It was interesting to see the way this situation played out. It was reminiscent of my struggles with the Cumberland County government.
Steven G. Vegh of PilotOnline.com wrote an article that was published last week, asking many questions about the requirements of the FOIA law when it concerns closed meetings.
First, he asked the City Attorney right before the vote to go to closed session.
Just before the private session , I asked the board’s lawyer, Assistant City Attorney Jack Cloud, what justified the closed meeting. He cited the FOIA section that exempts “consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by a public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel.”
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Board Chairman Kirk Houston told me later that one member, whom he did not identify, had asked Cloud whether the policy could be discussed in closed session and was told yes.
The language used by Mr. Cloud is almost word for word from the code section regarding FOIA. The problem with that is that this question has been asked and answered in that merely citing the code language is not sufficient public disclosure under the law. The agency that is tasked with the job of decision making in FOIA inquiries is the FOIA Advisory Council, an agency of the Division of Legislative Services. They also train localities large and small in the law regarding FOIA in Virginia.
Back to Mr. Vegh:
I am still puzzled.
If the board wants its attorney’s interpretation of the Americans with Disabilities Act – or the Bill of Rights, or any other law – it can do that in open session.
There is no lawsuit against NPS on service animals, and a hypothetical possibility of litigation does not justify confidential meetings under the law.
The Freedom of Information Act states: “Nothing in this subdivision shall be construed to permit the closure of a meeting merely because an attorney representing the public body is in attendance or is consulted on a matter.”
This is the response given to Mr. Vegh when he inquired about closed meetings by asking the Virginia FOIA Advisory Council. It is an opinion rendered in 2007 in a similar situation:
In order to convene a closed meeting, subsection A of § 2.2-3712 requires a public body to approve a motion that (i) identifies the subject matter, (ii) states the purpose of the meeting and (iii) makes specific reference to the applicable exemption from open meeting requirements provided in § 2.2-3707 or subsection A of § 2.2-3711. Prior opinions of this office have stated that a motion that lacks any of these three elements would be insufficient under the law.[link mine]
Mr. Vegh rightly questions what all the secrecy is about. I am interested in the question too, even if I don’t live in Norfolk. That’s because it takes more money to run an unorganized government, money that in part is likely some of my tax dollars.
The issue at hand here, service animals, is not controversial in any way. This is an example of taking advantage of citizen apathy, in order to fulfill an agenda unknown to us.
All the laws of the land are nice, but it doesn’t mean anything if judges won’t levy fines or punish repeat offenders even more harshly.
Read the FOIA code. It takes ten minutes, and is not a waste of time.
Resources:
Virginia Code – FOIA
Open Government
Local government
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to have an open meeting.
There are very few conclusions one can come to. In my experience, the attorney and the Assistant Administrator would tell me one thing, and I was seeing something completely different in the code.
People don’t pay attention to this part of government. It’s not flashy or widely publicized.
There’s nothing so hard about an open meeting: show up, be thoughtful and go by the rules.
Having sat through more than a few school board meetings, I know exactly why they have those crazy closed meetings. It’s because most people on the board have no idea what they are talking about and they don’t want people to know it. I’ve got audio and video recordings of the whole budget process and it’s astonishing how little work they accomplished. It’s not that they are incompetent, they just aren’t taking the job seriously enough to read and study the material. The staff, who were always on point, especially Dr. Bentley, got visibly annoyed at it on more than one occasion.