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” because in some cases it — believe it or not — has actually caused members of the all-Republican board to turn down donations from developers. Hard to imagine a worse fate for a Loudoun Republican politician!
Buona said:
We’ve had cases where supervisors haven’t taken donation because, if we had, we wouldn’t have had a quorum to take a vote on some applications. Literally . . . It’s causing some real problems for this board.
I’ll bet, given the $500,000 in campaign contributions they received from developers!
More to the point, it is indeed astonishing, and one might even say abhorrent, that a law designed to prevent conflicts of interest is actually causing the board to . . . avoid conflicts of interest. Amazing. Someone ought to do something about it, or Republican politicians might become an extinct species in Loudoun County.
realloudoun 