Loudoun View

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See You at the Spelling Bee

I have resigned from the Board of Directors of the Loudoun Literacy Council, which I did with regret—I felt due to my busy schedule I just haven't had the time lately to devote to the duties of a board member, or at least not to the extent that I would have liked to. I loved telling people I was on the Loudoun Literacy Council Board of Directors, and believe me, if I felt it was responsible to do so, I would stay on it until they kicked me off. I cannot say enough about the importance of the mission, or the incredible work and achievements I have seen in the years I’ve been associated.

Of course this doesn’t stop me from staying involved in supporting the council, which I plan to keep doing—look for more Buzzed at the Bee and Not-Your-Kid’s Bee events whenever we can make that happen. So with that in mind, I decided it was better to free up a spot on the board. (And if the person who replaces me is anything like the board members we have today, that person is going to do amazing work.)

When I first got involved with Loudoun Literacy back in 2017, frankly, it was sort of a nonprofit in some ways rebuilding itself. Now, thanks to amazing work by everyone involved, it’s one of the topflight, most respected and most successful nonprofits in Loudoun County. And as I always tell people, learning the language is the first step to lifting yourself up, from accessing other human services to getting more education and a better-paying or more satisfying job.

Anyway, I wanted to share publicly the letter I sent to our executive director, board chair, and fellow board members.

Dear fellow board members,

In the time I have served on the Loudoun Literacy Council Board of Directors, I have seen the organization flourish. It was one of the great privileges of my life to be invited to join, and it has been one of the great joys of my life to be part of it.

In the years since I first got involved with the Loudoun Literacy Council through the first Buzzed at the Bee and Not-Your-Kid’s Spelling Bee, I have seen our organization grow to be among the most respected and well-run nonprofits in Loudoun. That is entirely down to the work of this board, the previous board that invited me to join, the excellent staff, and Nikki Daruwala and her tireless leadership.

I am always very proud to tell people I am a Loudoun Literacy Council board member, so it is with regret that I offer my resignation. Unfortunately, it has become clear that I do not have the free time necessary for my duties as a board member. Happily, as I write this I am not at all concerned about Loudoun Literacy Council going forward. The Board of Directors today is a room full of people I respect and admire, and I am glad that I feel I can step away with the full confidence that our success will continue under their leadership.

I plan to stay involved with the Loudoun Literacy Council as much as possible. I look forward to helping out with more spelling bees and to telling more people about the excellent work this nonprofit does and why it is so important to everyone in our community.

Thank you for sharing this time with me.

Renss

How to Cover COVID-19 (And Care for Your Community)

This week, we directed our reporters to write three stories that I think are useful—in fact essential—to Loudouners.

Operating on the theory that articles about this fund or that loan program are taking bites at what people can do who are affected by the economic slowdown, I sent reporters out this week to put together a package of three stories that are very explicitly answers to the questions:

I would encourage other local news sources to do similar work. This is essential public service journalism, and we should all be in high gear on that right now.

I have seen many good ideas offered on other angles and stories to cover the current pandemic, which is affecting every walk of life. But I think all of that, while important, right now comes second to making sure we are offering people this kind of information.

I would offer two more thoughts on coverage:

First, you may notice these articles largely focus on economic issues—business and jobs, effects of the pandemic response and not healthcare per se. This is because reporters are not doctors or health officials, and should report carefully and accurately what those people are saying. We should also be thinking carefully about where we’re getting our information. Medical advice is not the place for us to innovate, quite frankly. (We have hammered social distancing and so on in other articles, also an important responsibility at this time, but that is a different kind of article.)

I have seen public health officials offer elected officials, who also have a public platform, similar advice about avoiding fragmented or inconsistent messaging. This is to prevent even well-meaning officials, who are absolutely prolific in their communications right now, from inadvertently confusing the issue with those e-blasts.

It’s also because in fact we pretty much know what needs to be done from a health perspective—where creativity and public debate are needed right now is in how to get health practitioners the supplies they need. Also, while the health advice is the same all over—wash your hands, try to leave space between yourself and others—the ways available to support local businesses and workers can be different in each community.

