Author: Andrew Jenner
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Andrew Jenner, Publisher
Andrew spent most of his career as a journalist in the Shenandoah Valley, working as a freelancer for a decade. He covered many things for many media outlets, including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Roads & Kingdoms, Discover and WMRA. He returned home to Harrisonburg in 2018, after three years living and writing in Brazil.
They lived to quack another day
When I took my kids to Kline’s last week and found the duck sitting on her nest in the planter, I sensed another gritty duck story to tell. I kind of hoped, to be honest, that things would end badly. A dark, disturbing duck story on Easter weekend? No proper journalist could resist that.
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A farmer, a businessman and a county supervisor walk into a debate hall…
In the final days before their April 27 firehouse primary, Republicans running in the 25th House District —Marshall Pattie, Chris Runion and Richard Fox differ more in who they are rather than what they believe, as they showed Tuesday at their latest debate.
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After last-minute maneuvering, General Assembly passes funding bill for I-81 improvements
The road to funding improvements on I-81 took another twist Wednesday, with the General Assembly voting to increase truck registration fees and impose new fuel taxes along the I-81 corridor.
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Jail population swells much faster than recent predictions, creating more questions than answers
The number of people sent to jail has outpaced a 2014 forecast. The local jail population peaked well over 600 last year, seven years earlier than predicted in the 2014 community-based corrections plan. And no one can agree on why.
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Unexpected retirement prompts candidate scramble in the 25th House district
At his campaign launch event yesterday in Bridgewater, Chris Runion handed out his regular business card from Eddie Edwards Signs, where he’s president. It’s been a busy few days, he said. There hasn’t been time yet to throw together a card for the House of Delegates race he’s just scrambled into, after the unexpected announcement that Del. Steve Landes would not run for reelection.
After last-ditch effort to fund I-81 improvements this year fails, more study, another report, and lots of divergent opinions await
State Sen. Mark Obenshain went out on a limb with a bill to begin tolling on I-81 to pay for $2.2 billion in much-needed improvements to the interstate . Things didn’t work like he’d hoped, however.
“I’m deeply disappointed,” Obenshain said. “We had a commitment to a process last year, and, frankly, I did a pretty uncomfortable thing of taking the result of that process and carrying that legislation.”
Beneath a political cloud in Richmond, legislators emerged with policy ‘success,’ says Harrisonburg’s delegate
Despite a legislative session that The Washington Post described as “the strangest … in anyone’s memory” amid a trio of scandals in Virginia’s executive branch, Harrisonburg’s state Del. Tony Wilt said it ended up being a “very successful legislative year.”
Keys to stemming rising jail population could be in the numbers. The question now is how to find them.
While the local jail population continues to grow, the record-keeping systems used by law enforcement, the courts and other pieces of the local criminal justice system remain stuck in the past, complicating efforts to understand what’s driving that population growth or to begin addressing it. Within a year, however, new insight into local criminal justice trends could be coming from two different sources.
