Staff proposes ordinance rewrite to let Charlottesville oversight office operate without full board

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Charlottesville staff presented a redlined rewrite of the police civilian oversight ordinance at a Sept. 11 joint meeting of the City Council and the Police Civilian Oversight Board, proposing to formally establish an Office of Police Civilian Oversight and to give the office's director greater operational authority to act on the board’s behalf when the board cannot vote. The presentation was led by James Walker, acting executive director for the oversight office.

City staff said the package focuses on the office’s operations: renaming the position “director” to match city practice, moving director duties to the front of the ordinance, clarifying who administers access to department records and giving the director explicit authority to carry out audits, investigations and other oversight activities even when the board lacks a quorum.

The revisions aim to reduce procedural barriers that staff said have stopped the office from functioning in practice. “The goal is to clean up some of the language, the wording that restricts the office from carrying forward actions,” James Walker said during the presentation. Walker said many of the proposed changes mirror language used in the city’s Office of Human Rights ordinance.

Under the draft, the governing body would still retain ultimate authority but would delegate detailed approval of the office’s operating procedures to the city manager to streamline review. Walker said operating procedures amount to an “80‑page document” with internal inconsistencies that make council-level approval unwieldy. The proposed change would keep the City…