Just the facts, please!

Arthur Candenquist has made important contributions to Rappahannock County. But his recent letter to the editor “Read, Understand, Comply with Laws,” is mistaken about recent court proceedings in Rappahannock Circuit Court related to funding for outside counsel in the Bragg 1 lawsuit against the BOS.

Mr. Candenquist writes: “A recent court ruling last week (22nd January) against one of the Supervisors revealed that he had committed not one but four additional infractions of the law . . .” (emphasis added.) Nothing could be further from the facts.

The court did not “rule” on any additional infractions of the law on January 22nd. It simply agreed to permit additional conflict of interest allegations to be made by the plaintiff. The court did not determine that any of these alleged infractions were “committed.”

Mr. Candenquist gets it right when he says the hearing was for “one of the Supervisors,” but perhaps it should have been for the entire BOS, since over the past two years four of the five sitting Supervisors have voted for legal defense funding. The BOS sought and received a letter of opinion from the Commonwealth Attorney attesting the vote was lawful and did not constitute a conflict of interest. Why Supervisor Lesinski was the only BOS member sued for supporting additional funding only underscores the frivolous nature of these allegations.

All of us should respect one of the bedrock principles of our legal system — innocent until proven guilty.