The Board of
Supervisors missed its chance to avoid the stain that Supervisor Eugene
Delgaudio casts on this Board and this fine County.
Chairman Scott
York issued a statement that the Board intended to look into Mr. Delgaudio’s
alleged misconduct, presumably involving fund-raising on County time, among the
other things that Mr. Delgaudio’s been accused of doing. On this score, Mr. Delgaudio admitted that he
did raise funds on County time at the last Board meeting.
Chairman York’s
announcement of an investigation could have been encouraging except for the
fact that there’s hardly anything “independent” about the investigation that
the Board ultimately authorized unanimously, 9-0, including, yes, Mr.
Delgaudio’s own vote supporting the investigation.
The Board is
going to have its County Attorney select the “independent” prosecutor and pay
the “independent” prosecutor a whopping $15,000 to conduct this “impartial”
investigation. Really? The Board should appreciate how
characterizing this underfunded appointment by its own counsel as “independent”
is suspect.
Nor can we
ignore, in this regard, when evaluating the Board’s efforts, what Chairman York
said he’s done already to have this matter “investigated.” Chairman York said that in March of this
year, he referred charges against Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio including, we
presume, Mr. Delgaudio’s alleged misappropriation of public services. He sent “the matter,” he said, to the Loudoun
County Commonwealth Attorney, Jim Plowman, who was Supervisor Delgaudio's
Loudoun County election ticket mate. So,
the referral was problematic from the start.
In addition,
Chairman York chose this “confidential” referral route rather than convening a
public meeting of the Board. Why no
public meeting in March? Why only last
week? Was it because Chairman York had
the scent of the Washington Post investigation in March when it was not the
widely circulated expose it’s become?
Under these circumstances, the referral looks more like an effort to
protect instead of to detect anything questionable about Mr. Delgaudio’s
conduct.
Mr. Plowman, in
turn, forwarded “the matter,” according to Chairman York, to the Arlington
Commonwealth Attorney who, York says, found no violation. No violation!
Wow! I’m a former federal and
state prosecutor from New York and you can’t get a local prosecutor to clear a
traffic ticket, much less an elected official in a corruption
investigation.
What information
and what questions did Chairman York present to Mr. Plowman and the Arlington
Commonwealth Attorney?
Did they ask
whether there was an unlawful misappropriation of public funds when Mr.
Delgaudio and his County employees conducted fundraising on county time at
taxpayers’ expense?
Did they ask what
representations Mr. Delgaudio made to the County, if any, in connection with
reimbursed expenses by the County for fundraising seminars that his County
staff attended?
Did they ask
whether it was a violation for Mr. Delgaudio to blend his responsibility to the
County as an elected official with his leadership of Public Advocate, charged
with copyright violations?
We know too
little about the “investigation” to date.
But we do know that the process in place is suspect because of what
preceded the Board’s belated public disclosures – after the Post stories
appeared.
The resolution is
simple – the Chairman and Board of Supervisors should go back to the drawing
board, get it right this time, and petition a truly independent body, perhaps
the courts, so that we appoint someone truly “independent,” rather than someone
underfunded and compromised ethically right out of the gate.
We require an
investigation that is truly fair, vigorous and public that gets at what really
happened.
Otherwise, we are
underwriting a process that will surely guarantee our beloved County another
ration of ridicule and embarrassment.
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