COMMENTARY: White-Out Conditions
The Stafford Board of Supervisors finds itself in a storm of its own making.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Winter Storm Blair delt a blow to our region on Sunday night, and more is expected this evening. It wasn’t the only storm that hit last night, however.
In her ongoing investigation into the removal of Mary Becelia, a Stafford private citizen, from the Central Rappahannock Regional Library Board last July, Adele Uphaus has surfaced two sets of documents that show the depths to which the Stafford Board of Supervisors was willing to go to avoid blame for their actions last year and silence any discussion of those actions.
In preparation for the Board of Supervisors’ public statement to Becelia at its December 17, 2024, meeting, the Board went through multiple drafts of the statement, according to documents the Advance received via the Freedom of Information Act, before finally settling on the one Chair Meg Bohmke read from the dais at the meeting.
Surprisingly, nine versions of the statement the Advance reviewed did include an apology. “We deeply regret any misunderstanding or harm this may have caused Ms. Becelia and the community. We sincerely apologize to Ms. Becelia and all those affected by this situation as we work to correct the record.”
That language did not make the cut, however, for the statement read on the 17th.
We do not know who worked on and edited the versions or the process by which they were altered. The FOIA did not provide the names of the people associated with crafting the statements. Also, each draft contained no redactions — or edits — making it difficult to determine precisely how the language that was read on December 17 evolved.
Two drafts of the apology, however, were withheld from the Advance under “attorney-client privilege,” an oft-used loophole in Virginia’s notoriously weak FOIA laws. Those documents are of interest because they contain redactions, and they could potentially shine light on who was stymying the Board’s doing the right thing and apologizing.
Silenced, Rebuked
We also learned of a settlement agreement that was delivered to Becelia in early December.
Like the statement that was read at the Board of Supervisors’ meeting on December 17, the agreement accepts no responsibility for the irresponsible actions that the Board took against Becelia not once, but twice, in 2024.
And then there’s this extraordinary language in the document:
Ms. Becelia, her predecessors, successors, and assigns, hereby absolutely, fully and forever releases … the Board ... of and from any and all manner of claims, demands, rights, causes of action, whether present and future, whether known or unknown….
The document further states that it’s “not an admission of any past or present liability or wrongdoing by the Board, as a whole, or any employee of the Board.”
In short, had Becelia signed it, she and her family would have been silenced, the Board would have walked away with only an obligation to remove the word “misconduct” from the public record, and the whole sordid story would have been forever buried.
As for the public? The story would have become but another skeleton in the closet at the Stafford County Board of Supervisors’ meeting room.
White Out
One rightly wonders why the Board of Supervisors is tying itself in knots to prevent this story from seeing sunlight. This ruckus appears to be about a simple committee seat on a library board.
A library. An institution of which American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie — who personally paid to build 2,500 of them in his lifetime — said: “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”
A library. An institution that stands as a bulwark of the First Amendment.
A library. A place where the ideals of the Enlightenment, which are the corner stones of American society—not religion—live.
What is it about this great American institution and Becelia’s service to it that has brought both Bohmke and Crystal Vanuch to a place where they still can’t apologize to Becelia? Instead, they merely apologized for “the process.”
What is it about the great American institution and Becelia’s service to it that led Bohmke to put forward an agreement that admits to no wrongdoing and silences Becelia and her family? Despite overwhelming evidence that the Stafford Board of Supervisors was in fact wrong in its actions and its treatment of her?
An apology was on the lips of the Board members involved in drafting the statement read on December 17. Somewhere, deep down, they knew they were wrong, and they knew an apology was well deserved.
And yet, they knowingly rejected it.
Storms — be they ones churned up by Mother Nature or by human failings — can create white out conditions that blind those in the midst of them.
Eventually, however, storms clear. And the truth of what occurred in their midst will emerge. Even the storms that enveloped the Donner Party and Richard Nixon could blind the public to what happened only so long.
For now, white out conditions have engulfed the Stafford Board of Supervisors.
But the sun, and its disinfecting rays, will come out again.
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