Advisory Council

Nothing in FOIA prohibits the release of the name of a juvenile shot and killed by a police officer, but §16.1-301 appears to serve as a broad prohibition against the release of law-enforcement records relating to juvniles.

a list of websites and keywords blocked by the school district's computer network firewall may be exempt from disclosure because those records may reveal the design and/or function of part of the school's security system.

personnel files at most governmental agencies are available to the subject of the records, but not if the subject is the employee of an educational agency.

Nothing in FOIA prohibits the release of the name of a juvenile shot and killed by a police officer, but §16.1-301 appears to serve as a broad prohibition against the release of law-enforcement records relating to juvniles.

School board's motion to go into closed session complied with FOIA's three-part test for such motions. County's vague reference to affirm a recommendation on a personnel matter identified by number rather than by name or position did not comport with FOIA's requirement that votes taken after reconvening after a closed meeting must describe the substance of the action.

The issue of whether a private entity that receives less than 66 percent of its budget from governmental sources is principally supported by public funds must be considered on a case-by-case basis. The receipt by a private entity of public money derived from arm's length transactions, without any other source of public funds, should not be included in determining the private entity's status as a public body under FOIA. As such, the Peninsula SPCA is not a 'public body' and therefore is not subject to the records and meeting requirements of FOIA.

A task force created by a mayor-elect is not a public body subject to FOIA, as the Mayor-elect is not an official covered by FOIA until he takes office.

The Virginia Board of Bar examiners has discretion under §54.1-108 to withhold the passing score an individual made on the bar exam, even when it is the subject individual making the request. The Virginia Board of Bar Examiners can elect to withhold aggregate data on bar exam results under the board's broad grant of authority under §54.1-3922. The FOI Advisory Council does not have authority to determine whether an agency has abused its discretion in withholding information it is legally entitled to withhold.

FOIA requests and responses should be clearly communicated and shold avoid editorial comments so that the process does not become adversarial. Minutes of state agencies created prior to July 1, 2004, may be inadequate representations of what transpired in a meeting; a public body is not required to recreate the actions of a pre-July 1, 2004, meeting in revised minutes.

A motion to go into closed meetings to discuss 'issues relating to a specifically named individual' is too vague to identify either the subject matter under discussion or the purpose of the discussion. Though a meeting might have been closed without the proper procedure, votes taken after the meeting, provided they were recorded in public, are valid.