r/FreeVirginiaNews

Virginia's Department of Social Services spent $52 million on a failed IT project to overhaul the state's outdated child support enforcement system, Gov. Abigail Spanberger said Wednesday.

In June, VPM News reported on DSS shutting down a two-year project to modernize its child support mainframe system — the Automated Program to Enforce Child Support (APECS) — that records showed had cost more than $50 million.

DSS did not confirm the total cost at the time, but Spanberger revealed the price tag Wednesday while addressing the General Assembly’s joint money committees for the first time as governor.

“We uncovered a $52 million loss at the Department of Social Services on a failed effort to replace the commonwealth's antiquated child support enforcement system,” Spanberger said. “Virginia paid serious money, and all we got were tools that barely worked.”

Spanberger’s remarks about the child support system project came as she criticized actions taken by her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin.

“My predecessor might have thought it was okay to just write off losses like this one, but I don't,” Spanberger said about the project. “It's not a corporate balance sheet that we're dealing with. It is taxpayer dollars.”

Read more here.

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Virginia wildlife department proposes new fees, regulations to offset rising costs.

Here’s a guide to how fire departments are funded in Virginia, in eight FAQs gathered from Cardinal readers.

Virginia jumped a spot to No. 3 in this year’s CNBC rankings of the Top States for Business, and the financial news network said the Old Dominion might have ranked higher except that its economy is still suffering from President Donald Trump’s DOGE cuts a year ago.

DOGE’s “chainsawing attack on public servants” has put families out of work and dampened consumer spending, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) said in an interview. Countering that requires “a long-term rebuild.”

She declined to mention her Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, by name, but said she was proud of bettering his outgoing No. 4 ranking. “I’m sure it’s not lost on anyone,” she said.

See also r/VirginiaGOP, r/VirginiaDems, r/Tidewater, r/HamptonRoads, and r/VirginiaNews.

It has been four years since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion, leaving Americans to navigate a confusing patchwork of abortion protections, restrictions, and outright bans depending on jurisdiction. Organizers have ramped up efforts to improve access since the ruling, and thanks to that work, measures to protect and ensure reproductive freedoms are expected to be on the ballot in three states come November: Idaho, Nevada, and Virginia. ✊️

See also r/VirginiaNews, r/FreeVirginiaNews, and r/VirginiaUrbanism

See also r/VirginiaNews and r/VirginiaGOP

See also r/VirginiaNews, r/VirginiaEnvironment, and r/VirginiaUrbanism.

See also r/VirginiaNews and r/FreeVirginiaNews

See also r/VirginiaUrbanism and r/VirginiaEnvironment

See also r/HamptonVA, r/Tidewater, r/HamptonRoads, r/VirginiaEnvironment, and r/VirginiaUrbanism

See also r/VirginiaBeach, r/VirginiaEnvironment, r/VirginiaUrbanism, r/Tidewater, r/HamptonRoads, and r/VirginiaNews

Bryan Watts looked troubled as he gazed over the Ware River in Gloucester County, leaning against the long, extendable staff he uses to inspect osprey nests from below.

At the top is a baby mirror that he has attached to a paint roller handle — its convex shape ensures good visibility.

The method is simple enough: Take a small boat out to tall, human-made nesting platforms sitting in the river, use the extendable mirror to take a quick look at the nest and any eggs or chicks inside, and move along to the next one.

"What we're seeing in here is a lot of failures, and this has been going on for several years now," Watts said.

As director of the Center for Conservation Biology at William and Mary, Watts has surveyed these nests for years to track ospreys' reproductive health. He released a study in June with nine other researchers describing their findings.

The Ware River drains into Mobjack Bay, a sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay that sits on the end of Virginia's Middle Peninsula. Of 10 nests on this brackish stretch of river, ospreys successfully produced one chick this year. In 2023, 81 nests on Mobjack Bay and its tributaries produced three chicks.

Watts compared those numbers to the DDT era — that pesticide, banned in 1972 for agricultural use in the US, wreaked havoc on bird populations by causing them to lay eggs with dangerously thin shells. Osprey populations fell by 80% to 90%, with an average of fewer than one chick per breeding pair, Watts said.

Now, Mobjack Bay osprey are producing even fewer chicks on average.

Read more here.