LGA Honors Ad Hoc Committee on Collective Bargaining with Special Projects Award

The Walter C. Erwin, III Special Projects Award recognizes LGA’s members who have performed work on an LGA project or other project of significant importance to the LGA or local government generally. The purpose of this award is to encourage greater service to LGA and/or local government and to honor members whose projects have been especially effective and successful.

Walter C. Erwin, III served as the City Attorney for Lynchburg for 41 years, from 1980 until he retired in 2021. He served on the board of directors of LGA from 1998 until 2003, during which time he held the office of treasurer, vice-president, and president. He received LGA’s highest honor, the Finnegan Whiting Award, in 2007. Walter freely shared his encyclopedic knowledge of local government law on LGA’s forums, where his humor was also in evidence. A frequent presenter at LGA conferences, his sessions were always one of the highest rated at those conferences. In July of 2020, the board of directors renamed the Special Projects Award in honor of Walter C. Erwin, III for his embodiment of the principles of this award that recognizes recipients whose work impacts our association and local government.

For Spring 2022, LGA is pleased to present the Erwin Special Project Award to LGA’s Ad Hoc Committee on Collective Bargaining. The work of the Ad Hoc Collective Bargaining Committee spanned months in 2021 while its members were still in the midst of advising their clients on the ongoing challenges of operating in a global pandemic. Each member of this Committee dedicated time and talents to a myriad of “assignments” through subcommittees, engagement of UVA law students to assist in research, zoom meetings to discuss issues, sharing of client experiences, and most notably drafting and review of a comprehensive white paper on collective bargaining that was shared with the LGA membership. The product of the Committee, the Collective Bargaining Decision Points for Public Employers, is a priceless tool for local government attorneys, covering the “lifespan” of collective bargaining beginning with “Preliminary Considerations,” a discussion of whether to allow collective bargaining, through “Crafting the Ordinance,” advice on how to develop a collective bargaining ordinance. LGA is proud to recognize the following individuals for their guidance on this new and unchartered issue for public employers:  

Chair, Cynthia E. Hudson, County of Albemarle and Sands Anderson PC
Wade T. Anderson, Prince William County Public Schools
Adonica Baine, City of Newport News
Derek G. Challenger, City of Portsmouth
Theresa J. Fontana, County of Loudoun
Andrew “Andy” Fox, City of Norfolk
Megan E. Kelly, County of Prince William
Brandi A. Law, City of Hampton
Timothy M. McConville, Praemia Law PLLC
William E. “Will” Moore, Jr., County of Spotsylvania
Sharon E. Pandak, Town of Dumfries and Pandak & Taves, PLLC
Marjorie A. Smith, City of Virginia Beach
Jeffrey D. “Jeff ” Wilson, Pender & Coward, P.C. 

Although ineligible to be recipients of the award, LGA thanks law students Chance McCraw and Ritchie Vaughan of the State and Local Government Policy Clinic at the University of Virginia School of Law and Professor Andrew Block for the invaluable foundational survey research and other contributions to the committee’s work product.