Mark R. Warner

LURAY, July 17 ? U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D) gathered with downtown leaders and supporters on Sunday to tout the area's economic strides and talk about continuing challenges.

With about a dozen new businesses opening their doors in the historic district in the past year, or planning openings in the coming year, the former Virginia governor said it's those small investments that make a big impact.

In the past five years, according to the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, Main Street communities have made more than $161 million in private investments in the state, creating 2,637 jobs. 

Since his last visit to Luray eight years ago, when he toured the downtown area, walked the Luray-Hawksbill Greenway and met with local students at Lord Fairfax Community College's Luray-Page County Center, Warner said he's noticed continued development underway in Luray.

“There is more activity in town, less shops that were boarded up,” Warner said, referencing his downtown drive to Sunday's brunch-time meeting at the Mimslyn Inn, which was hosted by LDI. “I want to commend the Luray [Downtown] Initiative for what they're doing. It takes this kind of public-private collaboration to get things done.”


LDI GARNERS STATE, NATIONAL RECOGNITION
Warner's Sunday stopover was part of a three-day tour of the Shenandoah Valley. His staff reached out to LDI about arranging a Q-and-A style session after “positive media” about the downtown group reached his office, said Luray Downtown Initiative Program Manager Jeff McMillan.

Last Wednesday, LDI was one of five downtown groups recognized with a Virginia Main Street Merit Award. During the Virginia Main Street Downtown Intersections workshop in Staunton, LDI was awarded Outstanding Fundraising Effort for its Tailgate Party and Chicken Chow Down events.

“Our board represents a cross-section of business leaders who volunteer their time and energy to better our downtown,” McMillan told a crowd of about 40 on Sunday, attributing the group's award in large part to the efforts of former LDI member and event organizer Starr Johnson.

In September, Johnson spearheaded LDI's“Pay It Forward” Tailgate Party at the Luray Singing Tower to help fund downtown revitalization efforts. The inaugural event also contributed $5,000 to the Tailgate's winning team, the nonprofit Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets.

A three-day Chicken Chow Down Weekend followed in May, and highlighted the Valley's poultry industry and Page County's designation as the state's third-largest poultry and egg producer.

Collectively, the events netted more than $30,000 for downtown projects.

During a Main Street Now conference in Milwaukee, Wis., in May, LDI was announced as a Main Street America program for gaining national accreditation for achievements made by the nonprofit organization the previous year.

LDI first gained state accreditation in 2004 when it was named a Virginia Main Street group by the State Department of Housing and Community Development.
The Luray group is currently planning its Sept. 10 Tailgate II event and working to establish a new network of merchants and business leaders through a “2016-17 Directory.” 


SMALL TOWN STRIDES
“There are remarkable things happening in smaller communities across Virginia, where downtowns are being revitalized,” Warner said. “That's where most of the jobs are coming from.”

According to the Kauffman Foundation, continued the Senator, 60 percent of all net new jobs created in the U.S. in the past three decades were yielded through startups.

“Some of those startups are Google and Facebook,” continued Warner. “But some of those startups are a local restaurant, a local artisan, somebody that's just taking an old building on Main Street and reopening it. We need to do more to continue to revitalize that.”

In the past year, Downtown Luray has seen several new restaurants open, including Dubliners Celtic Pub in February and 55 East Main Brew House and Grill last year, in addition to the relocation of Gathering Grounds. Other eateries and culinary stops are in the works on Main Street, including the vintage-inspired burger and snack bar Baby Moons, the Chapman House Restaurant and Moonshadows Restaurant and Catering. A fall opening is additionally scheduled for the Hawksbill Brewing Co.

The Mimslyn Inn on Sunday announced the grand opening of its latest expansion project. Recently the inn completed work on the newly refurbished Manor House on South Court Street, as well as five new cottages and five historic cottages behind the property. The investment is projected to bring in nearly $300,000 to the inn in 2016, said general manager Jim Sims.

“The inn is anticipating a combined total of $10 million to be added back into the local economy this year,” Sims said.

A grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled at the Manor House at 9 a.m. this Friday, July 22.


SMALL TOWN SETBACKS
With limited road access and funding disparities facing many small towns throughout the state, said Warner, a statewide entrepreneur network that he is currently working on could be beneficial to areas like Luray and Page County.

“[Page County is] a beautiful, beautiful place,” Warner said. “But since you're in this Valley without a lot of road access … it's a little harder.”

The senator continued, noting the “shared workspace” an entrepreneur network would establish.

