The FOIA Council has had its plate full this summer, studying issues affecting access and the Freedom of Information Act.

Some of the issues are not particularly problematic, more matters of degree or of detail, like figuring out the right language to use for the amount of advance notice a public body must have prior to a FOIA lawsuit’s filing.

Other issues are much more charged, including access to law enforcement records.

Also notable, and in some ways the most important to VCOG, is what if anything to do about citizens who use FOIA as a club to intentionally gum up the works of a government agency.

I’ve lost count of the articles and editorials I’ve read over the past several months. I’ve even lost count of the localities or boards.

The Albemarle School Board stands out only because it may be the most recent (and, truth be told, because a faithful VCOG member of many years alerted me to it).

So, there’s a vacancy on a publicly elected board -- county supervisors, town council, school board, etc. Assuming that the seat cannot remain vacant until election time, the board will appoint someone to fill the empty seat, choosing from among applicants who have expressed interest or other recommended individuals.

From time to time I get calls from reporters who are doing stories about Virginia’s FOIA or public access laws in general. Invariably, I’ll be asked how Virginia rates against other states: is it better, worse, average?

When asked, I tend to limp along in response, hedging here, qualifying there, because it’s really tough to say.

There’s shock value in being among the worst FOIA laws in the country, and there’s pride in being among the best. I know Virginia’s law is in neither extreme. The answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

The difficulty, of course, is that records and meetings laws are so very different from state to state. No two states have identical procedures for asking for records or for going into closed session. No two states have identical exemptions. No two states have the same enforcement mechanisms. And no two states have the same provisions elsewhere in their state law annals that may affect disclosure.

The upshot is that there are portions of Virginia’s law (and every other state’s laws) that are “good,” and portions that I wish were otherwise.

Here are a few things I like about Virginia’s law: