Senator Louise Lucas has been under investigation by the State Corporation Commission for selling interests in her Victory Conference Center before being registered with the SCC.  This is actually no big deal and can usually be worked out fairly quickly between the SCC and the principles.  And such is the case.

But my concern is the time line in the process.

Based solely on the information in the Virginian-Pilot article, Senator Lucas’ project and corporation was under investigation and had reached an agreement with the SCC in July when she approached Portsmouth City Council about Using Federal Bonds to help fund the project.  She was supposed to notify the investors within 30 days of the agreement with the SCC.

As she was standing in front of City Council she knowingly had not complied with the agreement (on the advice of her attorney), and in fact, according to the paper, had not complied with the agreement until a week ago.  October.  She was still attempting to secure funding for her project/corporation even though she knew she was not allowed to do so.

Tony Basch, an attorney for Victory Conference Center, said letters weren’t sent to investors sooner because he had hoped to get permission from the state by now to raise up to another $3 million for the project.   -=SOURCE=-

So Tony Basch advises Lucas to violate the terms of the agreement so they could raise an additional 3 million dollars (with the SCC’s permission). 

The SCC Representative says:  He described their dealings with Victory Conference Center as “an ongoing matter” that remains under investigation. Victory Conference Center LLC still is not registered with the commission but has a pending application, Schrad said.

So lets get this straight. 

• She raises 2 million dollars without her corporation, Victory Conference Center, LLC being registered with the State Corporation Commission.
• The State Corporation Commission begins an investigation, concludes that she in fact didn’t register the corporation; and enters into an agreement with Victory Conference Center, LLC and Louise Lucas to begin a process of notifying investors and refunding their money if desired.  This process was supposed to begin within 30 days of the agreement.
• Lucas goes before City Council to request funding, up to $50 million, from Federal bonds.  She still hasn’t registered with the SCC at this point.
• On the advice of her attorney, she fails to comply with the terms of the agreement, and does not send notifications out until the first week of October.  The reason for this decision to ignore the agreement with the SCC was so another 3 million dollars could be raised.  STILL IN VIOLATION OF SCC RULES because the corporation is still not registered with the SCC.

While the initial failure to register could be seen as an administrative oversight, the continuing to raise money, or trying to, after the oversight was brought to the attention of the principles, and the attorney for the corporation blatantly advising to violate the rules of the SCC and ignore the agreement reached is criminal in my opinion.

This smacks of the same shenanigans that has put Portsmouth on the map.  This time however, it is not the Portsmouth City leadership pulling the pranks, but a state level elected official and her advisors.