“Our administration remains committed to investing in rural communities during this unprecedented health crisis and as we work to rebuild Virginia’s economy,” Northam said in a statement. “This funding will go a long way to address the immediate needs of Virginia families and provide relief to small businesses, so they are better prepared for economic growth despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic.”
The following counties and cities will receive CDBG funding for small business relief funds:
Alleghany County, Covington, Clifton Forge, Iron Gate: $1.6 million
Amherst County: $550,000
Brunswick County: $520,000
Culpeper County and town of Culpeper: $850,000
Halifax County and South Boston: $550,000
LENOWISCO (Lee, Scott, Wise counties and the city of Norton): $1.7 million
Mecklenburg County: $520,000
Page County: $548,275
Shenandoah County: $550,000
York County, Poquoson and Williamsburg: $1.23 million
According to the governor’s office, Swissomation, an Amherst County business, has been contracted by General Motors to increase production of components for ventilators for very ill COVID-19 patients. Swissomation, which manufactures very small machine parts, will receive $569,650 in CDBG funding to help purchase special equipment to fill the order from General Motors.
Other CDBG awards, federally funded and administered by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, will assist housing and food programs. This year, more than $20.4 million has been distributed to communities across the state.
More details on the CDBG awards, including how the funds will be distributed, are available on the governor’s website.
Last week, the state saw 5,455 new COVID-19 cases and 151 virus-related deaths, continuing a statewide decline, according to the Virginia Department of Health’s update Monday, Sept. 28. Virginia’s positivity rate is 4.7%, a 1% decrease since Sept. 21.
Virginia has 146,593 total cases and 3,172 fatalities as of Monday, as the world approaches 1 million deaths — one out of five of which took place in the United States.
Gov. Ralph Northam and first lady Pamela Northam announced in a statement Friday that they had tested positive for COVID-19 after a household staff member came down with the coronavirus. The governor said he was asymptomatic and that Pam Northam had mild symptoms, and that they planned to quarantine themselves at least 10 days following their tests last week. In a video update via Twitter on Monday, Gov. Northam said he and the first lady were “on the mend.”
Several Virginia universities are reporting COVID-19 rates among students, faculty and staff members, although the universities are using different methods. Some are reporting daily, while others are providing weekly updates. James Madison University closed its campus in early September due to a high number of new cases and plans to reopen in October. Here are the most current university stats:
James Madison University: 865 total self-reported positive cases (since Aug. 17); 629 positive tests reported by health center (since July 1), for a total of 1,494 cases. The overall positivity rate of tests at the university’s health center (since July 1) is 24.23% as of Sept. 28.
Virginia Tech: 976 positive tests since Aug. 3, with 141 new cases from Sept. 18 to Sept. 24. The seven-day moving average positivity rate as of Sept. 24 is 20.14%.
University of Virginia: 648 positive cases among students and employees reported from Aug. 17 to Sept. 25. The university recorded 158 new cases from Sept. 18-24, according to its tracker.
Virginia Commonwealth University: 276 total positive tests, including 242 student cases as of Sept. 28. According to prevalence testing, the positivity rate is 0.6% as of Sept. 25.
George Mason University: 60 positive cases among students and employees between Aug. 17 and Sept. 24.
Radford University: 409 total positive cases among students and employees as of Sept. 21, with 12 new cases since Sept. 14. Overall positivity rate is 10.8% as of Sept. 21. The dashboard is updated each Tuesday.
Meanwhile, some regions around the state still report relatively high coronavirus rates, although many hotspots have seen declines in the last few weeks.
Here are the health districts with higher than 10% positivity rates as of Sept. 24, the most recent day available:
West Piedmont (Franklin, Henry and Patrick counties and the city of Martinsville): 10.9% (up from 10.2% Sept. 17)
Western Tidewater (Isle of Wight and Southampton counties and the cities of Franklin and Suffolk): 12.8% (up from 10.7%)
In West Piedmont, there are 19 outbreaks listed, with seven at long-term care facilities, 10 in congregate settings and two at correctional facilities. Western Tidewater reported 18 outbreaks, with nine at long-term care facilities, four in congregate settings, four at correctional facilities and one at a health care setting, according to VDH.