“One of the challenges is, if someone's got a great new idea in Page County and they want to start a business, too often traditional banking sources aren't available. You've got to look for major capital, and it's hard to find major capital in a place like Page County. So, we're trying to network together a series of angel investors.”

Warner noted the importance of healthcare in rural areas, commending Page Memorial Hospital for retaining its critical access designation.

“One of the things I'm proud that I worked on was making sure we kept the Page [Memorial] Hospital open,” said Warner. “Because if CMS ? which is the payer of Medicare and Medicaid ? had taken away its critical care services we could have seen a closure of a hospital the same way we we've seen another county's in Southwest Virginia.”


TOUTING TOURISM AND THE GREAT OUTDOORS
“We can continue to try to bring in industry, but I think it's going to be a challenge,” Warner said in reference to Page County. “We need to continue to promote tourism, continue to promote outdoors.”

Tourism continues to drive funds in Virginia and Page County. Visitors to Page in 2014 spent $63.6 million, up 2.7 percent from the previous year, according to the most recent numbers from the Virginia Tourism Corp. Additionally, the county's Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) fund continues to increase through a growing base of visitors.

When fiscal 2015 ended last June, TOT funds, made up by a 5-percent “lodging tax,” totaled $730,431 ? $110,431 more than the year’s $620,000 projection.

Cycling events, “trail concepts” like Page County's Artisan Trail Network and outdoor events and excursions, said Warner, are assets to places like Luray that are “off the beaten track.”

“The Shenandoah Valley's got a brand that's world class,” Warner said. “... We've not taken that brand and marketed as well as we could.”


AGING INFRASTRUCTURE, FADING INDUSTRY
With the vast majority of buildings on Virginia Main Streets being in historic districts, investors and merchants are faced with aging infrastructure, Jay North of Luray's Hawksbill Trading Co. told the Senator.

After opening in January in the old Page Coop on Virginia Avenue, said North, the trading company's all-volunteer board of directors has increased its vendors from 20 to 50. However, he said, many businesses in historic districts struggle to update buildings.

Infrastructure changes, as well as limited funding sources needed to make updates, said Warner, will continue to be a challenge on Main Street, as well as in attracting large manufacturing facilities.

Warner commended LDI for recently receiving a $15,000 Downtown Investment grant. In February, LDI was one of 10 groups awarded Virginia Main Street funding, and is using the facade grant to update Luray's Brown Building/Bridge Theater.

The county is currently working to update and fill old buildings in Luray and throughout the county through its 2014 designation as an Enterprise Zone. The state program encourages job creation and private investment through grant-based incentives to qualified investors and job creators.

Through the program, the county recently welcomed the firearm concealment manufacturer Tactical Walls in the former Genie Co. facility just north of Shenandoah — a $1 million investment, according to county officials.

Warner concluded the nearly hour-long Q-and-A by thanking LDI, the Mimslyn Inn and those in attendance.

“I know probably most of you, when you turn on the TV news, you want to throw a shoe at the TV. I feel the same way …” Warner said. “We hear what happens on the news about some of the awfulness, but there's so much good in this country … and in communities that don't get a lot of attention.”

WINCHESTER — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told a group of those on the front line of the Winchester area’s heroin epidemic on Monday he would "nudge and push and prod" to bring more resources here.

Warner met with representatives from Valley Health, law enforcement, the Northern Shenandoah Valley Substance Abuse Coalition and other community leaders for a roundtable discussion at the Winchester Medical Center campus.

He was in his final day of a four-day tour that included Woodstock, Harrisonburg, Luray and Charlottesville. He visited downtown Winchester businesses Sunday.

Coalition Executive Director Lauren Cummings gave a presentation on the number of opiate deaths and injuries over the past few years, and the efforts being made for prevention, treatment and recovery.

"We don’t have a detox facility in our area anymore," she said. "There’s a tremendous need for that."

Cummings referred to an article she read last week about a woman who died while detoxing in a jail rather than a hospital.

She said the area has just two treatment providers licensed in addiction.

There are six levels of licensure, one for each level of treatment, said Dr. Nicolas Restrepo, vice president of medical affairs at Winchester Medical Center and a member of the coalition.

"It’s going to create a workforce issue," he said. One part of Virginia is using telemedicine while another is training family practitioners in addiction medicine to help with the shortfall, Restrepo said.

Warner said he has legislation to expand telemedicine related to Medicare, although a drug treatment bill would be enacted through Medicaid.

"It really would be nice if we could bring an extra couple billion dollars we pay in taxes and do Medicaid expansion here," he said with a laugh.

