Planning Commission-Work Session Only 5/14/2025 - May 14, 2025
meeting
Prince William County Planning Commission
3h 1m
4 speakers
8 agenda items
transcribed 7 days ago
official recording ↗
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the purpose of the Planning Commission work session and who is presenting?
Good evening, everyone. and welcome to the Prince William County's working session with our county attorney's office and uh we're gonna be talking about several very important uh items that the planning commission needs to be aware of. This is an annual uh working session that we have and so we now welcome the Princeton County Attorney's Office, ma'am.
Thank you, Chair McPhail, members of the commission. I'm Michelle Robel, the county attorney, and thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. Some of you were here last year when we provided training to you. And I've committed to the Board of County Supervisors that we will provide you annual training. The law sometimes evolves and changes, and so we'd like to provide that to you, and also members of the commission may change. Welcome. You're uh so I am Michelle Roble. I'd like to introduce the the people that I am so fortunate enough to work with. We've got Chief Deputy County Attorney Alan Smith. He will be doing the conflict of interest act, the COIA presentation. Kurt Speer, senior assistant county attorney.
I'm sorry, senior deputy county attorney. He will be doing the uh legal land use in closed session with you. And we're gonna start out with Deputy County Attorney Rob Scoff, and he will be handling the FOIA. I was talking with Chair McPhail, and we'd like to respect your time. We have a lot of information to go over, and what I would propose to you is that. have each of them go through the presentation and then ask your questions at the end because oftentimes the next question that you have could be on the next slide. So hopefully we'll be able to to get done maybe a half hour, half hour and an hour. And so thank you for your time and we'll turn it over to Mr. Scoff.
Chairman McPhel, members of the commission, my name is Rob Skoff. Um and I will be I will be brisk with this presentation. We're talking about the Freedom of Information Act FOIA. Which really has two components, public meetings and records. And we're going to be talking about both of those today. So um I'm going to start off with some quotes, and all these quotes are from the law. So FOIA is a Virginia law, and these quotes are directly from it. And um and they're important because they sort of permeate everything we do with FOIA. And whenever judges or courts are looking at actions and trying to figure out whether they comply with FOIA, this is what they'd look at. Because right in the law, right off the bat it says that meetings and records are presumed open.
So there's already a presumption that people are entitled to records under FOIA and are entitled to attend meetings. And the provisions are liberally construed and if there's ever supposed to be an exemption that a locality is trying to invoke, those exemptions are narrowly construed. So again, these are quotes directly from the law. So when we read cases about FOIA, they almost always start with these these quotes. So, like I said earlier, we're going to be talking about meetings and um records. So, first off, what is a meeting? Obviously, you guys are in one now, but uh they don't have to be this formal. Uh, a meeting could be an informal assembly, but the the key is that there need to be at least three members um of the body and they need to be transacting or discussing business.
But it doesn't have to be uh you know at a government building. Uh there could be um um uh forms elsewhere. Um and I will also say if there is not a quorum, um we do advise you not to have a meeting. So that that happened last time the meeting was canceled. And that's what we do recommend uh because there really can be no public action taken unless you have a quorum. So the location does not matter. Uh you could have a meeting inadvertently, you could have a meeting out of the county, you could have a meeting by phone, at a retreat, by exchanging emails. The key really is are there three or more members and are they transacting public business?
So what about like attending a party or some sort of public community event?
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Agenda
8 items
1
What is the purpose of the Planning Commission work session and who is presenting?
7:32–16:12
2
How does the County Attorney define a public meeting under FOIA?
16:12–25:01
3
What are the rules for creating a meeting via email or text?
25:01–33:58
4
How many days does the county have to respond to a FOIA request?
33:58–39:48
5
What are the acceptable responses if a FOIA request cannot be fulfilled in five days?
39:48–48:00
6
What are the key differences between a work session, a regular meeting, and a special meeting?
48:00–56:50
7
How should commissioners handle gifts and potential conflicts of interest under COIA?
56:50–1:04:43
8
What steps should be taken to approve the motion for a closed legal consultation meeting?
1:04:43–3:01:26
Speakers
4 identifiedOfficials recognised by voice; public commenters shown as “Speaker N” unless they state their name.