Local News

HILLSVILLE — Special use land assessments can apply to Hillsville properties in January 2014, after the town council held a public hearing and approved an ordinance earlier this month.
The ordinance set out the requirements for the long-sought special assessments for land owners to match those offered in Carroll County.
Localities in Virginia are allowed to assess real estate based on the “use value” instead of fair market value.

RICHMOND — Last month’s mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school has revived a national debate about firearms laws, but gun control legislation is meeting a familiar fate in Virginia’s General Assembly.
Legislation aimed at closing Virginia’s so-called “gun show loophole” won’t advance this year, but members of a state Senate committee pledged last week to work toward a compromise that could expand the use of criminal background checks for firearms sales at events like the annual Labor Day gun show in Hillsville.

RICHMOND — The Virginia Senate has reshuffled its standing committees and the changes give Southwest Virginia, and specifically the Twin County region, representation on the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee.
Republicans have working control of the evenly-divided chamber and they used that advantage last week to install first-term Sen. Bill Carrico (R-Grayson County) on the powerful Finance Committee.

Landmark News Service and Staff Reports

Carroll and Grayson counties and Galax would be taken from three Virginia Senate districts and combined with other localities into one Senate district, as part of a redistricting plan proposed this week.
The proposal would place Carroll, Grayson and Galax within the 40th Senatorial District effective with the 2015 election. The 40th in its present format is represented by Sen. Bill Carrico (R- Grayson).