Second, walk and chew gum. Some local news organizations have shut down all other coverage to focus on COVID-19. Due largely to time constraints, a lot of our own coverage on other topics is a lot smaller right now, but I'm still covering the county budget, too. All these other systems—local governments and so on—still have to function in a crisis (especially in a crisis!), and the mechanism of accountability has to function too.

A couple other thoughts: Yes, we are seeing very high web traffic right now. However, responsible reporters and editors will remember that this job, especially in a pandemic, is not about self-promotion—it is about service. And we are not just average folks looking to support our community. We have a special platform and, if we’re any good at our jobs, a network of contacts and information that most people don’t have.

This is an opportunity to promote organizations like the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Northern Fauquier Counties, not ourselves. And let’s be smart about it. We don’t have to guess how to help our community. If we’ve been asleep our whole careers and don’t already know, we should at least know who to call. This is our whole job.

I’ve said it before: This job is a responsibility.

And finally, despite my advice on self-promotion, hopefully we have demonstrated over the past few weeks that local news is also an essential service, including during a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Local newspapers rely mostly on local businesses for their advertising revenues, and we are already seeing local papers close shop all over the country because high web traffic does not automatically translate to high revenues. For people outside the news business, please keep us in mind, and remember we’re also a small business. We’re a handful of people, underpaid and overworked, working long days trying to serve our community and be part of the solution.

For Now, Help Them

As you may know, I am privileged to serve on the Board of Directors of the Loudoun Literacy Council.

Today, Loudoun’s nonprofits are facing an almost unprecedented challenge. Businesses are shuttering, jobs are disappearing, and tremendous numbers of people will need help at the same time that volunteers have been sent home to practice social distancing.

Likewise, we at Loudoun Literacy Council have closed our office and put our in-person classes on hold to slow the spread of COVID-19 and “flatten the curve.”

Right now, I encourage you to give to our front-line nonprofits—whether that’s a food pantry, or the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Northern Fauquier Counties, where they know how to make that dollar work and where it’s needed.

But I ask you to remember us when the recovery begins. English literacy unlocks possibilities most people take for granted—from seeking help from other charitable nonprofits and public services, to everyday tasks like buying groceries or going to the doctor, to advancing one’s education and career. The services Loudoun Literacy Council provides will be essential as we all rebuild. When we help our neighbors to help themselves, we help everyone.

An Open Letter on Transparency

Government business is presumed to be public business, with a public right to know.
Inherent harm is done whenever the government keeps a secret, and that must be weighed against the harm of disclosing information publicly.
Therefore, the exemptions to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act must be used to the absolute minimum extent necessary. Every new rule should be examined in this light.
Parts of the new rule are justifiable, although not necessary.
However, the last sentence of the new rule is especially pernicious and serves only to punish supervisors who speak out when they see misconduct in closed session.

I have been making some county supervisors very uncomfortable lately.

I have been hearing feedback—shall we say—about the articles “New Board to Clamp Down on Information Access, Switch Up Rules” and its follow-up after the vote, “Loudoun Supervisors Adopt New Meeting Secrecy Rule.”

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has adopted a new provision in its Rules of Order, which reads in full:

“Documents, information and discussions from a closed session, attorney-client privileged communication and other confidential information shall not be disclosed without the approval of the Board. In the event confidential or privileged information is released or otherwise disclosed, without the consent of the Board, then the Board shall vote to either authorize the disclosure or reaffirm the confidentiality and/or claim of privilege. In addition, the Board may, in its discretion, sanction or censure a member for improper disclosure of confidential or privileged information.”

Emphasis mine.

Let’s talk about why my articles on this are written the way they are, why I emphasize that one sentence, and why this is such a bad rule.

Here’s how this action should be understood.

First, everything the government does is presumed to be the public’s business and within the public’s right to know—after all, power in our government comes from the people investing that power in their representatives, and the budget comes from our taxes. Democratic government is shaped by voting, and voting is only meaningful if it is informed voting, and voters need to know what their representatives are doing to cast informed votes.

Keeping secrets is the first step for those in government tipping the balance of power against the voters and in their own favor. There is inherent harm done any time the government keeps a secret from the people.

