Paul Williams will not be subject to a recall election as mayor of Glasgow, according to a ruling from Rockbridge County Circuit Court earlier this month.
The order, which was filed on Sept. 14, was based on the recommendation of Rockbridge County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jared Moon.
In a letter to the judge on the same day that the order was entered, Moon noted that a petition to remove an elected official must, according to state code, “state with reasonable accuracy and detail the grounds or reasons for removal,” which he determined the petition did not do.
The petition, which was filed with the court on Aug. 21, listed three reasons for Williams’ removal based on the language of the state code: misuse of office and violation of meeting decorum; neglect of duty and misrepresentation of official actions; and material adverse effects. A separate affidavit filed on Aug. 17 by Glasgow resident Mary Reynolds provided more specificity to each of those reasons, but Moon determined that the information contained in that document could not be considered, citing several elements of it that disqualified it from consideration under Virginia state code.
Some of the reasons related to the contents of the document, including the fact that it does not identify Williams by name and refers only to the “The Mayor of the Town of Glasgow,” and the fact that it does not affirm that Reynolds, as the circulator of the petition, is a legal adult resident of the United States with the right to vote. The fact that Reynolds submitted the affidavit and circulated the petition also disqualified it, as did the fact that the affidavit was not notarized. Additionally, the information contained within it was not included on the petition itself.
As a result, Moon concluded that the petition “merely proffers legal conclusions that mirror the language [of the state code] without a single factual allegation” and that “valid grounds do not exist to remove Mr. Williams from his elected position.”
