Speaker 2: Cam?
Cam:
[inaudible] below 5% positivity, are you in developing whatever, [inaudible 00:31:25] past phase three when we may see a further ease in the restrictions? Any idea when we might get to the next step or phase?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Yeah, that’s a great question, Cam. And I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to move forward at the appropriate time when we can do it safely and responsibly. But again, I’m not telling you or the viewers anything that they don’t already know. Numbers are going up in a number of states across this country, so we’re not out of the woods. We’re nowhere close to being out of the woods. And so until we can see a trend going down, we’re not going to make any changes. We obviously continue to have an open dialogue with our school districts. I know as a parent, and I’ve talked to a number of teachers, a number of families, we want to get our children back in school, but we need to get those numbers down in the communities in order to be able to do that safely and responsibly. So I don’t have any particular number I’m looking at, but it certainly has to be a trend not only in Virginia, but throughout this country, and we’re not there yet.
Speaker 2: [ inaudible ].
Speaker 5:
Hi, Governor Northam. Is your administration given any consideration to expanding the capacity limits for football stadiums or even to open bars, allow seating at the bars?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
The question, I didn’t catch the second part. I heard football stadiums, but-
Speaker 2: Bar [crosstalk].
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
At bars, uh-huh (affirmative). If we’re looking at expanding capacity, and I haven’t yet, again, and to answer to Cam’s question, our numbers are better but we still have a lot of room for improvement. And we know. I mean, I have watched what has happened not only in other states but also in different areas of Virginia. When people gather together, this is when the virus spreads. When people gather together and don’t wear a mask and don’t keep their social distancing, this is when the virus spreads. And I want to take this opportunity to contrast what happened in Virginia with our positive diagnosis. As Dr. Avula said, 65 people in close contact, when I say close contact, I’m talking about a foot or two feet apart riding in a car together, riding in an airplane together, sitting and having a meeting together, 65 close contacts and none of them tested positive.
So we know that the measures that we’re taking work. Compare that to what happened in the Rose Garden in Washington, just over a week ago, a gathering where people cavalierly sat together, stood together, hugged each other, you saw it, just like I saw it, no masks, no social distancing, and look at the number of people that tested positive. We talk about science. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. What we’re doing, what we’re asking you to do, the guidelines that we’re following in Virginia, they work. And when we don’t follow those guidelines, we have outbreaks like you saw in Washington.
Speaker 2: Laura?
Laura:
I don’t know if you’re willing to talk about any of the potential options for extending the election deadline. Could you ask the AG to file something with the courts, or what would the mechanism even be?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Rita, my counsel is here, Laura. So, Rita, thank you.
Rita Davis:
Thank you, Governor. Rita Davis, Counsel to the Governor. As the governor has mentioned, the statute sets the deadline for registration, and it does not appear that the governor has the authority to change that nor does elect. But this hasn’t happened… I mean, this has happened before. As you know, in 2016, a very similar occurrence happened. There was a complaint filed with the court, actually the Eastern District and the Eastern District issued an order to elect to extend the deadline. And it was the governor said, he would be fully supportive of a similar order in this matter. Thank you.
Speaker 6: [inaudible] from your office?
Rita Davis: No.
Could I file a complaint on behalf of the governor-
Alan:
[inaudible 00:35:55] governor’s office file [inaudible 00:11:56]. Why wait for an outside group to file a complaint and not do it yourself?
Rita Davis: Well, this delves into-
Well, this delves into probably a lot of legal standing issues that you’re not interested in. But, there’s a little complication about whether or not it would be proper for the agency to seek some sort of relief from the court as opposed to a plaintiff seeking the relief from the court. And so, I think the Office of the Attorney General is on top of this and waiting for any potential relief that’s been petitioned or asked for. So, we’re going to stand by and make sure that we don’t lose sight of this and that the appropriate methods are being taken to preserve Virginia’s ability to continue to be registered.
Any questions? Thank you.
Governor Ralph S. Northam: Thank you, Rita.
Moderator: We have one more. Bill Atkinson with The Progress-Index.
