Prince Edward County Citizens Taken for a Ride Again

In what must seem like deja vu all over again, Prince Edward County residents are learning of the sleight-of-hand that routinely passes for governance in their county. Wilkie Chaffin, a writer for the Southside Messenger, has been detailing some of these abuses, partly because they need to be heard by residents, and partly due to the fact that the Farmville Herald doesn’t cover items that might be embarrassing to their friends. And by ‘friends’, I mean the people that control county government right now.

In a very revealing article in the Messenger a few weeks ago, Mr Chaffin laid out the facts as to whether there is or ever was a USDA Rural Development loan guarantee by that organization for the ill-conceived Poplar Hill Golf Course.

Mr Chaffin spent several months researching this and asking for documents. What he found is a textbook case of the government doing whatever it wants to do without oversight or even the truth. In 1999, a Community Development Authority was authorized by the supervisors, in order to develop a golf course on land in the county, just south of the Town of Farmville limits.

Mr. Chaffin picks up the story from there.

In April of 2007, Norm Krueger, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Poplar Hill Community Development Authority (CDA), told the Prince Edward Board of Supervisors that the CDA did not have a golf course construction loan guarantee from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). On numerous occasions over the previous three years, CDA officials have said that there was a guarantee from the Rural Development office of USDA for an $8.8 million loan to build the Poplar Hill golf course (now called the Manor Golf Club) in Prince Edward County. Although the privately owned land at Poplar Hill has recently been sold to the Herberton Group, the golf course is still publicly owned by the Poplar Hill CDA. Documents obtained by this reporter from the United States Department of Agriculture and other sources, along with an interview with a USDA official, provide an interesting story about the firm used as the lender/broker for the loan, the numerous applications for the loan guarantee, and the responses by USDA, and about what happened after an initial favorable USDA response. In particular, two specific conclusions about the loan are evident: a) the CDA never actually had a USDA loan guarantee, and b) the firm chosen to act as broker for the loan and to represent the CDA in applying for the USDA loan guarantee had serious legal problems.

There are two more short passages that I will quote.

Another USDA concern was that the closing documents had not been received by the USDA Bond Council nearly eleven months after the closing of the loan. This was a violation of USDA requirements. The other two concerns mentioned in this letter had to do with proposed CDA activities that might have an impact on the CDA’s financing. USDA records indicate that neither the lender, Dolphin & Bradbury, nor the CDA ever responded to this letter. In any case, the conditional loan requirements for the USDA loan guarantee were not met by the deadline of May 30, 2006. The money for the possible loan guarantee was “deobligated” in early 2007. In spite of what CDA officials had been saying over more than a two year period, a July 12, 2007 USDA letter to this reporter stated that Dolphin & Bradbury “never requested that Rural Development issue a Loan Note Guarantee and never asked for an extension of time to meet these [loan guarantee] conditions.”

According to a 7-17-07 article in The Bond Buyer, Robert Bradbury reported that Dolphin & Bradbury still exists as a corporation, but has been shut down. In spite of the fact that Dolphin & Bradbury has ceased operations since its two securities fraud problems, it is still the lender under the terms of the Prince Edward loan documents. According to Norm Krueger, Chairman of the Prince Edward community development authority Board of Directors, the money for the loan was obtained when Dolphin & Bradbury sold Certificates of Participation in the loan to institutional investors. A Certificate of Participation (COP) is a share of the revenues of an agreement made by a governmental agency. The Prince Edward County Poplar Hill Community Development Authority remains obligated to these COP holders.

Normally, I wouldn’t quote such an extensive portion of a piece in a newspaper. In this case, even these quotes don’t do this story justice. It appears that Prince Edward County is on the hook for the remainder of the loan amount in the CDA affair. Do citizens know? Probably not. Will the largest local paper tell them anything about it? Not likely.

This is just one more example of what is, in my humble opinion, abuses of governmental powers to enrich the cronies and friends of those with the power. My previous article, talking about the situation with a land deal in the county, is another example. I can’t say when things will change in that county. I hope it is soon, for the sake of honesty and good governance.

Report by VOP from Iowa Heartland Forum

(I thank my friends at the Virginia Organizing Project for the opportunity to participate in their coverage of the Heartland Presidential Forum, in Iowa over the weekend. Unfortunately, we had massive computer problems over the weekend as well, so this is not as timely as I wanted it to be. My apologies, and enjoy!!)

By Kevin Simowitz
1 December 2007

The best way to stay warm in the freezing cold is to huddle together with a group of people — today in Iowa, about 3,500 people gathered inside the HyVee Conference Center in Des Moines for the Heartland Presidential Candidate Forum, sponsored by the Campaign for Community Values. After making the long haul from Virginia to Iowa (all told, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois took nearly eighteen hours to traverse), we finally arrived at our hotel the night before the debate at 2:45 a.m.

