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All Access
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Local
Jonathan Marcus called it a “jaw-dropping conflict of interests.” For over two decades, Rodney Poole has been a member of City Hall’s Planning Commission, often serving as its chair. And, for much of that same period, Poole has served as vice president and general counsel for The Wilton Companies — a real estate and development company with substantial holdings in the Richmond area. There’s no state law or city ordinance against that. So long as Poole discloses his business interests to city officials — and he told The Times-Dispatch he is always sure to do so — and recuses himself on certain matters, nothing prevents him from holding both roles. But according to Marcus — who formerly led a coalition of neighborhood associations that found itself at odds with the Planning Commission over its efforts to rezone Oregon Hill — Poole has wielded his dual positions to his advantage and, in at least one case, has not followed the guidelines he helped create for the city’s forthcoming zoning overhaul.
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Franklin City Manager Rosylen Oglesby describes, in her resignation, a work environment in which bullying, disrespect and aggressive behavior have become the norm, making it increasingly challenging for her to address the city’s concerning financial status. The Tidewater News obtained Oglesby’s Aug. 1 letter of resignation via a Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
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Statewide
The Richmond-based Virginia Public Access Project is starting a search for a new executive director after current leader Chris Piper shared plans to step down later this year to return to consulting on election policy. Piper, a former Virginia elections commissioner, is expected to leave VPAP after the November elections, which will give the organization several months to start lining up a successor.
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Column
Today, VPAP — a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose board always has a careful mix from both parties — stands as an institution in Virginia politics, a trusted one at a time when trust in others of longer standing has eroded. There was a time, though, when VPAP was an idea, not an institution, and a controversial one at that. Anyone who cares about Virginia politics now will be fascinated by the politics back then that gave rise to VPAP. Those are the people who ought to read it’s founder’s, David Poole, book, “Trusted Source: How a Virginia Nonprofit Gained Bipartisan Support in an Era of Political Polarization,” just published this week by the University of Virginia Press.
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When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons. Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in Henrico County owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer. The mystery over the award only deepened this month as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in West Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.
Associated Press
“Democracies die behind closed doors.” ~ U.S. District Judge Damon Keith, 2002
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