Bill Atkinson:
Yes. Governor Northam, welcome back. It’s nice to see you back with us. Quick question, are you happy with the level of transparency that we’ve been seeing in the reporting, the numbers of COVID positive testing across the state? Would you like to see that transparency increased even more when it comes to the school division reports to include whether or not the affected person or people who have tested positive were teachers, administrators, staff members or students?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
The question is about transparency. I may let, if Dr. Oliver or Dr. Avula wants to touch on this as well. Obviously, transparency is important to all of us. I think you’ve all seen when there are positive cases at schools, it’s being reported, parents know, et cetera. But if you want to have more details, Dr. Oliver, thank you.
Dr. Norman Oliver:
Thank you for that question. We are preparing a dashboard that will present the number of cases and outbreaks in K through 12 schools and institutes of higher learning that will be on our public-facing website. The only thing we’ll restrict there is when we have very small numbers of cases in order to protect the anonymity of those patients and their families. We don’t report that data. And so, it will be very similar to what we’ve already done with the nursing homes.
Moderator: Mel.
Mel:
Hi, governor. I don’t know if you or maybe somebody else from the administration could tell us a little bit more about this plot. Maybe tell us when the administration was notified and what steps were taken to make sure that you are safe.
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Without going into any detail, Mel, what I said earlier, we were notified of the threat. These threats are not new. Unfortunately, we have been dealing with those over the months. As you know, as I said, we had threats prior to January. I’ll just tell you that we take the threat seriously. We work very closely. When I say we, the state police, the Capitol Police worked very closely with our local police departments and also with our federal agents. That’s what we’ll continue to do.
Mel:
You said earlier today that you weren’t notified at first when the FBI communicated the threat to the administration. Can you talk about why that was?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
I’m sorry, repeat. I wasn’t notified when?
Mel:
When the FBI notified the state of the threat, do you know why that was and can anyone speak to that?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Again, Mel, I don’t need to get into those details. I think the important thing is that these threats are taken seriously. They’re investigated. I’m here to tell you that I’m very thankful to our law enforcement agencies, especially our state police that worked very closely with Pam and me and our family. They’ve done a wonderful job keeping us safe. We feel safe. As I said earlier, we don’t work under a cloud of intimidation and I’ll continue to serve Virginia.
Moderator: Andre.
Andre:
Governor, would you consider asking your inspector general to release the full report concerning those cases of misconduct that he discovered? And then on sidebar, you talked about the importance of recognizing indigenous people there. Can you talk about your work to help that community who are struggling with COVID-19?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Yeah. The second part of your question, yesterday was officially Columbus Day, but we’ve signed a proclamation to make it Indigenous People of this Country’s Day. That is to really make sure that we’re inclusive of everybody, Andre. Again, we are in Virginia at least. I’d say this as a country as well. We are diverse. We’re inclusive and we want to include everybody. And so, that’s what we’ve done. As far as reaching out to these individuals and making sure that their needs are taken care of, we have really worked hard through our sector of health and the department of health with our Health Equity Commission that’s overseen by Dr. Janice Underwood to get into these different communities and make sure that everybody’s needs are being met.
Andre: Inspector general and the report.
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
I’ll let Secretary Moran handle that. Thank you, secretary.
Secretary Moran:
Governor, thank you. Good afternoon, Andre. The question with respect to the Office of State Inspector General’s report and administrative investigation of the Virginia Parole Board, is that correct?
Andre: Yes.
Secretary Moran:
Yes. As you know, this has been an ongoing investigation since March, when the Parole Board aggressively reviewed a number of cases at the onset of this pandemic. In light of that, there were, admittedly, some deficiencies in some of the notices. OSIG has been investigating that. We have received the report. We have responded. I responded in a lengthy letter along with the Virginia Parole Board. They’re eight-page letter in terms of actions that have been taken since March with a new Parole Board Chair, Tonya Chapman, along with possibilities of correcting some ambiguities in the code during the 2021 session. We’re going to prepare some legislation.
Secretary Moran:
But, the report itself is property of the OSIG. It is their authority, obligation, responsibility to determine whether or not that gets released. By code, it contains information that is not FOIAble. So, they have not released it. But, that is a determination by FOIA. If you recall, some of the complaints that are being lodged now at the lack of release, the initial report regarding Mr. Martin was provided to a select number of legislators. Those legislators immediately released the report. So, I don’t want to speak for Mr. Westfall, but I suggest that is his reluctance to release that, again, to those legislators for fear they will publish it publicly, which is forbidden by the code section. So, he has provided a summary. But, long and the short of it is, Andre, Parole Board is working diligently to make sure that all the notices, all the appropriate policies and procedures for victim notification, as well as prosecutors, are adhered to and followed. We’re well aware of the complaints and the deficiencies, and we’re correcting them.