Republicans in the General Assembly have blocked efforts by Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe to expand Medicaid, saying they feared the federal government would not uphold a promise to pay 100 percent of the costs initially, and 90 percent thereafter.

In a 2014 interview, McAuliffe said the state was forfeiting more than $5 million a day by not expanding Medicaid.

Warner and some of those in the roundtable discussion said the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, which governs patient privacy, has hindered treatment efforts.

"Good idea gone wacky," Warner said. "Do you guys have a notion of what you think HIPAA reform would look like?"

Nurse case manager Maria DeLalla works with some of the smallest victims of the opioid epidemic in the WMC neonatal intensive care unit. She said the privacy requirements make it hard for treatment providers and community providers to communicate with each other about specific patients.

"We’re trying to get communication flowing back and forth so that everyone can provide wraparound services, ... HIPAA rules interfere with the ability [to have] that conversation," DeLalla said.

Restrepo said it also makes it difficult to track data associated with how intervention helps children of addicted mothers.

"That continuum of care for that child, there’s a phenomenal number of barriers to sharing meaningful information," he said.

Warner said there have been various epidemics over the years, with crack and methamphetamine coming before the heroin affliction. He asked how this one ranks compared to past ones in terms of pervasiveness.

The magnitude of prescription drug abuse in the community was underappreciated, said Dr. Jack Potter, medical director of the WMC emergency department and of emergency services for Valley Health.

Those using prescription drugs knew exactly how many milligrams they were taking, he said. When they turned to heroin that was being laced with higher-potency drugs; they had no idea about the purity. "They’re overdosing left and right because it’s very inexact," he said.

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Warner said, he’d hear drugs were bad, but heroin was especially feared.

"Nobody ever would think about doing heroin," he said. "Heroin was kind of ... so off limits. How did that change?"

Winchester police Chief Kevin Sanzenbacher said so many people became hooked on opiate medications, and when prescriptions were cut back to reduce abuse, many turned to heroin, which also became cheaper and more readily available.

"In none of those issues did we as a community address this as a disease. ... We haven’t dealt with the root cause," Restrepo said.

Warner told the participants he commended what they’re doing, and wishes to be considered more of an ally when it comes to grants. He said he’d have his staff follow up to see how they could "nudge and push and prod."

Cummings explained after the discussion the coalition has applied for a Bureau of Justice Assistance grant for $350,000 for drug court implementation. Warner could write a letter in support of that, she said.

Additionally, Warner can contact Michael Botticelli, director of National Drug Control Policy, as the region applies to be added to the Washington-Baltimore High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, Cummings said.

"We’ve applied for the third time," she said.

Being accepted would lead to federal funding to support law enforcement and prevention efforts, Cummings said.

WINCHESTER — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., in town for a roundtable discussion about heroin on Monday, weighed in on the crisis facing law enforcement officers across the country, with eight killed in two recent incidents.

Five Dallas police officers were shot and killed — and seven injured — on July 7. Three more were killed and three wounded in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday.

The shootings followed incidents in Baton Rouge, where police fatally shot a black man July 5, and in Minnesota where police shot and killed a black man the next day.

"Our law enforcement puts their lives on the line every day, and we need to stand up for them," Warner said during an interview with The Winchester Star after the roundtable discussion.

"There’s absolutely no justification for these kind of awful actions that are coming out of Dallas and Baton Rouge. At the same time, we also need to understand there needs to be, I think, movement on criminal justice reform."

There needs to be mutual respect among police and the communities they’re sworn to protect, he said.

"That’s going to be an ongoing process," he said. "In the short term, we’ve got to bring a halt to these kind of horrible assaults, horrible shootings."

Warner said he was referring to the shooting of law enforcement officers, and there are questions regarding some incidents police have had with citizens.

There are also issues involving firearms, he said.

"When you’re talking with law enforcement officers, I hear lots of concerns about some of the rules in some states where you’ve got open carry with long guns [permitted]," Warner said, "because that basically elevates every incident to a much more dangerous circumstance."

He said he thinks the "vast majority" of Americans, including gun owners, support legislation calling for those on no-fly lists to be banned from buying guns, and support gun shows being forced to follow the same rules as gun stores for sales.

"I’ve been disappointed that we’ve not been able to get to ‘yes’ on that," said Warner, who said he has an extensive history of supporting the Second Amendment.

Warner also shared with The Star his views on the recent coup attempt in Turkey.

"As a member of the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, I’ve been concerned for some time about the flow of [extremist] fighters moving to the front through Turkey, and that Turkey is not doing enough," he said.

