realloudoun

The grand jury does not name the “retired pastor of a prominent Loudoun County community church” who lied repeatedly under oath when asked about the unreported $5,000 in cash he handed over to Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling), but several distinguishing facts in the grand jury’s report point to one Arlie Whitlow, the “founding pastor” of “The Community Church” in Ashburn. This is a local mega-church that has repeatedly confused the local Republican Party with the Word of God: a few years ago the local GOP even decided to hold its closed primary at this Ashburn church.

The grand jury’s report pretty clearly ID’s the lying rev by noting that campaign disclosure forms show that “a member of the pastor’s family” had given Delgaudio a smaller, reported contribution and that “the retired pastor and members of his family had donated money to several [other] members of the Board” (even though the rev just cannot remember ever doing so now, nor does he remember anything about that five grand in small unmarked bills he slipped to Delgaudio). VPAP‘s records show that Josh Whitlow (“assistant pastor” of the church) gave $1,000 to Delgaudio; Arlie Whitlow gave $1,000 to Supervisor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin) and Charlie Whitlow (“lead pastor”) gave Chairman Scott York (R-At Large) $4,000.

Nice that so many of our hard-working (if legally part time) elected GOP officials have such stalwart friends among such devout Christians (even if they can’t be bothered to tell the truth under oath).

One of the more amusing subplots in the grand jury’s report on our very own Loudoun supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) concerns the blatantly perjured testimony of “the retired pastor of a prominent Loudoun County community church.”

According to the grand jury’s report, the man of God during his first appearance before the grand jury had vehemently denied under oath that he had ever given Delgaudio, or any other politician, any campaign donation. No such contribution was reported by Delgaudio in his legally required filings of campaign contributions, either.

But numerous witnesses (including one of Delgaudio’s fellow GOP supervisors) testified that the right rev  himself had told them he had delivered $5,000 in cash to Delgaudio. And other evidence and testimony clearly confirmed that the rev had also handed out envelopes with cash or checks to other GOP supervisor candidates. Furthermore, Delgaudio himself wrote “$5,000 donor” on the envelope that the rev had handed over, and told his aide to send the rev a thank you note. Continue reading →

The full grand jury report on the investigation of our favorite wacko supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Needless To Say) is now available: download a pdf here: pdf

It’s a doozy.

The grand jury states unequivocally that multiple witnesses confirmed that Delgaudio was simply lying when he claimed that he had his aides contact potential donors only to raise money for a wonderful charity to support boys’ football. In fact, the supposed beneficiary of Eugene’s charitable urges, Lower Loudoun Boys Football League, stated that they had no fundraising projects  underway at that time and that they had no connection with or knowledge of Eugene’s (obviously bogus) claims to be raising money on their behalf.

On the contrary, multiple witnesses testified to the grand jury that they were approached by Delgaudio’s aides for a meeting with the great man himself, that at the meeting Delguadio “provided a pamphlet of his campaign and supervisor activities” and “on the back of the pamphlet there was an envelope and card soliciting money to ‘Retire Delgaudio Campaign Debt.'” And that these potential donors were in fact exactly the ones assembled on the list compiled by Delguadio’s aides (working at taxpayer expense) at his express instruction.

The grand jury also reported that “multiple witnesses” testified that  Delgaudio behaved toward his staff with “acts of verbal abuse on multiple occasions” and that “these actions were in direct violation of the Board of Supervisors Code of Conduct” which forbids “abusive, threatening, or intimidating language or gestures directed at colleagues, citizens, or personnel.” (Also, that Delgaudio “isolated his staff by strictly forbidding their interaction with other Board of Supervisors aides and attendance at regular BoS staff aide meetings.”)

Okay, all-Republican Board of Supervisors: the ball is now in your court. Here is an impartial panel of citizens who have found that one of your Republican colleagues has engaged in behavior that is a “direct violation” of the Board’s own published Code of Conduct.

Are you going to act on this?

Are you going to hold Delgaudio accountable for violating the Code of Conduct?

Or does that not matter to you?

You can’t now keep up the dodge that the matter is under “criminal investigation” and so you can’t even comment on it, much less take any responsibility for looking into it.

How’s about doing now what you could have and should have done a year ago (if Chairman York hadn’t tried to hide the evidence) or a half year ago (if you hadn’t tried to duck your responsibility for enforcing your own code of ethics, if we can use such a word for this crew).

Only in Virginia!

The special grand jury investigating the blatant misuse of office and public assets by our very own Loudoun Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) concluded its work today by issuing a report explaining why the special prosecutor declined to seek any criminal charges:

Although there was substantial evidence that Delgaudio had misused public assets for private gain, according to the grand jury — directing county-paid aides to spend most of their time raising money for Delgaudio’s campaigns and working for his outside hysterical-homophobic pseudo-lobby “Public Advocate” — misusing public assets is only a crime in Virginia if you’re a “full time officer, agent, or employee.” And under the law apparently county supervisors are deemed to be part time.

As the grand jury stated in its highly unusual report that it issued:

“While the jury cannot speak for [the special prosecutor], we believe that at least one significant reason that the jury was not asked to return an indictment is a result of limitations imposed by the Code of Virginia.

“This report summarizes evidence that suggests the misuse of public assets may have occurred within Supervisor Delgaudio’s office between Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 and explains why such misuse may not be criminal in this instance.”

In other words, if a county employee who mows the lawn for the Parks and Recreation Department did what Delgaudio did, he would be liable for prosecution under Virginia code 18.2-112.1, which states:

Any full-time officer, agent, or employee of the Commonwealth, or of any city, town, county, or any other political subdivision who, without lawful authorization, uses or permits the use of public assets for private or personal purposes unrelated to the duties and office of the accused or any other legitimate government interest when the value of such use exceeds $1,000 in any 12-month period, is guilty of a Class 4 felony.

A Class 4 felony is punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $100,000.

But since Eugene is merely an elected official responsible for representing the people and managing a $1.8 billion budget for the entire county, he gets a get-out-of-jail free card.

More to come!

Firmly putting in their place those citizens who had the sheer effrontery to suggest that citizens ought to continue to have a chance to express their views about where new schools are built in the county, the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors voted last week to proceed with its intent to amend the county’s zoning laws so that citizens no longer get to express their views about where new schools are built.

This, of course, is to improve “efficiency,” explained Supervisor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin), an argument that places our little county in such august company as Mussolini, who as we all know made the trains run on time.

Our very media-savvy Board is, however, learning from its past mistakes. Continue reading →