Tag: Featured

O.K., we’re going to go ahead and call it right now: Come November, Barack Obama is going to win Virginia, and with it the presidency, and Tim Kaine is going to ride his coattails into the U.S. Senate. How can we be so sure, you ask? Well, we could easily quote a raft of new polls that show both President Obama and Tim Kaine moving into a decisive lead in their respective races. We could also talk about how the current electoral college math is so daunting for the Republicans that a Mitt Romney victory would represent one of the most unprecedented political triple bankshots in American history.

But really, what it comes down to is this: Mitt Romney has run one of the most laughably inept campaigns in recent memory, and the criminal incompetence of his organization is almost certainly going to negatively impact downballot candidates (like, say, Republican senate hopeful George Allen) who might otherwise eke out a victory. (Which would explain why the New York Times’ well-respected political blog Five Thirty Eight recently calculated that Kaine has “roughly a 75 percent chance of winning the seat.”)

So now that we’re done obsessing about November, it’s time to move on to obsessing about 2013! That’s right: Believe it or not, all electoral activity will not cease on November 7, no matter how much you might wish it so. With that in mind, we’ve been poking around the margins, trying to figure out what some of Virginia’s most interesting pols are really up to.

First on our list is U.S. Senator Mark Warner, who has been keeping a relatively low profile as of late. Now, it’s no secret that Warner has found his day job more than a little frustrating. As a self-described “radical centrist” in a highly partisan congress, Warner has consistently had his ideas tabled or shot down entirely. (Anyone remember the “Gang of Six”? Yeah, we didn’t think so.) Now, the persistent rumor as of late is that Warner is eying a late entry into the Virginia governor’s race. (When recently asked by the Washington Post about this possibility, Warner pointedly said “I’m not going to quell anything.”)

With a recent Post poll showing him in a very strong position should he choose to run for governor again, one has to imagine that he’s tempted—especially since running for president (something Warner almost certainly wants to do) as a sitting governor is much better, historically, than running as a senator.

So if Warner decides to run for governor and wins, what happens to his senate seat? We’re glad you asked, since that brings us to another of our favorite rumors. Since Virginia governors are empowered to appoint replacements to fill a vacant senate seat, a newly elected Governor Warner would be given the unique opportunity to fill his own seat. And just who might he appoint?

Well, if you listen to the particularly fervid fever dreams of Virginia’s left-leaning gossipmongers, the nod would go to none other than Charlottesville’s own Tom Perriello, an Obama administration favorite who has been out of a job since he lost his U.S. House seat in 2010.

Is any of this remotely likely? As always, we have no idea. But it’s a hell of a lot more fun to engage in rampant 2013 speculation than to watch yet another painful, gaffe-filled Mitt Romney campaign event. Trust us.

Nearly a year after his company was charged with forgery, local real estate developer Michael Harding was indicted last week on seven counts, including mortgage fraud, money laundering, and bankruptcy fraud. This is not the local real estate developer’s first run-in with the law involving money, and Harding could face up to 55 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

Harding allegedly forged mortgage documents, obtained checks from mortgage companies intended for contractors, and took the checks to local businesses and had them cashed for his own personal use. The indictment also accuses Harding of filing false monthly reports and lying about forging signatures on real estate documents.

“There were just dozens of things like this; it was an ongoing operation,” said local attorney Robert Blodinger.

Blodinger is representing Jarman’s Sportcycles, one of the businesses that fell victim to Harding’s fraud, and the only victim named specifically in the indictment.

According to Blodinger, his client hired Harding, who was responsible for putting up a new building on the shop’s property. He arranged contracts for construction of the building, and in doing so, “invented a contractor who exists but wasn’t on this job,” JA Marshall Contracting. Blodinger said dozens of checks were endorsed—and likely forged—as the fake contractor.

“My client, as result of this, lost his motorcycle shop,” Blodinger said. The owner kept the business, he said, but lost the building because he couldn’t afford the mortgage payments. Blodinger said his client has opened a shop at a new location on 29, but the original site of Jarman’s on 250 will be sold at foreclosure in October.

Harding’s brother is Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding. Despite his position in local law enforcement, the Sheriff said he was not involved in the investigation in any way, and has never been questioned with regard to his brother’s activities.

“I love my brother and his family,” he said. “I will do what I can as a brother to support [them] outside of the legal process as this case moves toward a resolution.”

Chip Harding said he has had no participation in any phase of the investigation or prosecution process. With over 35 years with both state and federal law enforcement under his belt, he said he has confidence that his brother will have a fair trail with a proper and just conclusion.

The Sheriff said he was aware that “something was going on” several months ago, only because a friend informed him that his brother might be under investigation. He said he read the newspaper articles, but has neither discussed the issue with his brother nor read the indictment itself.

“I don’t really know much about it,” he said. “I’m staying apart from all that.”

