Tag Archives: BoS

Post modem post election

electionSigns2015Every election has its themes and forces that shape its outcome – that is – who will govern and implement what policies?

While there were a series of familiar campaign issues in this last election, there was an underlying concern about the character of our Loudoun County government.

We had a crowded field of experienced and inexperienced candidates offering themselves for public service.

Experienced hands enjoyed some special advantages, name recognition of course, but also incumbency, and those solidly gerrymandered election districts strewn across the Commonwealth’s electoral maps.

The greatest and most telling changes to the County’s character came, however, in several key contests for the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.

Eugene Delgaudio, the orange-hatted incumbent Sterling Supervisor, has been attacked for years for his allegedly questionable ethical and discriminatory antics on and off the Board of Supervisors. To its credit, the Board itself recoiled from Mr. Delgaudio’s misconduct, citing a scathing special grand jury report to do so. The Republican Party members took the Republican Board to task for its modest sanctions against Mr. Delgaudio, signaling a split in the party that proved deeper than may have been first understood.

Mr. Delgaudio’s conduct prompted a bitter and abiding distaste more generally for the Board’s ethical ambiguities.

There was legitimate unease with the Board’s cronies in construction and development who contributed heavily to Board members. Continue reading

The developers are coming (again)!

handshakeIf you’ve looked around, you’ve seen our rivers overrun and mud and dirt flowing across the road. It’s because we’ve had a lot of rain in recent days. We may be surprised and concerned at these torrential conditions. But the real problem is – it could get much worse if some developers have their way.

The Developers want to build on steep slopes and in flood plains, now prohibited.

Our Board of Supervisors is considering allowing them.

The name, flood plain, is self-descriptive. If either side of a stream or river is prone to flooding, then it’s a flood plain.

As a trial lawyer, I imagine someone building in a flood plain, their home then flooded, and asking, “How did that happen?” Answer: – our Board of Supervisors changed the ordinance because that’s what their contributors wanted.

Of course, more happens than a homeowner or commercial business getting flooded.

If a storm water pond floods, it’s likely to send polluted sediment and water downstream.

If waters overrun a parking lot in a flood plain, you can have toxic run off from the vehicles.

If you have barrels of petroleum, consider the disaster should that petroleum be carried off downstream.

An area is declared a flood plain as a buffer, with limited uses, as a guard against having to clean up, at taxpayer expense, should one build in that area.

As for steep slopes, have you ever tried to plant cover on a steep slope. If you don’t have something that holds that soil together, everything you plant (dumbly) will just run down hill.

A “steep slope” is an incline greater than 25 degrees. That slope has a high potential for erosion and mudslides. What do you think would happen if you were to place a development on or below a steep slope? You’re right. Disaster.

Could some engineer re-make the contours of the land? Sure, I suppose, by destroying what exists, but such development is destructive and that’s what the current County policy acknowledges, and prohibits.

So why should we change either our ordinance limitations on flood plains or steep slopes, since they appear to be quite responsible? We shouldn’t.

The Citizens have already recoiled from the Board’s proposals to modify the steep slopes prohibitions, so the Board retrenched, directing the County Staff, “the Imagineers” (you might call them), to come back and present “a compromise.”

How in the world do you think that “compromise” can work?

The truth is the Board is delaying, waiting for a Hail Mary pass, because they are inclined to do what their bosses, the developers, want, and to push this round peg through a square hole– at a date to be determined – if we don’t fight them and stop this wrong-headed revision.

Our Board, transparently lackeys for the developers, want Loudoun County to be “more business-friendly,” so they say, by making more land available for commercial development.

The Piedmont Environmental Council (the PEC) issued an alarm, rightly declaring, that these proposed changes are plain wrong, and, as for Loudoun County becoming more “business friendly,” the PEC says, “that storyline just doesn’t add up. Loudoun has significant vacant commercial space, and more than 3,100 acres of commercially zoned land (greater than 50 million square feet of space) on the market that hasn’t been built yet.”

So what’s the real story?

On the off chance this Board is not returned to office, a much hoped for electoral result, they are going to reward those developers who brought them to the dance, by passing these revisions.

Don’t wait until the election to vote them out of office, appear at the public Board hearing on Flood Plains on October 14 at 6:00pm, and tell them to represent the public interest, and not the Developers.

Political brawling in Loudoun

boxingBrawlFighters like politicians don’t always know when to step down.

Loudoun County Board Chairman Scott York is that kind of fighter who doesn’t know when to quit.

On about January 8, 2015, Scott said he’d put a lot of thought into whether he’d quit and decided his future “just didn’t include being Chairman for another four years.”

If Ali, a three time heavyweight champ, had listened to Doc Ferdie Pacheco, he might have gone out like undefeated heavy weight champ Rocky Marciano, physically intact, laurels strewn in his wake, without the humiliation of a drubbing by Leon Spinks and Larry Holmes.

