Chair’s Message

I am drafting this column on what would have been the first day of the Section’s combined Land Use Institute (LUI) and State & Local Government Law Spring Meeting in Tampa, Florida. COVID-19 obviously made that live meeting an impossibility. So, we pivoted. Instead, the 2020 LUI and State & Local Government Law Spring Conference will be entirely online, covering the same topics and with the same great panelists.

LUI, which is in its 34th year, will be presented over three consecutive days, May 12–14. It will include updates from national experts on a wide range of issues relating to land use, as well as both nuts-and-bolts presentations geared toward those less experienced in land use law and more in-depth sessions focusing on cutting-edge topics. CLE credit is available.

The following week, May 19–21, the CLE programming will continue during the Virtual State & Local Government Law Spring Conference. It will focus on the impacts of social media, electronic communication, and other technology on state and local government operations. Programs will range from cybersecurity to the impacts on privacy of social media monitoring, from the ethical implications of electronic communications to limitations on public employee use of social media and the First Amendment.

More information about the two programs and how to register is provided on pages 4–6 of this issue of the newsletter.

Unfortunately, these online programs cannot replicate the value of the physical gathering that had been planned. But I hope that we will have that opportunity again in the coming months.

In the meantime, the online programs will provide an opportunity for us to include those of you who may not have had the time or resources to travel to Tampa for a live meeting. Indeed, we are currently maximizing online offerings for all of you, including live-streaming programs on elections, COVID-19 related issues, and other topics, as well as providing access to a library of past programs on a wide range of topics.

If there are additional topics you would like to see included, let our CLE director Jessica Bacher ([email protected]) or me know. For instance, what issues are you currently facing? What do you foresee as the issues you will face when we begin to experience the “downslope” of the pandemic curve?

The Section will again have live meetings, as soon as it is safe to do so. For now, however, we will live-stream; we will videoconference; we will teleconference; we will stay in touch in whatever manner we can.

Feel free to email ([email protected]) or call me (850/513-3612) with your input. I look forward to hearing from you.