OP-ED: DELGAUDIO PROSECUTOR PUNTS! by John P. Flannery

Supervisor Delgaudio pretending to be a criminal (actual photo)

Source (picture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BWMgydjhOc

The Arlington County prosecutor, Theophani K. Stamos, looking into the gay-bashing Loudoun County Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, never invited the grand jury to vote on whether Mr. Delgaudio committed any crime.

She identified one crime, then said Mr. Delgaudio couldn’t commit it, and took the voting decision away from the grand jury. 

Mr. Delgaudio’s counsel said afterwards that Delgaudio “cooperated fully.”  How is it then that the prosecutor never asked Mr. Delgaudio to testify before the Grand Jury “under oath?” 

Mr. Delgaudio has been a political trickster since 1987 at the helm of Public Advocate.  Mr. Delgaudio wore a black and white striped convict’s uniform that year on Capitol Hill, waved placards at passing Senators, insisted U.S. Supreme Court Nominee, Robert Bork, was too tough on crime for criminals to support him, expecting this opaque irony would somehow convince Senators to vote for his confirmation.  They didn’t.  58 Senators said “No.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BWMgydjhOc

Delgaudio’s political theater since has only confirmed his rudeness and bigotry, particularly toward gays.

Not too long ago, Public Advocate allegedly hijacked a copyrighted marriage photo of a gay couple, photo-shopped it, and published it in a political campaign attack on an unrelated Colorado State Senator who supported civil unions.

In order to support his questionable political antics, Delgaudio raises money for Public Advocate, $1.1 million in 2011 (and he paid himself $133,000 that year). http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/521/521112449/521112449_201112_990O.pdf

It was little surprise therefore that the Grand Jury focused on Mr. Delgaudio’s fund-raising. 

Mr. Delgaudio hired Donna Mateer as an aide but, instead of having her work on County business, responding to constituents, County staffers, and other Supervisors, Mr. Delgaudio gave her a script to arrange meetings for Mr. Delgaudio to raise funds to retire his campaign debt. 

Mateer worked on County time at taxpayer’s expense.  According to the Grand Jury, “Supervisor Delgaudio was the one responsible for certifying time and attendance records for his BOS aides.”  Presumably, Mr. Delgaudio certified Ms. Mateer as working for the County when she was not.

Delgaudio told anyone who would listen that he was really raising funds for a local football league, and not his campaign. 

The Grand Jury reported, however, that they heard sworn testimony that Mr. Delgaudio was not raising funds for the football league.  This was a missed opportunity for the prosecutor to ask Mr. Delgaudio under oath why his public statements were at odds with what the Grand Jury had learned. 

The Grand Jury considered perjury charges for a pastor believed to serve as a conduit for cash contributors to give to Mr. Delgaudio.  An envelope memorialized a $5,000 contribution close in time to a Board vote by Delgaudio when he changed his position on the construction of a Loudoun County building.

The prosecutor was blind to any charge by the salaried Mr. Delgaudio misleading the County paymaster because, she said, he was not “full time.”  When the Board doubled its Member’s salary in 2008, the reason the Board offered was that one couldn’t serve as a Supervisor and hold a conventional job.  One Supervisor said you had to be retired or rich to serve. 

Chairman Scott York reportedly said there were days you could pay him $200,000 and it wouldn’t compensate what he did for the County.

An additional question is, does this mean, the prosecutor did not consider any other possible charges, not grand or petit larceny (18.2-95,96), nor embezzlement (18.2-111), nor fraudulent entries (18.2-113), not obtaining money under false pretenses (18.2-178), nor false statements to obtain property or credit (18.2-186)?

It feels like the prosecutor proposed “reforms” as a sop for denying the Grand Jury any opportunity to vote on the testimony it considered.  It’s also ironic -- the thought of reform -- when our Board opposes even an ethics policy. 

From the beginning of this grand jury investigation, it was clear it was going nowhere.   This same prosecutor would have had to reverse her first opinion, before there was a Grand Jury, when she cleared Mr. Delgaudio in record time.

