realloudoun

The other day we lauded Loudoun Supervisor Suzanne Volpe (R-Algonkian) for just about clinching the coveted Dumbest Supervisor award with her impassioned speech decrying as “abhorrent” the law that bars Loudoun supervisors from voting on land use decisions that directly benefit recent campaign donors.

But it turns out that Supervisor Ralph Buona (R-Ashburn) is just as hot and indignant over the law, sponsored by state senator Mark Herring, that requires transparency in government and avoidance of the most obvious forms of conflict of interest.

Buona moaned that the law is “causing some real problems for this board” Continue reading →

Bustling construction activity last week at the Loudoun Hounds stadium. (Source: Leesburg Today)

Last fall, winter, and spring we heard ad nauseam from our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors how urgent it was to circumvent and bypass all the usual rules, procedures, zoning, county master plan etc etc to grant a quickie special zoning exception for the bait-and-switch “baseball” stadium that extremely politically connected promoter Bob Farren suddenly wanted to build at the One Loudoun development, after having secured a special exception approval several years earlier to build it at the Kincora development.

Over and over, the supervisors and Farren explained what a tight deadline he was facing to get the stadium built by Opening Day 2014 for his as yet nonexistent Loudoun Hounds extremely minor league baseball team. Continue reading →

It’s certainly been an eventful week in the never-ending effort by the Loudoun GOP to capture the hearts and minds of the citizenry, regardless of their race, religion, or quaint ideas they may hold about decency and ethical conduct.

First we had local Republican party chair John Whitbeck doing his part to promote recognition of Loudoun County around the world, though perhaps in not quite the way our all-Republican Board of Supervisors had in mind with its “economic development” sales pitches (“Relocate your business to Loudoun County . . . Home of the Internet, the Redskins, and pogroms!”).

Then there was Suzanne Volpe (R-Algonkian) taking another mighty surge forward toward the coveted Dumbest Supervisor award Continue reading →

Our Loudoun County Republicans may not win any prizes when it comes to ethics in government, but then they sure know how to tell a completely humorless anti-semitic joke, don’t they?

(In case you missed the story, just Google “Virginia GOP anti-semitic joke” — we’re that famous!)

What most stories about local GOP chair John Whitbeck failed to mention was (a) that the crowd of local Loudoun Republican stalwarts waiting to hear GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli at a rally at Sterling on Tuesday thought Whitbeck’s warm-up joke about the Jews presenting the Pope with “a bill for the Last Supper” was hi-larious: you can watch the video where they break out in uproarious laughter and applause; (b) that Whitbeck is the worst joke teller in the universe. Continue reading →

In its never ending effort to increase opacity in government, the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors voted unanimously the other day (to find a record of this action by the Board, simply go to the Board’s award-winning user unfriendly local government website; click on “Board of Supervisors”; click on  “Board Documents”; click on “Board of Supervisors Business Meetings, Public Hearings and Special Meetings”; click on “Business Meetings, Public Hearings”; click on “2013”; click on “09-04-13 BOS Meeting”; click on “09-04-13 BOS Action Reportrv”; download the extremely convenient pdf file; open it on your pdf reader; and scroll down to Item 17 — it’s as simple as that) to eliminate the nuisance of writing up minutes of the Board’s meetings, starting this coming January.

Explaining that it is a terrible burden on the poor overworked staff to actually have to prepare and make available to the public a summary of the Board’s deliberations, public comments, and votes, Continue reading →