Tag Archives: Eugene Delgaudio

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

Want a government job? What’s your religion?

Arlington Commonwealth Attorney Theo Stamos

Arlington Commonwealth Attorney Theo Stamos

If you were asked to disclose your religion to get a job in government, you’d say, “that’s none of your business.”

Any public employer who wants to know your religion is wrongly using your response to prefer or reject you for a public job.

The interview question also violates federal and state constitutional rights and statutory prohibitions against asking a job applicant about his faith.

The Commonwealth Attorney from Arlington, Theo Stamos, nevertheless told a court last week that there’s nothing wrong about “probing” a public job applicant’s “religious beliefs.” Continue reading

Delgaudio attorney apparently switching sides

EugeneDelgaudioSadPandaLeesburg Today reports that Charlie King, the attorney representing Eugene Delgaudio in the citizens’ effort to have Delgaudio removed from office by the Circuit Court, has filed a subpoena seeking documents from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The rationale for the subpoena, according to Charlie King:

“Almost every article written about Supervisor Delgaudio mentions the designation of Public Advocate as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center,” King said in an email statement. “The Sterling petitioners (in a petition to remove Delgaudio from office) cited Public Advocate’s hate group status as one basis for removing him from office. In today’s America, calling somebody a member of a hate group is serious.”

Yes, it certainly is. And now I don’t know who, if anyone, is in charge of strategy over at Public Advocate/Office of the Sterling Supervisor.

Regarding SPLC’s 2012 addition of “Public Advocate of the U.S.” to its short list of anti-gay organizations extreme enough to be called “active hate groups,” Delgaudio only sings one note. Every transparently planted online comment, every press release, every public utterance directed at Loudoun County we’ve seen has repeated the same monotonous talking point: That the SPLC designation was made “because Public Advocate upholds traditional marriage.”

The repetition of this talking point has been so consistent that it could not possibly be accidental. The propagation of this lie has been the centerpiece of Delgaudio’s public relations management of the revelations about the co-mingling of his hate group’s fundraising activities with the privileges of his public office.

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“Lazarus Play” to Close Delgaudio Loophole?

Following what Del. Randy Minchew (R-10) describes as a “Lazarus Play,” a bill intended to hold elected officials to tighter ethical controls is headed for a committee vote Friday morning. – Leesburg Today

I wonder if Dems who blog up here all the time and complain will give Delegate Minchew some credit for keeping the bill alive — and for our Loudoun Board for supporting it too. There were positive comments about the bill at last night’s Board of Supervisors meeting – The Naked Truth

Credit where credit is due. Del. Minchew’s bill to close the Delgaudio Loophole in state law that allows elected officials to abuse public resources just because they’re “part-time” in the eyes of the law is back for a vote in the House of Delegates. This is a good thing, and credit to the Delegates who helped make this happen, including Del. Minchew.

That being said, it is well worth observing two disturbing implications of this “Lazarus Play.”

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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.

“Provocative Views”

Public Advocate celebrates Randall Terry's Oklahoma delegate scam.

Public Advocate celebrates Randall Terry’s Oklahoma delegate scam.

On Monday, the citizen group Sterling Deserves Better filed its petition with the Loudoun Circuit Court to have censured Supervisor and hate group leader Eugene Delgaudio removed from office. Real Loudoun has put together a good explanation of the legal proceedings and the case against him.

Delgaudio’s lawyer Charlie King responded to the petition yesterday, not by addressing any of the charges against his client, but with this:

“As President of Public Advocate, Supervisor Delgaudio takes clearly provocative views on national social and family issues.”

Indeed he does. His views are so provocative, in fact, that they even provoked him to remove his own promotion of a stunt by extremist Randall Terry from his Public Advocate website.

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Photos from 2009 Public Advocate stunt show Delgaudio working with his new extremist Library Board appointee

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. We don’t yet know how many words Sterling supervisor Eugene Delgaudio will emit claiming that he didn’t know “much of anything” about Andrew Beacham, his nominee for Loudoun County’s Library Board – but we do know that they will be arranged into falsehoods.

