realloudoun

Well, our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors has hit the ground the running for the new year, beginning with the usual deluge of “news”[sic]letters produced by their well-paid political consultants, all scrupulously avoiding mentioning what they actually are doing to give away your county to the commercial development industry but offering ever so helpful advice on such topics as:

• how to safely recycle our Christmas trees (Supervisor Janet Clarke, R-Blue Ridge) Continue reading →

Doing an uncanny imitation of the national Republican Party’s fiscal policies, our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors for the past year has been boldly declaring it has no intention of actually paying for the consequences of the county’s explosive growth that they themselves were responsible for. Continue reading →

Among the lame excuses the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors gave last year for why they could not enforce the law prohibiting people from sticking signs all over the public rights of way was that any fines collected have to go to the state Department of Transportation; thus the county could not recoup the costs of enforcing the law.

Of course the county does not recoup the costs of enforcing most laws —  laws are intended to protect the public interest, not generate revenue streams or pay for themselves. And the county already has the authority to remove illegal signs and seek court orders against serial offenders. (Not that it does either one, since the new Board abolished the *volunteer* sign cleanup program that cost virtually nothing.)

But now Creigh Deeds, Democratic state senator from Charlottesville, has filed a bill in Richmond Continue reading →

Back in November, when Loudoun Supervisor Shawn Williams (R-Broad Run) announced he planned to bring up a motion to strip as-yet-unindicted fellow supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) of his committee assignments as a sanction for his illegal fundraising activities on county time, Chairman Scott York (R) immediately canceled the next business meeting of the Board to prevent the matter from coming up.

Not a peep has been heard since about the Board’s views about Delgaudio’s ethical malfeasance and misuse of office and county-paid staff.

But lo and behold, when the new committee assignments for the year were revealed last week by York, and promptly unanimously approved without debate (as usual for this board), Degaudio’s name was not to be found among them. Continue reading →

From the get-go, our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors set out to show their extreme gratitude to the commercial developers who poured half a million bucks into local GOP coffers for the 2011 election: among other steps, they immediately abolished the volunteer program to remove illegally posted signs along the county’s roads, apparently on the grounds that it was too successful.

The Board then promptly overrode the county’s carefully worked-out zoning rules for permanent commercial signs, allowing One Loudoun to erect two electronic billboards — something forbidden by the statute and not allowed anywhere else in the county.

Now the Board rings in the new year with more goodies for the developers who want to get around the sign rules everyone else has to follow Continue reading →