Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) filed a Freedom of Information Act with Sussex County, Virginia, seeking all communications and records related to the April firing of County Administrator Richard Douglas.
In a motion by Supervisor Alfred Futrell, Douglas was fired April 16 in a surprise vote by county supervisors.
His removal followed months of dissatisfaction over county finances and disputes over the county emergency medical services (EMS) contracts.
Douglas was replaced by Board Chair Steve White, who assumed the job of acting county administrator. C&BP has filed a complaint with Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones seeking an investigation into whether White is violating state law by service as a county official and an elected supervisor. C&BP has asked White if he is drawing a salary for acting as county administrator.
White is a also a Virginia state employee, working for the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services.
Potential conflicts of interest
C&BP has also filed FOIA requests seeking the county’s recusal policy for elected officials, the number of times officials have recused themselves in the last 25 years and for all records related to the county’s EMS services and the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCVRS), which White chairs.
As of July 9, the county has not provided any of the records.
C&BP reported on June 30 that the IRS suspected SCVRS’ nonprofit status in 2023 because it had failed to file tax returns for three years. The nonprofit status was restored in 2025, but the latest publicly available SCVRS tax return is from 2019.
SCVRS reported a $304,000 surplus in the five years of tax returns from 2015 to 2019 that are on the IRS website.
Questions about finances
The murkiness around SCVRS’s finances was noted in the record of an April 17, 2025, board meeting. According to publicly available minutes from the board meetings:
Then-Sussex County Fire Chief Nick Sheffield told supervisors that Stony Creek and the nearby Waverly rescue squad each bills for its services.
Sheffield said, “Each of the rescue squads operate off of that money.”
Sheffield also said, “There’s a net profit to that and nobody knows what the net profit is,” though it is unclear if Sheffield was referring to Stony Creek’s profits of those of other County rescue squad.
There is no record from that time showing anyone at the supervisors’ meeting knew that Stony Creek had lost its tax status two years earlier because it had not filed its taxes for several years.
Six months later, Sheffield left his job after supervisors voted in a Sept. 18, 2025, meeting to eliminate funding for his job. He now works in North Carolina.
Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.
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