The question of how long a Franklin County resident may speak to the Board of Supervisors has become about more than two minutes.
It has also opened a window into growing tensions inside the board itself.
Two sitting supervisors, Tim Tatum and Dan Quinn, have raised concerns about the board’s internal processes under Chair Lorie Smith, including how rules governing public participation are being administered, how decisions are made and, more broadly, how Smith has exercised the authority of the chair.
Those concerns came into sharper focus following the Aug. 18 board meeting, when Franklin County Community Coalition Co-Chair Kim Jones requested five minutes to speak on behalf of the organization but was limited to three.
Jones said she signed the public-comment sheet before the meeting, identified herself as a group representative and had Coalition members present who were prepared to surrender their individual speaking opportunities.
When Jones requested five minutes, she was first told she had signed the wrong sheet. Jones replied that there was no separate sheet available for those requesting five minutes.
She was then told, on the record, that she “had to sign up the day before for five minutes.”
That requirement surprised Tatum, who has served on the board for nearly 12 years.
“I’ve never heard that,” Tatum said. “Where did that come from?”
Tatum questioned whether the requirement represented a change in board policy.
“Is that a new rule that the chairman put in?” he asked. “Well, if it’s a rule, then we need a vote on it.”
“If it’s a rule, then we need a vote on it.”
Supervisor Tim Tatum
Quinn independently said the requirement was new to him as well.
“That’s totally new to me,” Quinn said.
Quinn recalled previous meetings under former board leadership in which residents who had not previously registered were invited to speak. He said public-comment procedures have not always been consistently enforced.
The “day-before” requirement particularly troubled him because the board had recently revisited the five-minute option.
When the board initially eliminated the five-minute group option, Quinn said he was the lone supervisor who opposed doing so.
Tatum said his own thinking about the issue changed after hearing from a constituent who told him she was uncomfortable speaking publicly herself but wanted someone who represented her position to have sufficient time to speak.
“I didn’t look at it that way,” Tatum recalled telling her. “You’re 100% right.”
Tatum said he and then-Supervisor Mike Meredith subsequently agreed that one would make a motion to restore the five-minute option, and the other would second it.
The board reconsidered the matter July 21 and voted unanimously to reinstate “the five-minute rule.” Video of the meeting confirms that wording.
The wording matters because the board did not vote to create a new five-minute procedure; it voted to reinstate the existing one.
Quinn said no requirement to register a day in advance was established when the five-minute rule was restored. He also said he does not remember such a requirement being part of the previous rule.
He said there have previously been requirements that people claiming to represent a group demonstrate that other members are present, but he does not recall a consistently enforced requirement that a group representative register the previous day.
For Quinn, the larger concern is the effect such requirements have on public participation.
“The whole thing is it just feels like they’re making it harder for people to speak at a time when you should make it easier,” Quinn said. “Why are you making it harder?”
“Why are you making it harder?”
Supervisor Dan Quinn
Jones formally challenged the Aug. 18 decision in an email sent to Smith, the other supervisors, County Attorney Jim Guynn, County Administrator Steve Sandy and Clerk Emily Conner.
Jones wrote that the procedure she located provides for an onsite signup sheet and describes 24-hour advance notice as “strongly suggested”, rather than mandatory. She also wrote that the Aug. 18 agenda stated residents “may contact” the clerk before the Monday deadline, rather than requiring them to do so.
In prepared remarks Jones plans to deliver to the board, she draws a sharp distinction between those words.
“‘Strongly suggested’ and ‘required’ have different meanings,” Jones said. “‘May’ and ‘must’ have different meanings. A suggestion does not become a requirement because someone says it into a microphone.”
Jones has asked the county to identify the specific adopted rule, resolution or recorded board action requiring advance registration for a five-minute group presentation and to determine whether the Aug. 18 ruling was correct.
Her objection, however, intersects with broader concerns being expressed from within the board itself.
A divided board
Tatum, currently the board’s longest-serving member, said some of what he has observed has left him disappointed.
His concerns extend beyond public comment.
Tatum had hoped to become board chair himself this year.
He said that historically, although not necessarily as a formal requirement, longevity on the board has played a role in selecting its chair. Tatum previously served as chairman while then-Chair Ronnie Thompson was dealing with health problems and said that after Thompson did not seek another term, Tatum became the board’s longest-tenured member.
Around Christmas, Tatum said he began contacting fellow supervisors seeking support for the chairmanship.
According to Tatum, Quinn and Meredith were prepared to support him, but Nick Mitchell told Tatum he intended to vote for Smith. And Tatum related that Marshall Jamison told Tatum he believed Smith deserved an opportunity to serve as chair. He said Mike Carter did not return his call.
