Types of Public Hearings
There are two types of public hearings, legislative and quasi-judicial, and it is important to understand the distinction between them.
Legislative public hearings. The purpose of a legislative public hearing is to obtain public input on legislative decisions on matters of policy. Legislative public hearings are required by state law when a city or county addresses such matters as comprehensive land use plans or the annual or biennial budget. Legislative public hearings are generally less formal than quasi-judicial public hearings. They do not involve the legal rights of specific, private parties in a contested setting, but rather affect a wider range of citizens or perhaps the entire jurisdiction. The wisdom of legislative decisions reached as a result of such hearings is not second-guessed by the courts; if challenged, they are reviewed only to determine if they are constitutional or violate state law. For example, a court will not review whether the basic budgetary decisions made by a city council or county commission were correctly made. On the other hand, comprehensive plans in Growth Management Act (GMA) counties may be reviewed by a growth management hearings board, and maybe later by a court, for consistency with the GMA.
Quasi-judicial public hearings, unlike legislative ones, involve the legal rights of specific parties, and the decisions made as a result of such hearings must be based upon and supported by the "record" developed at the hearing. Quasi-judicial hearings are subject to stricter procedural requirements than legislative hearings. Most quasi-judicial hearings held by local government bodies involve land use matters, including site-specific rezones, preliminary plats, variances, and conditional uses.