The Opposition Research Training Blog

Bob McDonnell Going After Felon Vote For Republicans

Several Virginia papers and the Washington Post are running an AP story about Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell setting a faster pace in restoring the right to vote to non-violent felons in the Commonwealth than his predecessor Tim Kaine. The Post story is titled “Law-and-order Gov. Bob McDonnell sets record pace for restoring civil rights of former felons.” I am not sure what “former felons” means but I was shocked by what I learned in the article.

AP writes “McDonnell took office in 2010 and, with little fanfare, charged his administration with accelerating the process, vetting applicants through the secretary of the commonwealth, Janet Vestal Kelly, and his legal counsel, then providing applicants a response within 60 days.” It is almost unbelievable that convicted felons can get an answer from the Governor in 60 days.  Law abiding citizens of the Commonwealth appear to have taken a back seat to McDonnell’s “Restore the Vote, No Felon Left Behind” program.

The Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) has responsibility for creating and updating regulations governing the criminal justice system in Virginia. A system that includes at least 41,000 private security registrants, including security officers, K-9 handlers, private investigators, and locksmiths, who make their living protecting the private sector in Virginia. On December 22, 2010 DCJS submitted a “Comprehensive Revision - Regulations Relating to Private Security Services” to the Governor’s office for approval. The regulations have sat in the Governor’s office for 1 year 4 months and 16 days or 502 days total.

These regulations have a real impact of small business and the jobs of law abiding citizens. It is a shame McDonnell values the votes of convicted felons over the hard working people of Virginia.

Fugitive and Major Cuccinelli Donor Apprehended

U.S. Marshals arrested the fugitive known as Bobby Thompson Monday night in Portland Oregon. Thompson had been wanted on charges in Ohio where he was accused of masterminding a scheme to steal money collected by a scam charity known as the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. Authorities believe Thompson and a female accomplice bilked unsuspecting donors out of more than a $100 million in 41 states.

In 2009 the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs (OCA) barred Thompson’s phony association from soliciting for donations because it had failed to register as a charity and to make the required financial disclosures. Starting in 2009 Thompson made over $67,000 in donations to Virginia politicians with the bulk of it, $55,500, going to the campaign of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. Making him Cuccinelli’s second-largest individual donor. He also gave $5,000 to the McDonnell campaign, and $7,000 was divided among the campaign committees of four key Virginia lawmakers.

Thompson engaged the services of Washington, DC based attorney Samuel F. Wright to help get legislation passed in Virginia that would exempt veterans organization from having to comply with financial disclosure regulations. Once passed, Thompson would be free to fleece the citizens of the Commonwealth with little or no oversight.

Thompson made a $1,000 donation to Senator Patricia Ticer(D) the then chair of a State Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources with oversight of the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs. In 2010 Ticer sponsored SB 563 which added veterans organizations to the list of groups exempt from filing financial statements with the OCA. Reportedly Ticer tried to get the governor to veto her legislation after she learned the St. Petersburg Times had done an investigative piece exposing Thompson and his phony veterans association. She was to late. The bill became law in April 2010 only to be reversed in the 2011 session.

In May 2010 the Roanoke Times ran a story about Thompson’s political donations and lawmakers started dumping the donations with equivalent gifts to legitimate Virginia veterans associations. Cuccinelli didn’t want to let go of his sizable contribution. A spokesman for Cuccinelli’s campaign contacted by the Roanoke Times told reporters that if Thompson was convicted, and the money donated to the campaign had in fact come from misappropriated funds, they would donate those funds to reputable veterans organizations.

By mid June Cuccinelli’s campaign had placed Thompson’s contributions in a restricted account while they attempted to clarify matters. After months of pressure from Democrats the $55,000 became to hot for Cuccinelli to hold and in late July 2010 he relented and announced he would donate the Thompson money to a worthy organization.