Some asked months ago, why do we need to file a petition by the citizens of Sterling to remove Supervisor Delgaudio?

It’s because only the people can possibly rid themselves of politicians like Supervisor Delgaudio.

GAZETTE COLUMN: THE WRECKING BALL by John P. Flannery

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors compromises the Courthouse Green

There they go again. Our Board of Supervisors can't help itself.

We have another in your face - "you're not as religious as we are" - December moments. I'm talking about our Board's assembly of preferred religious symbols on the courthouse grounds to the exclusion of others.

These Supervisors are the same people who would insist the problem with America is that we don't abide by the U. S. Constitution. Yet it is so very hard for our Supervisors and their learned counsel to read and abide by the First Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits the establishment of religion.

So they decided to pick a list of religions and say, implicitly, who can be offended by that? One practical answer is every other religion that was not included. But the right answer should be everyone including the included.

Today in Loudoun County we choose several religions to honor and advocate, tomorrow, we choose one, and then we choose a sect of one religion. This was President Thomas Jefferson's concern, that there would be warring sects and whichever prevailed would dictate what the nation must believe.

Years ago, my wife Holly and I visited Bali, a more beautiful place in the world is hard to imagine. Religious symbols abound. The entrance ways to homes are studies in religious meditation. The Bali government, however, requires its citizens to identify themselves by one of three specified religions, Hindu, Muslim, or Christian. I asked, "What if I am a Jew?" The answer was, "Well, then you'd identify yourself as Christian." I said, "But that's not Jewish!" My respondent shrugged.

What if this was the forced choice in America? No doubt some anti-Semites would be pleased with the exclusion of Jews but find it disconcerting to highlight and endorse or "establish" religions that were not Christian. There's the rub when government prefers and chooses one or several religions as permissible.

We don't believe our Board misunderstands the First Amendment. We believe instead they are imposing their religious views on the community - a very un-judaeo-christian thing to do as I read the scriptures, not to overlook that it's also extra-legal and unconstitutional.

The Board has tried some sleight of brand in support of constraining our individual rights and liberties. They have had the gall to say that they were allowing for the exercise of free speech. But a government advocating for and establishing religion is not free speech. Nor is the speech contemplated by another phrase in the First Amendment "free" when the government authorizes what may be said, purposefully excluding what else might be said. The freedom of speech is an individual and personal freedom enjoyed by the people, not by the government, and rebels against the controlling and channeling of such righteous exertions by the government as the Board is doing in our fair county.

Some say, "what's the big deal?" This is oft said by those unaffected by the unconstitutional constraint - in the past, for example, those who didn't have to sit in the back of the bus. It is by tolerating such offenses against individual rights, even when we are unaffected, a kind of "das macht nichts" (it doesn't matter) approach, that we all lose our rights by not so subtle degrees. For next time, the incursion may be about "your" rights.

In the category of calling the kettle black, we have Leesburg Supervisor Ken Reid, the most formidable aspirant to the intolerant-as-a-bed-bug designation, currently held by the orange-hatted Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, for calling atheists, "terrorists." When called on it, caught at it, Supervisor Reid gave some iteration of I-misspoke-intolerantly and I should have used better code to communicate my real biased thinking to those that agree.

Supervisor Reid's spoken aloud sentiments reveal his unconcealed bias that no person may embrace the uncertainty of life and say he or she disbelieves in a divinity that has a Judaeo-Christian origin. The "terrorism" of which Supervisor Reid rails is the dissenting belief system that conforms not at all with his own. The specific objection that he made was against atheists who would express these views on a court house lawn that Supervisor Reid had declared sacred to certain specified religions for a season that our Board has chosen.

Supervisor Reid's confessional gaffe instructs us as to the true meaning of this array of select religious symbols on the civic space to the exclusion of others that represent belief and unbelief systems that the board did not select and that the Constitution assures are protected.

Perhaps next year the abundant private venues all around our court house grounds will suffice to allow each person to celebrate what he or she chooses to express without interference by public officials who swore to uphold a Constitution that they'd rather violate instead.

