🔥 Good morning, RVA: Health insurance update, budget season, and smoke on the skyline

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, cloudy, and that’s about today for you. However, tomorrow there is a small chance of…snow! Andrew Freiden at NBC12 says, as per always, Richmond is right on the line but could see actual snow—that accumulates—tomorrow evening! S(n)o(w) exciting.

Water cooler

Richmond police are reporting two murders. First, at 5:40 PM on Monday, officers on patrol near the 200 block of W. Charity Street heard gunshots, responded, and found Katrez T. Bryant, 18, shot to death. Second, later that same evening, police received a call of a person shot, arrived at the corner of Redd and Coalter Streets, and found Kieshell L. Walker, 25, shot to death.

OK. Yesterday I wrote a few words about how I didn’t understand the bill that would create a state-level health insurance exchange in Virginia (SB 732, introduced by my very own rep, Sen. Jennifer McClellan). I heard from back from a bunch of folks (including the patron!) and now have a handful of links for those of us wishing to learn more about state-level health insurance exchanges—which is not a sentence super high on the list of sentences I thought I would ever write. First, a correction: A new, state-run exchange would replace the federally-run exchange in Virginia. You wouldn’t have to poke around in both systems. Whew. Second, locally, the Commonwealth Institute has a piece from back in October looking at several ways, including a state-run exchange, that the Commonwealth could reduce costs and increase access to health care coverage. Third, here’s an interesting stat from last March: Enrollment in Healthcare.gov decreased by 2.6% that year, while enrollment “in the 12 states running their own exchanges ticked up by almost 1%.” Actually, you can check out a graph of Healthcare.gov signups compared to the state-run exchanges since 2014 over on the very specific acasignups.net. One of my concerns is the cost of governments creating new custom software from scratch. I honestly cannot stop thinking about this fascinating thread (with a positive outcome) from Waldo Jaquith about the proposed cost of new software to support a paid family and medical leave program in Virginia. We all remember the initial rollout of Healthcare.gov, and it’s not too hard to picture a local version of that whole situation. Luckily, this article from Pew Trusts says that a handful of states have made this same switch, and Virginia can learn from their mistakes and successes. Alright! Do you now feel better informed than yesterday??

She’s running. Well, technically Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says sources say that Councilmember Gray will run for mayor in 2020. We’ll see if a public announcement is forthcoming, and we’ll for real for real see later next month because the filing deadline for local offices is March 26th. Also fascinating is that Paul Goldman, who you may remember from the waste-of-time schools referendum from a couple years back, paid for polling to test the waters for Gray and provided the results to the RTD.

As we inch closer and closer to spring, my most favorite time of the year fast approaches: Budget Season! Multiple people sent me this year’s budget calendar, which fills me with joy. As you well know, I spend a lot of hours of my life listening to Council’s budget sessions. I continue to think it’s one of the best ways to get a handle on the status of the City’s priorities. This year, though, it sounds like we will have fewer hours of audio to enjoy (I assume there are others out there listening to all of these meetings??). The current calendar shows just five sessions, compared to last year’s six, with each sessions lasting only two hours instead of five. I have no idea how they’ll get everything done in such a short amount of time, but I’m excited to find out.

Last night Richmond’s School Board successfully voted to rename three schools, and Justin Mattingly at the RTD has the details. Say hello to Cardinal Elementary, River City Middle School, and Henry L. Marsh III Elementary! Personally, I love the move away from people’s names. Make sure you look through the presentation that includes all of the suggested names for all of the schools and the reasoning behind each of the finalists (PDF).

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says that the Planning Commission approved the 12-story tower proposed for the corner of Lombardy and Broad Streets. As that New York Times article says: Build build build build build build build build build!

Did you see that big fire off of Brook Road near I-95 last night? Carrie Rose Pace on Twitter has an incredible picture of the smoke stretching across the city’s skyline. The Richmond Fire Department says “A primary search was conducted with negative results, no injuries or fatalities to report at this time.” /r/rva, which is down at this moment, has a bunch of absolutely bananas photos folks took of the fire from various points around the city.

This morning’s longread

The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake

This long longread by, check notes, David Brooks(??) has some real interesting facts and figures about the decline of the nuclear family and the benefits of a larger, more interesting, more inter-generational family—even (or maybe especially) if that’s not a family you were born into. Honestly, I think this piece pairs wells with yesterday’s article about building more and denser housing (an article that President Obama just recommended you read). It’s hard to live with and around folks when present-day zoning makes that actually illegal.

During this period, a certain family ideal became engraved in our minds: a married couple with 2.5 kids. When we think of the American family, many of us still revert to this ideal. When we have debates about how to strengthen the family, we are thinking of the two-parent nuclear family, with one or two kids, probably living in some detached family home on some suburban street. We take it as the norm, even though this wasn’t the way most humans lived during the tens of thousands of years before 1950, and it isn’t the way most humans have lived during the 55 years since 1965.

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This morning’s Instagram