Checks & Balances Project (C&BP) has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the response times of Sussex County, Virginia, emergency medical responders.
AI-assisted searches indicate the records are on the Sussex County website, but links to those meetings and records don’t work. The failure to maintain the site and keep records available is an apparent violation of Virginia law.
Response times of the Stony Creek Volunteer Rescue Squad (SCRVS) run by Steve White, the chair of the county board of supervisors, are of particular interest. A ChatGPT search showed the SCVRS weeknight response times “consistently exceeded the 20-minute standard for several months.”
C&BP has reported that White voted to send taxpayer funds to SCVRS, which is an apparent violation of Virginia’s conflict-of-interest law. White also engineered the defunding of the positions of the county fire chief and deputy fire chief in September 2025 and the April firing of County Administrator Richard Douglas.
A previous Freedom of Information Act request by C&BP yielded an October 2025 memorandum of understanding between the county and SCVRS in which the county agreed to pay SCVRS $422,250 a year for EMS services. That amount was more than twice the revenues SCVRS reported in its publicly available tax returns from 2019, the last year they filed tax returns with the IRS.
The IRS suspended SCVRS’ nonprofit status in 2023 after it failed to file tax returns for three straight years.
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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