Warner said he hopes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attention doesn’t get diverted too much by domestic issues.

He said the country is the front line in the fight against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

"Turkey, five years ago, was modeled as a moderate Muslim state that had a functioning democracy," Warner said. "But we’ve seen in President Erdogan a real taking more and more control over things like the court system."

He said he hopes Erdogan doesn’t use punishing coup leaders as a way to clamp down on democratic institutions.

Warner said he will get a full briefing on the Turkey situation when he’s back in Washington, D.C., this week.

LURAY — It’s time to invest in Main Street, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner says.

The Luray Downtown Initiative has brought several new businesses and investments to town in the last year, and the two-term Democrat said the trend is spreading throughout the commonwealth.

“There are remarkable things happening in small communities across Virginia where downtowns are being revitalized,” he said. “It takes this kind of public-private collaboration to get things done.”

Warner stopped in Luray on Sunday to discuss economic revitalization with about 40 people at the Mimslyn Inn in Luray as part of a weekend swing through the Valley. The event was hosted by LDI.

Luray is a designated Main Street community through the Virginia Main Street program, which is managed by the Department of Housing and Community Development. It “provides assistance and training to help communities increase the economic vitality of their downtown commercial districts,” according to a press release.

Warner said he’s working to connect various revitalization efforts across the country to allow them to share information and resources.

Luray needs to emphasize tourism, he said, because attracting manufacturing jobs would be difficult due to limited access to the town.

Warner said investing in infrastructure and beautification is essential to revitalization. Since the 1970s, the federal government has cut infrastructure spending in half, he said.

“I think that’s crazy,” Warner said. “That used to be America’s qualitative edge.”

He said revitalization and increasing investment creates more than half of new jobs, and he highlighted efforts in Harrisonburg through Harrisonburg Downtown Renaissance.

“There’s a real energy in Harrisonburg — a lot of new tech companies, a lot of new startup enterprises,” said Warner, who stopped by Pale Fire Brewing Co. in the city on Saturday. “A lot of this five, six years ago was not happening.”

Luray needs to attract businesses that will invest locally, unlike giant companies that are shedding “human capital” to become more productive and cut costs, he said.

“If we don’t find a way to make more people feel like investing in our free enterprise system is actually going to give them a fair shot,” he said, “I feel we’re going to see more and more ... folks on both ends of the political extreme.”

Warner said the country needs to make “capitalism work for more people in the 21st century,” and people in rural areas deserve a fair shake.

“Communities in the Valley, communities in the Southside, Southwest, need to have the same opportunities that the folks in Northern Virginia have,” he said.

Warner also spoke in support of trade deals, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination before endorsing Hillary Clinton last week, have used their opposition to the agreements as a rallying cry on the campaign trail.

Clinton, whom Warner has endorsed, and President Barack Obama support both deals.

Warner said such agreements help the United States set the rules for trade, but have left behind rural communities.

“If you’re a small community in Southside Virginia and you lost your textile mill or you lost your furniture plant based on trade,” he said, “all the stats in the world isn’t going to convince [you].”

Multinational corporations benefit most from the deals, he said, but Washington needs to provide incentive for them to invest back in the U.S.

“I don’t know if you pass a law or you just go sit down with them and say ‘You’re going to expand all this additional profit, and you’re going to be able to add all these jobs. You need to locate some of these jobs in the communities that are left behind,’” Warner said. “We ought to be doing a heck of a lot more for communities that are left behind.”

WINCHESTER — U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) visited the Loudoun Street Mall on Sunday afternoon to talk with local business owners to see how the city’s revitalization efforts are paying off.

His stop was part of a four-day tour through the region, which began Friday and has included visits to Charlottesville, Waynesboro, Woodstock, Harrisonburg and Luray.

"One thing I’ve noticed over the last four to five years is how a lot of small to mid-sized towns are having a rebirth," Warner, 61, said. "I think people want to come back down to the feeling of community."

Warner, who has visited Winchester numerous times over the past 25 years, noted how drastically the downtown has evolved from a "sleepy town" to a place with a thriving nightlife.

"These used to be communities that rolled their sidewalks up at 6 o’clock," he said.

But a major shift in the business market, according to Warner, is that more people are working as entrepreneurs or independent contractors, and younger generations tend to move from place to place more frequently.

"Nobody is going to work at the same place for 40 years anymore," Warner said. "So how do you support a local downtown? How do you support entrepreneurs? I’m trying to work on something that would create an entrepreneurial backbone in communities."

One problem, Warner said, is many of these independent businesses do not offer benefits such as health and retirement plans.

