Blogs

In April and May, VCOG surveyed its members and supporters about their views of FOIA -- what problems they encounter, what works, what doesn’t work. 

Fees are a never-ending struggle between government and records requesters. Virginia FOIA says: government can “make reasonable charges not to exceed its actual cost incurred in  accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for the requested records.”

The Virginia Supreme Court just confirmed that government can charge for the time it takes to review -- and, by implication, redact and decide that a record is exempt  -- so now there’s a little more guidance (for better or for worse) on when a charge for labor can be imposed.

A Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that state legislators cannot witthhold the names and email addresses of constituents who contact them.

Elected officials often justify their decision to meet serially in groups of two based on the fact that they're only talking, they're not making a decision. They won't make the decision, they say, until the public meeting. The problem is: there's no bright line between the discussion and the decision. And without at least some measure of access to the discussion, the public is often left stuneed by the decision.

I’ve written up a short primer for the Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors and School Board.

The two have been at odds over a BOS member’s request for salary data and other records from the school board. The school board has said it will take 14 hours of staff time and cost around $700 to get the salary data because of the financial software the board uses. Neighboring localities charge $0 for the same salary information and some use off-the-shelf management tools like Excel.

Anyway, here’s the primer.

To the BOS member requesting records:

We've all known someone who has either been foolish enough or unlucky enough to have to move from the Commonwealth to one of the lesser 49 states. 

If you want to be transparent, then don't hide your plans.

This week I got yet another reason to love the Library of Virginia and, most especially, their dedicated records analysts. A very small cadre of helpful friendly folks handle records-management questions from every locality and state agency in the Commonwealth. How they accomplish as much as they do and still retain their sunny demeanor is well beyond me.

Anyway, this week they released a new service on their website. In the Library's words,