Second, Virginia actually already has a pretty porous sunshine act. The Virginia FOIA Advisory Council counts more than 100 exemptions to the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Quite frankly, any time a public body seeks to go beyond Virginia’s already-permissive exemptions to government transparency rules, we—and any responsible news media—are going to make that uncomfortable for them.

Third, it is important to note that there is almost never a time when public officials are required to keep something secret, a dangerously incorrect interpretation of the law that I have heard repeatedly from some very smart people in government. Almost every exception to sunshine laws is voluntary, which means almost every time public officials hide something from the public, it is because they have chosen to do so.

(I refer you here to a previous post on this topic: http://www.renssgreene.com/loudoun-view/2017/4/29/about-those-foia-exemptions.)

I acknowledge there are times when it is in the public interest to temporarily keep a secret, the most common examples being cases in which an elected body is in some sort of adversarial conversation where discussing their strategy publicly would put them at a disadvantage—real estate negotiations, for example, or court cases.

In this way, the exceptions in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act which allow public bodies to meet behind closed doors seem to present an unavoidable and intractable problem for government transparency. On the one hand, they are in certain circumstances necessary—otherwise taxpayers would be sinking ungodly amounts of money into real estate and lawsuits, since the government would be handicapping themselves by discussing their strategies publicly. On the other hand, there are no publicly-accessible records of those closed sessions, so we have only the word of the people in those meetings that only legally-permissible topics were discussed, and that only the narrowest necessary exemptions to transparency laws were exercised.

In my experience, even the most well-intentioned public officials tend to err toward keeping the secret, because things look different from the top floor of the Loudoun County government center. Nobody thinks they’re the bad guy, and the slow degradation of government transparency and democracy is not typically carried out by cackling villains—just people who keep erring on the side of the wrong type of caution. There are always reasons to keep secrets.

Given the harm that is done when the people’s business is hidden from them, whenever the government contemplates keeping something secret, that harm must be weighed against the harm done by disclosing that business publicly. That an exemption to government transparency is legally allowed should not mean our government officials automatically take it.

Considering all of this together, it should be clear that public bodies are obligated to use those exemptions to government transparency to the absolute minimum extent necessary.

The Problem With the Rule

All of that said, there is, in fact, a pretty defensible rationale for most of this new rule. County Attorney Leo Rogers (a hotshot of a county attorney if ever there was one, it must be said—I have enjoyed learning about his career gamboling across the state, outmaneuvering and frustrating Dominion Energy wherever he goes) explained to me that it has become apparent that public bodies can accidentally waive their attorney-client privilege and make documents public by simple inaction. He cited two cases: Chase v. City of Portsmouth, a 2006 federal case, and Walton v. Mid-Atlantic Spine Specialists, a 2010 case on which the Virginia Supreme Court ruled partially before sending the case back down to the lower state court.

In Chase, the plaintiffs sued the city for denying their application to renovate and reopen a vacant building as a church. Before the council voted, the city attorney had written a letter to them advising that they risked a lawsuit if they turned down the application.

One council member discussed that letter in open session. Critically, when it came to a lawsuit, the court ruled that in part because nobody else on council objected when that member started talking about it publicly, the council had waived the attorney-client privilege protecting that letter from discovery. When attorney-client privilege is breached, the parties must take some sort of affirmative action to reassert their claim to privilege.

Walton is a medical malpractice suit. During discovery, the defense apparently inadvertently provided the plaintiffs with a letter from a doctor at Mid-Atlantic Spine Specialists to his attorney, admitting he may have made a mistake examining a patient. The defense then sought to keep that letter out of the trial, asserting attorney-client privilege. The state Supreme Court ruled they had waived attorney-client privilege by failing to take reasonable actions to ensure the confidentiality of the letter, overturning a decision by the lower court.

The new rule gets at the problem highlighted by these two cases by causing the Loudoun board, if they find out that something from a closed session has been disclosed publicly, to vote either to agree to releasing it publicly or to reassert their claim that that information should be confidential. Theoretically, that should—at least in a court setting—help restore attorney-client privilege and keep those documents away from a jury.