GAZETTE COLUMN: OPEN LETTER TO BOS – TIME TO CLEAN UP DELGAUDIO’S ACT by John P. Flannery

Supervisor Delgaudio - and a few of his like-minded friends

Dear Chairman and Members of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors exclusive of Sterling Supervisor, Eugene Delgaudio,

It’s high time that this Board of Supervisors took a long hard look at Mr. Delgaudio’s alleged misconduct. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center charged recently that Delgaudio headed a gay-bashing hate group called Public Advocate.

Last week, we read reports that Hannah Scoggins, of Public Advocate, that same hate group, was telling Delgaudio’s County staffers what to do, rather than another Senior County employee or the Supervisor himself.

We also learned that Mr. Delgaudio had allegedly misappropriated a private copyrighted wedding picture of a same sex marriage, altered the photo and ridiculed the couple in an out of state political campaign. 

More than that, we’re told that Delgaudio, after a most inappropriate job interviewing process, made it a condition of employment for his county staff, one worker in particular who came forward to talk about this publicly, to raise money for Delgaudio’s political and “charitable” campaigns while working on County time on our tax dime. 

There are reportedly e-mails, contribution lists, and documents, that support these charges, and I have filed a Freedom of Information Act, to see these materials for myself; I understand other citizens have and are doing the same because they’re not sure you’re going to do what’s necessary. 

I do not believe that this is a partisan issue.

I believe both parties and independents see this as a good government issue – as the alleged misconduct violates ordinary standards of decency and tolerance and the proper use of a public office.

While I may disagree with Board Members who oppose same sex marriage, that is a different discussion than the gay bashing, and hateful bigoted speech that Delgaudio spews relentlessly.

Each other Board member’s skin must crawl when Delgaudio renders one of his indecent rants, and you’re associated because you serve with this relic of Old South intolerance.  Bigotry is a category of free speech that should guarantee a seat in the audience once spoken, rather than on the dais as an elected official.

Raising the necessary funds to run for office is an onerous and complex undertaking.  But there are some bright lines when fund-raising is not allowed.  No elected official may rely on his taxpayer paid staffers to call for political or charitable contributions when the staffer is on the county clock, on County time. 

We presume, for this letter and for all time, that no member of this Board supports bigotry, nor believes that an outside hate group should direct campaign staff, or condones the use of public staff to raise campaign or charitable funds, and the misappropriation of public resources.

Accordingly, I most respectfully insist that this Board should ban hateful rhetoric from its chamber and by any elected official who purports to represent the citizens of this County on the Board, not only what Delgaudio has said and done in the past but what we can expect he will continue to do.

Accordingly, this Board should also ban – at the very least - outside hate groups from directing the conduct of our public employees.

Accordingly, this Board should force Mr. Delgaudio to refund every penny of taxpayer funds, if found to be misspent and misappropriated for his fund-raising activities, and, if Delgaudio resists, then you should take him to court and seek a money judgment against him, and deposit the proceeds in the County Treasury.

Accordingly, this Board should refer any criminal charges, should any be confirmed, to a special prosecutor appointed by the Court.

This Board should establish the kind of machinery that the Congress has on its ethics committee to handle such matters in the future but, in the meantime, should these charges be found true, Mr. Delgaudio should be disciplined including but not limited to removing him from any and all leadership position(s) on the Board of Supervisors and on its various Committees.

The Board, like our community, has only just been informed of the breadth of Mr. Delgaudio’s misconduct.  If this Board doesn’t want to be tarred with the same brush, by tolerating his misconduct, it must act firmly and swiftly. 

These recent published reports have prompted another rash of head-slapping questions about what mind-altering substance could possibly exist in Loudoun County’s drinking water that would permit a Delgaudio to be elected to anything.

This Board of Supervisors must draw the line between robust free speech and bigotry, also between legitimate fund-raising and the misappropriation of public services.

This Board must do what’s necessary, hold hearings, examine the evidence, take Delgaudio’s testimony in public, and act upon the findings. 

Studied indifference is not an acceptable response.