It’s probably easier to find out what bills the Peoples Assembly of Kazakhstan has passed than to learn what your local Loudoun Board of Supervisors is up to.
Forget the local “news”papers, of course, which are too busy reporting such front-page scoops as the opening of furniture stores and pictures of pets in need of homes to bother following up on any of the very developer-friendly initiatives of your elected representatives. Continue reading
We’re back!
Students of Metro Derangement Disorder, the strange phenomenon that paralyzed our normally very unanimous unanimously Republican Loudoun Board of Supervisors, will recall the particularly acute form of the syndrome that afflicted Supervisor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin) in the weeks leading up to the Board’s 5–4 vote approving the extension of Metrorail to Loudoun back in July.
At the last minute Higgins, who claimed to be very judicially undecided on the issue long after everyone else in the county knew he was planning to vote against it, joined with the truly indecisive Ken Reid (R-Leesburg) in issuing a lengthy set of conditions for his support, which included renegotiating the entire deal, putting off the decision for another six months, requiring new action by the Virginia legislature, Fairfax County, the transit and airport boards, and the United States Congress, and suspension of the first two of Newton’s three laws of motion. Skeptical observers concluded he might just possibly be trying to torpedo the deal.
Anyway, as part of Higgins’s other not so subtle maneuvers to kill Metro, his office apparently committed a cardinal no-no and began sending out e-mails to the constituents of Supervisor Suzanne Volpe (R-Algonkian) insinuating Continue reading
Chancellor “Dr.” The Rev. Michael Farris of Patrick Henry Bible “College” in Purcellville, a major force within the Loudoun GOP machine, has offered another explanation for the far-right opposition to Metro that nearly sunk the project in last week’s cliff-hanging 5–4 vote by our unusually non-unanimous Board of Supervisors.
Metro made for some strange political problems for our normally very unanimous supervisors. Continue reading
Up until now, being a Republican Loudoun County supervisor has been a remarkably undemanding job. Short hours, no acrimonious debates, no need to listen to constituents and their annoying problems, thinking strictly optional (especially so in Ken Reid’s case).
All you have to do is vote along with your eight fellow Republican supervisors 9–0 on whatever prearranged goodies come up from the local GOP machine (getting rid of annoying regulations on developers; allowing big box stores without a special exception; appointing prepicked slates of campaign contributors and commercial real estate reps to the water, zoning review, and government “reform” boards; killing off programs to protect Loudoun’s scenic and cultural heritage; approving electronic billboards for your friends).
But the upcoming vote on whether to back out of Loudoun’s previous commitments to fund the Metrorail extension to Dulles and Loudoun has put them in an uncomfortably tight spot. Continue reading
Tomorrow our fearless Board is scheduled to take up the various brilliant schemes that Supervisor Suzanne Volpe (R-Algonkian) et al. have devised to pretend to be doing something about the epidemic of illegal signs littering our roadways.
Since abolishing the extremely effective volunteer clean-up program promptly upon taking office in January as (a) a payoff to the developers who put them in office and (b) payback to those who opposed them, the new Board has been scrambling to cover its collective posterior with all sorts of half-baked schemes that will give the illusion of enforcing the law against illegal signs, while doing almost nothing in reality. Continue reading
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