Warner said he supports a move toward portable benefits, which would allow an employee’s benefits to be transferred to a new employer’s plan or to a person leaving the workforce.

"This is where the economy is headed," he said. "A lot of this will start to be experimented on by local communities before it reaches a national level."

Warner began his 45-minute tour of downtown Winchester at Mountain Trails, an outdoor gear store on the Loudoun Street Mall, where he bought a pair of shoes. Other stops included nearby Union Jack Restaurant and Pub, the Village Square Restaurant and the Bright Box, an entertainment venue.

The city completed a $7.1 million renovation of the pedestrian mall in 2013. Improvements included replacing aging water and sewer mains and adding above-ground amenities such as gateway entrances, a splash pad and a public bathroom.

"We really worked to foster an environment where businesses feel welcome," Downtown Manager Jennifer Bell said.

She cited millennials as one of the main instigators of change on the mall, as they want a community atmosphere, along with the presence of strong businesses and activities.

She noted that a few years ago, malls were on the decline due to the availability of products that could be found on the Internet.

"But what you get downtown is the customer services, the interaction," she said. "People are looking for that downtown — the more personal experience."

Garry Green, co-owner of Mountain Trails, which recently moved to the mall, said, "We are thrilled with the traffic that is down here."

Bell added the city has made considerable efforts to ensure there are events on the mall — from a farmers market to live bands — to keep people coming back.

While Warner was talking with people near the splash pad, his press secretary, Rachel Cohen, said he regularly makes these types of trips.

"A lot of his efforts of late have been focusing on the Virginia economy," Cohen said. "In a time when we have fewer federal dollars, we really need to work to diversify the state to do well growing the businesses into the 21st century."

Warner addressed speculation that he is being considered as a potential vice presidential running mate for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

"I’m not going to be a candidate for the election," he said.

Warner said he hopes fellow Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine is Clinton’s vice presidential pick.

"I’ve known Tim for 35 years, and he is a solid, trustworthy man," Warner said. "I think he brings executive experience as well as legislative experience."

Today, Warner will be at Valley Health in Winchester for a roundtable discussion with local officials about combatting prescription drug and heroin abuse.

The way we work today would be unrecognizable to the union bosses and corporate leaders of the past. When the United Auto Workers and General Motors signed the "Treaty of Detroit" in 1950—the most influential labor contract of the 20th century—a job was something you did full-time for your whole life for a single company, and the arrangement came with generous health, unemployment, and pension benefits (not to mention guaranteed wage increases). Workers had to give up their independence and turn up at the same place every day at the same hours, but they were rewarded with a ticket to middle-class comfort.

Now such jobs are growing scarcer. Through Ray Kroc's hamburger franchises, the growth of temp agencies like Kelly Girl (now Kelly Services), and particularly the outsourcing boom of the 1980s and 1990s, companies have found numerous ways to take "non-core" workers off their books and reduce their costs. More than 15% of the workforce is now made up of agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, independent contractors, and freelancers, according to a recent estimate by economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger. More than 40% of workers don't receive a full range of employer-contributed benefits, government figures show (for example, those who work less than 30 hours a week and don't get health coverage under the Affordable Care Act).

True, there may be advantages to working more flexibly. Freelancers set their own time and make their own rules, as any Uber driver will tell you. But then one person's flexibility is another person's insecurity. And, across the economy as a whole, we might say the shift to "contingent" work hasn't been completely beneficial. In the years that companies have been cutting their payrolls, there’s been a rise in income volatility, income inequality, and wage stagnation at the middle-bottom of the scale. In effect, economists argue, companies have managed to shift costs from their balance sheets to individuals and the taxpayer.

"Because that [portion of workers] has no social insurance, when bad things happen, they fall back on public assistance," says Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. "Whether it's a failure of the employer or employee to contribute, you have a free-rider problem on an already bankrupt entitlement system. Many companies outsourced their cafeteria workers, their janitorial services, and a portion of their supply chain to avoid [paying benefits]." Indeed, 50% of fast-food workers, the grandchildren of Kroc’s franchise innovation, are now subsidized through public assistance, according to one study.

Warner has been leading an effort with the Aspen Institute, called the Future of Work Initiative (FOWI), to "identify concrete ways to strengthen the social contract in the midst of sweeping changes in the 21st century." When he started last year, he says he imagined this meant the gig economy and the question of how to protect Uber drivers and workers on TaskRabbit. But he's since realized the issue is wider than that. It's not just that technology is enabling new, looser forms of work. It's that companies are taking the logic of "core competency"—the management concept that says they should focus only on essential activities—to the limit. These days, millions of workers complete mainstream tasks for a company, wear the corporate uniform, and yet are paid as subcontractors (Fedex drivers, to give one very visible example). On-demand firms like Uber, on the other hand, currently provide work for only 0.5% of the workforce, Katz and Krueger estimate.

