In Virginia, No One Assigned to Track Down Officials that Violate Disclosure Laws

As Marion’s director of finance, Dixie Sheets has distributed and collected, notarized and stored the town’s conflict of interest disclosure forms since taking office in 1985.

Along with Marion’s eight Town Council members, she, as a constitutional officer, is required to fill out a Statement of Economic Interest. But, Sheets completed her first one – for the first time in 24 years in office – on July 22, 2009.

It was an honest mistake: She misread the code and didn’t interpret it to include herself. And no one, until the Bristol Herald Courier inquired, had pointed it out.
Sheets immediately faxed one over.

Not her job

Each of the forms belonging to her eight Town Council members has at least one error or omission: from failing to include required contact information and neglecting to mention immediate family members, to outright skipping questions and listing personal, recreational real estate as a money-making business venture.

“They sign that they have completely filled them out,” Sheets said. “They know which schedules relate to them. I am not privy to their personal information. I do not peruse them, it is not my job.”

Sheets is right: It isn’t her job. It isn’t anybody’s.

The Virginia Code explicitly charges the commonwealth’s attorney with prosecuting violations of the disclosure law, but it neglects to clarify who is responsible for catching them.

“Ummmm, that’s a good question,” Smyth County Commonwealth’s Attorney Roy Evans said when asked who’s in charge of giving the forms the third degree. Of the 10 commonwealth’s attorneys contacted by the Herald Courier, almost all shared his unawareness.

“I don’t have any idea,” said Gerald Mabe in Wythe County. “I should. If you find out, let me know.”

At least two, Bristol’s Jerry Wolfe and Tazewell County’s Dennis H. Lee, thought the forms got shipped off to a state office. They do not. They remain in a file cabinet in a local county administrator, school board or town clerk’s office.

Not on their watch

While the commonwealth’s attorneys don’t know who is responsible for demanding compliance or accuracy on the disclosure forms, most seem to think their jurisdictions are exempt from problems because no one has ever brought one up.

“In my five years, I’ve never had anyone contact me,” Wolfe said. “I’ve never had any report of someone not filing financial disclosure forms in an appropriate manner.”

That sentiment seems true across the board: In Virginia’s 22-year history with the requirement, no one has ever been prosecuted for failing to adequately report, even though the commonwealth’s attorney can prosecute violators for malfeasance in office, a Class 1 misdemeanor.

After inquiries from the Herald Courier, at least one commonwealth’s attorney, Tamara Neo in Buchanan County, was intrigued enough to request her county’s forms.

Still, Neo said, the review process would “be complaint-driven. We don’t want to investigate innocent people.”

No written procedures

Moreover, the commonwealth’s attorney is required by Virginia Code to draft and distribute a written document detailing a procedure. But none of them have, and most seemed thoroughly unaware they were supposed to.

Joe Short, Dickenson County commonwealth’s attorney, was one of the few aware of this requirement. Still, he said: “I have never drafted one, I’ll be perfectly honest.”

Many question why they would, considering the form itself comes with instructions.

“I’ve talked to the city clerk, and it appears that what we have done, and apparently it was done about 20 years ago or so, if not longer, we adopted the procedure as prescribed by the State Board of Elections and by the Virginia Code … which spells out the procedure to be used,” Wolfe said in a voice message. “It’s established for years that the way the procedure works in Bristol, Va., is that we abide by those code sections … .”

Some others, however, seemed genuinely concerned with the oversight, pledging to remedy the situation quickly.

“That is certainly something that I – and I’m guessing most other current [commonwealth’s attorneys] across the commonwealth – will need to remedy,” Shawn L. Hines, Lee County commonwealth’s attorney, wrote in an e-mail.

Scott County’s Marcus McClung went so far as to compose a procedural memo and send it over.

But for now, filers get little direction, without individually seeking it out, other than the excerpted Virginia Code that accompanies the questionnaire.

That could explain, at least in part, the overwhelming confusion that leads to incomplete, disjointed and spotty disclosure.

Choosing a form

Generally speaking, each November someone in the clerk or county administrator’s office, usually an assistant or secretary, gets a memo from the Secretary of the Commonwealth in Richmond instructing them to go to the secretary’s Web site and find three downloadable forms. Each council and board member and elected and appointed official is required to fill out one of the three based on position. The memo goes so far as to bold and underline the word “appropriate” when describing what forms the clerks should direct to each public official.

Still, many of those in charge don’t have a clue which form is to go to whom, so they just send all three. The chorus is they’d rather have people fill out too much than too little.

While noble in theory, the excessive and often repetitive paperwork leads many to disclose information on forms they were never meant to fill out, while leaving it off the right one. Or to disclose the same information twice.

The entire Smyth County Board of Supervisors, for example, filled out two extra and unnecessary forms. Problem is, they included pertinent real estate holdings on a form meant only for planning commissioners, zoning appeals board members, executive officers and real estate assessors. Then, they omitted the
information from the “appropriate” form, and the one they did include with their filing doesn’t require a notary’s signature.

Pam Testerman, administrative assistant of Smyth’s County Administrator Office, said she has sent all three forms each of the five years she has been on the job, but she plans to correct the “internal glitch” before next year’s filings.

To be filed away

Testerman, and those holding similar positions in counties across the state, collect the disclosure forms, glance them over and file them in a cabinet to be rarely, if ever, seen again.

So the clerks collecting the financial disclosures are generally the only people to see each form, making them, essentially, the sole gatekeeper of thoroughness and accuracy. But they were never offered that job, and they didn’t accept it.

“If we missed one, then we missed one,” Dixie Sheets said of why a Marion Town Council member’s form was never notarized.

That places the burden of providing complete and accurate disclosure forms squarely on the shoulders of the filers.

“I’m sure I just did it very quickly,” said Town Council member Suzanne Jennings. “Listen, we’re so busy, I just didn’t pay any attention to it. I was probably trying to do four things at one time.”

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531