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Spot the missing supervisor!

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

Laws are for people who don’t fund our campaigns

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

Janet Clarke just wants to spend more time with her district

In the annals of politicians’ lame excuses, Supervisor Janet Clarke (R-Blue Ridge) seems to be vying with as-yet-undicted fellow supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) for the place of distinction on our all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors.

In her role as vice-chairman for the past year, Clarke has apparently been less than popular with her fellow board members, though part of the friction is no doubt due to Chairman Scott York’s well-known short fuse and condescending attitude toward women. Be that as it may, Clarke sent out a sudden “newsletter” three days ago announcing she will not be seeking to continue as vice-chairman (the position is elected by the nine board members themselves) for the remainder of her four-year term.

No politician in history has ever said, “I’m stepping down because I am a total failure,” of course, but Continue reading

The old one–two developer punch

Loudoun Republican Supervisor (but I repeat myself) Shawn Williams (R-Broad Run) certainly has no shortage of chutzpah when it comes to carrying water for the commercial developers who bankrolled his election campaign.

This week he sent out another one of his “newsletters” bemoaning the terrible fact that “Loudoun’s residential-commercial imbalance has led to one of the highest property taxes south of the Mason-Dixon Line.”

Let us parse this statement. Continue reading

So much easier to govern without those annoying citizens getting in the way

Our very efficient all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors has found that it gets so much done, it doesn’t need to have so many meetings, above all so many of those boring and annoying sessions where they have to listen to the citizens (who, unlike the commercial developers who gave them $500,000 in campaign contributions, don’t even buy them drinks at Tuskie’s or spring for junkets to Germany).

After canceling its scheduled meeting for December 18, the Board also announced (see full text below) it will be holding meetings next year on a much reduced schedule — and avoiding altogether that awkward business of first having to listen to citizens in a public comment session, then vote on a possibly unpopular matter right afterwards. Now the Board plans to shoot first and ask questions later: it will hold business meetings where votes are taken only twice a month, on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 4 p.m., and have public input beginning at 6 p.m. Continue reading

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