From DPVA:
BREAKING: As Sears Touts Work as Lt. Gov., She Has “Empty” Schedule And “Spends Long Periods Not Actively Working”
As Virginians call for transparency about what she’s done in office, Sears refuses to respond
VIRGINIA – New reporting from NOTUS details that while Winsome Earle-Sears touts her work as Lt. Gov., the reality is she has a largely empty schedule and “spends long periods not actively working in an official capacity.”
NOTUS reports that Sears previously declined to share details about her role in the Administration and “did not respond to several phone and email messages left by NOTUS with her gubernatorial campaign and Virginia lieutenant governor’s office.”
Megan Rhyne, executive director of the nonpartisan Virginia Coalition for Open Government, called for more transparency from Sears. This reporting adds to Sears’ “troubling pattern of secrecy” and ethics violations including undisclosed trips, flights, and $12,000 in gifts.
NOTUS: Winsome Earle-Sears’ Official Schedule Is Empty for Months at a Time
- The government website of Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears highlights that she has “traveled over 28,000 miles across the Commonwealth since coming into office” and “headlined numerous events across the Commonwealth and across the nation.”
- That track record is part of the case the Republican is making to voters as she runs for governor, with Election Day less than two weeks away.
- But her official lieutenant governor schedule tells a different story.
- Unredacted calendar documents obtained this month by NOTUS via the Virginia Freedom of Information Act show large gaps — sometimes weeks, other times months — where Earle-Sears lists no meetings, events or governmental engagements on her official schedule.
- Earle-Sears did not respond to several phone and email messages left by NOTUS with her gubernatorial campaign and Virginia lieutenant governor’s office.
- Earlier this year, Earle-Sears declined to offer specifics when public broadcaster VPM, which obtained a partial version of her schedule, asked her to describe and detail her role in the Youngkin administration.
- “I’m not going to divulge what we talk about. […],” Earle-Sears said at the time.
- […] but as a citizen, I’d like to know a little bit more of what she’s doing,” said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the nonpartisan Virginia Coalition for Open Government.
- By early 2023, however, Earle-Sears’ schedule grew bare.
- Her official schedule contained no engagements from February to July 2023. In August of that year, she listed two events, followed by four in September, three in October, five in November and four in December.
- Earle-Sears began 2024 with fewer than a dozen events […]
- On Feb. 7, she attended “Aerospace Day at the General Assembly 7:30am – 8am.” And then, nothing: between March 2024 and September 2024, the lieutenant governor listed no items on her official schedule.
- But the Virginia state archivist, citing the Virginia Public Records Act, indicates that the state should maintain a permanent collection of “official appearances, itinerary, and speeches” by any lieutenant governor, including “calendars” and “schedules.”
- Official schedules help confirm how government leaders spend their time when entrusted with power by constituents. Taken together, Earle-Sears’ schedules do not indicate whether she sometimes sought to keep her whereabouts as lieutenant governor a secret, or conversely, if she spends long periods not actively working in an official capacity.
- A representative for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who campaigned for Earle-Sears as his successor, did not reply to inquiries from NOTUS about how the lieutenant governor spends her time on the job.
- “At the end of the day, they’re working for the people who put them there,” J. Miles Coleman of the University of Virginia Center for Politics said of the state’s elected officials. “The average voter would probably want more transparency.”
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