Unemployment fell in Waynesboro in September, but rose slightly in both Augusta County and Staunton, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Virginia Employment Commission.

Waynesboro’s rate dropped to 8.2 percent in September compared to 8.5 percent in August.

A Stuarts Draft man will serve three years’ probation for paying a teenage girl to perform oral sex on him as he videotaped the act.

Wayne Edward Gill, 39, pleaded guilty late Monday in a deal with Staunton prosecutors to avoid jail time. The court ordered Gill to register as a sex offender.

Gill paid a 17-year-old R.E. Lee High School student $300 to film her performing the act earlier this year in a Staunton auto body shop. The girl was seeking to pay drug debts, authorities have said.

Alarmed by the number of low-income workers missing out on income tax credits and paying for tax preparation, the area’s Community Action Partnership this week begins lessons that will lead to a free preparation program.

A three-vehicle crash along U.S. 11 and Captain Hizer Lane stopped traffic Tuesday morning after a Fort Defiance High School student braked for a loose dog, authorities said.

Daniel Whitson, 29, of Grottoes, smashed his vehicle into the back of the student’s car, jack-knifing the trailer he was hauling into an oncoming vehicle.

Buoyed by a wave of small-government enthusiasm after a march on Washington earlier this year, the region’s tea party movement is sweeping up new acolytes even as controversy swirls around a group deeper South, area organizers said.

A former Army counterintelligence worker from Maryland who killed a northern Virginia couple in 2001 was scheduled Tuesday to become the first U.S. inmate to die by electrocution since last year.

The state of Virginia, which already has had to cut $6 billion from the two-year budget ending June 30, 2010, may have to cut $250 million to $300 million, the House Appropriations Committee was told today.

A Stuarts Draft man who solicited a teen girl for oral sex avoided jail time as part of a plea agreement with the Staunton prosecutors office.

With 100 Internet-savvy NASA fans cheering on the shuttle and churning out constant Twitter updates, Atlantis sailed smoothly into orbit Monday with six astronauts and a full load of spare parts for the International Space Station.

Authorities say they found a Staunton home inhabited by 100 birds with 19 more dead in a freezer, floors littered with piles of feces and carpets stained by urine.

Michael Mason killed his ex-girlfriend with a single gunshot fired at her head from close range.

John Franklin Myers shot his girlfriend in a gravel driveway outside the mobile home where they’d lived for seven tumultuous months.

Crews using four cranes swap old Delphine Avenue span for a new one as a crowd of onlookers watch the action.

State Labor Department opens investigation into death of Greenville man pinned by a forklift at a Lynchburg food distribution plant.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to send damage assessment teams to Virginia following last week’s wind-driven rain storm.

By Bob Stuart

The News Virginian

More than half of Virginia voters favor alternatives to public schools and want school-choice changes such as charter schools, tax-credit scholarships and school vouchers, according to study results to be released today.

The survey of 1,203 likely Virginia voters was taken last month for Virginia-based organizations by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice of Indianapolis.

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed want choices other than regular K-12 public schools and nearly two-thirds favor tax credits for scholarships.

“This shows a healthy appetite for increased parental choice and increased state support,” said Jeff Caruso, executive director of the Virginia Catholic Conference, the public policy organization for both Virginia Catholic dioceses.

Caruso said it is important for parents to have choices for their children since “they know what environment is best.”

Retiring House District 20 Del. Chris Saxman said the survey participants support public education but want choices for children.

“The system works well in higher education,” said Saxman of the menu of choices for Virginia college students.

While there were gaps in knowledge about school alternatives, the principal researcher on the survey said there were strong sentiments as well.

Paul DiPerna, research director for the Friedman Foundation, said a little less than half of those surveyed were aware of school vouchers and charter schools.

But DiPerna was impressed that nearly two-thirds of the survey participants expressed support for tax credit scholarships.

Under that proposal, private donors and organizations who donate money for scholarships would be given tax credits.

The money would be put in a pool to allow low and middle-income students in a state like Indiana to attend a private school on a scholarship.

Saxman for years has introduced tax credits for scholarships legislation in the Virginia Legislature to allow school choice.

While his legislation has passed the Virginia House, it has stalled in the Senate.

Under Saxman’s bill, the students could use the donated scholarship money to attend private or other public schools of their choice.

“Some kids need a change in their environment,” he said.

Another finding that surprised DiPerna was a question regarding the challenges facing public schools.

He expected to see funding, accountability or perhaps classroom overcrowding top the list.

Leading the list at 21 percent were issues schools have with student discipline and self-control.

The survey also found support among Democrats, Republicans and independents for tax-credit scholarships and school vouchers.

Caruso said educating children is not a political, ideological or religious issue.

“We are all partners in educating the commonwealth’s children,” he said. “This is a collaboration.”

Christian Braunlich, vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, one of the survey sponsors, said a copy of the study will go to every Virginia General Assembly member prior to the 2010 session.

Braunlich said the survey results would also go to Virginia business associations and a wide range of opinion leaders.

Saxman, who will be watching from outside the General Assembly for the first time in eight years in January, is optimistic there will be more school choice.

“I think this year we will get some charter schools. They are in demand around the commonwealth,” he said.

When Lindsey Megginson thinks of her husband, she remembers an unwavering smile, laughter with family and the couple’s last kiss, just before sunrise.

Overall U.S. spending on health care would rise as a result of legislation approved a week ago by the House of Representatives, according to a report by a top official at the agency that oversees the government’s health insurance programs for the elderly and indigent.

Politicians may be divided on health care reform, but a consensus has formed among senior citizens: they find the 1,900-page House bill so confusing that many doubt proposed Medicare changes can even be explained.

STAUNTON – Sixth District Rep. Bob Goodlatte has joined Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb in criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to try 9/11 terrorists in U.S. courts.

“They should be put before a military tribunal not in our civil criminal courts in the United States,’’ said Goodlatte, R-Va., following Saturday’s Veterans Day Parade in Staunton.

Goodlatte said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accomplices in the 9/11 attacks in New York are “terrorists who are engaging in a militaristic type behavior.”

The chairman of the Danville TEA Party Patriots said Sunday he was unsure about whether the group will continue with its planned effigy burning of Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a bonfire rally Saturday in Blairs

Officials: Data showing holes in Waynesboro core will help fill gaps.

Veterans parade comes to Staunton

RICHMOND — The hits keep coming for Virginia’s financially strapped school divisions.

The Virginia Department of Education recently recalculated the composite index for the 2010 and 2011 school years, which determines how much money each school system receives annually from the state.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Nearly a year after terrorist bullets snuffed the life forces of her husband and daughter, Nelson County resident Kia Scherr hopes her new Web site will help other people find positive forces in their own lives.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — State police announced Friday that they think Morgan D. Harrington was trying to hitchhike on a Copeley Road bridge the night she disappeared, which her father said isn’t something she’d normally do.

Three months into a new job as president of Blue Ridge Community College, John Downey is leading an institution that continues to receive record enrollment and now has career coaches to reach out to local schools and industry.

STAUNTON — Armed with scales and gem testers and magnifying glasses, Eddie Lambert and his team of four assessed everything from ticking pocket watches to little toy firetrucks.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — An Albemarle County jury awarded $5.25 million on Friday to the parents and sibling of a 16-year-old county girl who was killed in a car accident in 2008.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said today that the effects of a storm system that battered Hampton Roads are easing and that flooding in western Virginia and elsewhere may not be reach levels that had been feared.