Kate: Why don’t release the report on your own?
Secretary Moran:
The follow-up question is why not release the report. Kate, as I’ve mentioned, it’s an OSIG report. It’s up to OSIG to provide that report and not ours. If they release it to me and I release it, that will chill any further communication between OSIG and me. That is not my report to release. It’s forbidden by code and I follow the code.
Andre:
But, the governor has oversight over that department. So, can’t the governor make sure or ask that that report be released?
Secretary Moran:
Again, another followup with respect to the release of the report. Much like what Counsel Davis mentioned, in the code, it has a registration date. The governor can’t just ignore the date for registration. That is in the code. It is very similar analogy to releasing OSIG report. It’s in the code. Some of that information, I’ll tell you, I’m sure you’re aware, some of the information that’s in these reports is personal and it presents some potential safety risks for those who were in those reports. And so, I think legislature was appropriate in their actions previously to make sure that is protected information. And so, OSIG is following the law and what’s in code. Certainly, that is our position as well.
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Thank you, secretary. Well, thank you all for being here. As I said at the beginning of my comments, Pam and I sincerely appreciate all the well-wishes and the prayers. It really did a lot in keeping our spirits up. We continue to work from home, but we’re glad to be back in the office. We look forward to being back on the road, to governing the Commonwealth of Virginia. In the meantime, I just ask all of you to continue to do what you’re doing, stay strong, take care of yourselves, your family, your loved ones, your friends, wear your mask, keep your distance in and wash your hands. As I said already, we’re coming into the fall months. It’s going to get colder. There are going to be more challenges. I encourage all of you that are able to do so to get a flu shot. I think that’ll help a lot with some of the things that we’ll be dealing with this fall, but stay safe and until we meet again. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it.
Cam:
[inaudible] below 5% positivity, are you in developing whatever, [inaudible 00:31:25] past phase three when we may see a further ease in the restrictions? Any idea when we might get to the next step or phase?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Yeah, that’s a great question, Cam. And I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll be able to move forward at the appropriate time when we can do it safely and responsibly. But again, I’m not telling you or the viewers anything that they don’t already know. Numbers are going up in a number of states across this country, so we’re not out of the woods. We’re nowhere close to being out of the woods. And so until we can see a trend going down, we’re not going to make any changes. We obviously continue to have an open dialogue with our school districts. I know as a parent, and I’ve talked to a number of teachers, a number of families, we want to get our children back in school, but we need to get those numbers down in the communities in order to be able to do that safely and responsibly. So I don’t have any particular number I’m looking at, but it certainly has to be a trend not only in Virginia, but throughout this country, and we’re not there yet.
Speaker 2: [ inaudible ].
Speaker 5:
Hi, Governor Northam. Is your administration given any consideration to expanding the capacity limits for football stadiums or even to open bars, allow seating at the bars?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
The question, I didn’t catch the second part. I heard football stadiums, but-
Speaker 2: Bar [crosstalk].
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
At bars, uh-huh (affirmative). If we’re looking at expanding capacity, and I haven’t yet, again, and to answer to Cam’s question, our numbers are better but we still have a lot of room for improvement. And we know. I mean, I have watched what has happened not only in other states but also in different areas of Virginia. When people gather together, this is when the virus spreads. When people gather together and don’t wear a mask and don’t keep their social distancing, this is when the virus spreads. And I want to take this opportunity to contrast what happened in Virginia with our positive diagnosis. As Dr. Avula said, 65 people in close contact, when I say close contact, I’m talking about a foot or two feet apart riding in a car together, riding in an airplane together, sitting and having a meeting together, 65 close contacts and none of them tested positive.
So we know that the measures that we’re taking work. Compare that to what happened in the Rose Garden in Washington, just over a week ago, a gathering where people cavalierly sat together, stood together, hugged each other, you saw it, just like I saw it, no masks, no social distancing, and look at the number of people that tested positive. We talk about science. It doesn’t get any clearer than that. What we’re doing, what we’re asking you to do, the guidelines that we’re following in Virginia, they work. And when we don’t follow those guidelines, we have outbreaks like you saw in Washington.
