Suggested Procedural Rules for Local Appointed Boards

Appointed boards are a vital part of local government in North Carolina. This book provides model procedural rules for their meetings.  The model rules cover, among many other topics, the organizational meeting, open meetings law requirements, the role of the presiding officer, agenda preparation and approval, substantive and procedural motions, voting, and public hearings.  Legal and practical issues are analyzed in the comments that follow each rule.  Extensive footnotes point out statutory procedural requirements that are specific to certain appointed boards.

This handbook replaces Suggested Rules of Procedure for Small Local Government Boards, a popular publication first authored by Bonnie E. Davis and revised and expanded by A. Fleming Bell, II. The widespread use of that publication shows that it succeeded in providing local government boards with a concise set of model rules that they found helpful to their work.

This handbook incorporates material from Suggested Rules of Procedure for Small Local Government Boards, though the two publications differ in significant ways. Intervening changes in the law have been taken into account. Many of the rules and the accompanying explanatory comments have been substantially rewritten. New rules have been added, and some rules have been eliminated, combined with other rules, or divided into separate rules. The goal throughout has been to make the rules easier to understand and apply whenever possible.

Extensive footnotes also distinguish this handbook from Suggested Rules of Procedure for Small Local Government Boards. City councils and boards of county commissioners enjoy broad discretion to decide the structure and functions of most local appointed boards; however, some of those appointed boards are subject to their own statutory procedural requirements. The footnotes attempt to document those requirements, particularly when they could make it necessary for a board to modify one or more of the model rules. 

This handbook focuses exclusively on local appointed boards. An array of statutory procedural requirements peculiar to city councils or boards of county commissioners do not apply to local appointed boards. For this reason, the School of Government has published a separate volume of model procedural rules for city councils and another for boards of county commissioners. This handbook does not include procedures for quasi-judicial hearings. Local appointed boards with responsibility for those proceedings can find legal and practical guidance in Quasi-Judicial Handbook: A Guide for Boards Making Development Regulation Decisions (2017) by Adam Lovelady and David W. Owens. Thanks are due to our colleagues Frayda S. Bluestein, who reviewed the manuscript and provided many valuable suggestions, and Rebecca Badgett, who helped identify pertinent statutes and checked citations. We are likewise grateful to Melissa Twomey for her fine edits and to the other professionals who assisted in bringing this handbook to publication.