These are the 10 Virginia localities that have seen the most cases in the state, as of Sept. 28:
Fairfax County: 20,822
Prince William County: 12,122
Virginia Beach: 6,858
Loudoun County: 6,839
Chesterfield County: 6,000
Henrico County: 5,452
Norfolk: 4,849
Richmond: 4,647
Chesapeake: 4,315
Arlington County: 3,963
Globally, there are 33.2 million reported COVID-19 cases and 999,202 confirmed deaths as of Sept. 21. The United States, which has the most confirmed cases and deaths worldwide, has seen 7.12 million confirmed cases so far, with 204,861 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since February.
The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association and its Shared Services Corp. subsidiary have partnered with a newly founded Richmond-area business to obtain domestically produced medical-grade face masks for hospitals and other health care providers in Virginia, VHHA announced Monday.
Olivian’s masks are not N95 but are considered medical-grade.
The announcement comes after months of concerns across the country that hospitals and doctors’ offices were too reliant on Chinese medical mask producers to maintain sufficient supplies for frontline COVID-19 responders. Virginia signed a $27 million contract with Norfolk-based Northfield Medical Manufacturing LLC in April to ship N95 masks and other personal protective equipment from Asia, when states turned to private market negotiations to get PPE, which was running short nationally.
Although nonmedical face masks, hand sanitizer and other supplies are plentiful now, medical-grade masks, which protect wearers from airborne particles, still are running short in many places.
Olivian, founded by Wendy Jiang Scelia in March, has led an interesting history. Scelia was part of the team that co-founded Tablee, a Richmond-based startup that was part of the Lighthouse Labs’ 2018 accelerator cohort, which produced a button for restaurant tables that allows patrons to page their waitstaff when they needed something. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tablee Tap was no longer in high demand.
An engineer who received her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, Scelia shifted focus to a new startup, Olivian, earlier this year to create a domestic pipeline for medical-grade masks. Olivian is a client of Blackbriar Regulatory Services, a spinoff company of Avail Vapor. BRS manufactures masks and other items in a plant in Chesterfield, and Olivian has opened other manufacturing operations in Houston. Olivian is registered with the Food and Drug Administration, and it has started a monthly subscription service for masks.
Olivian’s goal is to create 100 domestic jobs and manufacture 40 million masks per month in the United States. Scelia changed gears after her brother’s wife, a nurse in Connecticut, said her unit was running low on PPE, especially disposable masks. After using her supply chain connections to get masks to her sister-in-law’s hospital, Scelia said she realized the need for a reliable domestic manufacturing operation.
“What began as a response to a family situation has rapidly [evolved] into a homegrown business providing local jobs while contributing to the response to a global health crisis,” Scelia said in a statement.
“Access to the supplies and equipment needed to respond to COVID-19, from PPE to testing kits and remdesivir, has been an ongoing challenge for Virginia hospitals and other health care providers since the pandemic arrived in March,” VHHA President and CEO Sean T. Connaughton said in a statement. “The association has actively pursued multiple strategies to acquire PPE and establish new supply lines. This exciting new partnership with Olivian is a critical step forward in that work.”
VHHA did not disclose financial terms of the contract or how many masks Olivian will provide to health care providers in Virginia. The association includes 110 hospitals and 26 health systems.
The Virginia Department of Health reported 6,567 new COVID-19 cases last week and an increase of 278 deaths from the virus — a larger number than most weeks because of a backlog of death data that was entered since last Tuesday, VDH said. The state now has 141,138 cases and 3,021 fatalities, as of Sept. 21.
The state’s positivity rate is 5.7%, a significant decrease since Sept. 14, when it was 7.2%. Virginia recorded its first COVID-related death in a patient younger than 19 last week, an adolescent from the Southside Health District, which covers Brunswick, Halifax and Mecklenburg counties.
The nation’s COVID-19 death toll approached 200,000 this week, more than 60,000 above Brazil, which has the next highest fatality rate in the world.
Several Virginia universities are reporting COVID-19 rates among students, faculty and staff members, although the universities are using different methods. Some are reporting daily, while others are providing weekly updates. James Madison University closed its campus in early September due to a high number of new cases and plans to reopen in October. Here are the most current university stats:
James Madison University: 821 total self-reported positive cases (since Aug. 17); 613 positive tests reported by health center (since July 1), with a total of 1,434 cases. The overall positivity rate of tests at the university health center (since July 1) is 24.9% as of Sept. 21.