Speaker 2: Laura?
Laura:
I don’t know if you’re willing to talk about any of the potential options for extending the election deadline. Could you ask the AG to file something with the courts, or what would the mechanism even be?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Rita, my counsel is here, Laura. So, Rita, thank you.
Rita Davis:
Thank you, Governor. Rita Davis, Counsel to the Governor. As the governor has mentioned, the statute sets the deadline for registration, and it does not appear that the governor has the authority to change that nor does elect. But this hasn’t happened… I mean, this has happened before. As you know, in 2016, a very similar occurrence happened. There was a complaint filed with the court, actually the Eastern District and the Eastern District issued an order to elect to extend the deadline. And it was the governor said, he would be fully supportive of a similar order in this matter. Thank you.
Speaker 6: [inaudible] from your office?
Rita Davis: No.
Could I file a complaint on behalf of the governor-
Alan:
[inaudible 00:35:55] governor’s office file [inaudible 00:11:56]. Why wait for an outside group to file a complaint and not do it yourself?
Rita Davis: Well, this delves into-
Well, this delves into probably a lot of legal standing issues that you’re not interested in. But, there’s a little complication about whether or not it would be proper for the agency to seek some sort of relief from the court as opposed to a plaintiff seeking the relief from the court. And so, I think the Office of the Attorney General is on top of this and waiting for any potential relief that’s been petitioned or asked for. So, we’re going to stand by and make sure that we don’t lose sight of this and that the appropriate methods are being taken to preserve Virginia’s ability to continue to be registered.
Any questions? Thank you.
Governor Ralph S. Northam: Thank you, Rita.
Moderator: We have one more. Bill Atkinson with The Progress-Index.
Bill Atkinson:
Yes. Governor Northam, welcome back. It’s nice to see you back with us. Quick question, are you happy with the level of transparency that we’ve been seeing in the reporting, the numbers of COVID positive testing across the state? Would you like to see that transparency increased even more when it comes to the school division reports to include whether or not the affected person or people who have tested positive were teachers, administrators, staff members or students?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
The question is about transparency. I may let, if Dr. Oliver or Dr. Avula wants to touch on this as well. Obviously, transparency is important to all of us. I think you’ve all seen when there are positive cases at schools, it’s being reported, parents know, et cetera. But if you want to have more details, Dr. Oliver, thank you.
Dr. Norman Oliver:
Thank you for that question. We are preparing a dashboard that will present the number of cases and outbreaks in K through 12 schools and institutes of higher learning that will be on our public-facing website. The only thing we’ll restrict there is when we have very small numbers of cases in order to protect the anonymity of those patients and their families. We don’t report that data. And so, it will be very similar to what we’ve already done with the nursing homes.
Moderator: Mel.
Mel:
Hi, governor. I don’t know if you or maybe somebody else from the administration could tell us a little bit more about this plot. Maybe tell us when the administration was notified and what steps were taken to make sure that you are safe.
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Without going into any detail, Mel, what I said earlier, we were notified of the threat. These threats are not new. Unfortunately, we have been dealing with those over the months. As you know, as I said, we had threats prior to January. I’ll just tell you that we take the threat seriously. We work very closely. When I say we, the state police, the Capitol Police worked very closely with our local police departments and also with our federal agents. That’s what we’ll continue to do.
Mel:
You said earlier today that you weren’t notified at first when the FBI communicated the threat to the administration. Can you talk about why that was?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
I’m sorry, repeat. I wasn’t notified when?
Mel:
When the FBI notified the state of the threat, do you know why that was and can anyone speak to that?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Again, Mel, I don’t need to get into those details. I think the important thing is that these threats are taken seriously. They’re investigated. I’m here to tell you that I’m very thankful to our law enforcement agencies, especially our state police that worked very closely with Pam and me and our family. They’ve done a wonderful job keeping us safe. We feel safe. As I said earlier, we don’t work under a cloud of intimidation and I’ll continue to serve Virginia.
Moderator: Andre.
