Members of the Virginia General Assembly are considering a bill aimed at preventing local governments from making last-minute changes to their agendas.
Imagine a scenario where a school board makes a last minute addition to their agenda, one that gives a significant raise to their superintendent. Perhaps they keep the addition to the agenda hush hush until the meeting has already started. That's the kind of behavior that former Senator Adam Ebbin wanted to crack down on when he introduced one of his final bills earlier this year.
"It seeks to prevent rushed decisions by restricting final actions on items added after a meeting has started while still allowing last minute administrative decisions," Ebbin said.
Now, Ebbin is no longer in the Senate, but his bill is still making its way through the House of Delegates. This week, it passed a key subcommittee and is expected to be on the agenda for the House floor soon.
"Many people will look at the agenda ahead of time and make decisions not to attend because the agenda doesn't include something that they care about and then they find out later that the item was added at the meeting and acted on," said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Coalition for Open Government. "And, believe me this is not a one-off. This is happening all over the state in all corners, school boards, city councils, everything."
The bill has the support of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, which workshopped the legislation before the General Assembly session started in January.