According to Chairman York, who apparently agreed to nominate Beacham “on behalf of” his Sterling colleague (how does he manage to get himself into these predicaments?), “the information provided on Beacham was not very detailed. Beacham’s four-paragraph resume only said he had ‘worked in the field of media production and broadcasting over the last 4 years.'”

In fact, Beacham’s “work” includes publicly defacing the Koran “in support of Florida pastor Terry Jones” and other political theater acts with fringe anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry. He is active with nativist and anti-government groups in Loudoun, and calls himself a “full-time Pro-Life missionary and activist for Christian policies in government” while declaring that “the only good progressive is a dead progressive.”

Beacham did not move to Sterling by coincidence.

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Whitbeck led reform commission to “save BILLIONS,” boasts Delgaudio

Eugene Delgaudio's lie-filled 12-11-13 email promoting John Whitbeck

Eugene Delgaudio’s lie-filled 12-11-13 email promoting John Whitbeck

John Whitbeck co-chaired the Loudoun County Government Reform Commission subcommittee responsible for studying fees for county services, privatization and outsourcing. His subcommittee targeted the vulnerable county workforce and the after school program that serves the county’s poorest children. Whitbeck’s subcommittee report was delivered four months late. It made no outsourcing recommendations, and its major “saving” recommendation was to double the fees on the already profitable CASA after school program.

In one of the most lie-filled emails of all time, Eugene Delgaudio’s 2013-12-11 campaign email boasted:

The largest and most comprehensive budget cutting program and money saving ideas ever presented to Loudoun since my own “Delgaudio’s 100 Million Dollar Tax Reducation [sic] Plan” was produced by Loudoun County Government Reform Commission.

The scale of the Reform ideas is gigantic and could save BILLIONS over the next decade if implemented.

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Seriously, Jim Plowman, … Seriously?

Frank Wolf campaigns for SPLC designated hate group leader

Jim Plowman, our Commonwealth’s Attorney issued a fake “legal opinion” berating President Obama for campaigning for Terry McAuliffe. He ends his charge with the quote below, emphasis mine. The statement was published by anti-semite John Whitbeck in a GOP 10th CD email. This is the same CD committee whose chief fundraiser is the County’s tax collector.

The very fact that President Obama is campaigning for McAuliffe raises serious questions as to whether McAuliffe’s stature in the Democratic Party is shielding him and his company from full and timely investigations by the DHS and SEC.

Virginians would be right to question whether the President’s appearance with McAuliffe produces a legitimate conflict of interest.  Principles don’t change depending on which elected office you seek.  These actions would never be tolerated at the local level and they shouldn’t be tolerated at the State or National level either.  The public deserves prompt answers to these questions.

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Sterling hate descends on Purcellville (Updated)

Warner Workman stands in front of a Telos sign at the Sterling Teen Job Fair 2013

Warner Workman stands in front of a Telos sign at the Sterling Teen Job Fair 2013

Reveling in the unapologetic hate of Supervisor Delgaudio’s inner circle, supporter Warner Workman is working Purcellville social media for the LaRock Campaign. LaRock is a close confidant of Delgaudio. Here’s Workman’s latest comment on the Gazette Statement on LaRock Campaign Claims article, emphasis mine.

I got plenty of time with the obummer and socialist slimdown…

The problem with healthcare is government involvement. There was never a healthcare problem, just a government involvement problem. It is much worse now…part-time employment, mass cancellation notices…all so little Mary can get laid and not pregnant….and if she does…we’ll pay for the abortion as well.

The solution is, as it always should be, is free market solutions…not goose-stepping socialist mandates.

Posted by Warner Workman | October 25, 2013, 7:57 pm

[Update] Conservative activist and former Reform Commissioner Barbara Munsey commented that Mr. Workman resides in Lovettsville. So why does he spend so much time and energy working for Supervisor Delgaudio?

Workman’s LinkedIn page confirms a Lovettsville, VA residence and a position of “Senior Program Manager–Senior Systems Engineer–Electrical Engineer at Central Intelligence Agency”, currently working for beltway bandit ETG. His prior job was in the CIA’s Directorate of Administration.

Initially, I thought his online comment demonstrated he’s mentally challenged. I was wrong. There’s no excuse. He’s seething with hate, and the politicians he supports appear to approve of his behavior.