21 years late, 21 million dollars short

Does history matter? I think it does. And when it comes to the EDA, history can matter very much indeed.

Back in 1998, a local Warren County paper carried my letter criticizing new “secrecy provisions” that the county’s Economic Development Authority had recently adopted. “The EDA’s bunker mentality flies in the face of every tenet of open, honest, and responsible government,” I wrote. “It champions the image of wheeling-and-dealing, behind closed doors, using the public purse and authority to pursue unwritten and often private goals rife with unintended consequences. What are they trying to hide?”

A few days later I received a typewritten, unsigned letter: “Why don’t you mind your own business?” it read – period.

Then our driveway and mailbox were vandalized.

The sheriff’s deputy asked, “Do you have any enemies?”

“How much time do you have,” I laughed (I’ve been in politics for a long time).

Stephen Heavener, the EDA director at the time, sent me a four-page handwritten tirade. “I recommend that you educate yourself on the reality of competitive economic development,” he wrote. Well, I had taught graduate-level courses on the subject, but I was always willing to learn.

So I asked more questions.

What was Mr. Heavener’s bottom line? “Secrecy.” Where was the public oversight the taxpayers were demanding? “We welcome scrutiny,” he wrote. (Really? One provision of the EDA’s new policy went so far as to prohibit the disclosure of “any information not required to be disclosed by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.” Some “scrutiny”!)

Well, he had private meetings with individual supervisors, he told me.

But secrecy limits scrutiny, so I asked Mr. Heavener about the EDA’s understanding of ethics, as articulated perhaps in its employee handbook. “I have no idea about what you mention concerning ‘the ethical dimensions of the development process,’” he wrote. But he did mention ethics when I suggested that the EDA recruit businesses that might find northern Virginia to be too expensive and lacking in Warren County’s amenities. No way. Our EDA Director considered it “unethical” to recruit from a “nearby community.”

He called that “competitive.”

Fast forward twenty-one years. Mr. Heavener had “no idea” about ethics. Did Jennifer McDonald do any better? And if these two were clueless about the subject, where were our elected officials with fiduciary responsibility over the EDA for 21 years? Did they have “private meetings” with EDA’s directors? Did they ever inquire, publicly or privately, about the “ethical dimensions” of the EDA’s “secret” conduct of its business?

The question is timely. Consider the comments of Board of Supervisors Chairman Daniel Murray regarding the public outrage over the scandal that has made Warren County a national laughing-stock. According to a report by a local NBC affiliate, Murray criticized “the disgraceful behavior of the people in Warren County — false accusations, things that they don’t understand.”

“False accusations”? Well, Mr. Chairman, what accusations are true? And if we don’t “understand things,” do you – and your fellow board members – understand them?

Next: if the Board did “understand things,” why didn’t you take appropriate action instead of, yes, “stonewalling” citizens who demanded you do so?

And if the Board didn’t “understand things,” why didn’t you resign?

Chairman Murray and his colleagues can’t have it both ways. They can’t plead ignorance and still insist that they are competent and should stay in office.

Our Supervisors have proven their incompetence beyond a reasonable doubt. Not only that, the entire Board and its senior staff have signaled truly stunning arrogance in demanding that the taxpayers pay their legal bills, raising future taxes even higher.

What to do now? Clearly the secrecy precedent set by Mr. Heavener and continued by McDonald and the EDA board was accepted as policy by the current and former Supervisors. That policy has allowed what one new EDA board member now calls a “catastrophic failure.”

It’s time for a change. The EDA should be closed down. And whatever entity – if any – takes its place, our elected officials must make sure that it isn’t too secret, too complicated, too sophisticated, or too cumbersome to prevent our elected officials from “understanding things.”

And the Board of Supervisors?

The people of Warren County deserve a government they can trust. And today more than ever, we need one.

We don’t trust this one.

Christopher Manion
Warren County, Virginia