Welcome back Shadowers! The summer heat is on, and lots of stuff happening. If you’ve not checked out the Farmers Market in Covington, please do and support your local businesses.
Can you believe we’re already 7 months into 2024? In those seven months, The Shadow group has grown to almost 5,000 active Facebook followers and has exposed a litany of unethical and illicit activities from our government officials. There’s been so much happening, let’s do a recap, catch up any new readers to date, and hand out our semi annual Weenie Awards started by Buck Rumpf 30+ years ago. Here are the award rankings:
1. The Slightly Soggy Weenie: Not too bad, just a little damp around the edges.
2. The Mildly Mediocre Weenie: They are not setting the world on fire, but they are not the worst.
3. The Lukewarm Loser Weenie: Hovering around the middle, lacking zest and zeal.
4. The Flimsy Failure Weenie: Flimsy and falling apart, they are definitely dropping the ball.
5. The Ultimate Wretched Weenie: The worst of the worst, a true disaster in every way.
Alleghany County
Weenie Award: 4. Flimsy Failure Weenie
What’s happened: 1 Resignation, two lawsuits with $10 Million in legal actions against the County and its public officials.
Lawsuit, State and Federal Violations: The Alleghany-Covington Department of Social Services has been under fire for multiple alleged violations. Result: The local DSS and its Director, Tammy Wilson are facing a $5M dollar Lawsuit.
Deputy breaking laws: Former Alleghany Sheriff Deputy Chad Wickline crashed his vehicle on the interstate in April, and instead of following the law he took an oath to uphold, he fled the scene and failed to report it to the authorities in a timely manner. Result: Wickline resigned from the Sheriff’s department, and reportedly has taken a job not in law enforcement.
Sheriff breaking laws, unethical behavior: Alleghany County Sheriff Moore visited the Virginian Review and stated he personally didn’t like the Virginian Review and the Shadow and was going to withhold public press releases. This is against the First Amendment laws, and State laws prohibiting retaliation by public officials. Result: Sheriff Moore seems to be still reluctant, but trying to cooperate and share information. He stated, “We try to keep the public informed about everything that is going on here, but we simply want the truth to be told.“
Alleged police brutality, Federal lawsuit: Former Deputy Wright brutally beat Joshua Barricks for supposedly riding his skateboard down the “middle” of the road (dashcam shows he was on the side, and not illegally,) and public intoxication. Barricks received life-threatening injuries. Seems the Alleghany County Sheriff’s department thought so little of the incident that they did not investigate. Result: Wright is facing a $5M Federal lawsuit for alleged police brutality and excessive use of force.
Clifton Forge
Weenie Award: 1. Slightly Soggy Weenie
What’s happened: 1 resignation, multiple corrections of the violations
State Violations: The Town of Clifton’s Waterworks had one State violation in March. Result: The town immediately fixed the issue.
Code enforcement: Snakes were found in a vacant house and lot. Several attempts to have the town remove the snakes have been unsuccessful. Result: unresolved.
State Violations: CF didn’t have their building department within compliance. Result: The Town updated its procedures and staff to fix the issue.
State Violations: Town was not publishing its advertising notices correctly. Result: The Town manager agreed to publish advertisements in the local newspaper of record.
Unethical & State violations: The town residents were extremely unhappy with unusual behavior from the Code Enforcement official. He was also found to uncertified. Result: The code official resigned.
Out of Date: The town’s website was out of date, and in particular, residents could not pay their utilities online. Result: A new website, and a section to pay utilities online.
Covington
Weenie Award: 5. Ultimate Wretched Weenie
What’s happened: 4 resignations, outright lying, unethical and illicit actions by the City Administration requiring multiple State enforcement actions.
State violations exposed: The Current City Administration (Mayor, City Manager) had been running their Building Department illegally for years. Result: The City’s building department was shut down by the State in May, and the building official resigned.
State/Federal violations: City administration (Mayor, City Manager) had been giving substantial favoritism to the new owners of 410 on Main St, allowing them to overlook required building safety codes for months. Result: The building was permanently shut down by the State Fire Marshal in May.
State/Federal violations: The City Administration allowed unsafe operations at the City’s waterworks with 3 violations and 13 Federal EPA violations. Result: The State is now actively monitoring and threatening legal action and penalties. Currently, the city apparently missed a public notice deadline, exposing them to more legal action from the State.
