MC supervisors nix funding appeal

From staff reports
Published: May 15, 2008

The Madison County Board of Supervisors voted May 13 to deny a request to pay for Sheriff Erik Weaver’s appeal of a lower court ruling that he willfully violated Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act.

The appeal, which had been set to go to trial late last month, was postponed to first decide if the county must pay the sheriff’s attorney fees – to the tune of $250 per hour. Earlier this month, Harrisonburg attorney Mark Obenshain, representing the sheriff, sent the board of supervisors a formal request that the county agree to pay for Weaver’s “retention of counsel to defend the [Freedom of Information Act] action asserted against him by [Brightwood resident Leigh Purdum].”

At the April 28 hearing, Obenshain had said the county should be required to pay, and said that Virginia code provides for sheriffs to have counsel appointed through the county for civil action arising from their official duties.

The supervisors discussed the request in closed session Tuesday during the afternoon portion of its regularly scheduled May 13 meeting, according to Supervisors Chairman Eddie Dean. Later that evening, the board voted to unanimously approve Vice Chairman James Arrington’s motion to deny the request.

During Tuesday’s meeting, County Attorney V. R. Shackelford III told the board that Judge F. Ward Harkrader Jr., a retired 16th Judicial Circuit Court judge who is presiding over the appeal, would make the ultimate decision of whether or not the county will pay Weaver’s attorney fees, although the county’s vote regarding the request could potentially impact the judge’s decision.

At the April 28 hearing, Shackelford had filed a motion that requested written documentation that insurance wouldn’t cover the sheriff’s legal fees and also asked that if the county is required to pay the sheriff’s legal fees, the rate not be $250 per hour, but instead only be $90 per hour, since that’s what the commonwealth pays court-appointed attorneys in criminal cases.

The postponed hearing is set for 10 a.m. May 20 in Madison County Circuit Court.

The sheriff lost a General District Court case Dec. 18, 2007 that was filed by the plaintiff in the appeal, Brightwood resident Leigh Purdum, a former Madison County Sheriff’s Office public information officer. The sheriff was ordered to personally pay a $250 fine and $53 in the plaintiff’s court fees.
Purdum, who now works part-time as a national law enforcement trainer on missing children issues, has said in previous interviews that she brought the suit against Weaver, her former boss, after he refused to identify the people he had appointed to a newly formed citizens advisory board. (The names have since been released.) Purdum also sought other information about the board, including its meeting dates, the criteria for choosing members, topics of discussion, goals and objectives and copies of previous minutes.

Weaver signed paperwork seeking the appeal three days after the December ruling by Judge Robert H. Downer, who was specially appointed from Albemarle County. The sheriff, who began his second term in January, has said in previous interviews that Purdum’s freedom of information requests, which came during a bitter sheriff’s election race, were actually personal attacks from someone he described as a “former disgruntled employee.”

(Purdum worked part-time for the sheriff’s office from January 2003 to April 2004, when she quit. Her husband, John Purdum, who worked as a deputy for Weaver, quit at the same time. “We found the sheriff’s operational standards unacceptable and in conflict with our ethics,” she explained in a letter that she submitted to The Eagle last year.)