This morning’s rally was canceled due to the icy rain falling (standard fare for Iowa this time of year, but a real adventure for plenty of warm-weather natives), so our contingent of leaders and staff of CASA de Maryland and the Virginia Organizing Project headed straight to the conference center to help get with set-up and crowd control as the candidates and listeners arrived. A couple of minutes before 2p.m., we made our way into the auditorium for the beginning of the candidate forum.

The format of the forum was quite different than that which is familiar to most debate-watchers. Each candidate was presented with two groups of community members, and each group consisted of three speakers. In each group, the first member told a personal story, which led in to the questions asked by the other two members of the group. This led to each candidate being on stage for roughly twenty minutes, with the opportunity to field four questions from community members, as well as a final question from the moderator.

The first candidate to take the stage was John Edwards, and he was immediately asked to speak to the juxtaposition between corporate and community interests after listening to family farmers discuss the problems posed by giant “factory farms.” Edwards quickly shifted gears into discussing the larger problems facing America, promising to shut down Guantanamo Bay and stop racial profiling across the country. Speaking directly to the crisis posed by the criminal justice system, Edwards explicitly addressed the need to create more economic opportunities around the nation, declaring that we as a people faced a “great moral responsibility” with our upcoming vote.

Edwards managed to draw a decent reaction from the crowd, even as the first speaker at a somewhat lengthy event. As sincere as Edwards might be, however, he never appeared to be entirely comfortable on the stage. Empathy comes easily to Edwards, but when asked to communicate some sense of shared national vision, he leaves a bit to be desired.

Dennis Kucinich was next to take the platform, and he immediately came out on the offensive, promising to repeal NAFTA and institute a federal living wage if elected President. Kucinich initially appeared a little stiff on stage, arriving a couple minutes after he was called to the microphone and rushing into his first answers. However, after establishing a personal connection with the first community member, Kucinich hit his stride by responding to a question about health care, expounding upon his plan to establish a not-for-profit health care system and an economy within which no one would be unemployed. Moving easily around the stage, Kucinich brought the crowd to their feet by answering questions in Spanish and committing to finding “green” solutions as an alternative to oil, coal, and nuclear sources of energy. Kucinich drew laughter from the crowd at the conclusion of his time on stage, and plenty of the supporters in the crowd made their voices heard with chants of “si se puede” as the attention shifted to Hillary Clinton.

As a result of the hostage situation the day before the forum, and compounded by the inclement weather, Senator Clinton was unable to make it to Iowa on time, and was forced to respond to the questions over the phone. Unfortunately for Senator Clinton, the inability to read the faces of the crowd, and her relatively centrist views as compared to the other candidates, led to her drawing the only significant booing of the afternoon. Speaking primarily about immigration reform and her health care plan, Clinton failed to impress the crowd with her unwillingness to commit to leveling the public vs. private playing field in the health care industry, and especially not with her lukewarm response to ensuring a path to legalization for immigrants.

Christopher Dodd, one of the two longest-shot candidates of the day, took the stage between the two front-runners and used the questions he was asked to speak to his self-proclaimed history of working to achieve compromise in Congress. Referring often to his Senate voting record, Dodd talked about the necessity of passing legislation like the DREAM Act (as had Kucinich, and both mentions of the bill drew applause from the crowd), and his willingness to provide a path to legalization for immigrants. Dodd was well-received by the crowd, but in relatively lukewarm fashion, as not many of those present appeared to take him seriously as a candidate for the White House.

Barack Obama might have stolen the show as the final candidate of the day, but the show was nearly handed to him by the forum organizers in the first place. The first story he heard included the chance to hug a small child on stage, which is certainly easy money for a presidential candidate. Declaring the need for health insurance for everyone, Obama did what he does best, mitigating the need for more public coverage through programs like SCHIP while also acknowledging the fact that fixing the current system must include compromise with the private insurance industry. Obama probably drew the loudest cheers from the crowd when he arrived on stage, but he managed to protect himself from serious opposition to his health care policies by telling a personal story of his own mother’s death, and seeking common ground with the crowd by promising to go after predatory lenders to abolish variable-rate mortgages.

At the end of the forum, it seems pretty clear that there wasn’t an overall winner (although Kucinich had a strong showing and Obama fared well with his audience) for the day, and even Clinton’s weak performance is mostly forgettable. However, sitting with a group of community organizers and activists, many of whom dedicate their lives to working on immigration reform issues, it becomes abundantly clear just how necessary it is to shift the debate from typical party politics to establishing community values and the common good as ideas to be voted upon.

Webcast of Iowa Candidate Forum Available

Today at 2:30 P.M., there is a webcast of the Heartland Presidential Forum. My friend Barry over at the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP) contacted me and asked me to pass this on to all my readers and those interested. Below is the information you need to know in order to watch this forum live on the web.

What: Heartland Presidential Forum

When: 2:30P.M. EST Today (December 1, 2007)

Where: Go online at this address for the webcast.

Joe Szakos, the Executive Director of VOP, will be sending me a dispatch of what’s happening there in Iowa. It will be posted when it becomes available.