The thing is, both of those cases also contain their own rebuttal: In Chase, the court decided that the letter was protected from discovery anyway under the “work product” doctrine, which protects materials prepared in anticipation of a lawsuit from discovery—so the exemption for consulting with legal counsel was in this instance duplicative, at least as far as the courtroom was concerned.

And in Walton, the state Supreme Court found the lower court’s decision to let the doctor keep his letter out of the record allowed the defendant’s attorney “to engage in questioning that had significant potential to mislead the jury,” demonstrating the danger of letting people decide their own exemptions to transparency.

“Parties should not be permitted to use the privilege as both a shield, preventing the admission of evidence, and as a sword to mislead the finder of fact by allowing evidence that would be impeached by the privileged information if it had not been suppressed,” the court wrote, and although Mid-Atlantic Spine Specialists is by no means a public body, that is a useful framework for thinking about government bodies hiding information from the public.

More to the point, the truly pernicious part of the new rule is really the last sentence: “The Board may, in its discretion, sanction or censure a member for improper disclosure of confidential or privileged information.”

To what end? The claim of privilege has been asserted already. The only purpose of this vote is to punish a colleague on the Board of Supervisors for talking about what happened behind closed doors. Let’s give the new Board of Supervisors absolute credit for being absolutely well-intentioned—there are situations where they may want to censure a colleague for speaking outside of that privilege. Say—as has been suggested to me by a current supervisor—a member talks to a developer with an application before the board about what has been discussed in closed session. That is a reasonable time to sanction or censure a colleague. Do we write all our rules for a best-case scenario?

I’ll excerpt a passage from my boss’s excellent editorial in last week’s paper, which I think highlights the problem here:

“If members believe the material or information being discussed should be in the public domain or is improper for secret talks, they have a duty to make those objections. It is not unprecedented for an elected official to refuse to participate in a closed meeting because of such concerns.”

The new rule, up to its last sentence, is not necessary—supervisors don’t actually need it to take a vote reasserting their claim to privilege—but probably not especially harmful either in its practical effect. But the last sentence only serves to lay out the case for a board acting in bad faith to punish one of their number for having a crisis of conscience and speaking out.

So this is what I put to the new Board of Supervisors: Perhaps those articles are uncomfortable to read not because I (and my editor-in-chief) have suddenly, after a career of thoughtful, conscientious and fact-oriented reporting, decided to come for you. Maybe they’re uncomfortable because this rule demonstrates unusually bad judgment by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors and their almost invariably excellent senior staff. Maybe it’s because, written in the way that I have, those articles point out the glaring problem with the new rule.

No Open Internet, No Loudoun Now

The new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, and some members of Congress are trying to strip away net neutrality—also known as "open internet"—regulations. If that happens, you can just say goodbye to a lot of news and free expression.

I'm enough of a skeptic to reflexively raise an eyebrow at the idea of more regulations defending openness, but this is one of those cases where a government of the people must impose certain rules to preserve a level playing field for all those people.

If you're read up net neutrality, you can probably skip the next few paragraphs. There will be a big "START READING AGAIN."

Net neutrality is essentially the principal that when you buy internet access from an internet service provider, you get access to the whole internet. They have to treat all internet traffic to you the same, without picking and choosing websites and services to slow or block.

The FCC took a while to figure out how to enforce that in a way that would stand up in court, but they finally arrived at a way of basically treating the internet the same way they would treat a utility—which seems more and more appropriate, since utilities are regulated monopolies, and not many people actually have a choice in internet service providers. (In the city, you might have a choice, but how many people really only have internet service from one company where you live?)

So: Everyone who gets electricity gets the same 60-hertz frequency and so forth and everything you plug into the wall socket works—the idea of an appliance just not being compatible with the power grid probably never even occurs to us. Everyone who gets water is entitled to water that is clean and safe to drink. Everyone who buys internet access gets the same internet.

(No, the FCC doesn't regulate the electricity and water supplies. I just wanted to illustrate the idea simply.)

