THE NEWS DESK
The News Desk is a collection of news, notes and breaking items affecting the Fredericksburg community.
Special investigator requested for Culpeper prosecutor
Diane Fincher asked the Culpeper County Board of Supervisors Tuesday night to approve funding for a special investigator who would be assigned to Commonwealth Attorney Megan Frederick’s office.
“We do endorse this position for an investigator who would answer to the commonwealth attorney and no one else,” Fincher told the board.
Fincher was one of about a dozen citizens who showed up—at Frederick’s request—to pressure the supervisors into providing about $60,000 in the FY-2014 budget to fund the new position.
Frederick said in an interview last week that she was not requesting the added position so that her office might investigate Sheriff Scott Jenkins, although she admitted that statements she says he has made regarding the Michael Hash murder case “are very concerning.”
Fincher, however, said that she is “concerned about what has happened in Culpeper with local law enforcement agencies” and the 40-year resident added that she wanted things back the way they were.
Several members of the Board of Supervisors have opposed Frederick’s request and one openly criticized her inability to work with Jenkins, who the recently elected commonwealth attorney says “is not fit to be sheriff.”
In a related matter, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted unanimously to allow Jenkins to use money from his department’s budget to install a key-card lock system at the entrance to the commonwealth attorney’s office.
The sheriff volunteered to pay for the lock—and a new metal door—after Frederick asked the Board of Supervisors’ buildings and grounds committee for the upgrade.
She said that someone, somehow got into her office twice in January and believes they were trying to locate a recently discovered box of files from the Hash case.
A key-card lock system would record the name of anyone who enters the office and the time the entrance occurred.
In other action Tuesday night, the Board of Supervisors approved moving the Cardova Precinct voting place from Culpeper High School to the American Legion Building, and shifting the Jeffersonton Precinct voting from the Jeffersonton Community Center next door to the Jeffersonton Baptist Church.
The Board also set June 10 as the deadline for taxpayers to file complaints concerning their 2013 real estate assessments.
Donnie Johnston:
