AFP fought a months-long battle last year with Augusta County local government over transparency. Now, it’s members of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors fighting amongst themselves and the county administrator, Tim Fitzgerald, over government transparency, and the lack thereof.
“I’m kind of saddened that this week, a couple events went on, and we kind of lack the communication with this board, and I think we need to open up the communication lines a little bit more, because I don’t know that we’re all getting informed on what is going on in the county,” said Mike Shull, the former BOS chair, who represents the Riverheads District, at a board meeting last week.
Shull, South River Supervisor Carolyn Bragg and Wayne Supervisor Scott Seaton each raised issues with the lack of transparency on county government matters during a spirited discussion at the tail end of a three-hour-plus-long meeting on Dec. 11.
The specific issues referenced involve the stunning lack of progress on the All Points Broadband project, a recent meeting between members of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors and members of the board of directors of the Augusta County Service Authority, and the decision made by Fitzgerald to terminate a contract with Roanoke-based consulting company Hill Studio on the county’s comprehensive plan update, which is apparently breaking news.
As I was researching this story, I tried several Google searches on that last one involving the Hill Studio matter, and came up empty.
Just got confirmation from the county administrator’s office: the contract with Hill Studio was terminated on Nov. 15.
Background: obviously, a lot to unpack here.
You may remember that Shull and Bragg were very much on the other side of the transparency issue earlier in the year when we at AFP were fighting, through the Freedom of Information Act and eventually the court system, for access to a recording of a closed meeting of the Board of Supervisors in 2023 in which board members discussed the resignation of former South River Supervisor Steven Morelli, which reportedly involved sexual-harassment allegations from county employees.
That battle for transparency was a 6-1 deal, with Shull, then the board chair, Bragg and the rest of the BOS aligned against Seaton, who had recorded the closed session and encouraged the local news media to push for it to be made public.
The county ultimately prevailed, and got court approval to keep what was said in the 2023 closed meeting under wraps.
It’s one thing when it looked like a board supermajority and the staff were in tandem keeping one of its members and the public on the outside looking in, and quite another when it now seems to be a smaller cabal of board members and staff aligned against the rest.
In the dark, literally, on broadband
The News Leader broke the All Points Broadband story with some solid reporting that was published online on Monday.
The gist of the story there: All Points Broadband has yet to install a single line of fiber optic cable, after having pledged earlier this year to have 267 miles of cable installed in Augusta County by the end of the 2024 calendar year.
“All Points, I didn’t know about that until yesterday, that that was going on,” said Shull, referencing the news that had been made public earlier in the Dec. 11 BOS meeting.
“I was standing there talking to someone, and he was telling me all about this All Points meeting, and I’m looking at him, like, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” a frustrated Bragg said, after Shull had first broached the topic.
“I was actually arguing, going, no, there’s not a meeting. And yes, in fact, there was a meeting. And this kind of thing is really a lack of communication. It’s a professional courtesy that the members of the board be kept informed,” Bragg said.
“I thought, shame on me, but I thought everybody knew about the All Points visit. I don’t know why we wouldn’t have. I mean, I understand you said that they issued the request and all that, but why wouldn’t you tell this whole board? Why wouldn’t you let them know this was going on? I mean, broadband affects all of us,” Bragg said.
The secretive BOS-Service Authority meeting
Shull was particularly upset about the secretive BOS-Service Authority meeting.
“There was a meeting with the Service Authority, some staff, supervisors over there. I’m the sitting member of this board on that board. I was not notified about that, either,” Shull said.
“What if we had questions that you could pass along? We didn’t have the opportunity to do that,” Bragg said, referencing the BOS-Service Authority meeting, which Fitzgerald said was scheduled at the request of the Service Authority board.
Jeff Slaven, the BOS chair and the board’s North River District representative, said it was his call to have himself and the board’s vice chair, Pam Carter, from the Pastures District, attend on the behalf of the BOS.
“Didn’t make no historic decisions, didn’t engrave nothing in stone. We just simply went down there to find out what their plan was, kind of how they want to move forward,” Slaven said.
We’ll have to take Slaven’s word on that, because Fitzgerald, pressed on the matter by Seaton, confirmed that no minutes were taken at the BOS-Service Authority meeting.
Seaton was incredulous at that revelation.
“It just seems to be something that, you should have minutes if you have two entities that are getting together, that should have been advertised,” Seaton said.
Hill Studio: terminated?
Hill Studio, in 2023, was awarded a contract to lead the development of a comprehensive plan and economic development strategy for Augusta County.
I’ve finally been able to piece together what was referenced by supervisors and Fitzgerald as an apparently already known fact among county leaders, that the county has terminated that contract.
As I wrote above, that move came down on Nov. 15.
Shull was the first to broach the topic at last week’s BOS meeting.
“Hill Studio, we weren’t informed on anything that was going on about that organization until the day that we got an email about termination,” said Shull, who then questioned how Fitzgerald came to the decision, apparently without consulting the BOS, to break the contract.
“I’m still pondering and questioning that, when we as a board voted on that company to come in here and things,” Shull said. “I feel like we should have been informed when the problems were arriving, and they weren’t giving us the right product that we were looking for. That should have been brought back to this board, we had a discussion on it, and we decide on whether we tell them, can you give us the right product? This is what we’re looking for. Or if they said they couldn’t, then it should have been a determination of the board to terminate them. I don’t think the staff and Mr. Fitzgerald had the rights to really terminate them before they came back and talked to this board.”
Fitzgerald defended his decision.
“I think it gets into the question about, well, you know, what’s the role of the staff, and what’s the role of the board? I think in the Hill Studio situation, we didn’t know we had a problem ‘til we knew we had a problem, and then we decided that that’s the direction we need to go,” Fitzgerald said.
“We told the board right away,” Fitzgerald said. “It didn’t, I mean, we didn’t, we weren’t fighting problems for six months. It was, once we got a product, and we saw what we had, we determined that was the time that we needed to make a decision to go in a different direction. And we made that from a staff level, knowing that we didn’t have confidence that they could get across the finish line in time we needed to. And we had confidence in our folks that we could pick it up. So that’s the reason why that decision was made, to go forward.”
Bottom line: more transparency
“I think this board, if we had some communication and things, that this board would be open and more informed. And I think this board could make better decisions if it was more informed on everything that goes on,” Shull said.
Glad to see that we’re on the same side on that one.
Finally.
“It reminds me of the mushroom theory, you know, where you feed them crap and keep them in the dark. I don’t like coming in here and finding out things that has took place and not knowing anything about it,” Shull said.
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Chris Graham
