By Carol Diggs In each of Virginia’s last five national elections, voter registration around the state has surged anywhere from 6 to 10 percent. This year, coronavirus has made voter registration (like so many things) just a little harder. Registering online, available throughout the pandemic shutdown, requires a Virginia driver’s license or DMV-issued ID—things that […]
By Carol Diggs In each of Virginia’s last five national elections, voter registration around the state has surged anywhere from 6 to 10 percent. This year, coronavirus has made voter registration (like so many things) just a little harder. Registering online, available throughout the pandemic shutdown, requires a Virginia driver’s license or DMV-issued ID—things that […]
Governor Ralph Northam was in Charlottesville today to announce a budget amendment that would end the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court fines and costs. The amendment would also reinstate driving privileges for 627,000 Virginians whose licenses are suspended. At Legal Aid Justice Center, which has filed suit against the commissioner of […]
Driver’s license suspensions under siege A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction December 21 and ordered Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Richard Holcomb to reinstate the driver’s licenses of three plaintiffs who automatically lost their licenses when they were unable to pay court costs and fines. The judge said they are likely to prevail in […]
It’s a tough argument to make: That a woman with three children who makes around $9 an hour, who can’t buy enough groceries to meet minimum nutritional needs, and who shares a bedroom with two kids in an apartment with another family, has plenty of money left over to pay $100 a month to get […]
It’s not just bad driving that has caused nearly 1 million Virginians’ licenses to be suspended. Failure to pay court costs—often unrelated to being behind the wheel at all—has put indigent citizens in a downward spiral of debt, unemployment, and incarceration, according to a civil suit filed by the Legal Aid Justice Center two years […]
Most people recoil at the thought of going to the DMV, so when a Department of Motor Vehicles van pulled up to Reid Super-Save Market last Thursday morning, a line of people were already waiting to cash in on the convenience of a mobile office. The DMV’s first office on wheels used a telephone modem […]
Busy as a bookworm Here in the digital age, one relic from our printing-press past is defying obsolescence: the library. The Jefferson-Madison Regional Library saw its busiest year ever in 2016, with its newest Crozet and Northside libraries contributing to the boom, according to director John Halliday. It’s not just books that account for the […]
Not in attendance at a civil case hearing February 2 in U.S. District Court were the four plaintiffs who are suing Virginia’s Department of Motor Vehicles. One reason for their absences, according to their attorney, is because their driver’s licenses are suspended. The case, filed by Legal Aid Justice Center against DMV Commissioner Richard Holcomb, […]