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People
Virginia
Business
March 2003
Sharp
backs voucher
Richard
Sharp may not be chairman of Richmond-based electronics
giant Circuit City anymore, but he’s still got
the title. Two months after stepping down from Circuit
City’s board last June, Sharp became chairman of
Children First America, an advocacy group that supports
diverting public dollars to private or parochial education.
The group has strong ties to owners of Wal-Mart and
is based in the same Arkansas town as the retailer.
Sharp,
who retired as Circuit City’s CEO in 2000, has
shown his support for school choice with cash: He reportedly
gave $100,000 to a 2000 school-voucher ballot initiative
in California that was defeated. “We have a mandate
to publicly fund education, but that doesn’t mean
we have to have a public education monopoly,” Sharp
said in a USA Today article last year.
There’s
still baseball
He’s out! William L. Collins III —
leader of a decade-long drive to bring a Major League
Baseball team to Northern Virginia — was dumped
as chairman and CEO of Alexandria-based Metrocall last
month.
Neither
Collins or the company’s board of directors gave
any immediate explanation for the move. Collins led
the paging company since 1996; Metrocall spent four
months in Chapter 11 last year after suffering heavy
losses in subscribers as cell phones replaced one-way
pagers.
Collins’
firing isn’t expected to hurt the baseball bid.
Collins and his group of investors have reportedly given
$8.4 million to the Virginia Baseball Stadium Authority
in fees and loans. The Washington Post reports that
the firing will let Collins spend more time chasing
a MLB franchise.
Virginia
Business - March 2003
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