Trash talk
Tom “two-faced” Frederick says in “The Waste Land” [Sept. 14], “we never have and never will compete with private companies.” I guess he’s forgotten his long legal battle, paid by taxpayers, to put private companies out of business. I don’t know if McIntire and Ivy should be closed, but I sure know that Frederick should be closed permanently. Hopefully he will be recycled.
Derek Oppen
Ivy
WTF, AG?
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s attempts to shine a spotlight on the science of climate change have instead shone a spotlight on the Attorney General’s office, and found it to be both incompetent and wasteful of taxpayers’ funds [Headlines from c-ville.com, Sept. 7]
On August 30th, Judge Peatross issued his opinion on the University of Virginia’s petition to set aside the two Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) issued to it by the Attorney General’s office in relation to five research grants awarded to former UVA professor Dr Michael Mann.
The CIDs were issued under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA), which relates only to fraudulent claims for Commonwealth funds. Of the five grants in question, four were awarded by federal agencies disbursing federal funds. This was clear from the source the AG’s office used to identify the grants, namely Dr. Mann’s curriculum vitae, so including the four of them in the CIDs looks legally shoddy.
Then, at the hearing before Judge Peatross, there was more shoddiness. Deputy AG Russell was unable to detail what fraud had been perpetrated, leading the judge to rule that Cuccinelli’s office had failed to meet the requirement under FATA of defining the nature of the conduct constituting the alleged violation. In these times of budget stringency, having state lawyers appear before judges unprepared is unacceptable.
Following the judge’s ruling, any new CIDs can involve at best only one of the five grants, for $215,000. Even that is questionable, since the grant was issued in 2001, and Judge Peatross ruled that any new CID has to relate to acts to obtain funds only after FATA came into effect, which was January 1, 2003.
Two questions for AG Cuccinelli: 1), at what point will you have spent more taxpayers’ money in pursuing Dr. Mann than you can possibly hope to recover from him? 2), wouldn’t it make more sense for your spotlight regarding misuse of Commonwealth funds to be directed at Northrop Grumman and their $2.4 billion computer contract, which has spectacularly failed to deliver dependable service to our state government?
Heather Rowland
Charlottesville