A former Pulaski town councilman charged with four misdemeanors received a deferred disposition on Friday on all charges.
Michael Reis, a former member of the Pulaski Town Council, was charged with three class 1 misdemeanors and one class 3 misdemeanor in 2024 relating to alleged ethics and conflict of interest law violations in his role as a public official between January 2021 and April of that year.
He received a deferred disposition on all four charges on Friday without an admission or plea. Reis said he was “extremely happy” with the outcome in an email on Tuesday.
A deferred disposition allows the court to withhold imposition of a sentence and place conditions on the defendant that, when met, allow for the charges to be dismissed, according to the Virginia State Crime Commission. Reis’ four charges will be dismissed if he remains in good standing with the court for the next six months: through Nov. 7.
“These charges were instigated and enabled by certain people in our community who care more about their public image than the public trust, who use their position, power and influence to discourage public involvement in matters affecting the public and who hide behind the very same laws I was accused of breaking,” he said. He declined to name the people he referred to.
“During the past years I have learned that many more people than I have been bullied and abused for raising issues of public importance. Despite this revealing experience, I will continue to ask questions and speak out on matters of community importance and to use my time and effort to support others who are unfairly targeted for doing the same,” he added.
The charges against Reis stemmed from his role in facilitating the appropriation of public funds to benefit the renovation of the Calfee Community & Cultural Center, a local institution that came to be known as the Calfee Training School when it first was a school for Black children in 1894, and Wide Angle Strategies LLC, a consulting firm with a vested interest in the center.
Reis, an attorney, was first elected to the town council in 2020. He served the remainder of his term on the town council and left that position at the end of 2024, after deciding not to seek reelection.
Reis, who was a registered agent for Calfee CCC and Wide Angle Strategies, was accused of violating several subsections of the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Act, or COIA, after failing to disclose his role and that of his wife, Jill Williams, who had served as the Calfee CCC’s acting co-executive director since 2020 and as the principal consultant to Wide Angle Strategies since 2013.
The assistant commonwealth’s attorneys in Tazewell, who had been tapped as special prosecutors in the case, did not respond to emails or voicemails left in regard to the deferred dispositions.
Reis denied any intentional wrongdoing in April 2024, when the charges were leveled against him. He said he had turned himself in at the magistrate’s office after state police contacted his attorney. He was served and released on his own recognizance.
“Prosecutors have discretion for a reason. Could I have made a mistake in filing? I don’t think I did anything wrong personally. COIA is a confusing statute, even for attorneys. It’s got definitions that don’t always make sense, they are very hypertechnical,” he said during a phone interview with Cardinal News in April 2024.
Allegations of wrongdoing first emerged in a video that was uploaded to YouTube in 2023. The video showed an edited clip of a Pulaski Town Council meeting from Sept. 22, 2022. In it, Reis can be heard presenting a request on behalf of the Calfee CCC to consider applying for a federal grant. Reis said in an email Thursday that he was “simply raising that the request had been made” and that he specifically stated he was not making a motion — a part that he said had been cut from the video.
The council approved the funding request in a subsequent meeting. While Reis abstained from voting on the motion after his wife gave a presentation, he did not publicly disclose his role as a registered agent for both Calfee CCC and Wide Angle Strategies. Reis told Cardinal News in 2024 that his work in this instance was very minor and “more trouble than it’s worth.”