 

IRS Makes Verifying Exempt Status Easier

Locating information about exempt organizations has gotten a little easier with the introduction of Select Check by the Internal Revenue Service Exempt Organizations Section. Select Check allows users to search for exempt organizations found in IRS Publication 78, smaller organizations filing a 990-N, and those organizations automatically revoked for failing to file for three consecutive years, all in one place. The search engine defaults to finding any search terms in a search string, so place the organization’s name in quotes to save time.

FOIA Guide for Local Government Leaders

The Virginia Municipal League publishes an excellent FOIA guide to help local government leaders understand and meet their obligations under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The handbook is revised yearly.

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act, Virginia Conflict of Interest Act and the 
Virginia Public Records Act 2011-2012 Edition Guide for Local Government Leaders can be found here. The handbook also provides sample Statement of Economic Interest, Financial Disclosure Statement, and Disclosure of Real Estate Holdings forms.

How to Search Virginia Court Records

The first thing you need to know is that not all Virginia court records are online and not all records are found in the online indexes. Many courts allow access through the Virginia Supreme Court’s online case management system. Some, like Prince William County and Fairfax County Circuit Courts have opted for their own systems. The Prince William County Circuit Court system is free; Fairfax County Circuit Court offers paid subscription access only. The majority of circuit court systems can be accessed through the Virginia Supreme Court’s online system. Three Circuit Courts, King and Queen County, Henrico County, and Chesterfield County offer no online access and require a search at the courthouse.

All 125 general district courts offer searching online through the General District Court online case management system. It is important to remember that not all district court cases are found in the online index. Cases handled by the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court (JDR) are not available online.

Juvenile and Domestic Courts hear cases involving both juveniles and adults. Information related to most juvenile cases is not public. Adults charged with offenses against children, family or household members will have their preliminary hearing in JDR court. If there is probably cause, and the defendant is charged with a felony, the case is transferred to Circuit Court where the name will be found in the Circuit Court index. If the charge is a less serious offense the trial will be in JDR court. A juvenile 14 years or older at the time of a felony offense may have their case transferred to Circuit Court by a judge after a probable cause hearing and written notice. If the 14 year old is charged with murder or aggravated malicious wounding the case is automatically certified to the circuit court.

Cases involving spouses seeking support after separation, modification of custody, visitation and support are all heard by JRD courts. To search a name in a JDR court index call the Juvenile and Domestic Court Clerk’s Office. They will search the name over the phone; they do not require you to come to the court to search.

The Code of Virginia, For Humans

Researchers who regularly search the Code of  Virginia using Virginia’s Legislative Information System know it can be a nightmare at times. Virginia Decoded is an excellent resource created by Waldo Jaquith, an open government technologist. The site displays the code in a more user friendly fashion and seems to have a more robust search engine. In addition to the code,  sections contain historical legislative information as well as amendment attempts, the correct cite for the law, and relevant court cases.

The Opposition Research Handbook

The Opposition Research Handbook is now available at Amazon as a Kindle book. Like the downloadable PDF version all links are footnoted or hyperlinked if you are using a Kindle with Internet access.

Monitoring Twitter Conversations

Stop getting one side of the conversation when you search for tweets by user name. TweetsBetween is a Twitter search tool that allows you to monitor a conversation between two public Twitter accounts. TweetsBetween is a search API that will locate tweets between two users in the last 6 to 9 days.

The “First Street” Political Intelligence Tool

The First Street database is a political intelligence tool offered by CQ Press. The company has taken mountains of data from publishing government and political directories for years and digitized it into an extensive relational database. The database contains more than 660,000 lobbying forms, filed by more than 43,000 lobbyists dating back to 2004. Information on more than 100,000 pieces of legislation dating back to 1993 is used to correlate associations between 240,000 congressional and federal staffers, 33,000 clients of registered lobbying organizations and 18,000 congressional and federal organizations. All the information is fresh with update times ranging from near real-time to weekly.

Search Campaign Finance Records Quickly

Need to find campaign finance information fast? Try the Campaign Finance links page at SearchSystems.net. The page contains 111 links to databases for campaign finance reports, contributions, disbursements, fund transfers, and Political Action Committees.