Youngkin moves to save run-down city Dems have controlled.
Washington Post finds this "remarkable."
Petersburg is a city in southern Virginia of about 34,000 people. Approximately 80 percent of its residents are black.
The city, plagued by financial woes, failing schools, and an enormous homicide rate, is a shambles. But Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin has moved boldly to “revitalize the city’s fortunes and improve the quality of life for residents,” as the Washington Post puts it.
The Democrats certainly have had their chances to improve Petersburg. They’ve controlled the city decades — maybe since Reconstruction. (The last Republican to carry the city in a presidential election was Richard Nixon in 1972.) And, until recently, the Democrats controlled Virginia for eight years.
Meanwhile, Petersburg sank further and further into despair. Six years ago, the city nearly went bankrupt and had to shut down key services. Petersburg thus became an object lesson in bad management — so much so that the Virginia General Assembly created a mechanism for audits of municipal ledgers throughout the state to make sure other municipalities don’t sink as low as Petersburg.
Today, the unemployment rate in Petersburg is the highest in Virginia and almost twice the national average. The homicide rate is among the highest in the U.S. — it ranked second nationally in 2020, behind only St. Louis. The absenteeism rate in the city’s schools is 2½ times the state’s average.
The outlook for Petersburg is quite grim. According to this report:
Looking ahead, Petersburg may well continue to face demographic and social headwinds. If current trends continue, the combination of an aging population and lower educational attainment will likely limit the attractiveness of the city to potential relocating businesses. If younger residents anticipate this, they will more likely locate away from the city.
Additionally, continued delays of infrastructure maintenance and a lack of improvement in school performance could leave residents with compromised public services and somewhat limited skill sets. If this, in turn, is reflected in lower tax revenues in the future, the city’s current set of problems could persist and be compounded.
Glenn Youngkin is determined to halt the city’s slide and, indeed, to reverse it. Yesterday:
In an extraordinary two-hour ceremony, Youngkin and seven of his Cabinet secretaries detailed 42 initiatives they pledged to undertake with Petersburg officials and faith, civic and education leaders.
Youngkin said the effort hinges on local residents working together in a public-private partnership, with government pitching in to facilitate. The initiative, which aides said has been in the works for weeks if not months, consists of six areas of emphasis: education, public safety, health care, transportation, economic development, and relations between the community and faith leaders. . . .
Cabinet secretaries representing each area made presentations of their specific goals, outlined several initiatives to satisfy those goals, and introduced stakeholders that would be working as partners, such as the YMCA, church groups and city officials.
After each presentation, the secretaries and stakeholders ceremonially signed a pledge describing their commitments.
What are some of these commitments?
Education Secretary Aimee Rogstad Guidera, for instance, touted a proposal from Virginia State University — which is a historically Black college — and Richard Bland College to start a “lab school” in Petersburg in partnership with the local K-12 school system. Lab schools have been a major Youngkin initiative; the General Assembly set aside $100 million for such projects in the coming fiscal year but did not approve funding beyond that.
Guidera also announced a new program in which Virginia State will train people to serve as mentors and tutors in the Petersburg school system, and said the YMCA has committed to providing special programs in schools to help children get extra support.
In addition:
Jason Miyares [Virginia’s attorney general] said he has asked two federal prosecutors assigned to the region to focus on violent crime in Richmond and Petersburg.
Since April, Virginia State Police have committed additional resources to Petersburg, which city Police Chief Travis C. Christian credited with leading to a reduction of violent crime. Christian said Public Safety Secretary Robert Mosier calls him at least once a week “to make sure we’re just doing okay here in the city of Petersburg.”
Priorities listed by Transportation Secretary Shep Miller include several federal programs that have long been in the works. Those include a $58 million grant awarded to Virginia and North Carolina to improve rail service between Richmond and Raleigh, which will benefit Petersburg, as well as federal money to improve the local Amtrak station.
The Post reports that “state Democrats seemed somewhat caught off guard by Youngkin’s big rollout.” Maybe they actually believe their own BS about those mean, uncaring Republicans.
But state Dems rallied in time to assert that many components of the governor’s program have been “around for some time.” The House Minority Leader claimed that “as usual, the Governor is taking credit for other people’s work.
However, local Democrats, the ones who have to deal with the mess associated with decades of their party’s governance, had a very different take. Petersburg’s Democratic mayor, Samuel Parham, lauded his new Republican partner:
Governor Youngkin is the first to step down here and say that he is going to put all of his resources in a city to move the dial to create prosperity here in the city of Petersburg. . . .
I got a special man right there in Governor Youngkin. I have his back, he has mine.
There was also praise from Petersburg School Board Chairman Kenneth Pritchett. He stated:
We’re excited about lab schools. . .We thank the governor for bringing everyone in the commonwealth of Virginia together for Petersburg. We needed change, like, yesterday.
Unfortunately, “yesterday” the Democrats were in charge.
The Washington Post claims to find it “remarkable” that Youngkin is so committed to helping Petersburg. Of the governor’s rollout, reporter Gregory Schneider sniffs:
It was a remarkable turn for an administration that has drawn criticism for agitating the racial divide, particularly for its crusades against “equity” in school programs and against critical race theory. . . .
This is another case of believing one’s own BS, or pretending to. There’s no contradiction or tension between (1) opposing the race-based distribution of benefits and burdens or an emphasis on teaching children about the evils of whiteness and (2) trying to save a failing city with a mostly black population via a private-public partnership that includes funding for lab schools, mentoring, tougher law enforcement, improved rail service, reliance on community and religious leaders, etc.
Indeed, I believe that shedding (1) the “equity” agenda (which, in essence, means discriminating against whites and Asian-Americans) and (2) an education agenda that induces blacks to distrust, if not hate, whites constitutes, in itself, a step in the direction of improving life for members of all races in any jurisdiction.
Will Youngkin’s initiatives be enough to revive Petersburg? The cynic in me has doubts.
But Youngkin’s efforts hold more potential for doing so than anything the Democrats have come up with during their sorry reign. And they give the lie to the left-liberal narrative that conservatives are hostile to blacks or indifferent to improving the quality of their lives.