Doing away with those regulations would allow your internet service provider—which is, right now, usually pretty much invisible to you except with you get the bill—to pick favorites. They could strike a deal with Facebook to squeeze out Snapchat. They could charge you more for web browsing versus email. People often give the example of things like Netflix or Wikipedia being essentially killed in the cradle by established interests that don't want the competition.

And that's basically what the FCC chairman and some members of Congress are trying to allow. In fact, they're trying to prevent the FCC from ever creating such protections again.

START READING AGAIN

Okay. So. Apply that to something like Loudoun Now.

There's nobody else covering Loudoun like we do. The paper started up in a few days with a handful of really dedicated people, and it's a passion project for pretty much everyone involved. That's why we work such long hours and put in so much thought and work—and it shows in the difference in coverage and response we've had from the public, of which we're very proud.

But we're a local paper, so we don't really have a ton of money sitting around.

Suppose internet service providers could show favoritism. We probably wouldn't be on that list of big media companies that could dish out more money to get their site onto people's computers. Or suppose there would be a bidding war, and you'd have only one winner—and only one voice—in every locality. And after that, who's keeping anybody honest? You've got a monopoly, and nobody else can challenge what you write. Suppose a Breitbart won a bidding war somewhere.

And expanding that beyond Loudoun Now—what about this blog? Or what about other tweets and podcasts and websites you go to for something interesting or new ideas?

The internet is where the exchange and war of ideas happens now. That's so obvious you probably didn't even read that sentence. And so, because we rely on the internet, and it relies on this certain infrastructure, the means of access and the infrastructure on which it operates have to be maintained as a level playing field for everyone on it. Forget binging every episode of Knight Rider—this is the free and open exchange of ideas that is the underpinning of democracy we're talking about.

What To Do About It

So! There are basically two ways to attack this right now.

You can tell your member of Congress to oppose Utah Sen. Mike Lee's Senate Bill 993, which is somewhat cynically and crassly called the "Restoring Internet Freedom Act." If you're in Loudoun, your Congressional representatives are Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA-10), Sen. Mark Warner (D), and Sen. Tim Kaine (D).

You can also look up your members of Congress and sign a pre-written letter at the Electronic Frontier Foundation here.

The bill is currently in the Senate Commerce committee, where unfortunately Virginia does not have any representation.

About Those FOIA Exemptions

Purcellville Town Council member Kelli Grim. (Renss Greene/Loudoun Now)

So the Purcellville Town Council is wild.

I very, very seldom cover the Purcellville Town Council. It's not my beat, I don't have the connections, I hear a few things—but I pretty much know what I read in the paper and that the meeting I was at last week was nuts. So while I think I have a general sense of what's going on between the majority on council and the apparently tremendously popular town manager they just decided to sack, I'm not going to start calling fouls on that.

But here's a foul I will call. Council member Kelli Grim was complaining about some other council members who allegedly talked about what happened during the hours of closed-session performance review of town manager Rob Lohr Jr. She said she would not stoop to those levels.

Quoth council member Grim:

“Do what you need to do, but I’m not going to violate the FOIA laws.”

Except that doesn't make any sense.

I did call this out in my second article on Mr. Lohr at Loudoun Now, if you're thinking that looks familiar, but I thought it was important enough to get into detail here and make a few more points about it.

By "FOIA," Grim is referring to Virginia Code § 2.2-3700 through § 2.2-3714, the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (or FOIA or "sunshine laws" if you're hip.) FOIA requires that meetings of public bodies ("any legislative body, authority, board, bureau, commission, district or agency of the Commonwealth or of any political subdivision of the Commonwealth") be open to the public, but there are 48 (48!) exemptions to that requirement. Many of those exemptions refer to specific public bodies, but the point is, there are plenty of holes in Virginia FOIA.

The very first one of those holes exempts Lohr's performance review from sunshine laws. From § 2.2-3711:

"A. Public bodies may hold closed meetings only for the following purposes:

1. Discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment; assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific public officers, appointees, or employees of any public body[...]"

So Grim seems to be saying that talking about what happened in that closed session would "violate FOIA." But rewind, in case you missed it: "Public bodies may hold closed meetings."

