Midweek briefing

No signs of intelligent life

Terrors lurk on the Queen City’s streets in the ostensibly innocuous form of sandwich boards, set up on downtown sidewalks by infidel merchants and restaurateurs to advertise such subversive stuff as the dread lunch special.

Turns out the boards are illegal in Staunton under Draconian city ordinance. Just to make sure everyone’s clear, the city is serving up citations to violators, such as Sallie Ann Holsinger, owner of Back in Thyme Design boutique. Clocktower restaurant owner Kim DuGuardo is in the same pickle.

Maggie’s Beads owner Maggie O’Brien says the City Council is showing its insensitivity to the merchants who give Staunton’s downtown life. She and others say signboards are just the kind of cheap advertising options they need in tight times like these. We, of course, might suggest another, more effective option.

But O’Brien’s point is taken. Council officials say they’ll take another look. We say, by all means, look, and then cast this silly law into the wastepaper basket.

Failure-to-deliver notice

Here’s what must have happened: President Barack Obama, orating in New Hampshire last week on the virtues of a government healthcare takeover, eventually got round to hearing himself.

“[I] think private insurers should be able to compete,” he said first, attempting to dismiss concerns that a public option soon would remove private options. He might have stopped here. Or not. “They do it all the time.” Yes. “I mean, if you think about it – if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right. No, they are. It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

Now, Joe Biden, you get out of the president’s head this instant. Citing the Postal Service and its problems as cause for offering a public health care option is something like talking about investing in pulp then pointing to Enron.

Of course, the health care monolith has not been dismantled, only pared of one of its more offensive features, one that’s likely to be later revived. But those among the lucid might take heart. If Obama is listening to himself, he might no longer be delighting in what he hears.

Move along, ‘Len’

Get the shoe horns ready, it’s almost time to pry Leonard M. “Len” Pomata out of the chief information officer’s chair at the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. The outfit could have a new chief by Thursday, which means it’ll be time for Pomata to clear out.

Don’t cry for Pomata. He still has that other job, the one as secretary of technology to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. That’s the post that puts Pomata on the VITA oversight board that will vote on the new chief information officer.

Conflict? Pomata and Kaine see none. Republicans see it differently. They want Pomata to resign as interim CIO or as Kaine’s technology czar.

There’s the other nagging issue – Pomata approved another fat payment to embattled tech contractor Northrop Grumman after his predecessor and other VITA brass had urged that the money be withheld over Northrop’s sundry performance failures.

Both Kaine and state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath County, their party’s gubernatorial nominee, think VITA’s boss should be appointed by the governor. Sen. Mark Warner, another Democrat, who as governor came up with idea of outsourcing for tech services, thought the agency that became VITA should remain independent. We’ll stick with him on that one. The state should, too.