A nearly five-hour closed session at the conclusion of its Aug. 25 committee meetings marked the Smithfield Town Council’s first use of a new procedure requested by Councilman Darren Cutler to govern what gets discussed outside the view of the public. Per the new written guidance, the town manager or town attorney will identify items they believe to be appropriate for a closed session on each meeting’s agenda, citing the applicable section of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act that allows, but does not require, a closed meeting. Once in closed session, the council will receive a more specific briefing from the town manager or town attorney on why the matter warrants a closed session and, if the council disagrees, the matter will be moved to open session. If the council elects not to discuss any topic during a closed session, the guidance states that the council is to “disclose this publicly” and “defer the topic to the appropriate place on the agenda” upon returning to open session. “Closed session is a choice. It’s not a requirement,” said Cutler.

As the controversial Gigaland data center project headed toward what looked like a summer vote by the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors, the developer’s outreach director contacted a list of what he assumed were supportive residents with a special incentive: send an email to the supervisors and get a $100 Amazon gift card in return. The director, Vance Pitzer, said they could copy his templates or write their own, but should get “spouses…kids, anyone in the family” with an email address to send one too. Anyone who did this should copy him and developer Art Lickunas to get the gift card as a “small thank you,” according to emails reviewed by the Fauquier Times. Within two weeks, at least 69 such emails arrived at county offices. Gigaland would not say how much it spent on the gift cards, but an investigation by the Fauquier Times revealed that some of the emails were fabricated or came from people who knew little about Gigaland, a project that had proposed to open 200 acres near Remington to as many as seven data centers. A separate email campaign by a marketing firm followed, but was stopped when supervisors complained of more than 200 emails flooding their inboxes.

After more than an hour in closed session, Smithfield’s Town Council voted 6-1 to renew its contract with Town Attorney Bill Riddick’s law firm, Riddick & Pope P.C. The contract will include a new hourly billing rate negotiated by Sands Anderson, a Williamsburg law firm. The vote at a special Aug. 29 meeting came five days after an earlier unanimous vote to retain outside legal counsel to probe an increase in Riddick’s pay that town officials say they didn’t authorize. A Times investigation found Riddick had begun billing the town at $275 per hour in 2018, up 37.5% from the $200 hourly rate specified in his 2008 contract, and has billed 27% higher at $350 per hour over the past 18 months.

Former Hopewell Ward 7 Councilor Dominic Holloway was sentenced to 10 years of probation on Sept. 2 after being found guilty of embezzlement of public funds by a jury in Charles City on July 29. The charges stem from an event held just over two years ago on July 1, 2023. Holloway was indicted in 2023 after The Progress-Index reported he used a city credit card to pay almost $700 to buy food for the event, the nature of which was at the center of both the prosecution’s and defense’s case.