Outgoing Purcellville Town Manager Robert W. Lohr Jr. (Renss Greene/Loudoun Now)

There is nothing in the Freedom of Information Act that requires a town council to lock the public they purportedly represent out of a meeting. And there is in fact no prohibition in any law against anyone who was in that meeting talking about what happened in the meeting.

The language around government documents is similar. The code sections which spell out those exemptions begin: "The following information contained in a public record is excluded from the mandatory disclosure provisions of this chapter but may be disclosed by the custodian in his discretion, except where such disclosure is prohibited by law." (Emphasis mine.)

Invoking the Freedom of Information Act to argue one must withhold information is bizarre and odious to the spirit of open government.

So just keep that in mind when a government body declines to give you information you have requested or locks you out of a meeting, citing an exemption in FOIA. Yes, they do it routinely, and yes, FOIA grants them the right to do it, but it does not require it. There is very little information that public officials are not actually allowed to give you, particularly when you're talking about local government. They are choosing not to give it to you.

Anyway, as my college advisor and mentor, Emory & Henry College professor emeritus Dr. Teresa Keller, is known for saying: "Raise hell, raise hell!"

The good news

A few weeks ago, our own managing editor (and education reporter) moderated a joint town hall between members of the Board of Supervisors and the School Board. It had pretty much everything you expect from a town hall—thoughtful discussion, pointed questions, personal attacks masquerading behind question marks, at least one guy who everyone's just waiting for the day he turns violent.

The conversation got emotional a few times. In the past few months, Loudoun has been genuinely shaken by a series of high-profile suicides and violent episodes among its students, forcing the community to once again turn the spotlight on mental health among its young people.

And one of the most remarkable moments of the evening went completely unreported. The moderator, our managing editor, broke character for a moment and, visibly choking back tears, confessed:

“It’s been an issue that we’ve cried about in our newsroom. It’s been an issue that we really want to shine a spotlight on, so it clearly hits home. So know that we’re not just sitting there without souls typing. These are our neighbors too. So maybe tonight we say let’s keep shining a light on that and see what we can do.”

She also wrote our paper's article on that event, and she wasn't about to write about herself. Another paper's reporter did not see fit to report it, either.

An aside here: There are a lot of people who could make a good case for playing the role of a publication's (or even the community's) heart. But a person who does this very difficult job and never gives in to the very strong, self-preserving urge to become cynical—a person who instead refuses to back down from being sensitive and compassionate in the face of the long hours and heartbreaking stories—for my money, that's as credible a candidate for the job as any. It's not completely true that "we" have cried about this in the newsroom. I have not.

But enough about that. I'm not up for a raise anyway.

The other thing that struck me about this was that, despite breaking with the stereotype of the hard-nosed, dispassionate newsperson, it so exemplifies what I believe a reporter's job should be.

I always define a reporter first as an advocate for the community. A good reporter, to my mind, is not just a person watching for scandal (although that's part of it) or stonily reporting the facts (although that's part of it) or spending hours leafing through byzantine, inscrutable government documents (although that's part of it.) A reporter is a person who spends those long hours trying to lift up their community, in large part through the distinctively democratic belief that the better informed the public is, the better off the community will be.

This is why, the week before that town hall, the paper dedicated a package of stories to mental health. (Disclaimer: I didn't write anything for that package.) This is why education appears on the front page as much as any other topic. It's why we spend extra time critiquing each other's stories to make sure we're shying away from cheap thrills and lazy writing in the conviction that we can present actually important news in a way that is thoughtful, readable, and interesting. It's why I spend hours poring over budgets and bills and government jargon, trying to synthesize impactful, understandable stories from complex topics. It doesn't matter what you report if people don't want to or can't read it.

Anytime I need guidance, that's what I ask myself: Am I being a good advocate for my community? My only criterion for successful reporting is being able to say yes.

On black skin and artificial turf

More than a dozen students, parents, and coaches from Dominion High School in Sterling (and one particularly impressive middle schooler from Seneca Ridge) turned out to the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting to ask the board to move up plans to turf the last four high schools in the county without artificial turf on their athletic fields. DHS isn't programmed to get a turf field until 2023, according to the latest school Capital Improvement Plan. The middle schooler stood on her tip-toes the whole time she was speaking to reach the mic on the podium.

