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The Virginia Supreme Court issued four opinions today of particular interest to local governments. Three involve localities as parties (City of Falls Church, County of Fairfax, and Town of Vienna), and the fourth involve a construction case filed against the Commonwealth of Virginia in which the Court addresses several issues of interest to local governments. (Excerpted from the Supreme [...]
On May 19, a team of great folks at Sands Anderson and our special guest Karen Harwood conducted a webinar on the State of Vested Rights (in Zoning), 2010 — the first installment of an ongoing series called the Sands Anderson Land Use Forum. We’ve been busy! (This will explain, in part, the length of time since my [...]
Well, it’s over. The “reasonable person” is dead. Or is it? The U.S. Supreme Court denied the request for a writ of certiorari by the City of Virginia Beach to review the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision overturning the City’s noise ordinance in Tanner v. City of Virginia Beach, 277 Va. 432, 674 S.E.2d 848 (2009). The Daily Press article on [...]
The General Assembly, Virginia Supreme Court and the Virginia State Bar have combined to make the job of our local Boards of Zoning Appeals (BZAs), and that of the local government attorney who deals with them, much more complicated. As a long-time county attorney and currently counsel to the Stafford County BZA, I have seen this [...]
Beyond the direct impacts on local government noise regulation resulting from the Tanner v. City of Virginia Beach case, (see previous blog post below), there are some questions that arise. These questions arise from the Virginia Supreme Court’s reliance on the “Due Process Clause” – all caps, with no citation – to strike down the [...]
I have prosecuted noise ordinance violations, litigated the very issues decided by the Virginia Supreme Court in Tanner, and authored the LGA/VML amicus curiae brief filed in that case. Like many local government attorneys and their clients, I am struggling with the case’s impacts on local government noise ordinances. In its opinion, the Virginia Supreme [...]
