Pittsylvania County group wants RIFA board declared void

A group of Pittsylvania County residents suing the Board of Supervisors wants the county’s ordinance that established the Danville-Pittsylvania Regional Industrial Facility Authority (RIFA) declared void.

RIFA is the group that develops city-county economic development projects using taxpayer money. RIFA owns the 3,700-acre Berry Hill Road industrial mega park site in southwestern Pittsylvania County, among other local projects.

Nancy Barbour Smith, Karen Maute, Andrew Lester, George Stanhope and Carolyn A. Gibson amended their complaint against the county Tuesday in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court, saying the Board of Supervisors violated state law when it failed to give adequate public notice before it adopted the ordinance creating RIFA in 2001.

County Attorney John Light said Thursday he had not received the filing and declined to comment on the matter. RIFA attorney Glenn Pulley could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The amended civil complaint also claims the Board of Supervisors went against its normal practice of publishing legal notices in the Chatham Star-Tribune, a weekly newspaper located in the county seat, and instead published it in the Danville Register & Bee on Sept. 23 and 30, 2001, a mere eight-day notice before the county’s Oct. 1, 2001 decision to pass the ordinance creating RIFA.

State law requires the county give public notice of an ordinance’s passage once a week for two successive weeks before it’s passed, the amendment alleges.

Their amendment also claims the state law disallowing residents in Virginia Planning District 12, which includes Pittsylvania County, from being appointed to serve on the RIFA board is unconstitutional. The amendment asks the court to strike that part of state law and declare it unconstitutional.  

Residents in 18 of the state’s 21 planning districts are qualified to serve on RIFA boards of directors, the plaintiffs claim. But in planning districts 10, 11 and 12, “‘only members of the appointing governing body of each member locality shall be appointed to the board,’” the plaintiff allege, again citing state law.

Virginia has been divided into planning districts since 1968. Each planning district includes elected officials and citizens appointed to the respective planning district commission by local governments that are commission members.

Smith, Maute, Lester, Stanhope and Gibson filed a lawsuit on Feb. 19 alleging that the appointment of county supervisors to the RIFA board violated the state’s Constitution requiring the entire board — and not just the chairman — make appointments to RIFA.

The lawsuit filed in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court accuses the three people — Kate Beger, Coy Harville and Hank Davis, who have chaired the Board of Supervisors since 2006 — of illegally appointing county supervisors to board.

RIFA has also intervened in the case after its board voted in August to hire Clement & Wheatley to represent it.

The plaintiffs are also challenging the legality of RIFA intervening in the case, saying that RIFA must have a “legally constituted, four member Board of Directors appointed pursuant” to state law in order to do so.

The RIFA board has two members each — as well as one alternate each — from the Board of Supervisors and Danville City Council.