Local Leaders Taking Their Leave

As we bid adieu to the year 2023, we are saying goodbye to a number of local government leaders whose terms of office are ending and who have made significant contributions to the Rockbridge area community.

Bill Fitzgerald, Buena Vista mayor the past six years who served previously as a regular member of City Council and was on the city’s School Board prior to that, has provided quiet, steady leadership for a city that is making great strides to confront and overcome innumerable difficulties.

During Fitzgerald’s mayoral tenure, the city settled its golf course debt, extricating itself from a financial mess that had held the city back for many years. He steered the city through the hardships of the pandemic and is leaving city government at a time when the downtown business district appears to be on the verge of a revival. With the aid of federal funding made available during the pandemic, Buena Vista is in the position to undertake a staggeringly expensive but critically needed upgrade of its wastewater treatment plant.

Betty Trovato and David Whitesell are stepping down from their posts as, respectively, Rockbridge County treasurer and commissioner of revenue in which they were stewards of the county’s finances. Trovato has been in her post for a dozen years and Whitesell has been in his for 20. Together, they have been in county government jobs for a combined 76 years – 38 years apiece. The fiscal outlook for the county is in a better place because of their capable, competent management.

On the education front, three members of Rockbridge area school boards are leaving – Wendy Lovell in the county, Mac Felts in Buena Vista and Tim Diette in Lexington. All three have made positive impacts on our local school systems and their leadership will be missed.

Two members of Buena Vista City Council – Stanley Coffey and Vice Mayor Cheryl Hickman – are taking their leave. Both of them were earnest in their efforts to closely monitor the city’s finances and be responsive to their constituencies.

A stalwart state lawmaker who has represented all or portions of the Rockbridge area for more than three decades, state Sen. Creigh Deeds, will no longer be representing us in Richmond. Because of redistricting, Deeds moved to Charlottesville and was elected to reconfigured state Senate District 11. We in the Rockbridge area will miss his responsiveness to the needs of our community, but his state leadership in bringing reforms to mental health services will continue.

State Sen. Emmett Hanger, a veteran state legislator who formerly represented the Rockbridge area, is retiring from state politics altogether. He has been a state senator for 28 years and, prior to that, served in the House of Delegates for eight years. A voice of moderation and bipartisanship, he was a key player in the 2018 machinations that expanded the state’s Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, thus extending health care coverage to an additional 735,000 Virginians.

Hanger’s leadership skills and emphasis on bipartisanship will be sorely missed. However, we are hopeful of a new era of bipartisanship in Richmond in the new year. In the recent November elections, Democrats held onto their slim majority in the state Senate and recaptured the House of Delegates by a narrow margin. It is our hope that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly will be able to find common ground when the new legislative session gets underway in January.

As we head into the new year, we want to express our gratitude to the public servants who are departing their roles. We wish them well in their future endeavors.