Virginia Tech: 841 positive tests since Aug. 3, with 130 new cases from Sept. 14 to Sept. 20. The seven-day moving average positivity rate as of Sept. 20 is 18.57%.
University of Virginia: 490 positive cases among students and employees reported from Aug. 17 to Sept. 18. The university recorded 121 new cases from Sept. 14-19, according to its tracker.
Virginia Commonwealth University: 231 student cases and 24 employee cases as of Sept. 21. According to prevalence testing, the positivity rate is 0.7% as of Sept. 21.
George Mason University: 40 positive cases among students and employees between July 30 and Sept. 17.
Radford University: 397 total positive cases among students and employees as of Sept. 14, with 40 new cases since Sept. 7. Overall positivity rate is 11.39% as of Sept. 14. The dashboard is updated each Tuesday.
Meanwhile, some regions around the state still report relatively high coronavirus rates, although many hotspots have seen declines in the last few weeks.
Here are the health districts with higher than 10% positivity rates as of Sept. 21:
Pittsylvania-Danville: 10.3% (up from 9.9% Sept. 14)
Portsmouth: 11.7% (up from 9.4%)
Western Tidewater (Isle of Wight and Southampton counties and the cities of Franklin and Suffolk): 10.4% (down from 11.0%)
These are the 10 Virginia localities that have seen the most cases in the state, as of Sept. 21:
Fairfax County: 20,305
Prince William County: 12,122
Loudoun County: 6,678
Virginia Beach: 6,656
Chesterfield County: 5,797
Henrico County: 5,295
Norfolk: 4,745
Richmond: 4,516
Chesapeake: 4,212
Arlington County: 3,851
Globally, there are 31.1 million reported COVID-19 cases and 961,656 confirmed deaths as of Sept. 21. The United States, which has the most confirmed cases and deaths worldwide, has seen 6.81 million confirmed cases so far, with 199,606 deaths attributed to the coronavirus since February.
A group of scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University‘s Massey Cancer Center discovered that an experimental cancer drug keeps the virus that causes COVID-19 from infecting cells and replicating. Their findings were published Monday in the Biochemical Pharmacology journal and will be tested in a clinical trial at VCU Health.
AR-12 has been studied as an anti-cancer and antiviral drug in Massey researcher Paul Dent’s lab, and Dent and others have found that the oral medication is effective against Zika, mumps, measles, drug-resistant HIV and the flu, according to a news release from VCU. Laurence Booth of VCU and Jonathan O. Rayner of the University of South Alabama have studied the drug’s use in treating patients with COVID-19. They found it is “highly effective” against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.
Dent’s team also found that people of non-European descent, particularly those of African ancestry, make one type of protein, while people of European descent make a variant. This difference may explain why African American people are more prone to serious cases of COVID-19, although Dent cautioned that the observation is not conclusive. “It provides a biomarker that could be evaluated to help explain why some people get more severe illness than others,” he said in a statement.
“AR-12 works in a unique way,” added Dent, the chair of Massey’s Cancer Cell Signaling research program and a professor at VCU’s biochemistry and molecular biology department. “Unlike any other antiviral drug, it inhibits cellular chaperones, which are proteins that are required to maintain the right 3D shape of viral proteins. The shape of the virus is critical to its ability to infect and replicate.”
Dr. Andrew Poklepovic, a medical oncologist and medical director of Massey’s Clinical Trials Office, is leading the effort to start a clinical trial. In prior trials for other diseases, the medication was “safe and tolerable” to patients, Poklepovic said in a statement. Unlike most other COVID-19 drugs, which are given intravenously, AR-12 is taken orally and could be used for outpatient therapy, he said.
The Food and Drug Administration must give its approval to test the drug on COVID patients, and VCU is in talks with a drug company to manufacture enough of the medication for the trial. C19 Therapeutics, a group of entrepreneurs gathered by Massey’s associate director for basic research, Said Sebti, has recently licensed AR-12 from VCU to raise funds in support of clinical trial sponsorship.
“We are working to submit the required information for FDA approvals, and we are also in discussions with a local pharmaceutical company to manufacture the drug for the trial,” Sebti said in a statement. “We are hopeful that AR-12 will emerge as a treatment option for patients suffering from COVID-19, ultimately saving lives and contributing to the global pandemic solution.”
