Who Gets Fired, Who Gets Payments Blocked?
By Greg L | 6 June 2012 | Prince William County | 8 Comments
I spent some time down at the Registrar’s office looking at the campaign finance reports filed by Prince William County supervisors, seeing who is listed as vendors to several campaigns. Under the new “ethics” rules adopted by the Board of County Supervisors, there’s a lot of individuals and companies who can no longer be paid with taxpayer funds. I wonder why these supervisors are so eager to fire members of their own staff?
County staff who appear as vendors on Chairman Stewart’s Campaign Finance Reports:
- Kerry O’Brien, Assistant To Chairman Corey Stewart
- Kevin McNulty, Assistant To Chairman Corey Stewart
- Laurie Cronin, Chief of Staff To Chairman Corey Stewart
- Stella Krull, Administrative Support Assistant to Chairman Corey Stewart
John Jenkins crafted this ridiculous proposal, which makes it rather surprising that he’d want to fire his own people this way.
County staff who appear as vendors on John Jenkins’ Campaign Finance Reports:
- Dorothy “Dottie” Holley, Aide to Supervisor John Jenkins
- Devon Cabot, Assistant to Supervisor Frank Principi
Now here’s a partial listing of some of the firms that have provided products or services to the campaigns of county supervisors, and whom are now not allowed to be paid using county funds:
- United States Postal Service, Federal Express
- Walmart, Best Buy, Bloom, Shopper’s Food Warehouse, VA ABC, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Sam’s Club, Wendy’s, Dixie Bones, Panera Bread, Bob Evans and Wegmans
- Staples, Office Depot, Verizon, AT&T, Radio Shack, Party City, Dollar Tree, Mailbox Junction, Yahoo! and HHGregg.
- Home Depot, Harbor Freight Tools, and Lowes
- Kitchen Gourmet (the required vendor for all catered events in McCoart)
- Prince William County Government, Prince William County Historical Foundation, Greater Prince William Health Center, and Virginia State Board of Elections
- Burke and Herbert Bank, TD Bank, and PayPal
- Media General and The Old Bridge Observer
- A vast number of churches, high schools and local restaurants
Prince William County will now be required to track every business in the county to see if it has ever provided products or services to local political campaigns, and ensure that if that specific business has worked (even unwittingly) with a political campaign that the payment be blocked. Frank Principi can’t submit a reimbursement request for a Verizon cell phone bill, but John Jenkins can, but Jenkins can’t pay AT&T. Caddigan cannot buy postage stamps from the United States Postal Service, but because Chairman Stewart always reimburses his staff for miscellaneous expenses rather than paying the USPS directly, he can. I can only imagine the nightmare this will cause in the county’s finance department.
So far I haven’t seen any supervisors pay electric utilities directly from a campaign account. That should be fun, if some supervisors are blocked from having electricity in their office because NOVEC or Dominion Power provided electric service to a campaign office.
Legislate in haste, litigate at leisure. I don’t think this idiocy will survive long enough for someone to file a lawsuit however, as the county staff must be going berserk as they mull through what this senile proposal will actually mean for them. If for some reason it does stand for any length of time, I can certainly see some serious litigation opportunities here. Not only has the General Assembly not authorized localities to bar companies from doing business with local government simply because a supervisor ate a hamburger in their joint or bought a pen in their store while campaigning for office, but such restrictions probably run afoul of the First Amendment
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It is my understanding that the vendor that supplies all the toilet paper at McCoart also supplied toilet paper for the Jenkins campaign and the vendor that supplies all Porta-Potties for the county provided a single transgender urinal/crapper unit for the Principi campaign. Now that stinks!
Now that you mention it, Don’s Johns does appear as a vendor on Corey Stewart’s campaign finance report. Since Prince William County shows up as a vendor also (for renting some space for a campaign event) I have to wonder whether his office is allowed to flush a toilet, use a porta-potty, or will be forced to dig field latrines in the back of the McCoart building. Then again, since the county is a campaign vendor I’m not even sure if his office can occupy space in the McCoart building in the first place.
This needs to be said at least once a year.
Mr. Greg - you are a great American.
I bet that Jenkins didn’t come up with on his own. I net je had help from the RINOS’s on the board.
Pete- thanks for standing up for the residents of PWC. Now bend over!
More great work! This is blogging at its finest, doing the job the paid press is too frigging lazy to do. Just imagine what guys like us could do if given the time and money to really investigate.
I’ll bet Jane Beyer shows up on Caddigan’s campaign finance reports…
The Health Center is the interesting one considering who the Executive Director is, and who sits on their Board of Directors. Another interesting rabbit to follow…
Now that the discretionary funds are dispensed with, I would suggest that some attention needs to be paid to the budget hold back provisions in the annual budget cycle. Simply when department abc submits it budget for the year for $20, the board votes on that amount and approves it. However, when department abc only uses $18, the $2 left over goes back to the county and the county executive and supervisors can use it as they please WITHOUT another budget vote. It is a neat little budget trick that gives the county executive and supervisors funds to fund projects that might not get through the normal budget cycle. Inflate the budget upfront will guarantee funding for certain projects at the end of the year. They should have applied the GAAP standard of putting the $2 back in the general fund to be re-appropriated under a direct vote. This budget trick is often known as hold back budgeting. This practice too should be banned which will bring more accountability to the process. The amount that the discretionary funds spent is dwarfed by this. Millions are misused and the citizens don’t have a say or accountability from their elected representatives.