The Shadow
Welcome back, Shadowers! Sometimes it is incredibly hard to be a good citizen. While your main job is to vote and pay taxes, you also have to have complete faith in and trust the leaders you elected will do the right thing. But when they don’t live up to their oaths, and act in unethical and illicit ways that aren’t in the community’s best interest, guess what… you could end up footing the bill for their bad behavior.
To the tune of $10 million smackaroos…
Yep, Alleghany County is currently facing $10 million in multiple lawsuit claims due to alleged civil or criminal violations committed by our public servants.
The first $5M lawsuit is the case against former Deputy Bobby Wright for alleged police brutality and excessive use of force against Joshua Barricks. In an incident back in 2022, Wright bludgeoned Barricks so badly that he had to be emergency evacuated to Roanoke for his injuries.
Now a second $5M case is on the docket with a lawsuit against the Alleghany-Covington Department of Social Services (ACDSS) and Director Tammy Wilson. According to the lawsuit filed with the Alleghany County Circuit Court, Wilson wrongfully fired DeAnna Ratliff twice. Once illegally, in which Ratliff was reinstated by the State, and then again in retaliation for alleged whistleblowing. Ratliff stated in the lawsuit that Wilson routinely demanded Ratliff to perform services that required certification and training per Child Protective Services (“CPS”) and Adult Protective Services (“APS”) regulations. Ratliff repeatedly objected to these directives both verbally and in written emails as she was neither certified nor trained to perform these tasks. Ratliff held a good-faith belief that what Ms. Wilson was demanding of her was unlawful.
Apparently, Wilson also routinely directed Ratliff to assign newly hired employees to process benefits applications with neither training nor required certifications. The Shadow looked into this claim. Turns out, multiple former ACDSS employees confirmed they were allegedly hired without any background checks, and then directed to violate the law to perform these duties. One former employee stated, “I was hired with a single interview and no background check,” while another also stated a similar experience. Both were ordered to handle sensitive information like driver information, income, social security, tax, and Medicare/Medicaid records.
If all this is true, then Wilson and the ACDSS board are allowing and ordering untrained, uncertified people to see every single piece of information about anyone who asks for DSS services. This is a massive violation on state and federal levels. This includes anyone with a standard claim, all the way up to Child and Adult Protective Services and Foster Services.
It gets worse.
Several sources have reported that some employees have disregarded all privacy laws and openly leaked this sensitive data (income, criminal records, child protection records, etc) to their friends and to the public who have no relationship with the ACDSS whatsoever.
Here we go again, why is it a citizen’s responsibility to call this out and hold the Director and the ACDSS Board accountable for this type of alleged gross negligence and bad behavior?
Well heck, let’s add a little salt to this wound and force taxpayers to pay for all the fun and games while we’re at it.
In the “Speeding because we can” department, one resident asked the Shadow, “Could someone tell me why the police go soooo fast up and down Monroe Ave in Covington? They are going to kill someone, and the way they drive is dangerous. I know often there are emergencies, but EVERY time? The speed limit on Monroe is 25 mph.”
Another resident stated, “I live off of Monroe and I agree the speeding is ridiculous. Yesterday, in a matter of 20 minutes, 6 different cops, a combination of city and county drove by my house (not at the same time) while people were running 35 plus including them. I have lived there for six years now and nothing has changed.”
Although Virginia statutes permit law enforcement officers to exceed speed limits under certain circumstances, they are required to prioritize public safety at all times. So, what will it take to ensure officers observe the speed limit when there is no emergency?
How about trying something proactive and easy, like our law enforcement leaders giving a refresher on public safety that all LEO’s learned at Academy 101?
Or a fatality would do it.
In the “Let’s use our government position to promote only our personal favorite businesses,” the Covington Small Business Coordinator Terri McClung recently posted a promotion for the Recorder Newspaper on the city’s official Facebook page for small businesses. The Virginian Review wrote her a letter thanking her for her support of community newspapers, and since the Virginian Review is also a small business, they sent their information to be highlighted on the page as well. Let’s see if Ms McClung will do the right thing and not show her partisan views on a government website like she is legally obligated to do.
From the Reader question bag, one reader asked, “I have noticed the City of Covington doesn’t open up jobs for bid to contractors in the area. Do you know why Concrete work automatically goes to Chris Johnstons’ company, and Teddy Dressler gets all excavating and asphalt? Most govt agencies get 3 bids on jobs and make a decision. How do we retain contractors in the area if they’re unable to compete?”
There could be a couple of answers here. One is that there aren’t actually three qualified contractors for each to obtain three estimates. Or, if the request for bids happened between 2020 and late 2023, most folks in Covington probably didn’t see the notices. Most, if not all requests for bids or proposals were apparently published in Highland and Bath counties via the Recorder due to the Vice Mayor seeing no ethical issues with his multiple conflicts of interest. The Vice Mayor is also the Alleghany Editor for the Recorder and was allegedly directing the City Clerk, who happens to be his wife, to send all advertising notices, bids, and such to places far far away from the people who needed to see the advertisements. This could be seen as ‘rigging’ the deck so that nobody would see the notices except for their favorite companies.
There’s more on ‘rigging’ the deck, but I’ll leave that to next week.
I’m out of time, and out of coffee, but remember, never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.
