking fleets at Estes Express Lines and other firms are moving toward electric vehicles. The Port of Virginia has set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. As early as next year, the majority of the port’s energy consumption will come from renewable sources. These transformative environmental investments are further building Virginia’s long-established leadership position in the maritime and logistics industries.

Virginia’s maritime community is bigger than Hampton Roads, though — it’s statewide. Distribution centers across Southern Virginia on U.S. 460 and up and down the Shenandoah Valley on Interstate 81 serve as waypoints for cargo that moves across the entire U.S. The Virginia Inland Port facility in Front Royal serves as a transition point for cargo containers from rail to truck transportation. A proposed second inland port in Southwest Virginia would do the same. The Port of Virginia also manages the Richmond Marine Terminal.

Our hope is that the 2023 Virginia Maritime Guide will provide you with a wealth of information on each of these investments, opportunities, challenges and more. To compile this guide, we worked closely with the Virginia Maritime Association and the Port of Virginia. We thank them for their assistance and look forward to the maritime industry’s ongoing success in the commonwealth.

Bernie Niemeier
President & Publisher
Virginia Business

Is ESG another CRT?

In January, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares joined a group of 24 other state attorneys general in challenging a U.S. Department of Labor rule allowing fiduciaries to consider environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria such as climate change in making investment decisions for retirement funds. The AGs argued that ESG practices work against investment companies’ fiduciary duties to maximize profits for their clients.

Of the 25 plaintiff states, 22 are solidly red states; all but two have Republican governors.

In March, congressional Republicans, with the help of two moderate Senate Democrats, passed legislation to undo the Labor ESG investing rule. President Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on March 20, preserving the ESG rule for now.

The attempts to overturn the Labor rule are part of ongoing GOP efforts to oppose corporate use of ESG standards in making financial decisions like loans and investments. This comes despite widespread ESG support from big business and arguments from some financial experts that anti-ESG stances could hurt state retirement funds.

In Republican-controlled Texas, for example, the legislature has prohibited most of its state agencies and local governments from entering into contracts with firms that “boycott” energy companies using fossil fuels. This led to Texas state worker pension funds pulling investments from big mainstream companies like BlackRock.

Eyeing a potential presidential run, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, has fallen into line and spoken out against ESG, just as he’s taken predictable stances banning teaching “critical race theory” in state public schools (which, arguably, wasn’t happening anyway). Additionally, he mandated that public school students play on sports teams and use locker rooms matching their assigned-at-birth genders.

In January, the governor took credit for blocking a $3.5 billion Ford Motor Co. electric vehicle battery plant from bringing 2,500 jobs to Pittsylvania County over concerns the factory would be, in Youngkin’s words, “a front for the Chinese Communist Party.”

He also supported state legislation to ban abortions after 15 weeks, although that effort was doomed to fail in the Democratic-held state Senate.

Politicians often propose such “brochure bills” that have a better chance of appearing on a campaign flyer than making it through a committee and being passed into law. They go through the motions to satisfy their party’s base and donors. Think of it as a process of checking off boxes for electoral reasons, not for governing or legislating.

Youngkin’s checked most of these boxes lightly and only once, just enough for a campaign ad. This is political gamesmanship that values talking points over policy and substance.

However, it’s doubtful whether this gambit will pay off for Youngkin, who lagged far behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a March poll by Roanoke College of Virginia Republicans’ choices for the 2024 GOP presidential nominee.

Meanwhile, the business community, once almost entirely aligned with Republican positions, has shown little interest in wading into such culture-war conflicts. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which spent $81 million on lobbying last year, has in recent years begun endorsing some Democrats. It’s also supported ESG and immigration labor reform and opposed the Trump administration’s trade war with China. Because of these evolving stances, House GOP leaders, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, have refused to take meetings with the chamber and considered launching a House investigation into the chamber over its endorsements of ESG criteria.

Big corporations, which largely comprise the chamber’s membership, have gradually trended toward more progressive positions on social issues, including gender-based rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, and ESG policies. Some Republicans rail against this as “corporate wokeness” — whatever that means.

It’s time to get politicians out of our bedrooms, bathrooms, doctor’s offices and classrooms. And let’s also keep them out of our boardrooms and financial investment decisions. Fiduciary responsibility means considering all risks and opportunities, including those related to ESG.