No joy in Court of Appeals on attempt to appeal personnel grievance under city policy

In Styles v. City of Colonial Heights, the Virginia Court of Appeals held that it had no jurisdiction under Va. Code 17.1-405 for an appeal of a city grievance case, even though the statute authorizes appeals from state grievance proceedings pursuant to Va. Code 2.2-3000, et seq., and the city grievance procedure under Va. Code 15.2-1507 is supposed to be in accord with the state procedures under Title 2.2.

This sort of reminds of that rebel flag lunch box case, where the en banc court held something like just because the S.C. law tries to incorporate by reference some aspect of the federal law does not make it a federal question, similarly the connection between the local grievance procedure and the state grievance procedure does not make a local grievance into a state grievance. (Hmm, not a very fun analogy.)