Seeing all those teenagers show up on a school night to brigade the Board of Supervisors with their requests during the public input session was one of my favorite things I've ever seen in a boardroom. You very seldom see people in team hoodies and sneakers in the halls of power. It must have been an intimidating thing to do for those students, and several of them were as well-spoken and moving as anyone I've seen there.

But there was one sour note, and it left a bad odor around something that was otherwise a very fine demonstration of democracy in action.

A few things to keep in mind:

Loudoun County just elected its first-ever black supervisors, Supervisor Koran Saines and Chairwoman Phyllis Randall.
Immediately before the public input session, the board approved and presented a resolution recognizing Black History Month. In fact, before she joined the board, Phyllis Randall helped start the board's annual tradition of passing such a resolution, and up until this year she also wrote that resolution.
Turfed fields are not a civic crisis. Yes, it is unfair that four of Loudoun's high schools (Dominion, Heritage, Freedom, and Briar Woods) have grass instead of turf. It makes things more difficult on the teams, particularly when bad weather keeps them off their field and forces them to jostle for time in the gym or at another school's field. Then, of course, during the season they go play on turfed fields and aren't used to the surface, which does make a difference. I do sympathize. But as problems go, let's agree that this is a pretty civilized one.

Things were going great until the very last speaker on the topic of turfed fields (an adult) took the podium. I won't share his name here, although it's a matter of public record. And from here I'll just copy my transcription of the recording:

“It’s kind of telling that we’re here tonight when we celebrated Black History Month, because this is about inequity, it is about disenfranchising communities, it is about putting our kids in a position where they feel less important than others.”

And looking Loudoun's first black chairwoman dead in the eye:

“I think this board seriously should consider the message that it’s sending the young kids there about how important that they are compared to the rest of the communities within Loudoun County, because what you’re saying to them is that they’re not, and I don’t think that’s the message that the board is trying to say—especially, Madame Chairwoman, tonight, when a resolution was passed to honor Black History Month and what that means to your community and Loudoun County.”

Kudos to you, sir, for going with "your community" and stopping short of saying "you people." There was another speaker after him, speaking on a different topic, but I'm not sure the sound carried. All the air was gone from the room.

Loudoun's first black supervisors, Supervisor Koran Saines and Chairwoman Phyllis Randall, read a resolution proclaiming Black History Month in Loudoun. Renss Greene — Loudoun's first black supervisors, Supervisor Koran Saines and Chairwoman Phyllis Randall, read a resolution proclaiming Black History Month in Loudoun. *Renss Greene*

Of course, this person wasn't trying to be offensive. He was trying to be persuasive, and what's worse, he was arguing for a good cause with the very purest of intentions. But he has implicitly equated the trials of a student athlete struggling to overcome a grass field and the trials of a black people throughout history struggling to overcome centuries of oppression and discrimination.

To her credit, Randall barely flinched.

It's a frustrating, tragic irony that the specter of racism will overshadow any point he was trying to make about anything as innocent as high school sports. (I did not include his comments in the relevant Loudoun Now article for just that reason—it would only mean one person distracts from those students' story.) Odds are, if you ask him about it, that speaker will rail against racism. He had good intentions. But to borrow extremely selectively from last year's Between the World and Me by The Atlantic correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best. “Good intention” is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the Dream.”

This guy is not individually responsible for every bad thing that has happened or will happen to minorities because of race, and there's no need for everyone to walk around with a crippling sense of guilt and mincing, exaggerated political correctness. But we have to be a little cognizant of the weight of our words and conscious of the scope of America's current and historic problems with race and other social inequality, especially those of us in the public eye. This speech was too heavy an axe, and it slipped and cut both ways: it hurt the argument for turfing those fields by distracting from it; and by its careless logic, it perpetuated the brusque indifference and thoughtless inattention of well-meaning people which allow social inequality to persist well into the 21st century.

As the student athletes of Dominion, Heritage, Freedom, and Briar Woods high schools—and millions of minority people of every stripe in America—can attest, neither of these struggles are over. But hey, at least by 2024, there will be a turf field at Dominion High School.