JBG Smith announced Monday it has purchased seven blocks of Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum in Arlington County and Alexandria from the Federal Communications Commission, an acquisition that will allow the Bethesda, Maryland-based developer to build a 5G network in the National Landing area, where Amazon.com Inc. is building its HQ2 East Coast headquarters.
A JBG Smith subsidiary, SEAD LLC, purchased seven Priority Access Licenses — four in Arlington, three in Alexandria — for more than $25 million in an FCC auction that closed in late August, the company said in a news release Monday. The licenses, which total 70 MHz, span 16.2 million square feet in National Landing and Potomac Yard. With Amazon building its HQ2 headquarters and others — including Virginia Tech and George Mason University — building facilities that will also have high-tech needs, the broadband spectrum purchase will provide connectivity for 5G and other technology infrastructure, JBG Smith officials said. It could also draw defense and cybersecurity, cloud computing, internet of things and artificial intelligence sectors to the area, the company added.
“Our investment in next-generation connectivity infrastructure will further cement National Landing as a premier global destination for entrepreneurs, universities and global technology companies to ideate, innovate and scale globally,” Evan Regan-Levine, JBG Smith’s executive vice president of strategic innovation and research, said in a statement.
The FCC raised close to $4.6 billion in auction bids in August, mainly from mobile phone and cable companies — Verizon, Cox and Comcast among them. The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech foundations also purchased licenses — six bought by U.Va. for $118,200 and eight by Virginia Tech for $1.1 million. Not all spectrum locations are equal, though: JBG Smith’s seven licenses in Northern Virginia were far more expensive, at $25.27 million.
Traditionally, the CBRS band was used by the government for military radar and satellite stations, and it will still be in use for those purposes as an “incumbent user,” according to a report by Cablefax. Each license is for three years, and according to rules released by the FCC in 2017, new users must not cause harmful interference to military or government users.
The Virginia Department of Transportation has issued its approval for the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel‘s five-year, $3.8 billion expansion to proceed, VDOT announced Thursday.
Hampton Roads Connector Partners (HRCP) received a notice to proceed for the project, allowing the builder to start interstate and tunnel work in the 9.9-mile corridor. Some preparations have started for the largest roadways project in Virginia’s history and one of the biggest nationally, which will add twin two-lane tunnels next to two existing tunnels.
HRCP, a joint venture led by New York-based Dragados USA Inc. and including Vinci Construction, Flatiron Construction Corp., Vinci subsidiary Dodin Campenon Bernard and designers HDR and Mott MacDonald, won the contract for the project, expected to conclude in 2025. It will double the number of lanes in the bridge-tunnel and ease traffic, VDOT says. HRCP received state and federal permits last month to start work in the waterways and along Interstate 64 between Hampton and Norfolk. Geotechnical borings and staging work on the HRBT South Island for a tunnel boring machine (TBM) began this summer.
The TBM, which will excavate the two tunnels, is expected to launch from the island in 2022, according to VDOT. The project also includes widening of several adjoining bridges, starting early next year. Two lanes open to traffic will be maintained in both directions during construction.
With the notice to proceed, the project moves into more detailed design and construction phases, according to HRBT Expansion Project Director Jim Utterback. “Acquiring the permits for a project of this magnitude in 16 months was a remarkable effort,” he added in a statement Thursday.
The Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission oversees funding, which is financed with regional sales- and gas-tax revenue and includes $200 million from the state’s Smart Scale transportation prioritization program. Comprehensive and funding agreements for the project were signed in April 2019.
The day before Virginia’s absentee ballots were set to begin being sent out, the Supreme Court of Virginia denied an appeal from Kanye West‘s campaign, a last-ditch effort by the rapper, producer and presidential candidate to appear on this year’s general election ballots.
On Thursday, the court dismissed without prejudice West’s appeal to the Richmond Circuit Court’s decision to disqualify him as a presidential candidate after two Suffolk County residents sued the Virginia Board of Elections on Sept. 1. They claimed that they were tricked into signing documents to become Virginia electors for West, an independent candidate who is widely considered a spoiler for President Donald Trump, although West has denied the claim.
The ruling says the Supreme Court of Virginia found it does not have jurisdiction over the case and that it was not “appropriate under the circumstances” to change the lower court’s temporary injunction, which disqualified West as a presidential candidate on this year’s Virginia ballots. The court also denied the appellants’ motion for a stay pending appeal, an administrative stay, a vacating summary or reversal as moot.