Rather than face Smith in a vote he expected to lose, Tatum asked that his name not be placed in nomination.
“I’d rather not get nominated than to lose to Lorie,” Tatum recalled telling colleagues.
Quinn provided some important context to that account.
He said lobbying for the chairmanship before the board’s annual organizational meeting is typical, and that similar vote-counting has occurred in previous years.
He said Smith, however, vigorously sought the position.
“Lorie actively lobbied for the chairman role,” Quinn said.
Smith called Quinn seeking his support, Quinn said, but he told her he could not vote for her.
Tatum now describes an alignment on the board that he believes generally supports Smith.
Which supervisors did he not consider to be part of that alignment?
Tatum identified himself and Quinn, along with Meredith before his Aug. 18 resignation.
Quinn did not characterize the board in the same terms.
He did, however, acknowledge concerns about Smith’s leadership before she became chair.
Quinn said he had concerns stemming partly from Smith’s previous interactions with businesses in his district and told her about those concerns when she sought his vote.
At the same time, Quinn credits Smith with being proficient in the mechanics of chairing a meeting.
He described her as knowledgeable about Robert’s Rules of Order and the regular cadence and procedural requirements of board meetings.
“She’s very good at that,” Quinn said. “She’s very knowledgeable about it and good at that.”
His concerns lie elsewhere.
“She’s more challenged to perform properly when things get complicated,” Quinn said. “That’s where it becomes much harder for her.”
Quinn cited Smith’s conduct toward school Superintendent Kevin Siers during a joint meeting as an example of the type of leadership he had worried about before Smith became chair.
According to Quinn, Smith publicly called Siers incompetent in a room filled with school and county officials and members of the public.
Quinn said the incident reinforced his concern about “using power and strength in a bad way.”
“That was a bad thing to do, in my opinion,” he said.
‘Before God and everybody’
Tatum’s concerns about the board’s climate also extend to how much county business is conducted outside public view.
Closed meetings are permitted under Virginia law for specifically identified purposes, including certain personnel matters, consultation concerning actual or probable litigation, and other exemptions established under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
Tatum said he believes those exceptions should be narrowly applied.
He recalled an incident years ago during a closed meeting when he said supervisors Charles Wagner and Tommy Cundiff wandered into a discussion involving farming, farmland and cattle.
Former Supervisor Jimmy Jefferson interrupted.
“Boys, I don’t see why this conversation can’t take place before God and everybody,” Tatum recalled Jefferson saying.
“Boys, I don’t see why this conversation can’t take place before God and everybody.”
Former Supervisor Jimmy Jefferson, as recalled by Tim Tatum
Tatum said Jefferson had it right.
“The closed session should be used at a very narrow, tight reason,” Tatum said. “It shouldn’t be so broad.”
That concern has particular resonance following recent events surrounding the board.
Meredith abruptly resigned during the Aug. 18 meeting after a lengthy closed session. Tatum later confirmed that Supervisor Marshall Jamison was the board member who urged Meredith to resign and described the treatment of Meredith inside the meeting as “brutal from where I was sitting.”
Tatum said he regretted remaining quiet rather than coming to Meredith’s defense.
The episode also raises a broader question about the relationships among seven independently elected supervisors.
Meredith did not serve at the appointment or pleasure of Jamison, Smith or any other member of the board. He was elected by voters of the Boone District, just as each of the other six supervisors was elected to represent a district of the county.
A request from one supervisor that another resign, therefore, carries consequences beyond the relationship between two board members. When an elected supervisor leaves office, the district loses the representative its voters selected.
Why Jamison believed Meredith should resign, and what occurred during the closed meeting before Meredith decided to do so, remain important questions in understanding the board’s current internal climate.
The episode also left the board with one fewer member whom Tatum identified as outside Smith’s “following”.
For Jones, the questions surrounding the board’s internal relationships may be complicated. The question that brought her to the microphone Aug. 18 was not.
She wants to know what rule cost her two minutes.
In her written objection, Jones asked county officials to identify the precise board action establishing the “day-before” registration requirement, correct the record if the Aug. 18 ruling was erroneous, and make certain the county’s signs, signup sheets, website and staff instructions accurately reflect the procedure adopted by the board.
Her prepared remarks put the question directly to supervisors.
“If there was another adopted rule making advance registration mandatory, identify it,” Jones said. “Give us the language, the adoption date, and the recorded Board action.”
Tatum’s question was even shorter.
“Where did that come from?”
“Where did that come from?”
Supervisor Tim Tatum
The answer may say something larger about a board now confronting questions over who makes its rules, how those rules are enforced and how power is exercised among seven supervisors elected not by one another, but by the people they represent.