City State: Morning Roundup

The family of a Catholic University student who was fatally shot while bicycling through Petworth last year has filed a $20 million lawsuit against the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, accusing the agency of failing to supervise the 16-year-old murder suspect committed to its custody. The lawsuit states that on the day of the fatal shooting, DYRS “incompetently supervised the juveniles under their control,” allowing the suspect, Eric Foreman, “to evade supervision and detention,” according to The Washington Times.

The day after Barack Obama in 2008 became the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson more than 40 years earlier, Gov. Tim Kaine, one of Mr. Obama’s earliest supporters, gleefully proclaimed, “Old Virginny is dead!” Democrats took control of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats as well as gained a 6-5 majority in the state’s congressional delegation and controlled the Virginia state Senate.

Today, Virginia Republicans have the top three statewide offices, hold an 8-3 advantage in the U.S. House delegation after defeating three Democratic members of Congress in last year’s midterm elections and are poised Tuesday to take control of the state Senate, The Times’ David Sherfinski reports.

All 140 seats in Virginia’s General Assembly are up for election Tuesday, but the focus has narrowed to a handful of races, including several in Northern Virginia, that will determine the trajectory of state government for the next several years, The Times reports.

Virginia Republican and Democratic luminaries crisscrossed the commonwealth over the weekend in last-ditch pushes to get their voters to the polls Tuesday for General Assembly elections that history shows likely will have a low turnout, The Times reports.

Former D.C. Council member Sekou Biddle says he will run in the Democratic primary for an at-large seat, telling voters he will focus on ethics and serving as a role model for young black residents. Mr. Biddle, a Ward 4 resident, served as an interim council member from January to April, after the D.C. State Democratic Committee appointed him to the at-large seat vacated by council Chairman Kwame R. Brown. He lost the seat in a special election this year to Vincent B. Orange, whom he will face again in an April Democratic primary, The Times reports.

Alma Preciado for years hosted her own radio show, ran a successful mortgage business and worked to help elect Republicans in Maryland through her post as vice chairman of the state’s Hispanic Republican Caucus. She even became Maryland’s first Hispanic delegate to the National Republican Convention in 2000 and talked about elected office herself. But a single business transaction in 2005 has turned the onetime promising political figure and businesswoman into a convicted felon, a fugitive from justice and a prisoner of the state of Maryland. Preciado, 61, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday in Montgomery County on a fraud-related charge, The Times reports.

Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. is asking the O’Malley administration to delay implementing its statewide initiative on land development until the start of the 2012 General Assembly so his chamber can review the plan. Mr. Miller, Prince George’s Democrat, has asked the Maryland Department of Planning to hold off implementing PlanMaryland in response to Senate Republicans. They argue that the plan, which is designed to limit sprawl and protect the environment by encouraging compact development in existing population centers, instead will stifle rural development and allow the state to intrude upon existing county-planning procedures, The Times reports.

Mr. Miller and House Speaker Michael Busch, both Democrats, say they supported spending more on transportation infrastructure to create jobs, but getting a majority vote for raising gas taxes and fees to help pay for projects will be difficult, especially since no Republicans would vote for them, according to the Maryland Reporter.