Plaintiffs Matthan Wilson and Bryan Wright were granted a temporary injunction by the circuit court Sept. 3, when Richmond Circuit Judge Joi J. Taylor ruled that 11 of 13 elector oaths submitted by West’s campaign in August were “obtained by improper, fraudulent and/or misleading means” or are invalid because of a notary’s “violations and misconduct.” Wilson and Wright said they didn’t know they would be expected to vote for West in the Electoral College and that they did not support his candidacy.
Taylor, in her ruling, also directed the elections board to “take all necessary measures … to provide notice to voters of Kanye West’s disqualification,” in the case of ballots already printed before the ruling. As for ballots that had not been printed, the board was prohibited from including West’s name.
Attorney General Mark Herring filed a brief Wednesday to the Supreme Court of Virginia arguing that “appellants are simply too late and the petition for appeal should be denied,” adding that all 133 localities have started producing ballots and are expected to begin sending batches by mail Sept. 18. Earlier in the week, Gov. Ralph Northam said there was a record-breaking number of requests for mailed absentee ballots — 790,000 statewide, as of Tuesday — due to the pandemic.
“I’m pleased the Supreme Court of Virginia agreed with me today and denied Kanye West’s appeal,” Herring said in a statement. “This case could have thrown the election into chaos, drastically changing the ballot and potentially disenfranchising tens of thousands of Virginians during an election that has brought challenges like none we have ever dealt with before. Today’s ruling will keep things on track and help to ensure that every single vote is counted in November.”
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that the Daily Press had not paid rent on its offices for more than a year. This information was based on a court filing that the newspaper’s landlord has said may have had an incorrect 2019 date listed. The Daily Press was delinquent on its rent by three months, from April to June 2020, but is now current, according to Pointe Hope LLC’s lead investor, Joe Ritchie Sr.
Employees were told they needed to gather their personal items by 5 p.m. Sept. 25 because they will not have access to the building after that time, according to an email from Par Ridder, the Chicago-based interim general manager of the two newspapers, which are owned by Chicago-based Tribune Publishing Co.
The decision comes after the closing of the Virginian-Pilot’s longtime Norfolk office in April and the shutdown of its printing press in Virginia Beach in July. Both newspapers, as well as The Virginia Gazette and Tidewater Review, are printed at the Richmond Times-Dispatch press. The closing of the Virginia Beach press eliminated 48 full-time and 84 part-time printing and packaging jobs, and newsroom employees have been given a series of unpaid furloughs since the March onset of the COVID-19pandemic.
The newspapers’ staffs will be working without an office by the end of September, with reporters, editors and other employees working remotely, mainly from home. That’s been the routine for many Pilot and Daily Press journalists since March, when the pandemic began.
After the Virginian-Pilot’s Brambleton Avenue office, its home for 82 years, was sold to developers who are turning it into a residential property, Tribune Publishing executives said that employees would be able to work from the Daily Press office in Newport News or the press building in Virginia Beach — a plan that was reversed over the past three months.
“Going forward, we will evaluate our workspace needs,” Ridder wrote in the Sept. 15 email. “However, as the pandemic prevents us from safely returning to the office for an undetermined period of time, we do not expect any decisions on this front to be made in 2020.”
Pointe Hope LLC, owner of the Daily Press’ office at the City Center at Oyster Point office park, sued the newspaper for $110,018 in June in a dispute over unpaid rent, according to Newport News Circuit Court records.
However, Joe Ritchie Sr., the leader of Pointe Hope, a group of local investors who purchased the nine-building center for $64 million in 2016, says that the Tribune has paid all overdue rent since the lawsuit was filed. The Daily Press owed three months’ rent on two properties when the suit was filed in June, Ritchie says.
“They are current on their rent,” Ritchie said in a phone interview with Virginia Business. However, Pointe Hope’s lawsuit is still pending until the Daily Press and the property owners can reach a settlement agreement on a termination of the two leases, which were supposed to expire in 2025, Ritchie added.
The Daily Press denied a breach of contract in an Aug. 21 legal filing by Brett Spain of Willcox & Savage PC in Norfolk. In the response to the lawsuit, the Daily Press’ attorney contended that the terms of the two leases were “suspended or excused based on events amounting to force majeure,” or unforeseeable circumstances that prevent fulfillment of a contract.
