Selected writing
Who is responsible for vetting local campaign finance reports?
VPM News || November 1, 2024
Amid questions surrounding the fundraising numbers, legal credentials and campaign finance reports of Richmond City Council candidate Tavares Floyd, Virginia election law is getting a lot of attention.
A crucial question being asked: Who’s responsible for ensuring that candidates’ financial disclosures are accurate?
Richmond’s top elections official, the city’s lead prosecutor and the state elections department are all certain of one thing: It’s not them.
Funeral home founder refutes Tavares Floyd’s ownership claim
VPM News || October 22, 2024
Tavares Floyd listed himself as an owner of Charlottesville’s “McClenny + Watkins Funeral Home” on a financial disclosure form he filed with the Richmond City General Registrar to run for the 6th District council seat.
Robert “R.B.” McClenny Jr., the funeral home’s owner, told VPM News that’s not true. Floyd “has never owned any part of the business,” McClenny said in a phone call Tuesday.
McClenny said Floyd worked for the funeral home “about five or six years ago” and still provides help on a part-time basis as an attendant for funeral services.
Tavares Floyd is not licensed to practice law in any U.S. state, territory
VPM News || October 21, 2024
Tavares Floyd, a candidate for Richmond City Council, describes himself as “a lawyer, small business owner, lecturer, public servant and community advocate” on his campaign website.
The 6th District candidate has also been listed as a civil rights attorney in biography pages and blog posts from organizations he’s been involved with.
But Floyd — who is running against his former boss, Councilor Ellen Robertson — is seemingly not licensed to practice law in Virginia. Further investigation revealed Floyd is unlikely to be a licensed lawyer anywhere in the U.S.
23 Va. school districts have taken books off shelves in past two years
Richmond Times-Dispatch || May 7, 2022
To understand the landscape of challenges to books in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch sent public records requests to each of the state’s 132 public school systems seeking information on books that had been removed or placed under review in the past two school years.
Twenty-three school districts confirmed that they had taken at least one book out of circulation for content reasons, while 90 said no books had been brought up for review.
First-time homebuyers feel squeezed out in hot Richmond housing market
Richmond Times-Dispatch || April 30, 2022
An analysis of home sales data by the Richmond Times-Dispatch found that since 2017, average sale prices across the city of Richmond and Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico counties have shot up by more than $120,000, despite median household income increasing by less than $10,000 in that time period.
Furthermore, the traditional “starter home” price point is rapidly vanishing from the market. In 2017, over 30% of home sales in the area closed for $200,000 or less. Now, less than one of 10 houses sells below that threshold, while twice as many homes sell for over $500,000.
Richmond is Virginia’s overdose capital. Nine of 10 fatal overdoses in the city involve fentanyl.
Richmond Times-Dispatch || January 26, 2022
More than 2,000 Virginians died of drug overdoses through the first nine months of 2021, a 17% increase over the same time frame in 2020. Virginia is on pace to record nearly 2,700 overdose deaths in 2021, a figure nearly four times higher than when the state began tracking overdoses in 2007 in response to the painkiller epidemic.
The spike in overdose deaths — 2021 is poised to be the eighth year in the past nine that Virginia saw record highs — has been driven almost entirely by fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin. Fentanyl deaths have increased every year since 2012, while deaths not related to the opioid have declined in each of the past five years.
5 ways celebrities use offshore
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists || October 4, 2021
Shakira did it. So did Ringo Starr, Claudia Schiffer, Julio Iglesias and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar. They have all set up companies “offshore,” in places like the British Virgin Islands (BVI), where tax rates are low or zero and where their businesses — and their identities — are hidden from the public.
And they’re among the celebrities, politicians and billionaires named in a trove of leaked files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Those records are part of the Pandora Papers, an investigation of the offshore financial system that the rich and famous use to buy yachts and private jets, invest in real estate and protect their families’ wealth while avoiding scrutiny.
Disconnected: Students struggle with e-learning obstacles, lawmakers earmark solutions
Capital News Service || November 20, 2020
In both Baltimore City and Allegany County, the number of households without a broadband connection hovers around 40%, but usually not for the same reasons.
Allegany County residents are hamstrung by topography that blocks cell signals, and a population density too low to justify the investment of broadband providers. In Baltimore, broadband infrastructure is plentiful. But urban connectivity often comes down to affordability, according to state officials and city stakeholders.
Confusion over federal eviction moratorium led to selective enforcement
Capital News Service || September 2, 2020
A two-month investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found that while the federal and state moratoriums dramatically decreased eviction filings in April and May, cracks in the federal law appeared immediately.
Confusion about the moratorium’s language, which played out in conflicting guidance from federal agencies and the courts, led to selective enforcement. Landlords were expected to determine for themselves if their property was covered by the CARES Act. Renters had virtually no legal help to fight back. And eviction filings in some cities dropped more steeply in white neighborhoods than minority neighborhoods during the federal moratorium.