This afternoon Nelson County’s Commonwealth Attorney Anthony Martin authorized Charlottesville Police to obtain criminal charges against the City Registrar Sheri Iachetta Owen and a former Democratic Party representative on the City’s electoral board, Bettye Stephanie Commander. Both Owen and Commander turned themselves in to authorities Wednesday afternoon.
Owen was charged with four felony counts of misuse of public funds in violation of Section 18.2-112 of the Code of Virginia; and two felony counts of misuse of public assets in violation of Section 18.2-112.1 of the Code of Virginia. Commander was charged with four felony counts of embezzlement in violation of Section 18.2-111 of the Code of Virginia.
Both cases were based on the used of City-issued cell phones. Owen’s husband had racked up over $4000 in charges which has been reimbursed after the story broke in the local newspaper that Commander had continued using a municipal cell phone (according to the City Manager, Maurice Jones, issued in accordance with policy) for years after ending her service on the board.
Nothing in Mr. Martin’s indictments mentions any other city officials such as City treasurer, Jason VanDever, who would have been in the position to stop such abuses. Expecting that would be foolish however as he is a member of the same political party as Ms. Owen, Ms. Iachetta and everyone else elected in Charlottesville.
Charlottesville’s Republican, Conservative and Libertarian citizens need to start mounting serious challenges to City offices lest the one-party rule will continue to produce this kind of behavior out of those who feast at the trough of taxpayer monies while purporting to “care about the poor” in our communities who have to bear the burden to pay those higher taxes on local businesses that must be collected to pay the cell phone bills and whatever else these “registrars of Nottingham” spend the tax collections on for their personal use.
Unfortunately Mr. Martin’s investigation ends here but we are hoping that more whistleblowers will be embolden by the assistant in the registrar’s office that blew the whistle on this felonious behavior. The moral of this story is that wherever one party dominates the elected offices, corruption will grow in the warm light of cronyism and fraternal dependency. Sure, cities SEEM like they would be overwhelmingly democrat and rural counties overwhelmingly Republican but with voter turnouts in the 35-40% range, there are more than enough people to win some seats and break up the “club.”