York badly wanted those laurels from the Chamber of Commerce and he told them, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, not to worry, he really wasn’t going to go for a fifth round to get elected.

The Chamber conferred on pug Scott York his desired “laurels,” and, no sooner did they rest upon his hallowed crown, did he throw a sharp left jab at his own integrity, and jump into the political ring, seeking re-election.

“Slippery” Scott is like a small club fighter who slips punches, shifts his stance to suit election year allies, tracks backward in the ring, the “Slippery” Scott shuffle, and, between rounds, his corner men treat his cuts, an expanding contributing entourage of developers, according to VPAP, including real estate developers, general contractors, highway contractors, building trades, excavation contractors, so they can have their hoped-for fifth round, more pay days by our County, for even more development. Continue reading

Systemic Dodging of Accountibility, the Delgaudio Loophole (UPDATED)

The big news of the week is the filing of the recall trial petition against Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio. (Well, the big news unless you’re Leesburg Councilmember, and perennial Mayoral candidate, Tom Dunn.) The filing triggers a process clearly outlined by statute, and ably explained by the ever-cogent blogger at Real Loudoun. One thing that has been lost in the shuffle of this week’s machinations, however, is the fact that the recall action was largely made necessary because of something that happened in Richmond earlier this month.

You may recall that the only reason Supervisor Delgaudio was not indicted by the grand jury is that he qualifies as a “part-time” elected official, and as such can – apparently – do whatever he wants with public time and assets without any legal penalties. GrandJuryRecc1The grand jury at the time took the remarkable step of calling upon the Virginia General Assembly to change the law removing the Delgaudio “part-time” Loophole as soon as possible. Indeed, that recommendation was the very first recommendation in the Grand Jury’s report.

If you’re wondering whatever happened to that recommendation, here’s your answer.

At the beginning of this year’s General Assembly session Delegate Randy Minchew dutifully introduced HB 420, a bill specifically designed to close the Delgaudio Loophole. The Grand Jury’s recommendation was on its way to being implemented. Loudoun and Virginia could breath a sigh of relief that while Supervisor Delgaudio got through the loophole, others would not be so lucky.HB420-Sunlight

But a funny thing happened on the way to ethics, transparency and accountability. Namely, Republican control of the House of Delegates. In an all-too-common move, the Mr. Minchew’s bill to close the Delgaudio Loophole and implement the Grand Jury recommendation was quietly killed in his own Courts of Justice committee. That’s what “laid on the table” means in the language of parliamentary procedure.

Now, there is another bill that would do the same thing in the House of Delegates, HB252. McDonnell,_Schmidt_and_Minchew_thumb This one introduced by Democratic Delegate, Scott Surovell. Del. Surovell is not confident of his bill’s chances of surviving the subcommittee to which it has been assigned within Courts of Justice because, “they already killed Randy’s bill and Randy is a Republican.” (UPDATE – Del. Surovell’s bill was quietly killed by Republicans on Friday, January 31st.)

That is an important point. Randy is an influential Republican legislator, recall he got his start as a “Counselor” to Gov. Rolex – I mean McDonnell. Either he has a lot less influence then he tells his constituents in the 10th Delegate District, or he really didn’t want his bill, HB420, to proceed.

Either way, Republicans have, once again, talked a lot of hot air about accountability and reform, but when put in a position to actually affect meaningful change that would curb the abuses of the past few years, they delay and quietly destroy important reforms. From the Board of Supervisors, which issued a six-month finger-wagging to Eugene Delgaudio before fully reinstating him to his privileges on the Board, to legislators in Richmond, who see nothing wrong with Gov. McDonnell accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts from major campaign donors seeking governmental imprimatur for their questionably-effective sovereign tonics, the political system here in Virginia seems to intrinsically dodge accountability when Republicans are in charge.

And so, in spite of a year of bombshell revelations in the press, a damning grand jury report, promises of action, and censure by the Board of Supervisors, Eugene Delgaudio remains a Supervisor with the full faith and confidence of his Republican colleagues. And the legal loophole that allows him to continue to misuse public assets (if he chooses to do so, and why wouldn’t he, given the complete lack of real consequences he’s faced from his fellow Republicans) remains wide open.

So, for those who ask why Sterling Citizens filed their recall petition against Eugene Delgaudio this week, I humbly suggest that it was the one path to accountability remaining to the people of Sterling who have been ignored and mis-represented by their Supervisor for long enough.

Taxes, Schools, and Sidewalks

Kids went to school one day this week. This marks the second week this winter where the Loudoun Schools have only been in session for one day. Many members of the community are incensed at the fact that our kids have been kept home so often this year. They complain that it is “just a little snow and cold,” and where they’re from originally, this kind of “wussiness” in the face of winter wouldn’t be tolerated.IcySidewalkTweet

Funny thing about that, though: Where they’re from originally, there is a long-standing local commitment to the public’s responsibility to take care of public infrastructure, like schools and transportation infrastructure, at the public’s expense. Here in Loudoun County, Republicans who run the Board of Supervisors and the School Board, not to mention those in the House of Delegates, have no such commitment. On the contrary, there is an attitude of “Starving the Beast” when it comes to public services and investment. As if our children’s education were a Beast of some sort.

