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Land Use Review Board asks Legislature for limited open‑meeting flexibility to allow day‑to‑day collaboration
Summary
The newly constituted Land Use Review Board told the Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that as a five‑member, full‑time board it needs limited flexibility to collaborate on guidance and procedural work outside formal open meetings while reserving all decisions for public sessions.
Jack Hurley, chair of the Land Use Review Board, and Pete Gill, executive director, told the House Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee that the new five‑member board needs limited flexibility to collaborate on technical guidance and procedural work without violating open‑meeting rules.
The board’s leaders said they are committed to keeping decisions and milestone votes in open session but that day‑to‑day tasks — drafting guidance, reviewing regional-plan procedures under Title 24 and editing shared documents — become inefficient if every collaborative exchange requires a warned meeting. “We don't want an exemption from the open meeting law like the PUC has. We don't feel it's necessary. We just need a little bit of flexibility,” Hurley told the committee.
Why this matters: the Land Use Review Board (LURB) has been converted into a full‑time, five‑member panel responsible for administering parts of the Act 250 program and reviewing regional plans. Committee members and counsel discussed how existing open‑meeting rules apply to background work versus deliberations and how a narrowly tailored carve‑out or clearer statutory guidance might allow collaboration without reducing transparency.
Board members said current practice forces them to silo work or repeatedly stop informal exchanges to avoid creating a quorum. “We are conferring with one another on a one‑on‑one basis throughout the week, and in such a way that we aren't considered a committee,” Pete Gill said. The board described concrete work examples: drafting compliance guidelines for regional planning commissions, resolving technical questions such as wastewater criteria and producing shared guidance documents that benefit from lawyer, planner and engineer input.
Committee members raised two constraints: a five‑member board reaches a quorum at three members, and any carve‑out must preserve public notice and decision‑making in open meetings. Representative Nugent asked counsel to clarify what background or staff‑level work is allowed and reminded members that they must avoid “conducting the business of the board in a deliberative fashion” outside warned meetings. Counsel and members discussed possible models — formal working groups, clearer statutory language allowing non‑deliberative collaboration, or limited procedural exemptions — but no statutory change was proposed at the hearing.
The committee ended the item after questions and said it would consider the board’s request as it reviews how open‑meeting law applies to new full‑time boards and commissions.