City violating its own Local zoning laws: The city administration (Mayor, City Manager) has illegally given a non-profit group Recover Virginia a building to inhabit. The City Manager personally acknowledged the zoning violation and has promised several citizens to do something about it for months. Result: Crickets and a continual refusal from the Administration to follow the law.The Administration seems to have gone rogue. What’s the point of laws now, even when an enforcement request to The Commonwealth Attorney to have the City Administration follow the law goes unanswered and unenforced?
State violations – retaliation, unauthorized overstepping of office: The City Clerk Kyla Crosier was called out for her unethical acts of favoritism and retaliation, taking it upon herself to direct required city advertisements and notices to her favorite newspaper (also where her husband the Vice Mayor works) instead of doing what the law instructs. Result: She resigned.
Potential rigging, and unethical conduct: – Small Business Coordinator Terri McClung was asked to clarify why the names of the Gauntlet Program winners were known several weeks before they were even judged. Questions were also asked to clarify the potential misappropriations of State Grant monies that went to a business that was shut down by the State Fire Marshal within 24 hours of winning the $20K cash grand prize. Result: Crickets. Did the company take the money and run?
State & Federal violations: – Discrimination: Small Business Coordinator Terri McClung was called out for using her city position to only promote her favorite businesses while refusing to promote others. Result: Crickets. Instead of just doing the right thing and posting the Virginian Review’s information, seems her ego will get the best of her, as she’s now opened herself to legal action for violating the First Amendment laws, retaliation laws, and anti-discrimination laws that govern equal protection and fair treatment.
State violations exposed: The current City Administration refused multiple requests to post City Council Minutes on their website as required by the law. Result: A letter to the Commonwealth Attorney’s office got the city off their butt to finally update the website.
Unethical behavior: Mayor Tom Sibold attacked Dewey Perkins during the May public hearing to discuss the issues between Brandon Wright and Dewey. Things just aren’t adding up here, and it seemed the City had already ruled in favor of Wright before the public hearing was held. Result: Ongoing dispute.
Alleged unethical behavior: Parks and Rec senior staff members Smals and Smith have reportedly been confronted by the City Administration for inappropriate behavior, with an alleged lawsuit pending from a parent. Result: They resigned from their positions.
Alleged Outright lying: The City administration (Mayor, City Manager), when confronted with the building and waterworks violations, instead of fixing the issues, seems they offered a lie instead, stating they had hired an engineering firm to temporarily fulfill their building and waterworks requirements. Result: FOIA documents received directly from the Administration proved no such activity existed. There was nothing in the contract, and no invoices to prove this work was done or covered in the contract.
In the “I have no issues with lying if it saves my bacon” grab bag, the Virginian Review (VR) received an official response from the City of Covington for a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The VR requested various written business communications from Vice Mayor David Crosier’s mobile device. The VR believed that pertinent publicly owned information related to several investigations would be found on his cell phone, especially since Crosier published it on the official City’s website for citizens to conduct city business with him. The City FOIA officer replied, officially stating, “David [Crosier] does not do business on Text.”
Unfortunately for the Vice Mayor, The Shadow team has evidence that clearly shows Crosier has, and is conducting city business on his mobile device. Federal law stipulates that if personal devices are used for conducting city business, then the taxpayers own the content and is subject to public disclosure.
It seems The Vice Mayor might not be fully comprehending the gravity of the situation here. Intentionally hiding or destroying evidence is called ‘intentional concealment’ and is considered a Civil violation of the VA State code.
Or, downright Obstruction of Justice.
If found guilty, an official could face fines of up to $5000. If the official destroyed or altered any evidence and found guilty, they could face up to $100 per item destroyed. The Virginian Review has sent a new FOIA request to see if the Vice Mayor wants to reconsider his position. If not, I guess the next step is to ask him to show up in a District Court and explain to a Judge why he stated he doesn’t do business on text, when evidence clearly shows he does. Stay tuned.
I’m out of time, and out of coffee, but want to remind you that if you’re unhappy about officials and their bad behaviors, there’s an offramp coming up in November. Get out and vote. We’re a small community, where literally your single vote can make the difference between whether our current officials continue with an administration full of lying, favoritism, and committing unethical and illegal behaviors… or not.