Virginia Regulatory Town Hall Guidance Documents

Guidance Documents

Jump down to

What is a guidance document?
How guidance documents are organized on the Town Hall

Instructions for State Users

How to upload a guidance document to the Town Hall
How to determine the applicability of a guidance document
How to edit guidance document information and applicability
How to delete a guidance document
Arrange for the Town Hall to generate the annual filing of your guidance documents with The Virginia Registrar

What is a guidance document?

A "guidance document" is any document developed by a state agency that provides information or guidance of a general nature to agency staff or the public to interpret or implement statutes or the agency's regulations.

Regulations have the force of law and bind regulated entities (i.e., entities that flout regulations can be punished) and the regulator (i.e., the agency/board has to follow its rules or the courts will order the agency/board to do so). Guidance documents, on the other hand, may sometimes bind regulators but do not bind their regulated entities.

According to § 2.2-4001 of the Code of Virginia, agency minutes or documents that pertain only to the internal management of agencies are not guidance documents (or regulations).

How guidance documents are organized on the Town Hall

A guidance document can apply to an agency, board or an individual chapter. Therefore you will find a guidance document tab on the "View Agency", "View Board" and "View Chapter" pages. Once you've clicked on the guidance document tab, documents will be displayed sorted by Document ID. Document ID is an alpha/numeric field assigned by the agency (up to 20 characters). The agency can adopt whatever format or coding strategy they wish to order the documents. You can optionally sort the documents by their revision date or by their applicability by clicking on the column heading.

For those agencies with many guidance documents you can also click on a small graphic to pull down a search box so you can enter a keyword or phrase and select only those matching guidance documents.

How to upload a guidance document onto Town Hall

After signing in, use the drop down menu to go to My Agency Boards.
Click on the Guidance Document tab.
Click on the New Guidance Document link.
Complete the form that appears on the screen (similar to that pictured below), including document applicability.
In order to better organize your guidance documents, you may assign each document an identification #. Up to 20 characters or numbers may be used. However, no special characters other than the underscore, period, or dash may be used.
For the document itself, click on the Browse button and select an Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word document from your system.
For the "Latest Revision" date, please use the following format: 03/04/2004. The "Latest Revision" date defaults to today's date but may be changed manually.
Under "Explanation or citations," indicate the Code of Virginia or federal law or regulation citation that provides the authority for the guidance document, if applicable.
When finished, click "Save" at the bottom of the screen. You may be prompted to wait a few seconds while your document is converted to PDF. If this happens, please wait a few seconds and then click continue.

How to determine the applicability of a guidance document

In determining applicability, consider whether the guidance document applies to:

This agency, in general, but not to a board or regulation;
A particular board, more than one board of the agency, or all boards of your agency;
One regulation of a board, more than one regulation of a board, or all regulations of a board.

Using the selection tree that appears for your agency, indicate the agency, board(s), and/or regulations that the guidance document applies to. The Guidance Document can apply to all boards, selected boards, or one or more selected chapters of a board.

Below is a list of guidance documents that shows all three levels of applicability: (1) applying to all boards for an agency, and (2) applying to all chapters for a selected board and (3) applying to just selected chapters within a board. You can sort the list on the screen by just clicking on the column header. This list is currently sorted by title.

guidance documents

How to edit guidance document information and applicability

After signing in, use the drop down menu to go to My Agency Boards.
Click on the Guidance Document tab.
You will see a list of all guidance documents. Click on the guidance document you wish to edit.
Click on Edit Document. Make changes as appropriate.
When finished, click Save at the bottom the screen.

How to delete a guidance document

After signing in, use the drop down menu to go to My Agency Boards.
Click on the Guidance Document tab.
You will see a list of all guidance documents. Click on the guidance document you wish to delete.
Click on Edit Document.
Go to bottom of the screen and click the Delete button. You will get a prompt asking you to confirm that you wish to delete the document.

Arrange for the Town Hall to generate the annual filing of your guidance documents with the Registrar's office.

If your agency has posted a complete list of all guidance documents on the Town Hall and the steps below are taken by December 15, the Town Hall will generate the annual report of guidance documents required by the Registrar.

If you choose to file through the Town Hall, your agency's filing will be structured as follows: (1) name of agency, (2) introductory paragraph, (3) list of guidance documents pertaining to the agency (including document ID # (if available), name of document, revision date), and (4) the list of guidance documents pertaining to specific boards or regulations under the agency (subdivided by board).

In order to automatically file your agency's guidance document list with the Registrar's Office via the Town Hall:

Only the agency coordinator for your agency has the authority to perform these actions

Step 1:  Make certain that your list of guidance documents on the Town Hall is complete and accurate.

Step 2:  Choose Agency from the left menu bar and click on your agency.

Step 3:  Click on the "Edit agency" link.

Step 4:  Check the box to "File guidance documents online."

Step 5:  Include the following information (in narrative form) in the "Introductory guidance document language" field:

Name, address, and telephone number of the staff person(s) to contact for obtaining copies.
Name, address, and telephone number of the staff person(s) to contact for asking interpretive or implementation questions.
Name, address, and telephone number of the staff person(s) to contact for asking interpretive or implementation questions.
Costs associated with obtaining printed copies of these documents from the agency. If there is no charge, so indicate. If the cost varies depending on the document, so indicate.
State that your guidance documents are available electronically for no charge on the Town Hall.
Location for viewing copies of your guidance documents.
Any other information that you think would be helpful to the public.

Step 6: Click on the "Save" button.