If tradition had been upheld on the Albemarle Board of Supervisors, Duane Snow would be chairman. Instead, at its first meeting of the year, the usually decorous board got testy over election of the chairman– and who would hold the real position of power: a seat on the transportation-controlling Metropolitan Planning Organization.

Supervisor Ken Boyd accused his anti-29-bypass colleagues of "politicizing" the longstanding tradition of rotating the chair every two years and passing it on to the vice-chair. In this case, Snow would have succeeded Ann Mallek in 2012– if the wounds weren't still fresh over ...

Read More »