But the growth of the sharing economy has helped put the issue of job insecurity on the map (Warner calls Uber "the tip of the spear"). Journalists now write stories about the plight of Mechanical Turkers. And unions, think-tank analysts and some platform companies are interested in coming up with new ways to protect workers in the new age.

These ideas include creating portable benefit schemes where contributions to health, retirement, and wage insurance attach to individuals wherever they work and that aren't dependent on the old-school employer-employee relationship. They'd also like to create a new legal category of worker (or even two) beyond the full-time (W2) and independent contractor (1099) classification, to more accurately reflect the way people make a living today. And finally, it's vital to stop the misclassification of an estimated 3.4 million employees currently identified as independent contractors who should be reported as W2 employees.

PORTABLE BENEFITS

In a paper written for the FOWI, David Rolf, Shelby Clark, and Corrie Watterson Bryant outline how portable benefits systems could help independent workers. In effect, these would eliminate the distinction between full-time and contingent work by prorating contributions based on hours put in. So, if you drive two hours for Uber, you might get $2 (say) from the company delivered to a universal account, with the possibility of employees themselves contributing part of their earnings as well.

There's plenty of precedent for such ideas. Regional construction companies pay into "multi-employer" plans, allowing workers to move easily between building sites and still get benefits. About 33,000 black car drivers in New York receive workers compensation coverage via the Black Car Fund, which is financed through a 2.5% surcharge on customer bills. In Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Belgium, the "Ghent System" provides portable, publicly subsidized unemployment insurance tied to union membership. And, starting in 2017, Illinois is setting up the Secure Choice Benefit—a portable retirement scheme for employees without pensions (paid from a 3% payroll deduction, but managed by employers).

Combinations of these concepts, either managed by unions, employers, or other entities, could offer a better safety net for contingent workers than they have now, the authors believe. But there's one big problem. Under existing labor law, if a company pays benefits to its workers, it's said to meet one of 20 legal tests making it a W2 employer. In other words, if Uber starts paying into a portable benefits scheme for its drivers, it could find itself sued for misclassification (though it's being sued a lot for that as it is).

Though many gig companies are keen to start offering portable benefits in theory, in practice they’re wary of doing so in case they run into legal trouble. "Unfortunately, you have this disincentive for companies to provide benefits to workers," says Shelby Clark, CEO of Peers, the sharing economy trade group. "For that to happen, we will need to see some laws changed to enable companies to support their workers better."

Uber declined an interview request, except to say in a statement that it is "experimenting with new ways to maintain drivers’ flexibility while also giving them an additional voice." That includes the creation of an Independent Drivers Guild in New York, and two other associations in California and Massachusetts. The Guild hopes to set up a benefits fund, though, crucially, drivers will remain independent contractors and won't enjoy rights like a minimum wage or overtime. The Black Car Fund is a potential model because it pays benefits from user fees, rather than direct company contributions, thus absolving companies from misclassification issues.

Meanwhile, several cities are keen to experiment with portable benefit schemes as a way of boosting their low and moderate income workers, Warner says. But companies like Uber are apparently reluctant to cooperate unless they get a comprehensive legal waiver. "Some of the on-demand companies have been unwilling to take chances," Warner says. "They've come to me and said, 'We want to provide benefits but we want a fully fledged safe harbor before we take risks.' I don't find that a very satisfying answer. It means they're prepared to take risks in disrupting [an industry], but they're not prepared to take risks for their workforce."

Conor McKay, director of the FOWI, stresses that misclassification is about more than paying benefits. "The companies have been saying, 'Hey, stop suing us for misclassification, and if you do, we'll promise to provide a modicum of benefits.' That's pushing it a little too far. We can protect the companies in some ways, but it's also about the ability to unionize and organize, and negotiate fair conditions."

A NEW CATEGORY OF WORKER

As things stand today, there's a growing gulf between the worlds of workers who get a W2 and those who get a 1099. The former get a guarantee of a minimum wage, overtime, unemployment benefits, workers' compensation, the right to organize, and so on, while the latter often get none of those things. Moreover, because the benefits enjoyed by the first group are fairly costly, there's an incentive for companies to minimize their fully employed workforces and to contest the ambiguity of the law. A solution might be 1) to rewrite various laws so there's less uncertainty, and 2) to create new categories of worker that accord more easily with modern working practices.