Continue reading

Enough Mephisto

Eugene's campaign workers. Hannah Champ (Scoggins) at the door, Werner Workman on the right.

Leesburg Today ran a very critical editorial of Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio’s latest LCRC antics, but the criticism, “Stop the Circus,” didn’t go far enough in exposing Supervisor Delgaudio operations.

He was putting on a political show—one, like so many during his 14-year board tenure, that was woefully short on substance, but with potential to help fuel his campaign fundraising machine. Continue reading

Deny Supervisor Delgaudio’s Funding Request

The Loudoun County BoS will vote on a request to grant Supervisor about $5,000 for a campaign newsletter. If the BoS understands the purpose of the newsletter, they’ll deny the request. Regarding the situation, there’s a good letter in the online version of the Leesburg Today that exposes the machinations of Supervisor Delgaudio’s use of taxpayer funded newsletters. The letter also demonstrates the possible illegal collaboration between the Sterling Supervisor and Dave LaRock’s 33rd House District campaign.

How much information was shared? Were voter lists shared? Was the value of the information reported as an in-kind contribution? There are many, many outstanding questions. The letter is inlined below, emphasis mine. Continue reading

Loudoun should adopt San Antonio’s non-discrimination language

Christianist Christians are claiming that they will be discriminated against under the city of San Antonio’s proposed non-discrimination policy.

No person shall be appointed to a position if the City Council finds that such person has, prior to such proposed appointment, engaged in discrimination or demonstrated a bias, by word or deed, against any person, group or organization on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, age, or disability.

Is it reading comprehension? I bolded the word religion. The Washington Times headline reads, “San Antonio proposal could set the stage for barring Christians from city council.”

“San Antonio’s current ordinance hasn’t been used to police city officials’ personal views on race, gender, or religion. That’s because the ordinance is meant to prohibit clear cases of professional discrimination and bias – not bad personal thoughts,” Equality Matters explains. “Right-wing media’s attacks on the San Antonio proposal represent but the latest example of the anti-equality movement’s Orwellian strategy to depict LGBT rights – whether marriage equality or employment non-discrimination – as a danger to liberty.”

We have a clear case of professional discrimination right here in Loudoun. Our BoS should adopt the similar language and lobby the state of Virginia to do the same. It would open up a lot positions in the governor’s office, AG, House, Senate, and local governments across the state. We’d have to add a warning label to the ballot.

WARNING: If you vote for a professional bigot, he or she may be removed from office at any time.

 

Eugene Delgaudio’s Identity Crisis

A chastened Supervisor E. Delgaudio listening to the public demanding his censure (photo J. Flannery)

Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio lost his ever-present orange hat, his open smile, his false swagger and his law suit when he tried to prevent the Board of Supervisor from having a hearing last Wednesday on what Mr. Delgaudio did or did not do to abuse staff and misuse and mingle County resources with his gay-bashing hate group and his campaign fund-raising activities.

Mr. Delgaudio said he wanted to know before last Wednesday’s meeting what the Board’s specific charges were.

The Board listed five charges, with the help of Board Member, Mr. Shawn M. Williams, drawing principally upon the 8-page statement filed by Ms. Donna Mateer, a former staffer (submitted last March)(that Mr. Delgaudio has had ever since), and the recent critical grand jury report (June 24, 2013)(that didn’t indict but did plainly identify various kinds of official misconduct by Mr. Delgaudio).

Mr. Delgaudio wanted an opportunity to respond.

Chairman Scott York called the Board into a Committee of the Whole in public so that Mr. Delgaudio could.

When given the opportunity, Mr Delgaudio lost his voice.

Mr. Delgaudio carped, sniveled and complained that he needed more time. Continue reading

The BoS MUST halt Supervisor Delgaudio’s recruiting activities

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisor’s MUST put a halt to Supervisor Delgaudio’s youth recruiting activities and apologize to all teens for allowing the Supervisor to coerce them into joining a right-wing club with the imprimatur of county government. I sent a letter to the BoS stating such.

Here is how the letter opens:

The purpose of this letter is to recommend that you bar Supervisor Delgaudio from sponsoring the “Eugene Delgaudio Sterling Teen Job Fair.” The Sterling Supervisor uses the job fair to recruit youth into a right-wing political club that has a history of violence, defamation and hatred towards minorities and progressive causes. Furthermore, this board should send a letter of apology the participants of prior job fairs and their parents advising them that the county was not aware of the recruitment activity and that it does not endorse or sponsor the Sterling Supervisor’s recruiting activities. I’m requesting that you take this into consideration at your July 17, 2013 meeting under the agenda item “Grand Jury Report: Follow-up on Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio Investigation.” Continue reading