*In the print version of this story, attorney Robert Blodinger’s name was misspelled as “Boldinger,” and the Jarman’s building foreclosure date was inaccurately stated as last October. 

For years, state auditors have been giving the Albemarle County Circuit Court Clerk’s office bad reviews, pointing out major record-keeping errors and costly failures in financial oversight. More than halfway through her eight-year term as Clerk, Debra M. Shipp says the problems that have plagued her office stem from a lack of staff support. But for some in Albemarle, the continued issues call into question whether her position should be an elected one at all.

As the record keeping and financial officer of the court, Shipp and her staff of nine are responsible for processing a vast amount of paperwork and checks each week, and take on a number of duties for the criminal and civil sides of the court.

Shipp had worked in the Circuit Court Clerk’s office since 1976 before she was elected clerk in 2007, replacing her former boss Shelby J. Marshall. In May 2009, problems showed up in the first audit of her office from the state, which cited delays in account reconciliations and a lack of staff training. Shipp chalked both issues up to personnel setbacks.

Each year since, the audit summary has grown as more issues cropped up. In June 2011, Auditor of Public Accounts Walter J. Kucharski noted Shipp’s office was holding more than $200,000 in state fines and court costs due to bookkeeping errors. Accounts were closed improperly, and the office was holding onto nearly $25,000 worth of copy fees that were supposed to be disbursed to the county and the Commonwealth.

That year, state Department of Judicial Services officials conducted a review of the Clerk’s office, and an analysis report, filed in December of 2011, raised even more concerns. Shipp’s personal office was clogged with boxes of paperwork, and several months’ worth of unprocessed checks were discovered on a shelf. The evidence room was so full the door was jammed, records were long overdue for destruction, and election results had sat in Shipp’s car for two weeks.

Kucharski’s most recent audit, released this month, showed more than half a million dollars in likely unclaimed property that should have been disbursed. Recordkeeping errors abounded, and problems noted years before persisted, prompting concerns about the potential for fraud. In his 28 years as a public auditor, Kucharski said he’s seen such errors “maybe once every 10 years.”

According to Shipp, the problem is a lack of manpower, and DJS’ 2011 management visit report backs her up, noting that office is understaffed. The State Compensation Board is responsible for funding her office, and the county supplements her budget by providing office space, health insurance, and a little extra toward salaries. Shipp said she’s turned to both for help, but has received little support.

Hiring hasn’t kept up with Albemarle’s population growth, Shipp said. By comparison, Charlottesville’s Circuit Court Clerk’s office has seven state-funded employees and two more paid for by the city, she said, “so they have the same amount of staff that I do, but we’re dealing with a population that’s twice as big.”

Things got worse in January, when her sister and deputy clerk Pam Melampy died suddenly. It was the second tragedy for Shipp in 12 months—her 21-year-old son died in a car accident the year before—and it caused personal and professional setbacks. For two weeks, Shipp struggled to cover the duties her sister had done.

“Finally I said, ‘I’ve got to get a grip,’ and I requested that the county advertise for the position and for a bookkeeper,” she said. Albemarle County human resources officials suggested she hire a temp to cover both jobs, and pushed for her office to join the county pay plan and have staff work eight hours a day instead of the seven that had been customary since the ’70s, which Shipp agreed to earlier this year.

Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford said it makes sense her own position and the Sheriff’s are elected, because they need be able to make legal judgements independent of other political offices. “But I question how many discretionary responsibilities are performed by the Clerk, such that you want to have that person responsive to the voters as opposed to responsive to some other organization that can oversee personnel and bookkeeping,” Lunsford said.

The practice of electing the Clerk is largely a holdover from an earlier era, said UVA law professor A.E. Dick Howard, who helped write the 1971 Constitution. “In the old days in Virginia, political power was really to be found in the courthouses,” he said.

When the team responsible for the updated 1971 Constitution looked into making clerk a statutory position—one that could be appointed if communities saw fit—they realized there was intense pressure to stick to the status quo. Maryland had tried to do just that two years before, and courthouse officials managed to block the state’s new Constitution from passing in the legislature.

“It was clear to me that if we proposed taking these officers out of the Constitution in politcal terms, we would run into a buzz saw,” Howard said. He’d personally be in favor of making the clerk a statutory position in order to give local governments more discretion in hiring and firing, he said. Currently, only a petition and judge’s order can remove a clerk from office. “But I think the gains might be more theoretical than real,” he said. What the office might gain in efficiency, it could lose in transparency.

Shipp said that despite a lack of resources, things are improving in the Clerk’s office. She doesn’t see a problem with serving an eight-year term. When she first took office, she said, a state official told her she’d be halfway through her term before she got things straightened out, “and as I can see it has,” Shipp said. “I’m not completely there yet.”

And will she run again when her term is up? “I’d certainly like to,” she said.