NOTUS: “Winsome Earle-Sears’ Official Schedule Is Empty for Months at a Time”

NOTUS: “Winsome Earle-Sears’ Official Schedule Is Empty for Months at a Time”

A new report from NOTUS reveals that Winsome Sears’ official schedule shows she went “months” with “no meetings, events or governmental engagements” — illustrating how Sears has failed to deliver for Virginians and hides when asked basic questions about her taxpayer-funded job.

Sears’ lack of transparency and accountability raises questions like “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.”

Both Sears and Governor Youngkin’s staff were unable to explain how she spends her time. As NOTUS reports, “Earle-Sears did not respond to several phone and email messages left by NOTUS with her gubernatorial campaign and Virginia lieutenant governor’s office,” adding that a spokesperson for Youngkin “did not reply to inquiries from NOTUS about how the lieutenant governor spends her time on the job.”

While Sears has refused to show up for Virginians, she has made time to go to the White House to beg for Donald Trump’s support and has defended Trump’s deeply unpopular cuts to Virginians’ jobs and health care.

Read more from NOTUS on Sears failing to deliver for Virginians:

• 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.

• Government officials’ schedules “have always been really sensitive and places of combat, 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.

• The Earle-Sears calendar documents, which are public records under Virginia law, cover the period between January 2022 and September 2024. Initially, they were packed with activity.

• By early 2023, however, Earle-Sears’ schedule grew bare.

• 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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