Andre:
Governor, would you consider asking your inspector general to release the full report concerning those cases of misconduct that he discovered? And then on sidebar, you talked about the importance of recognizing indigenous people there. Can you talk about your work to help that community who are struggling with COVID-19?
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Yeah. The second part of your question, yesterday was officially Columbus Day, but we’ve signed a proclamation to make it Indigenous People of this Country’s Day. That is to really make sure that we’re inclusive of everybody, Andre. Again, we are in Virginia at least. I’d say this as a country as well. We are diverse. We’re inclusive and we want to include everybody. And so, that’s what we’ve done. As far as reaching out to these individuals and making sure that their needs are taken care of, we have really worked hard through our sector of health and the department of health with our Health Equity Commission that’s overseen by Dr. Janice Underwood to get into these different communities and make sure that everybody’s needs are being met.
Andre: Inspector general and the report.
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
I’ll let Secretary Moran handle that. Thank you, secretary.
Secretary Moran:
Governor, thank you. Good afternoon, Andre. The question with respect to the Office of State Inspector General’s report and administrative investigation of the Virginia Parole Board, is that correct?
Andre: Yes.
Secretary Moran:
Yes. As you know, this has been an ongoing investigation since March, when the Parole Board aggressively reviewed a number of cases at the onset of this pandemic. In light of that, there were, admittedly, some deficiencies in some of the notices. OSIG has been investigating that. We have received the report. We have responded. I responded in a lengthy letter along with the Virginia Parole Board. They’re eight-page letter in terms of actions that have been taken since March with a new Parole Board Chair, Tonya Chapman, along with possibilities of correcting some ambiguities in the code during the 2021 session. We’re going to prepare some legislation.
Secretary Moran:
But, the report itself is property of the OSIG. It is their authority, obligation, responsibility to determine whether or not that gets released. By code, it contains information that is not FOIAble. So, they have not released it. But, that is a determination by FOIA. If you recall, some of the complaints that are being lodged now at the lack of release, the initial report regarding Mr. Martin was provided to a select number of legislators. Those legislators immediately released the report. So, I don’t want to speak for Mr. Westfall, but I suggest that is his reluctance to release that, again, to those legislators for fear they will publish it publicly, which is forbidden by the code section. So, he has provided a summary. But, long and the short of it is, Andre, Parole Board is working diligently to make sure that all the notices, all the appropriate policies and procedures for victim notification, as well as prosecutors, are adhered to and followed. We’re well aware of the complaints and the deficiencies, and we’re correcting them.
Kate: Why don’t release the report on your own?
Secretary Moran:
The follow-up question is why not release the report. Kate, as I’ve mentioned, it’s an OSIG report. It’s up to OSIG to provide that report and not ours. If they release it to me and I release it, that will chill any further communication between OSIG and me. That is not my report to release. It’s forbidden by code and I follow the code.
Andre:
But, the governor has oversight over that department. So, can’t the governor make sure or ask that that report be released?
Secretary Moran:
Again, another followup with respect to the release of the report. Much like what Counsel Davis mentioned, in the code, it has a registration date. The governor can’t just ignore the date for registration. That is in the code. It is very similar analogy to releasing OSIG report. It’s in the code. Some of that information, I’ll tell you, I’m sure you’re aware, some of the information that’s in these reports is personal and it presents some potential safety risks for those who were in those reports. And so, I think legislature was appropriate in their actions previously to make sure that is protected information. And so, OSIG is following the law and what’s in code. Certainly, that is our position as well.
Governor Ralph S. Northam:
Thank you, secretary. Well, thank you all for being here. As I said at the beginning of my comments, Pam and I sincerely appreciate all the well-wishes and the prayers. It really did a lot in keeping our spirits up. We continue to work from home, but we’re glad to be back in the office. We look forward to being back on the road, to governing the Commonwealth of Virginia. In the meantime, I just ask all of you to continue to do what you’re doing, stay strong, take care of yourselves, your family, your loved ones, your friends, wear your mask, keep your distance in and wash your hands. As I said already, we’re coming into the fall months. It’s going to get colder. There are going to be more challenges. I encourage all of you that are able to do so to get a flu shot. I think that’ll help a lot with some of the things that we’ll be dealing with this fall, but stay safe and until we meet again. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it.
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