Last year, Krueger and Cornell economist Seth Harris proposed creating an "independent worker" category that would fall in between W2 and 1099. On the one hand, such workers would be able to organize, bargain collectively, and pool benefits like disability insurance, retirement accounts, and liability insurance; and employers would pay some Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. On the other, they wouldn't get minimum wages, overtime, or workers’ compensation in the event of workplace injuries. This would "protect and extend the hard-earned social compact that has protected workers and improved living standards over the past century, reduce uncertainty, and enhance the efficient operation of the labor market," they write.

But others question whether the on-demand economy really rises to a level that requires across-the-board changes, especially as reforming anything in Washington is difficult these days. The legislative process is sure to take a long time, and it might reward companies that really should have been paying and protecting W2 employees all along. In helping Uber get on solider legal ground, we might do damage to the social contract that falls around other types of work.

The question of whether Uber deserves exceptional treatment is at the center of anantitrust suit facing the company this November. The suit alleges that CEO Travis Kalanick is trying to fix prices in the cab market through the "surge pricing" mechanism—an argument that could have merit. But, under Krueger and Harris's proposal, such criticisms would be moot: They would create an antitrust exemption in the case of independent workers.

"The gig economy is saying it has this new technology, that it's very efficient in matching services to customers, and that all of these traditional emoluments for workers just get in the way and put too much of a burden on the company," says Marshall Steinbaum, an economist who's written on the case. "The question is whether Uber is stupendous because of the app that it invented, or because it's operating on a different playing field where it doesn't have to do the things its competitors do."

BETTER ENFORCEMENT

Meanwhile, a report from the Century Foundation and the New America Foundation lays out other ideas for protecting and enabling contingent workers. That includes fostering new types of independent worker groups, like the Freelancers Union; encouraging new business models in the on-demand economy that do more for workers (like Loconomics, a cooperative alternative to TaskRabbit); and simply enforcing the law, so fewer flout the 1099 code (misclassification is most common in construction, day labor, janitorial and building services, home health care, child care, agriculture, poultry and meat processing, trucking, and home-based work, it says). But at the same time we might also have to accept that contingent work is here to stay and that we need to come up with new ways to facilitate it the best we can.

That starts by reducing the role that companies play in providing social insurance in this country. (In other countries, workers are protected just for being citizens. Here, they receive social insurance when they're employed). The Detroit Consensus placed huge responsibilities on companies that no longer make sense. Today, even union leaders say we shouldn't expect single corporations to cover us for health, disability, and old age.

"We ought to lengthen the social benefit list and shorten the employment benefit list. The American choice to privatize delivery of social contract benefits, primarily through the funded relationship, is in 20/20 hindsight, a mistake," says David Rolf, a Seattle-based vice president at the Service Employees International Union.

Portable benefits, in particular, would help end the so-called Labor Lock that stops people moving between jobs and starting their own businesses. And the idea may have appeal on left and right, according to Warner. "You have Democrats who advocate for social insurance. You have Republicans who like individual flexibility and hence all the benefits systems don't need to be run by governmental entities. There is a sweet spot where we might get something done," he says.

More to the point, a universal basic income might achieve the same sort of result. If we paid everyone a living wage, it would reduce the burden on companies and allow more people to do micro jobs without the threat of insecurity attached. It's time to start considering this and other such ideas.

RAPIDAN – U.S. Senator Mark Warner, D-Virginia, believes unmanned systems such as drones will one day be as popular as cell phones.

“I got in the cell phone business in the early ‘80s and people underestimated the amount of use it would have,” he said. “People thought it would take 30 years to build a wireless system, and that the end of that about 3 percent of Americans would have cell phones. They were wrong and I did pretty well. I feel like this is the same kind of potential.”

Warner, an early investor in cell phone technology, visited Culpeper on sweltering Friday morning for a drone demonstration at the Cedar Mountain Quarry. He watched while drones hovered above a 50-acre pit as explosives blasted away a large chunk of granite.

“We use drones for about every other blast to understand if we’re using the right amount of explosives,” said Cedar Mountain Stone owner Ed Dalrymple. " We can tell that by looking down it."

Before the recent advent of drones, the quarry gauged its use of explosives by eye.

“We stood back and watched it and said, hey this looks pretty good,” Dalrymple said. “This way, we get to see the physical effect.”

