The ghost of Gilmore-ism lives. It's more evidence that the Virginia Senate and House need to change over this fall.

He had both the Virginia State Secretary of Transportation and Democrat State Senator Mark Herring there with him at the Chantilly Library. The meeting room was filled to almost standing room only with about one hundred in attendence. His meeting was lively and informative. Great chemistry and good interaction with the community. Chuck's 90 minute session ran over slightly in to the next hour which was scheduled purely by chance for another politician, Ken Cuccinelli the Republican State Senator..... Chuck had more people still talking with him and Mark in the lobby outside the meeting room after his session than Cuccinelli had in his entire meeting. Ken probably had under 25 total.

It was an amazing difference in attendance and attitude.......

I must admit, after reading the latest installment in the series from Robert O'Harrow and Scott Higham, I wish I had time to write another one. According to this story, at GSA, where Tom forced out Angela Styles for friend and felon David Safarian, Lurita Doan took over. Doan was a very friendly donor to Davis when he was RNCC Chair; the Doan family gave $153,215 to Republicans and over $40,000 to Davis's RNCC in 2002. At GSA, for the second time in her federal career, Doan illegally bypassed her own staff to provide a no-bid contract to a friend.

Although the Post states that three Committee members signed the letter, they don't dare embarrass Tom Davis by saying Davis, the Committee Chair, was not bothered enough by the fraud to be one of the signers. The letter asking for an explanation was signed by minority Committee members Waxman, Holmes-Norton, and Obserstar.

On her way out, Styles said "There is still not a lot of oversight in some areas of our contracting system, and I think it will haunt us."  Done.

Andrea, thank you for all the information on Doan in your post. I worked as a Contracting Officer's Representative at GSA and at times encountered the pressure that some gov't contractors and Federal legislators put on GSA management to "overlook" the rules and regulations that the GSA employees worked so hard to follow. Fortunately, I had a manager that stood up to political pressures of legislators
who came to him to try to intervene on behalf of errant contractors whose businesses were in their legislative districts.  Because of his courage and ethics, these non-performing contractors weren't paid for work they couldn't or wouldn't do.

To me the real clue to Ms. Doan's ethics lies in the fact that she wanted to reduce GSA's contract audits despite the fact that according to the Post article these audits "have saved the taxpayers more than $1 billion over the past two years, the inspector general's office reported".  And to add insult to injury, Doan wanted to hand the audit function over to private industry.  It's amazing the hubris that folks like Tom Davis and Doan have in trying to pull off such sleazy stuff as this and expect not to get caught.

This is why we need Democrats like Henry Waxman ... and you Andrea!!!

Thanks so much! I can't tell you how much the info and encouragement mean.  Higham and O'Harrow included info on the reduction and elimination of audits in their series, in the story on December 2 and December 6th. It certainly seems strange that Committtee members working to assure accountability are included in the story but Committee Chair and contract "streamliner" champion Tom Davis isn't quoted at all.

When Davis was granted the Committee chair over Chris Shays, a real moderate and taxpayer protector, Davis changed the name of the "Government Oversight and Reform Committee" to remove "Oversight."  He removed it in more ways than one. Now the budget deficit has grown so much each American owes

Thanks again.