Part 1: With no official action in receipt of his verbal resignation, McFadden seeks legal answers to status of that resignation

Joseph McFadden, who emotionally stated his resignation from the Front Royal Town Council on August 8, in the wake of an apparently sometimes heated closed Executive Session leading to a 4-3 vote to immediately terminate Town Manager Steven Hicks, appeared at the Monday, August 22nd regular council meeting, though not on the council dais, but in a chair in the public seating section.

Shortly after the 7 p.m. starting time, Mayor Chris Holloway announced that the meeting would be canceled for lack of a quorum. Gary Gillispie was absent, and Latasha Thompson was present virtually, which the mayor observed he had been informed would not suffice to form the necessary four-member council quorum. Present along with the mayor, technically not a council member, were Vice-Mayor Lori Cockrell, Amber Morris, and Zach Jackson. In reaction to the announcement council was one short of an on-site quorum, a voice from the audience, believed to be Tom Sayre’s, observed, “Joe’s here,” to which the mayor replied that McFadden was “not a member.”

Joe McFadden, seated but not on the council dais, chats with Town Planning Director Lauren Kopishke after the Aug. 22 meeting was canceled for lack of a physically present quorum. They could have had the meeting if they’d re-seated McFadden, one observer noted. Not a McFadden fan, the mayor declined the idea, resetting the meeting to Aug. 29, at 7 p.m. at Town Hall. Below, Interim Town Attorney George Sonnett informs those members present they are not good to go for Monday’s scheduled meeting.

In the wake of recent discussion with McFadden on a change of heart on his resignation (8-13 linked story below) and information received that it may not have been legally acknowledged by the mayor or acted on by council, we asked the man who now finds himself in political limbo what he had hoped to achieve by his presence at Monday’s meeting. See: McFadden: Resigned or is he? Hicks: Fired, or is he? Legal questions follow Aug. 8 council work session – or was it a meeting first?

“My primary objective tonight was, there is a rule that council members have to attend, or if they miss several meetings, they can basically be voted off the council. So, that was my first objective tonight, to show up at the meeting, so I’m in attendance, and they couldn’t use that against me. The second reason I came tonight was just to show my constituency that I’m still here, I’m still part of it. It wasn’t that I just got tired of coming to meetings or something like that,” McFadden told Royal Examiner in the Warren County Government Center hallway shortly after the meeting’s cancellation.

“I also sent an email to the attorney general of Virginia just today hoping for a possible legal ruling on this, because that’s where we are, we’re in a legal stasis right now,” McFadden said of the impasse he finds himself in. He noted a conversation by phone with Interim Town Attorney George Sonnett. “He was very gracious to give me a call back and he said he couldn’t tell me what the Town’s legal opinion was, nor could he tell me why he couldn’t tell me,” McFadden observed of the lack of substantive information forthcoming during that conversation. This reporter and McFadden agreed it likely involved attorney/client privilege in a still contested legal situation.

“I totally understand. I’m just really hoping we do get a second opinion from whoever it is, or an outside opinion … Someone who can really look at the legal cases, etc. for whether or not I can actually withdraw my resignation or my resignation stuck that day,” McFadden observed.

Noting conflicting legal precedents and information, in the name of full transparency, McFadden pointed to one Virginia code that would not seem to be in his favor, at least in part. “In Virginia Code 24.2-226, election to fill vacancy, it says the officers or officer elects’ resignation should not be revocable after the date stated by him for his resignation or after the 45th day before the date set for the special election. Now, it goes on to say that it should be a written resignation. I did not submit a written resignation. I submitted a verbal resignation, which, four days later, I retracted. So, we need a legal opinion on this,” McFadden reiterated of a bottom line in the dispute.

There will be a Part 2 to this exploration of legal dynamics related to the August 8 verbal resignation of Councilman McFadden in the heat of the moment regarding a major personnel action by a 4-3 majority of the Front Royal Town Council and its mayor, the mayor breaking council’s 3-3 tie.