I was planning to top this column with some commentary on the early travails for freshman U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin in Washington -- but then something much more important happened late Friday.
I was planning to top this column with some commentary on the early travails for freshman U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin in Washington -- but then something much more important happened late Friday.
Yes, the Department of Administration inked a deal for a new operator to run the Capitol food court, after five months of having the operation out of service.
The Pittman Group, a Charleston-based catering/vending/food service company, will take over operations of the $3.7 million facility in the Capitol basement, effective the first week of January.
"We do have a contract. We do expect the food court to re-open in January," said Administration spokeswoman Diane Holley-Brown, who has had to field nearly daily inquiries about the status of the food court for the past five months.
If the Pittman Group sounds familiar, it's because they were partners in an operation that ran a temporary food service facility in the basement of the Culture Center in 2007, while the old Capitol cafeteria was being gutted and replaced.
(Hope they have better luck this time, since that experiment lasted from only January to mid-May 2007, shutting down because of dwindling business following the end of the legislative session that year... Of course, it was an untenable arrangement, having to prepare food off-site and truck it in each day.)
It will be interesting to see if they can make a go of it after Guest Services Inc. gave up on the place after losing money for 2 1/2 years.
And the new operators could be facing some new competition shortly, with word that McDonald's plans to build a new restaurant at the current Rally's location on Washington Street East...
***
Getting an invite to one of the Christmas parties at the governor's mansion is one thing, but it doesn't hold a candle to going to the White House for a holiday fete.
Which is what Supreme Court Chief Justice Robin Davis and husband Scott Segal got to do on Thursday, I'm told.
Unlike Christmas parties at the mansion, which at least under Joe Manchin drew about 500 guests per night, the party hosted by President Obama and first lady Michelle was limited to 300 VIPs.
Davis/Segal have known Obama going back to the 2006 Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner when Obama, then the rising star in the party (how quickly things can change...) was the keynote speaker.
***
I was planning to top this column with some commentary on the early travails for freshman U.S. Sen.
Joe Manchin in Washington -- but then something much more important happened late Friday.
Yes, the Department of Administration inked a deal for a new operator to run the Capitol food court, after five months of having the operation out of service.
The Pittman Group, a Charleston-based catering/vending/food service company, will take over operations of the $3.7 million facility in the Capitol basement, effective the first week of January.
"We do have a contract. We do expect the food court to re-open in January," said Administration spokeswoman Diane Holley-Brown, who has had to field nearly daily inquiries about the status of the food court for the past five months.
If the Pittman Group sounds familiar, it's because they were partners in an operation that ran a temporary food service facility in the basement of the Culture Center in 2007, while the old Capitol cafeteria was being gutted and replaced.
(Hope they have better luck this time, since that experiment lasted from only January to mid-May 2007, shutting down because of dwindling business following the end of the legislative session that year... Of course, it was an untenable arrangement, having to prepare food off-site and truck it in each day.)
It will be interesting to see if they can make a go of it after Guest Services Inc. gave up on the place after losing money for 2 1/2 years.
And the new operators could be facing some new competition shortly, with word that McDonald's plans to build a new restaurant at the current Rally's location on Washington Street East...
***
Getting an invite to one of the Christmas parties at the governor's mansion is one thing, but it doesn't hold a candle to going to the White House for a holiday fete.
Which is what Supreme Court Chief Justice Robin Davis and husband Scott Segal got to do on Thursday, I'm told.
Unlike Christmas parties at the mansion, which at least under Joe Manchin drew about 500 guests per night, the party hosted by President Obama and first lady Michelle was limited to 300 VIPs.
Davis/Segal have known Obama going back to the 2006 Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner when Obama, then the rising star in the party (how quickly things can change...) was the keynote speaker.
***
Frankly, I wouldn't know Joshua Austin from Josh Hamilton (actually, that's not true ... I got to see Hamilton play a Rookie League game in 1999 in Burlington, N.C.), but his hiring has evidently caused the first controversy within the Tomblin quasi-administration.
Austin was hired as Tomblin's public policy deputy director, but evidently his past history of posting derogatory comments about state politics in general, and Southern West Virginia politicians in particular, on various computer blogs didn't sit well with the powers that be in the Tomblin quasi-administration.
As of press time, Austin has been booted out of the inner sanctum of the governor's office all the way down to the Greenbrooke Building, where he's been assigned to work for Martha Walker in the Governor's Office of Health Enhancement and Lifestyle Planning (GOHELP).
Hallie Mason, who had been hired as executive assistant to the governor, has moved over to public policy.
There was only one additional new hire report for the governor's office last week: Tina Stinson, who had been administrative secretary to Tomblin spokeswoman Jacqueline Proctor in her previous post as deputy commissioner of Culture and History.
***
Finally, speaking of health, the city fathers in Nitro couldn't have picked a worse time to dredge up their old proposal to secede from the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department to allow smoking at the Mardi Gras Casino, and other establishments around town.
That comes on the heels of the most recent report from the Lottery Commission, which shows that Mardi Gras, which has long been the smallest of the state's four racetrack/casinos in terms of revenue, has moved up to the No. 2 revenue-producer, passing both the Mountaineer and Wheeling Island casinos -- both of which permit smoking.
Which raises the issue of whether the real reasons for the downturn in casino revenues are the weak economy and increased competition in neighboring states -- and not because someone is being deprived of the opportunity to partake in two (or possibly three) vices simultaneously.
Meanwhile, the same day the Nitro council's proposal was hitting the news, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin issued her report finding that there is no acceptable level of exposure to tobacco smoke -- that exposure to smoke from even a single cigarette causes permanent physical damage, and poses the risk of heart attack.
That being said, how could a bureaucracy created for the express purpose of promoting smoking purport to call itself a Health Department?
Perhaps the Nitro Death Squad would be a more appropriate name for this new agency...
Reach Phil Kabler at ph...@wvgazette.com or 340-348-1220.
Get Connected