realloudoun

Loudoun County’s tourism tax revenues are supposed to be used to promote tourism. But it’s a lot of dough — about $5 million last year — and our all-Republican Board of Supervisors, and its very partisan appointees to various county commissions and boards, have apparently found it to be a tempting slush fund to channel money to favored or politically connected businesses, organizations, and causes.

Among the events approved last month for a “Visit Loudoun Marketing Leverage Fund” grant, to the tune of $3,000 to support marketing and promotion of the event, is the “2013 Awakening Festival.”

This event, operated by something called “Awakening Ministries, Inc.,” turns out to be a “Christian contemporary music” “festival” whose avowed and unambiguous purpose, according to the Awakening Ministries, Inc. own website, is to proselytize:

“Our goal is to introduce Christ through the music, artists and the speakers.”

Perhaps the Board of Supervisors would like to consult the Constitution of the United States regarding this little matter of providing public funds for the direct promotion of a certain religion?

There is of course nothing more guffaw-inducing than the pomposity of a self-promoting local two-bit politician, and so in these discouraging times in our local government we would like to thank Supervisor Ralph Buona (R-Ashburn) for providing us some much-needed comic relief.

Supervisor Buona — taking a break from the hard work of paying off political donors (e.g., the backers of the One Loudoun stadium), slashing the school budget, and staging tax-cutting theatrics to shore up his far-right base in the local Loudoun County Republican Committee —  calls attention in his latest “news[sic]letter” to a hard-hitting piece of journalism featuring . . . a gushing profile of Supervisor Ralph Buona.

With the politician’s usual unctuous false modesty (“I am deeply touched and honored . . .”) the supervisor provides a convenient link to the blog containing the piece about himself, modestly entitled “Profile of a Driven Man,” which I admit at first made me think that perhaps I had missed the news that the Loudoun Board of Supervisors had voted to provide chauffeur service to elected officials.

No, it turns out to be a worshipful interview Continue reading →

By the way, one of the most nauseating bits of rhetorical evasion to come from Chairman Scott York (R-At Large) and Supervisor Ralph Buona (R-Ashburn) regarding the $20 million cut in the school budget the Board just voted is their pseudo-indignant insistence that it is not a “cut,” since the budget will nominally increase from last year. Did someone fail to tell them the little fact that the schools will be adding 2,500 additional pupils come September? Apparently so. So here’s the facts in a form that — possibly — even a Loudoun County Supervisor can understand:

The Loudoun County Public Schools will be increasing the number of enrolled students by 3.8 percent next year.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted to increase the school budget by only 2.5 percent next year.

If that’s not clear, here’s another way to explain it:

The Loudoun County Public Schools currently spend approximately $12,000 per pupil per year.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors just voted to provide only $8,000 per pupil for the 2,500 additional students being added to the school population next year.

By comparison, Fairfax spends $13,000 per pupil; Montgomery County, Maryland, $15,000; and Arlington and Alexandria $18,000.

Here’s a small suggestion, Chairman York and Supervisor Buona: If you’re going to insult the people of Loudoun County by arbitrarily slashing the school budget as a prop for some bit of right-wing political tax-cutting theater, at least don’t insult our intelligence by trying to claim it’s not a “cut.”

It’s always a good idea, when you’re planning to do something like take an axe to the school budget, to arrange things so that you don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of facing an angry public, which was what our very media-savvy all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors did last week, neatly scheduling their final vote on the county budget to take place before the 6 pm public comment period.

Adding to that bit of political stage management was the usual budgetary buffoonery and political gamesmanship that this Board is making their trademark. For a while it looked like the Board, having adopted the $1.8 billion budget by a vote of 5–3, would be unable to muster a majority to adopt the $1.205 property tax rate that was the direct mathematical consequence of the budget figure they had just approved. How’s that for businesslike leadership and responsibility? Continue reading →

We all of course were no doubt astonished to awake to the news this morning that the all-Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors, all of whom had received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the investors in the proposed entertainment and sports venue at One Loudoun, last night passed with no dissenting vote the sweeping special exception, rezoning, and newly invented “special activity area” zoning designation sought by the project’s developers, “VIP Sports & Entertainment”.

Our alleged local newspaper Leesburg Today (which has signed on as a corporate “partner” of the as-yet-nonexistent Loudoun Hounds baseball team that the stadium is supposedly being built for—how’s that for editorial independence) announced the joyous news with perfect objectivity Continue reading →