The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors may have violated state law in shutting out the public from a meeting last month to discuss a handful of Dulles rail policy and financial matters, documents provided to The Examiner show.

The papers related to the March 12 meeting strengthen arguments that supervisors had little legal standing to discuss the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project behind closed doors. Closed meetings are allowed under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act in a narrow set of circumstances, none of which cover basic policy discussions.

“The Fairfax Board of Supervisors should not be having a closed session to discuss concerns about the rail to Dulles project,” Virginia Coalition for Open Government Executive Director Frosty Landon said. “There is no exemption [from open meeting] ... that permits closed-door discussion of strategy.”

The meeting came just weeks before the state and Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority approved an agreement with contractors to build the first 11.6-mile phase of the rail, an agreement that puts the total cost of the first phase at as much as $2.7 billion.

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The entire project is already mired in accusations of government secrecy, which have primarily been leveled at the airports authority and the commonwealth, who are overseeing the rail extension.

Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman, an outspoken critic of how both agencies have managed the project, brought a long list of grievances and fiscal questions into the March 12 closed session.

He worried that the entire project was being reduced in scope to meet the federal government’s cost efficiency standards, with some elements being struck temporarily with the intent to restore them later. Kauffman wondered how those items and other big-ticket costs would be paid for, among other concerns. State officials have denied striking components of the project.

“What legal and related political strategies should we pursue if a deal, interim agreement or understanding is negotiated that is not in our county’s best financial interest?” Kauffman wrote.

The county cites two provisions of the Freedom of Information Act in its justification for entering a closed session to discuss rail to Dulles. One allows for consultation with legal counsel for “actual or probable” litigation or “specific legal matters.” The other allows for the board to discuss a public contract where an open discussion would hurt their negotiating or bargaining position.

Kauffman called all the issues he raised “legally related questions.”

Loren Cochran of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, however, criticized both of the county’s justifications after reviewing the meeting documents.

“I did not see how any of the exemptions that they have cited previously to The Examiner were applicable, and how they could have called a [closed] session and closed out the public from the matters that were apparently discussed on these documents,” he said.

The board cannot legally use the claim of contract negotiations, Cochran said, because it was not directly involved in the talks to build the Metrorail extension. He also challenged the legal justification, because the board is not facing any litigation related to the rail project.

wflook@dcexaminer.com