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Del. Pollard's column
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Delegate Albert Pollard, Jr., represents the 99th District, which
consists of the counties of Lancaster, Northumberland, Richmond,
Westmoreland, King George and a portion of Caroline, in Virginia’s
House of Delegates. You may contact his office in Lancaster Courthouse
at (804) 462-5940 or visit his website at www.albertpollard.com. |
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Dear Delegate Gilbert:
I am writing concerning the article I read on August 2 in which you blame the crowd at “wine and cheese parties” for shoving the Chesapeake Bay cleanup down the throats of the agricultural community.
As rural legislators, your district and my district share many similar characteristics, however, our districts have a major distinction and that is my district is down river of yours. This is particularly important because your area of the state is a nutrient hotspot -- meaning you import corn, export chicken and keep the manure, sending the nitrogen and phosphorous downstream through your surface and groundwater.
Indeed, two days before I read your article I was at Northern Neck Community Days. It was there that I saw some old friends, including a waterman in his 60’s who had not worked in over a month. The reason he hadn’t worked was because in mid-June he had caught what we refer to locally as “watermen’s disease” (vibrio vulnificus). Watermen’s disease is caused when bacteria which thrive in polluted waters of the Chesapeake Bay infect a nick or cut.
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Mariah, the kids and I just spent some time over on Virginia’s Eastern Shore – it is where Mariah is from – doing the ordinary things one does as a dad on vacation: pulling splinters (“It is best to wear shoes next time you are on the dock…”), picking up pizza, etc.
In the course of these ordinary things, I noticed something remarkable...ordinary Americans.
As I was driving north up the main highway to pick up a pizza, I happened to notice a bicyclist with a bicycle trailer heading south. And, behold, when came I south with the pizza, the bicyclist was on the side of the road fiddling with his tire.
I stopped to see if I could help and, to make a long story short, I had bumped into a father/son team who were out running. That is, they were running from Maine to Florida.
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Decoding Egg-citing Tax Policy |
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Tax policy is not, by its very nature, exciting. But we did have an interesting question come from a recent constituent outreach effort in King George County.
The question came from a woman who selling eggs with some other friends at the King George County Farmers’ Market. Different friends would take turns working on different Saturday mornings selling each other’s eggs. Her reading of Virginia law was that each “company” (individual) who sold eggs at the farmers market had to pay a flat “Litter Tax” of ten dollars. The tax is intended for stores, restaurants, and manufacturers/distributors of food and sundry products. Furthermore, some of the growers were convinced they were egg “handlers”, which required they pay an egg excise tax.
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Last summer, I wrote then Attorney General Bob McDonnell for an opinion about the ability of state parks to restrict swimming in public water. Shortly after I submitted the request, the Department of Parks and Recreation contacted me asking me to withdraw the request while they had an internal review.
Well, the review is back and, frankly, I still can't understand the rationale behind their policy. Therefore, I am resubmitting the request to the new Attorney General.
“Dear Attorney General Cuccinelli,
I am writing to request an Attorney General’s opinion regarding Virginia’s Department of Conservation and Recreation’s policy of only allowing state park visitors to wade into the public waters which are adjacent to certain Virginia parks. This ‘no swimming’ policy is, while perhaps well intentioned, in my mind, ‘nanny-istic’. More importantly, I fail to recognize the statutory authority by which any riparian owner can prohibit activity in publicly owned waters, or on publicly owned bottom land.
A park ranger informed me that this policy was in place because of ‘liability issues’. Due to the doctrine of sovereign immunity, I fail to understand the ‘liability issues’ argument. And, if there are ‘liability issues’, would not the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries also have ‘liability issues’ from all of their boat ramps? What about a state university which owns a waterfront parcel? To the extent that an individual’s family can sue the Commonwealth because their family member drowned in state owned waters, should we ban all boats from waters in the Commonwealth? It seems to me that unless all common sense has died, a sign simply stating ‘Swim At Your Own Risk’ is sufficient public precaution.
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The drawback of serving in the General Assembly is that you have to serve with 139 politicians and, sometimes, job performance is measured not by what gets done but by preventing bad things from happening.
Usually this provides very little satisfaction, except for recently when my office helped save the Kilmarnock Firemen’s Carnival … OK, that’s over the top. But we did help save the raffle.
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