Midnight directives

A ghost in the machine?

Who among us has not said at one time or another “there ought to be a law against. . .?” We are blessed to live in a nation founded on laws, a system that, for the most part, works pretty well. Sometimes, however, laws do more harm than good, or simply serve as mechanisms for harassment.
Local laws are no different.
Of the prerogatives of a board of supervisors, the power to make law, in the form of ordinances, may be the most dangerous given its potential for abuse. Even the most honorable intentions sometimes go horribly awry.

In Goochland, the ordinances most often addressed in recent years are those concerning land use. Indeed, while county zoning ordinances have had marginal effect on controlling growth, they have proved to be an excellent vehicle for citizen harassment.

Perhaps the most notable recent example of over enthusiastic enforcement of zoning ordinances was the “Signgate” fiasco that blighted the last local elections.

In October, 2007, in response to a single complaint about one sign, county zoning officials sent threatening letters to approximately 17 citizens who displayed large campaign signs for either Ned Creasey or Pat Turner on their property. These letters warned landowners that they would be subject to legal action if the signs were not promptly removed.

Instead of cowering and removing the signs, those citizens vigorously contended that their First Amendment rights had been violated. The letters were rescinded.

Bob Hammond, director of planning and zoning often explains that zoning ordinance enforcement is complaint driven. If the county received a single complaint about only one sign in one district, why were letters sent to 17 people in three different districts?

Apparently, there were no complaints about large signs exhorting voters to cast their ballots for House of Delegates’ candidate Bill Janis whose large campaign sign was displayed prominently in front of the Broadview Shopping Center. More surprisingly, there were no complaints about a large sign on River Road supporting Jimmy Massie, candidate for a delegate seat in a district that does not include one square inch of Goochland.

We still do not know where the list of offending signs came from, although there is much speculation about its source.

The sign ordinance was clarified in 2008. Given the response to the Signgate shenanigans, it is doubtful that there will be a repeat performance in future elections.

On the books for many years, the sign ordinance was probably the product of extensive tinkering in response to circumstances not envisioned when it was first drafted.

In recent years, ordinances and policies have meandered into public view in a more sinister manner. The appearance of the notorious sections 13 and 14 of the supervisors’ Standards of Conduct (see Cloudy Day in the Gulag) is very similar.
It is almost as though there is a rogue word processor somewhere in the administration building that cranks out these “midnight directives” creating ordinances and policies that magically appear in board agendas demanding immediate attention. Often they are inserted at the end of long agendas and addressed late in the evening session of an exhaustive daylong meeting.

Following the March 2007 public hearing on the budget, the supervisors were exhorted to immediately adopt an emergency ordinance banning mud bogging and another to restrict accessory uses, supposedly to prohibit the construction of illegal garages.

The mud bogging measure was a knee jerk response to citizen complaints about a particular event. The “illegal garage” measure seems to have been designed to prohibit a proposed sporting clays shooting range at Orapax Plantation.

Following an outpouring of outrage from mud boggers, the activity’s proponents have adopted self-regulation to ensure that small scale mud bogging occurs in areas where it will not annoy neighbors. Once the offending boggers realized that they had unwittingly disturbed some neighbors, they agreed to have their fun, at least in small numbers, in isolated areas. No punitive measures were needed, just some old fashioned, if intense, discussion.

The explanation of the need for the accessory use ordinance would have been amusing had it not had such sinister implications.
Poor Bob Hammond tried to convince the supervisors that the construction of inappropriate garages, accessory uses, was such a serious problem that it required emergency action. After intense questioning, Hammond finally admitted that the number of such garages was about two per year. That ordinance passed, paving the way for an extended legal battle.

If the board of supervisors, as it was constituted in 2007, believed it was important to the health, safety and welfare of Goochland to prohibit a sporting clays shooting range at Orapax, it should have been willing to pass a specific ordinance and vote on the measure in public. There may well be sound reasons to deny this facility to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of Goochland. They were never clearly articulated.

Instead, a midnight directive appeared fully formed on the board’s agenda with no information about its origins or true intended consequences.

In the ensuing months, the county and the owners of Orapax battled about the sporting clays shooting range. Their contentions even dragged the Boy Scouts into the mix. A board of zoning appeals hearing followed. The county argued against a shooting range that Orapax had in the past while Orapax defended the shooting range it planned for the future, an apples and oranges discussion if there ever was one. The BZA vote, a tie, upheld the county position. The tie occurred because the hearing had been postponed so many times that one member was out of the country on a planned mission trip.

Did any supervisors ever ask why the county was pursuing these matters? Or did they blindly trust the county staff members who presented the threat to the county as Gospel?

If a staff member or supervisor believes that a new policy or law is necessary, that person should be anxious to explain his motivations. Sneaking a proposed ordinance or policy on the board agenda with the expectation that it will be passed with little thought or discussion is just wrong.
Citizens are clamoring for open and accountable government. Midnight directives need to stop. The plug needs to be pulled on that rogue word processor.