ICYMI: Norfolk weekend stories

If you happened to have been out of town for the long weekend, there were a couple of stories in The Virginian-Pilot that you may have missed.

Hester will not run for seat

Councilwoman Daun Hester, who lost her bid for mayor last month, will not run in November’s special election.  As outlined previously, Hester’s decision to run for mayor means that she effectively resigns as of June 30. It appears that Mayor Paul Fraim is setting the stage for the new council, who take their seats July 1, to make the choice of the temporary replacement:

Fraim wrote a letter to council members last week suggesting that Hester’s successor be selected in early July. Fraim said the council should place newspaper ads in June to solicit resumes from potential candidates and hold public interviews of those candidates before making a selection.

Further, Fraim agrees with me on who should be appointed:

“I think whoever we appoint should agree not to run in November,” he said.

An open process, selection by the new council, and appointing someone who agrees not to run – all things I think are quite appropriate and have advocated for. Maybe someone in Norfolk is reading my blog 😉

Now, if they would just ask for an Attorney General’s opinion on the issue of special election versus appointment by council, I’d be a happy camper.

At least for a while 😉

NRHA Commissioner arrested in tax case

This has to be one of the stranger stories I’ve read in a while. Curtis Anderson, a member of the Board of Commissioners of the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority (NRHA), was arrested last week for failure to appear before a Virginia Beach judge in a case involving nonpayment of meal taxes on a restaurant he owned. According to the story:

Anderson is listed as the co-owner of The Palace on Plume, a new downtown restaurant scheduled to open later this year.

The council appointed Anderson to the housing authority board at the behest of Vice Mayor Anthony L. Burfoot in September.

Anderson was paid $1,150 as a campaign worker by Burfoot during his recent re-election campaign, in which Burfoot defeated three opponents.

Burfoot declined to comment on Anderson’s situation.

That’s a whole lot of information in four sentences, none of which bodes well for the new restaurant, Anderson or Vice Mayor Burfoot. This comes on top of a story from last month in which operators of other restaurants complained that Anderson is getting special treatment for his new restaurant because of his ties to Burfoot.

In the comments to the original article, someone pointed out that the meal taxes not paid were for May through August 2009. I verified that this is indeed the case, based on the case information obtained through the state’s website.  It does appear that Anderson’s claim that the restaurant was closed during the period is not completely true as this shows.  No one would be advertising having added something to the menu of a closed restaurant.

More interesting to me is that the court record shows two other charges for Anderson from May 2009 – just months before he was appointed – for operating an uninspected vehicle and for having a tinted windshield.  Found guilty in absentia, Anderson paid the fines and court costs.

The newspaper has taken to running background checks on candidates for public office. I think it’s time for council to do the same for its appointees.

UPDATE:  It was brought to my attention that the meal taxes were for returns due in May through August 2009. Upon closer inspection of the case information, I found this indeed to be the case. Meal taxes for a month are due on the 20th of the following month. When I looked at the offense date for a given month, it was the 20th of the month.  So the periods covered by the charges were meals sold in April through July.  And we know the restaurant was open on June 24th.