For some reason, the Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS® has decided to intervene in a Greene County Board of Supervisors race, on the side of the guy caught up in a national story about the county trying to put a muzzle on county employees.
It will, by the end of this story, obvious why the money people are weighing in here, and it’s not a good look on said money people.
First things first: CAAR issued a press release on Tuesday indicating that it is “proud” to announce an endorsement of Steve Catalano for the Stanardsville District seat on the board.
In so doing, the group is interjecting itself into a lingering controversy over whether or not Catalano, the board’s chair, was spearheading an effort to prevent county staff from being able to speak with the media regarding county business without his prior approval.
“CAAR is proud to support Steve Catalano for the Greene County Board of Supervisors,” said Josh White, the 2025 president of CAAR, and an associate broker at Story House Real Estate in Charlottesville, in a release noting that CAAR is “particularly impressed by Catalano’s independent business background.”
Catalano’s impressive independent business background amounts to him running a small (how small: one truck, one trailer) Stanardsville-based freight-carrier company.
His opponent is Jason Snow, a Greene County native and assistant facilities manager at the UVA School of Medicine, who, unfortunately for him, is one truck and one trailer behind in terms of being an impressive independent businessman.
Snow was motivated to challenge Catalano for the seat in the wake of the controversial move by the Board of Supervisors to shut down the Ruckersville Volunteer Fire Company in May, citing alleged operations deficiencies.
As that saga was playing out, The Daily Progress wrote in the spring about how county staff were “under strict instruction not to speak with the media,” and that all media requests had to go first through Catalano, the chair of the Board of Supervisors.
The paper reported in May that “even Catalano is under the impression that the informal directive is a rule that county staff must follow,” sharing an email from Catalano in which he wrote that “these are the very same rules that the chairman of the board has to follow when dealing with media relations regarding official policy or directives,” and that “any deviation from the board’s majority position should be stated as an opinion by staff, not as fact.”
“The intent is not to ‘muzzle’ staff members, but to present a consistent position on potential decisions in order that the public is not misinformed by anyone on the direction the county is taking regarding any initiatives,” the paper quoted Catalano in May.
The muzzling of county staff got the attention of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists, which addressed the issue in a letter to Catalano objecting to the policy, leading the county to claim, in response, that the policy that Catalano had spoken openly about with the Progress did not, in fact, exist.
In June, then, Catalano, responding by email to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, reversed course on what he had told the Progress, and claimed in an email that “there is no policy and there has never been a policy prohibiting staff members from speaking to the press.”
“I believe this is a misunderstanding based on some of my prior off-the-cuff comments,” Catalano wrote in that June email. “The Board of Supervisors (unanimously) desired the County Administrator to remind staff that it is the elected Board of Supervisors who have the responsibility to determine policy. When staff are asked about the County’s official position on policy matters, they are to represent the majority position of the Board or defer the question to the Chairman. This is a common practice because conflicting positions coming from the County erodes the public’s trust.”
That reads as a denial that is anything but.
Snow, in the course of his campaign for the Board of Supervisors seat, has made issue of the dysfunction in county government.
“I’m running because Greene County deserves leadership that puts Team First — not politics or outside developers,” Snow wrote on his campaign Facebook page as he announced his candidacy. “We need smart, accountable growth that doesn’t outpace our infrastructure. We need transparency in our government — where major decisions aren’t made behind closed doors. And we need to respect the people who live and work here, especially our farmers and working families.
“I’m not interested in rubber-stamping expensive plans or recycling broken processes. I believe in protecting Greene County’s rural character, demanding accountability before tax hikes, and bringing common sense and community-first thinking back to the Board of Supervisors,” Snow said.
If I’m CAAR, I’m running kicking and screaming from getting involved in this.
“As the REALTOR® Party, we do not endorse candidates based on political affiliation, but rather on their alignment with our core belief that private property rights are fundamental to democracy and that diverse housing options are essential for thriving communities,” White said in the CAAR release.
That’s totally about Snow’s lines about “outside developers” and “smart, accountable growth that doesn’t outpace our infrastructure.”
Transparency be damned.
For shame.
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Chris Graham
