VACo supports HB 167 (Ransone), which provides that in any instance in which a locality has submitted a correct and timely notice of public hearing to a newspaper published or having general circulation in the locality and the newspaper fails to publish the notice or publishes it incorrectly, such locality shall be deemed to have met certain notice requirements so long as the notice was published in the next available edition.
HB 167 passed in subcommittee Thursday morning by a vote of 9 to 1 and is headed to the full committee for consideration on Friday (tomorrow) at 9am.
Action Required – Contact members of the House Counties, Cities and Towns Committee to vote “YES” on HB 167.
KEY POINTS
- HB 167 does not circumvent any public notice requirements. The bill only allows a hearing to go forward if the locality has already followed all relevant public notice requirements and the newspaper inadvertently failed to publish the hearing notice or publishes it incorrectly.
- This bill is supported by VACo and VML as well as the Virginia Press Association.
KEY CONTACTS
- House Counties, Cities and Towns Committee: Hodges (Chair),Morefield (Vice Chair), McNamara, LaRock, Wyatt, Avoli, Ballard, Cherry, Scott, P.A., Cordoza, March, Wachsmann, Mullin, Roem, Gooditis, Kory, Subramanyam, Jenkins, Williams Graves, Sewell, Bennett-Parker, Shin
VACo Contacts: Joe Lerch, AICP and Phyllis Errico, Esq., CAE