Tribune Publishing announced last month that it was closing five other physical newsrooms, including the New York Daily News and The Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, where five employees were killed and two wounded by a gunman in 2018.
In an Aug. 5 financial filing, Tribune Publishing disclosed it “has withheld payment of rent for a majority of its leased facilities in April and May and requested rent relief in various forms. Tribune has been notified by a number of lessors that it is in default under the terms of the respective leases and the company and certain of such lessors have formally filed complaints in their local jurisdictions. The company is negotiating with such lessors on the terms of the potential rent relief and the lessors’ remedies and is responding timely to all filed complaints. The company has secured lease restructuring, rent abatements and deferrals for approximately 24 leases and terminations on four leases.”
Several newsroom employees and the newspapers’ union, The Tidewater Guild, criticized the Daily Press office’s closure on Twitter.
“Corporate leadership in Chicago tells us this decision was made ‘after careful deliberation,’ which makes you wonder why staff are only being given 10 days notice of the closure to pack up their belongings,” wrote Sara Gregory, an education reporter for The Virginian-Pilot.
“Journalism doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and Zoom is not a permanent replacement for collaboration,” Virginian-Pilot courts and public safety reporter Margaret Matray wrote. “Some things can’t be done on Slack. And I can’t conduct an in-person interview with a sensitive source at a Starbucks.”
A complaint of many reporters was that Tribune won’t reimburse work-related expenses such as power bills, internet access, printers and other materials needed for employees to work at home.
“It costs us money to work for @tribpub,” Matray wrote. “Shameful.”
Northam has occasionally criticized the federal government for leaving the responsibility of accessing COVID-19 tests and personal protective equipment solely to governors and state officials instead of instituting a federal plan, but he appeared to take the president’s alleged slights against military veterans more personally on a day when he mentioned the high suicide rates among U.S. veterans, close to 17 fatalities a day. A U.S. Army veteran, Northam treated wounded soldiers at Germany’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center during the Gulf War.
“I certainly don’t mean to be political, but I say this as a veteran, and I say this as a doctor who took care of a lot of wounded soldiers: When we have the leader of our country referring to people like me and other men and women who have worn the uniform and some who have paid the sacrifice of death … as ‘losers and suckers,’ it just turns my stomach. I have trouble respecting a leader that refers to my fellow veterans in that manner.”
Trump, who received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, reportedly said a French cemetery for American war dead was “filled with losers.” During the same 2018 trip, he allegedly referred to more than 1,800 Marines who died at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed, according to a report in The Atlantic magazine earlier this month. Trump has vehemently denied he made the statements.
The governor also criticized the president for holding in-person political rallies during the pandemic, a practice Northam says “ignores the science and goes against even what his consultants are telling him to do. It defeats the purpose.”
In other news, the State Corporation Commission granted Northam’s request to extend its moratorium on utility disconnections again, this time through Oct. 5. The moratorium, which began March 16, was set to expire Wednesday.
The last time the SCC extended a disconnection ban on Aug. 24, it warned it would not extend the moratorium beyond Sept. 15, instead urging state lawmakers to pass legislation to create a long-term solution for households having trouble paying power bills.
The SCC commissioners issued a statement Tuesday in response to the extension, saying, “Since we first imposed the moratorium on March 16, 2020, we have warned repeatedly that this moratorium is not sustainable indefinitely. The mounting costs of unpaid bills must eventually be paid, either by the customers in arrears or by other customers who themselves may be struggling to pay their bills. Unless the General Assembly explicitly directs that a utility’s own shareholders must bear the cost of unpaid bills, those costs will almost certainly be shifted to other paying customers.”
Northam said he hopes one more extension will allow the House of Delegates and the state Senate to pass legislation in their special session, which is entering its fourth week.
He also said that the state has already set a record for an unprecedented number of requests for mailed absentee ballots this year. So far, the Virginia Board of Elections has received 790,000 requests for ballots, which will be sent out starting Friday. The state also is offering early in-person voting at precinct offices beginning Friday and ending Oct. 31, and election officers at polling places will have personal protection equipment supplies for Election Day, which federal CARES Act funds will cover, Northam said.
Also, close to 500,000 people in Virginia — about 12% of the state’s population ages 18-64 — have downloaded the Covidwise app designed by Apple and Google to trace the spread of the coronavirus through Bluetooth technology, Northam said.
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