Substantive town governance or ‘Political Theater’? Split council passes ordinance expressing ‘opposition’ to COVID vaccination mandates

If you are looking for political drama – and why not in the current age of American and Front Royal politics? – the greatest drama from Monday’s 6 p.m. Special Town Council Meeting at Town Hall may have been whether Scott Lloyd would vote WITH Letasha Thompson in rejecting passage of an Ordinance mirroring the terms – without direct legal implications – of Lloyd’s rejected Ordinance proposal of the previous week. That ordinance would have legislatively forbid employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates within the town limits.

And while Lloyd found the wherewithal to cast such a vote with his council polar opposite, albeit for different reasons than Thompson’s negative vote, the ordinance passed by a 3-2 margin on the tie-breaking vote of Mayor Chris Holloway. That tie-breaking vote was a foregone conclusion as it reached the mayor at 2-2, Vice-Mayor Lori Cockrell, and Gary Gillespie voting approval, since the “Legislative Request” for consideration of the Resolution was brought forward by the mayor according to the August 2nd agenda packet.

How the vote might have gone – the guess here is 3-2 defeated not giving the mayor the tiebreaker – had the fifth remaining councilman, Joseph McFadden been present, may have been indicated by his pre-meeting Facebook post calling the Resolution initiative “Political Theater”. McFadden had been the only council member to have switched to a supporting vote of Lloyd’s anti-vaccine-mandate ordinance proposal a week earlier. This week, McFadden explained that he was committed to a previously scheduled training exercise Monday evening, and would not be able to attend the late-the-previous week called Special Meeting of August 2nd.

‘Let’s get this show on the road’ Mayor Holloway, at the head of the table, may have been thinking had he read absent Councilman McFadden’s Facebook assessment of Monday’s Special Meeting ordinance proposal, below (with posted starting time an hour late). Royal Examiner Photos by Roger Bianchini

What does the passage of the wordily titled “Resolution of the Town Council of the Town of Front Royal, Virginia, Encouraging All Businesses Located in the Town Corporate Limits from Requiring COVID-19 Vaccines as a Condition of Employment” mean?

Legally nothing, as Thompson pointed out in arguing against its passage, but perhaps politically something – as in easing public anger at those who voted against Lloyd’s ordinance initiative the previous week – Cockrell, Gillespie, and Thompson, with the mayor having made his opposition clear in comments prior to the vote.

But if it was “Political Theater” as McFadden contended, it was the “Second Act” of this particular political drama, according to Thompson and her colleagues who opposed Lloyd’s ordinance proposal coming to a vote in the first place. Why? – Because in the opinion of Town Attorney Doug Napier, according to the Virginia State Constitution and decades, if not a century, of legal precedent, municipal governments have no legal authority in Virginia to enact such legislation as Lloyd brought forward.

John Lundberg, speaking at July 26 meeting, was one of several citizens present for Acts 1 and 2 of this political drama. Other July 26 public speakers also present Aug. 2, were Stevie Hubbard and Gene Kilby.

But in prefacing his opposition to the Resolution as worded, Lloyd reiterated that he believes he has found legal precedent in the 1937 Town Charter under “Policing Powers” to authorize the municipal authority to legally forbid employment policies regarding public health matters, including vaccination mandates.

“In the form, this is written, it is asking me to express the opposite legal position of the one I articulated on Monday,” Lloyd said of his July 26th meeting defense of his ordinance proposal made in front of a full Warren County Government Center meeting room of around 150 people. Six citizens were present to observe council’s August 2 Special Meeting.

And while it appears a majority of his colleagues are siding with the Town legal staff on the issue, Mayor Holloway did note that part of the Resolution initiative is to seek a second legal opinion, well third if you count policy attorney Lloyd’s, on the matter. The page-and-a-half Resolution’s final paragraph addresses the sought-after legal ruling on applicable state law:

“BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that if a Court of Competent Jurisdiction finally adjudicates that localities do have the authority and jurisdiction to enact and regulate businesses and entities from mandating its employees and applicants for employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations (That is not a typo, that is the way it reads), that the proposed Ordinance (Lloyd’s failed one) shall be reconsidered.”

Click here for the full Resolution 

But pending such a state court, likely Virginia State Supreme Court, ruling, Thompson said she feared as with the previous week’s ordinance proposal, passage would give employees of Valley Health and other businesses in town opposed to being vaccinated, a false sense of security that they are somehow legally protected against termination, which she asserted neither a town ordinance nor resolution passage would accomplish at this point in a challenge of state legal authority on the matter.

Mayor Holloway led council in bidding a fond farewell to IT/Public Info Director Todd Jones, who is taking his IT ‘hat’ across town to the WCGC.

See the approximately 12-minute discussion, prior to adjournment to a closed meeting for “Personnel” matters, in the Town video. Also, Monday prior to the meeting, council and the mayor bid an affectionate farewell to IT and Public Information Director Todd Jones, who is leaving for the IT job across town with Warren County.