Martinsville Bulletin - Democrat Dittmar to Seek 5th Seat

News Article

By: Ben R. Williams

Jane Dittmar plans to use her experience and business background to bring jobs and increased internet access to the 5th Congressional District.

Dittmar, who is based in Albemarle County, is the Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives for the commonwealth's 5th District. Republican Rep. Robert Hurt currently is the 5th District Representative, though Hurt has announced he will not seek another term.

The 5th District is massive, Dittmar said, bigger than the state of New Jersey and many foreign countries.

"I've identified arguably five regions within our one congressional district," she said. "We'll be approaching each of those regions with different services. The ones that they want. The ones that we can help them with the most in terms of access to resources."

However, she said, there are a few uniform needs across the entire district. Everyone, Dittmar said, wants a good economy, good jobs and a better life for their children.

In Southside, she said, "We have good job training resources, but we don't have the jobs. People go into the pipeline of training and then they have to leave the area to go get a job somewhere else. We used to export furniture and textiles and tobacco, and now we're exporting our kids. We need to look at that in a systemic way. … I wrote the plan for the Central Virginia Economic Development Partnership, and that's exactly what we did. We looked at infrastructure, we looked at targeted industries, and then we looked at how to communicate that to bring in employers and to help our existing industry expand. And that's what we'll do in Southside as well."

A University of Virginia graduate with a B.A. in economics, Dittmar has owned several businesses, served on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors and was president and CEO of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce for nine years.

As chamber president, she said, "I got very involved with the issues that impact small businesses, all the way to our largest employers: Why they expanded jobs, when they expanded jobs, what environment allowed them to expand jobs. We were fortunate during the time I was president to have the lowest unemployment rate in the country. We had Canadian television stations coming to interview, asking what we were doing in this region that had heated up the economy so much."

"I think the key attribute that I hope to bring to my work as a Congressman is to work with our local and regional economic development officials to see what … Washington can do to help heat up the economy," she added.

Dittmar already has a few plans in the works, she said.

Dominion Power is getting ready to open a solar power farm in Fauquier County, she said. With Southside's abundance of underutilized flat tobacco fields, there is the opportunity to build solar farms locally, which would potentially provide a large number of jobs for both engineers and installers.

Additionally, Dittmar said, this year, a project to expand the width of the Panama Canal is slated to be completed. That project will allow the canal to accommodate increasingly common "supertanker" cargo ships.

Virginia's deep water ports provide easy access for those supertankers, she said, and "we could build whole industries based on what will be coming through and unloaded and shipped by truck or rail from our own ports here in Virginia, coming across the base of the state and then being distributed along I-81. … I've already talked with Senator Warner's and Senator Kaine's offices about how we might combine both the Senate-side and the House-side efforts to really put a focus on that."

One common issue that the entirety of the 5th District faces, Dittmar said, is a lack of adequate, reliable internet access. Expanding that access is one of her main goals.

"I was in Franklin County earlier this week, and I was meeting with a group of maybe 45 to 50 people," she said. "I always introduce this topic by asking, "How many people here feel like they have adequate internet service?' Not surprisingly, no one raised their hand. I said, "How many of you at least have reliable internet service?' Several people that had DSL raised their hands. Afterward, by the way, some people came up and said that during portions of the day, they can't even use their cash registers … because they don't have internet service that's reliable."

There are third world countries that have better internet access than the 5th District, Dittmar said, and as internet access only becomes more necessary to daily life, that situation needs to change.

"We have parents … that have to drive their kids to libraries at night -- if they're still open -- so they can do their homework. … 70 percent of teachers assign homework where you need to use the internet at home to do it. People can't telecommute if they have sick children. People that don't have good jobs and are seeking better jobs have to look on the internet to find those jobs. People that want to keep up with what government's doing -- whether it's supervisors in Henry County or city council in Martinsville -- have to be able to get online and go to the websites and see what local government is doing. Or state government. Or federal government."

While in Buckingham County recently, Dittmar said, residents told her that they used to be able to get tax return forms at the post office or library. Now, those forms can only be downloaded from the internet.

"Without this access, we are going to be further and further left behind," she said. "The solutions are within our reach."

Every time someone pays a cell phone bill, she said, they are paying a variety of taxes and fees. Most of that money goes to the Federal Communications Commission to a fund called Connect America, a program designed to expand internet access in areas like Southside.

"It's already part of the budget," she said. "It's already got a stream of revenue. And the checks are being written from the federal government to communities all over the country. All we have to do is get our name on the "Pay to the order of' (line) and we will have resources to be able to help our local governments deploy internet."

A resident of the 5th District for about 40 years, Dittmar originally is from rural Illinois.

"My father moved us to Virginia when he came to work for the Kennedy administration," she said. "My first sense of politics was through my parents. My mom worked for a United States Senator from Illinois, Paul H. Douglas. That was a very active time with regard to civil rights and changing social dynamics in the country. Growing up, we were hearing about that at the dinner table, at lunch, at breakfast."

Dittmar was among the fourth class of women to be admitted to the University of Virginia, she said. She and her husband, Frank Squillace, have six children, four of whom currently are in college.

Dittmar said she has been touring the district extensively, including several trips to Henry County, and plans to continue speaking with 5th District residents over the months leading up to the November election.

"I want Southside to be ambitious," she said. "I want to help achieve some goals through actionable initiatives … by using the seat in Washington to team up with state government resources and local government resources. We're going to connect all three to put things on the right trajectory for the region."

Source