Cedar Mountain Stone continues to partner with Germanna Community College on its drone training programs for commercial applications, an initiative the college hopes to grow, according to Germanna President David Sam, in attendance at Friday’s outdoor demonstration.

He said 42 students had completed drone classes since they launched last fall and another half-dozen or so are enrolled right now.

“We’re looking to expand training in the kind of things they can do — surveying, construction inspections, agricultural,” Sam said.

Ben Sherman oversees the drone program at Germanna in partnership with the Washington, D.C. office of senseFly, a Swiss company that develops and produces the unmanned aerial vehicles. Brandy Station-based Stilwell Technologies, a robotics company, is another Germanna contractor.

Agricultural uses for drones could include doing a pink eye inspection measuring infrared heat on the eyes of a herd of cattle using a land-based rover, Sherman said, something Wayne Stilwell said comes in very handy.

“My dad has owned a plumbing company in Culpeper for 40 years and is still running 200 head of cattle at 70-years-old, and he’s very worn out,” said the Army veteran who owns Stillwell Technologies. “That’s why we started it because we always have so many pink eye problems and it takes a lot of work once you get pink eye in your herd.”

Drone use is quicker, easier and cheaper than manual methods, Sherman said, noting that senseFly on Thursday mapped the entire 150-acre quarry in about an hour. A drone was also recently used to inspect the new bridge going in at U.S. 29 and Route 666, he said.

Adam Zylka with senseFly said opportunities abound.

“Today we are going to look at some of the thermal imaging, some of the thermal properties of the blast site since the quarry is kind of interested in that,” he said. “We can take the images to compare the blast site from yesterday and today.”

Drones can additionally be used for surveying on construction projects, said Briton Voorhees with senseFly.

“The amount of time you can save on that is pretty staggering,” he said. “Covering a natural area and you wanted a topography survey of it could take guys a week or two to do a couple hundred acres and now they can do that in an hour with a drone.”

Senator Warner, who co-founded Nextel, said the potential for unmanned systems is nearly limitless.

“I’ve been meeting with Google and they’re talking about having a drone that could deliver a meal to you within a six-mile radius within 15 minutes for a few dollar charge. They’re testing that technology now so this is coming and what my hope is that Virginia can be one of the leaders,” he said.

Warner said Germanna was among the community colleges nationwide at the forefront of drone education.

“We’ve got to constantly worry about safety concerns, cyber security, hacking, but that doesn’t’ mean we don’t need to keep testing, keep pushing ahead,” he said.

Following the drone demonstration, Warner addressed American security in the wake of Thursday’s large-scale terrorist attack at a Bastille Day celebration in Nice, France.

“What the terrorists want is for us to be afraid. They want us to restrict our lifestyles, restrict our freedoms and we have to be vigilant, but I don’t believe people should be changing their plans,” he said.

As of Friday morning, Warner, a member of the senate intelligence committee, had not yet received a briefing on the attack with a truck that killed at least 84 people at last count.

“Was this a lone wolf? Was this part of a broader plot? To me, it means we’ve got to combat these terrorists both domestically, internationally. We’ve got to take more of the fight to their so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq,” said the senator. “One of my fears is that a lot of this will require information sharing. We saw in the case of Brussels, some of the perpetrators were on lists, but that information didn’t get fully shared. We don’t know enough what happened in Nice yet to make any of those judgments, but the scenes were pretty horrific.”

U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va., met with local business executives and officials Friday afternoon to discuss what the federal government can do to help entrepreneurship flourish in Charlottesville and across the state.

During a meeting of the Charlottesville Mayor’s Advisory Council on Innovation and Technology, Warner spoke about creating a state network to share ideas about entrepreneurship.

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, along with Representative Bobby Scott, announced that the City of Newport News will receive $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant program. The funding supports revitalization efforts in local communities.

“We are pleased that the Department of Housing and Urban Development has chosen the City of Newport News for this competitive grant award,” the Senators said. “Today’s funding will help transform local neighborhoods into stronger and more prosperous communities.”

“Today’s announcement from the Department of Housing and Urban Development is great news for the citizens of Newport News,” said Rep. Scott.  “These funds will ensure access to safe, affordable housing and help revitalize an historic neighborhood in southeast Newport News.”

Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grants support the development of comprehensive neighborhood revitalization plans which focused on directing resources to address three core goals: Housing, People and Neighborhoods.  To achieve these core goals, communities must develop and implement a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategy, or Transformation Plan. The Transformation Plan will become the guiding document for the revitalization of the public and/or assisted housing units while simultaneously directing the transformation of the surrounding neighborhood and positive outcomes for families.

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