A Botetourt County resident’s lawsuit alleging that the county’s board of supervisors violated the state’s open meetings and open records law when it greenlit a Google data center campus is legally sufficient to move forward, a circuit judge ruled Tuesday.
But after nearly three hours, which featured some testimony and a lot of arguments about the case’s merits, substitute Judge Michael Doucette said court schedule issues forced him to postpone a further hearing on the matter until next week.
Robert Dallas, who lives near the Botetourt Center at Greenfield site, filed suit Nov. 2, seeking to invalidate the county’s economic development performance agreement with the limited liability company behind the project. His case alleges that the county violated the Virginia Freedom of Information Act when it approved documentation advancing the Google project.
Dallas’s suit also asks the court to “rescind all actions” carried out in connection with the June 2025 document.
Respondents in the case are the county, its board of supervisors, its economic development authority and Google-owned Helio Capital LLC.
Julian Harf, representing the county, elicited testimony showing that Google has transferred $2.5 million of a promised $4 million to the county, helping pay for ambulances, fire trucks, heart monitors, body cameras and more. Further testimony showed ground clearing work has already started.
Harf used the testimony to help support a plea filed in response to the suit. He asked the court to find that even if Dallas’ allegations are true, his case is legally insufficient. “Remedies” for a FOIA violation “do not include rescission” of the agreement and its effects, Hart said.
An invalidated agreement would not be the court’s problem, said John Fishwick, who leads Dallas’ legal team. Google, the county and Helio could work out those ramifications among themselves, Fishwick said.
FOIA law calls for a hearing within seven days of a suit’s filing, but it took eight before Doucette could be available. By the time the recently retired Nelson County judge decided in the plaintiff’s favor, the hearing time had bumped up against an already scheduled criminal court docket that included several cases in which jail sentences could be ended.
“I won’t force an inmate to spend one more day in jail,” he said as he told those gathered in the courtroom that the trial would be set for 9 a.m. Monday.
It was unclear why Botetourt County Circuit Judge Joel Branscom was unavailable to hear the case.
According to the suit, the county’s board of supervisors did not disclose on its published agenda that it would be discussing the agreement or a resolution to enact it in a closed meeting on June 24, 2025. After the board returned to public session, it voted 5-0, with no discussion, to approve the resolution and the agreement, after they were added to the agenda during the meeting as so-called “walk-on” items, the case alleges.
After a recess, the board returned to address another walk-on item — announcing the data center project. Yet another item that hadn’t appeared on the agenda was a board resolution approving Google’s agreement with the Western Virginia Water Authority, Dallas alleges.
Harf and Helio’s lawyer, Graham Bryant, told the court that information on the agenda denoted an economic development project in the industrial park, which they argued was the most the board needed to disclose, to protect the negotiations.
Harf said that county officials discussed the matter in detail after the vote, and any violation committed was “technical.” Fishwick said the board sneaked the matter into its meeting that day, part of an atmosphere of secrecy it had developed.
“They treat FOIA like it’s a little technical thing, and they can run roughshod,” Fishwick said, adding that the supervisors’ later announcement of the project was more of a “cheerleading session” than an information share.
