Members of the Norfolk School Board are facing criticism over meeting without public notice. It’s an issue that every Planning Commission and water-control board in Virginia has to deal with.
Three working days. That’s the advance notice every school board and city council and board of supervisors in Virginia is required to provide before conducting public meetings.
Megan Rhyne at the Virginia Coalition for Open Government says that’s because the public needs to know when their representatives are conducting public business.
“Meetings of public bodies are supposed to be accessible to the public," Rhyne explains. "And the public can’t come to a meeting if it doesn’t know about the meeting.”
That’s a requirement for almost anytime public funds are being spent, although people fail to provide adequate notice all the time.
Quentin Kidd at Christopher Newport University says the recent example of the Norfolk School Board is a head scratcher.
“Either it’s willful, in which case somebody ought to be held accountable for it," he says. "Or even worse, it's just ignorance.”
City Council members in Virginia Beach had a similar problem back in July, when too many council members showed up to a meeting with employees. That ended up becoming a public meeting that had not been announced in advance.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
