Board Repeals Transparency Policy – What’s The Path Forward?

On January 8, 2026, the Warren County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to repeal the Legal Services Transparency and Review Policy that had been adopted just one month earlier on December 9, 2025. The repeal was the Board’s first substantive action of the new year, signaling a clear priority: avoiding a formalized commitment to transparency policy in the legal realm.

What the Policy Required

The repealed policy established three straightforward requirements:

Written Legal Analysis: For major matters of significance to all citizens, proposed ordinances, comprehensive plan amendments, major policy initiatives, or regulations, the County Attorney would provide written legal work product to the Board. This would enable Board members and the public to evaluate legal reasoning, conduct supplementary research, and engage in informed participation in the process of changing county laws, all with a common reference point. See Why Legal Reasoning Behind Legislation Must Be Public Record.

Closed Session Specificity: Requests for closed sessions would be no less than 48 hours in advance (routine practices are 5 days), including sufficient detail to enable Board members and the public to assess whether the reasoning holds up. In particular, the policy incorporated requirements clarified by the FOIA Advisory Council concerning use of the “legal matters exemption”. Why? Because the statute itself does not define what “specific legal matters” means, the FOIA Advisory Council did clarify it. See FOIA Advisory Council AO_01_07. The exemption applies only to specific legal transactions or disputes, not general policy discussions, and does not apply to general issues, even if there may be legal consequences. See Closed Sessions: The Standards We Should Meet.

Quarterly Financial Reporting: The County Administrator would provide quarterly reports of legal expenditures, itemized by category.

These were not radical requirements. They enhanced public access to the legal basis behind major changes to county law, operationalized as policy existing FOIA obligations (statute enhanced with FOIA Advisory Council clarity), and established basic fiscal accountability.

The “We Don’t Need This” Approach

During the January 8 discussion, Board members who supported repeal argued the policy was unnecessary. If they wanted written legal analysis, they could just ask for it. If they didn’t like a closed session motion, they could vote against it. If they wanted to know about legal costs, they could request that information.

One supervisor stated, “I don’t like a bunch of policies; I got my power in my vote.”

This individualistic approach misses the point. Policies serve two essential purposes: they operationalize principles into consistent practice, and they represent commitments visible to the public.

When the Board operates without formal policies on transparency, citizens have no benchmark against which to measure the Board’s conduct. Citizens cannot easily determine what standards the Board has committed to uphold. The Board had an opportunity to begin the new year by affirming a commitment to transparency through a defined public policy. Instead, their first action was to repeal it.

The Irony of the Process

The procedural history of the repeal itself illustrates why formal policies serve an important function. In the same meeting, just minutes before repealing the transparency policy, the Board amended its meeting procedures to create an exception allowing new members to introduce motions to reconsider within the first year-a change from the longstanding requirement that such motions come only from members who voted with the prevailing side.

When the motion to reconsider the transparency policy was actually made, however, it came from a supervisor who had voted against the policy in December (i.e., by definition, not a new member), not from a new member whom the policy was modified to accommodate. Another supervisor who had also voted against the policy in December provided the second. In other words, the repeal was executed in violation of the Board’s own reconsideration policy.

Without a written policy establishing who may make such motions, there would be no objective way to identify this policy violation, either in the moment or in hindsight. The existence of the written policy makes it possible to recognize that the motion procedure did not follow the policy the Board had just established. Whether this was inadvertent or intentional is less important than the principle it demonstrates: written policies create a visible standard that allows both the Board and the public to evaluate whether policies are being followed consistently.

This is the value that documented policies provide. They establish clear and publicly available expectations that serve as reference points for Board conduct. Policies can effectively serve to keep the guard up and maintain consistent execution. Having a transparency policy in place should be viewed as an opportunity to always operate as transparently as possible rather than an unnecessary constraint.

The Path Forward

A minority cannot force the Board to adopt transparency policies they refuse to accept. But I can-and will-continue to advocate for the principles embodied in the repealed policy.

When closed session motions lack the specificity required by FOIA statute, including as clarified by the FOIA Advisory Council, I will challenge them in public. When impactful proposed ordinances and other text amendments are scheduled to come before the Board without written legal analysis, I will request it both for myself and the public benefit. I will seek a way to categorize legal costs and report on the breakdown of how the county spends its legal budget.

This approach will likely be characterized by some as disruptive. So be it. The Board chose not to institutionalize these transparency requirements. That choice means they must be raised and advocated for case by case, meeting by meeting, throughout the year.

I will continue to cite the statutory language and the text of FOIA Advisory Council opinions and compare them to closed session motions. The transparency policy included language drawn directly from FOIA statute and FOIA Advisory Council opinions that offer clarifying information about how the statute is to be interpreted. Since the Board rejected codifying those standards in Board policy, I will publish them independently, so citizens understand what FOIA actually requires versus what the Board practices, if there is any divergence.

What Citizens Should Watch For

In the coming year, pay attention to:

Closed session motions. In particular, those using the “Specific Legal Matters” exemption. Do they identify specific legal transactions or disputes, or just cite general subject matter? The FOIA statute requires specificity. The FOIA Advisory Council opinion specifies what is required as well as what is not permitted.

Legal advice on impactful legislation. Are Board members making decisions about substantially impactful ordinances, regulations, and text amendments based on written legal analysis they can independently evaluate, based on oral counsel received in closed sessions, or with no legal analysis at all?

Legal services spending. Does the Board provide any visibility into the various categories that the county spends its legal budget on?

The opportunity to proactively build trust through institutionalizing transparency policy may not be completely lost-the Board will need to bring the motion to reconsider the Legal Services Transparency and Review Policy back for another vote if it is going to follow its own meeting policies, as adopted January 8th. If this all seems too abstract and unconnected to everyday life, my next article will bring it down to a very concrete situation: the County Attorney’s repeated attempts to keep substantive questions about implementing county regulation of agritourism behind closed doors.

Rich Jamieson
North River Supervisor