Politics

15 minutes before last night’s Richmond City Council meeting, Mayor Dwight Jones withdrew his Shockoe Bottom ballpark proposal from consideration after a majority of council members expressed opposition to it.

Councilman Parker Agelasto believes many of the financial details of the Mayor’s plan were overly optimistic.

Councilman Jon Baliles says the plan put a moral obligation on the city that he was uncomfortable with. Baliles says Council members will have to meet with the administration to decide where the money set aside for the Shockoe project will now go.

Democratic Delegate Joe Morrissey of Henrico is the second Richmond legislator this week to challenge the legality of Mayor Jones’ Shockoe Bottom redevelopment plan. Morrissey is joining Republican Delegate Manoli Loupassi of Richmond in asking House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones to require that any state dollars for Shockoe development be contingent on all of the projects being open bid. He says if Jones does not include this stipulation in the budget amendments will likely be offered on the floor.

Shockoe stadium critics say taxpayers are indirectly funding a no-bid contract to build an apartment complex, which is central to the Mayor’s Shockoe Bottom development plan. Paul Goldman, former advisor to Governor and later Mayor Douglas Wilder, says the Jones administration is using the Economic Development Authority in order to bypass city and state laws requiring public projects be open to competitive bidding. He calls the deal a back room scheme that stems from an administrative culture of corruption.

U.S. District Judge James Spencer denied a motion by defense attorneys for former Governor Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen to dismiss the corruption charges against them as well as another motion to try them separately. In his ruling, Judge Spencer wrote that a jury must decide whether the former governor and his wife misused their official positions to trade influence in governmental decision making for the $165,000 in gifts and travel the McDonnell’s accepted from former Star Scientific CEO Johnnie Williams.