Virginians are taking home less pay, spending less in stores and still are getting hit on their investments, new state tax-collection statistics show.

On the heels of a touchy-at-times budget process, elected officials for Chesterfield County and its school system are still having trouble seeing eye to eye. The two School Board representatives on a joint committee with the Board of Supervisors recently pulled out, citing a lack of progress on key issues. The long-standing committee was re-established last year to allow members of the boards to communicate more closely, but it produced little clarity.

The Richmond area’s public relations community gathered last night to honor its own at an awards ceremony at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. The big winners of the evening were CRT/tanaka and the city of Richmond’s Department of Public Utilities, both of which won Best in Show awards.

When it comes to your lawn, sacrificing the “green” may actually be the greenest thing you can do. “The majority of lawns people have are artificial; they’re exotics,“ said Eugene Maurakis, director of science education at the Science Museum of Virginia.

When it comes to sex education, saying no simply isn’t enough anymore for some Henrico County students. Henrico’s Student Congress—a body consisting of 150 representatives from nine high schools—thinks schools need to offer more information relevant to today’s teens in required family-life classes. The nine high schools enroll about 14,700 students.

NEW YORK (AP)—The credit card bill is a 30-page study in conspicuous consumption.

Court records show that a woman convicted with her husband in the dismemberment murders of a Virginia couple in Ocean City in 2002 discussed cannibalizing one of the victims. The reference comes from a judge’s order today denying a new trial for Erika Sifrit, of Hollidaysburg, Pa. In a statement to police after the slayings, Sifrit said she refused her husband Benjamin’s request to cook and eat a leg of one of the victims.

Laid off from Qimonda, Dave Johnson of Hanover County won’t be taking his family on their usual week’s vacation on the Outer Banks this year. What he is going to do is go back to the Hanover Tomato Festival.

The Virginia Department of Transportation will advertise about $176 million in paving and bridge projects for construction bids today, the first of the federal highway stimulus work to hit the street in Virginia. An additional $75 million in highway jobs will likely follow next week. “We’re going to be moving them as quickly as we can,“ said Malcolm T. Kerley, VDOT ‘s chief engineer.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine last year restored the voting rights of a record 1,500 felons, including dozens with violent pasts. Many were signed up in time to vote in the presidential election. Bernard L. Henderson Jr., senior deputy secretary of the commonwealth, said several voting groups inquired about the time limit for registering to vote—29 days before the Nov. 4 election. The office set an Aug. 15 deadline and was able to accommodate about 1,000 in time to register, he said.

Toxic emissions continue to decline in Virginia. Factories, power plants and other industries released 63 million pounds of the troublesome chemicals in 2007, a 4 percent drop from the year before, a new report says. The state Department of Environmental Quality disclosed the figures yesterday in its annual report on toxic emissions. “We have seen a few years where the numbers were higher, but overall the trend is down, and that’s exactly what we like to see,“ said DEQ spokesman Bill Hayden.

The same firms hired by Richmond to analyze a proposed $363 million development, including a new baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom, already endorsed the concept in a study produced for the city six months ago.

Richmond Task force: More study needed on audit plan It identifies nine hurdles to combining city and school staff in near term Richmond’s city and school system internal audit departments won’t merge in the near future, if local leaders follow the recommendation of a City Hall task force that studied the issue. A 12-person team that included city auditor Umesh Dalal and School Board auditor Debora Johns spent nearly a year on the issue but ultimately opted against making an immediate decision.

The State Fair of Virginia Inc. has filed a lawsuit in federal court against a Tennessee-based company planning a 10-day fair this summer in Henrico County that they say undermines their decades-old event.

After a dismal start to 2009, businesspeople see more pain ahead, expecting no improvement in economic conditions till late this year at the earliest. Their pessimism was evident in the Federal Reserve’s latest snapshot of business activity nationwide.