A policy change announced at the Alamance-Burlington school board’s latest work session will no longer permit board members who participate in meetings remotely (by phone) to vote on any matters that are presented for the board’s approval, effective immediately.
The revision to the school board’s remote participation in board meetings was among more than two dozen policy revisions that school board members voted unanimously, 7-0, during their work session in January to approve as part of their “consent” agenda for routine, noncontroversial items that are typically approved en bloc without discussion.
Last week, school board attorney Adam Mitchell of the Tharrington Smith law firm in Raleigh gave a brief overview of the policy change, apparently due to the absence of school board member Chuck Marsh from last Tues-day’s work session.
Marsh participated in the work session by phone but didn’t vote on any items presented for board approval after the attorney recommended against it. The six other school board members were physically present for their work session at Central Office.
Mitchell also informed the school board at the beginning of the work session that board members who participate remotely cannot count toward the required quorum – i.e., four of the seven board members – necessary to conduct business.
An earlier version of the same ABSS policy, adopted at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, had permitted school board members to vote when participating in meetings remotely. Those votes were recorded via a roll call, in which each board member would respond “yea” or “nay” as his or her name is called.
Both the revised and previous policy allows school board members to participate remotely in up to three meetings per calendar year. A different set of “special rules,” which are outlined in the revised policy, would apply for remote meetings that may be held during a “state-declared emergency.”
The revision to the school board’s policy follows an opinion issued by the state Court of Appeals in August 2024, declaring the appointment of a sheriff in Anson County legally invalid, as Mitchell acknowledged during last week’s work session.
The Court of Appeals case centered on the appointment of a successor to Anson County sheriff Landric Reid, who died 1½ months prior to winning a second term as sheriff in the November 2022 general election.
During two subsequent emergency meetings, Anson County’s board of commissioners voted 4-0 on December 5, 2022 to appoint one person (Scott Howell) to fill the vacancy. The following day, on December 6, the commissioners voted to appoint someone else, Gerald Cannon – selected on December 3 by the Anson County Democratic Party to succeed Reid as sheriff – to fill the vacancy created by Reid’s death, according to the case background.
Howell also had been previously selected by the commissioners to serve out the remainder of Reid’s first term, from late September 2022 until the scheduled expiration of the deceased sheriff’s first term in December of that year.
Cannon had also been selected as Reid’s successor on December 3, 2022, according to the case background cited in the Appeals Court’s opinion.
The Court of Appeals subsequently concluded that the first of the Anson County commissioners’ two emergency meetings lacked the necessary quorum (four out of seven commissioners) to conduct business. During the emergency meeting on December 5, two of the seven commissioners were physically present at the meeting and voted to appoint Howell; and three commissioners participated by phone but only two voted (one commissioner lost the phone connection).
During a second emergency meeting on December 6, 2022, all seven Anson County commissioners were physically present and voted 4-3 to appoint Howell to serve Reid’s term as sheriff.
The Appeals Court ultimately concluded that Cannon hadn’t been legally appointed as sheriff because the board lacked a required majority of commissioners physically present (a “quorum”) to conduct business. (The Appeals Court also declared the first emergency meeting legally invalid because the commissioners had failed to give the statutorily-required 48 hours’ public notice.)
The Court of Appeals’ decision in the Anson County case “seems to indicate that there is no authority to count remote participants” toward the quorum required to conduct business, Kristina Wilson, an expert in public law and government, wrote in her analysis of the case for the School of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“It is notable that the…voting statutes make no mention of physical presence,” Wilson wrote, adding that even without an explicit requirement codified in state law, “the court still required it for [a] valid quorum.”
Wilson also opined that “local governments…should ensure the presence of an in-person quorum” to protect themselves from any future court challenges to votes taken without a legally valid quorum present.
