Newsletter

The followin are samples of questions Virginia citizens (and a few from outside the state) have asked us via the “Ask Us a FOIA Question” feature on our Web site, www.opengovva.org. We answer an average of seven questions per week. Questions were answered by VCOG Associate Director Megan Rhyne. The following questions have been edited…

Leigh Purdum of Madison County received VCOG’s Laurence E. Richardson award for individual citizen contributions to open government. The award honors the memory of a longtime Charlottesville broadcaster and VCOG founding director.Purdum, a former sheriff’s office employee, won a landmark court decision against Madison County Sheriff Eric J. Weaver for willfully violating the state’s Freedom…

The Virginia Coalition for Open Government held its annual conference May 22-23 in Fredericksburg.The conference kicked off with a dinner May 22 honoring the recipients of this year’s FOI award winners: Leigh Purdum and Laurence Hammack (see story, page 9). The keynote speaker was Sen. Edward Houck (D-Spotsylvania), the chair of the FOI Advisory Council,…

GLOUCESTER – The Gloucester Board of Supervisors played “fast and loose” with the state’s FOI laws, county Commonwealth Attorney Robert D. Hicks said in a February report on the board’s cloak-and-dagger firing of the county manager and immediate hiring of the board chair’s friend, Lacy Smith, as a replacement. Though Hicks said there wasn’t a…

Council opinion summariesIn AO-11-07, the council concluded that the sheriff of Madison County had to release the names of the citizens he appointed to a citizens’ advisory committee. The sheriff cited §2.2-3705.1(10) (as the Attorney General did in his opinion about releasing the names of concealed weapon permit holders to justify withholding personal information, like…

By Jennifer PerkinsPicture if you will, Jane Q. Public wants to get some information on how the legislature in Virginia operates.  Particularly, she is interested in the committees: names of the committees, names of their members, what their jurisdiction is, what kind of timelines the General Assembly has on bill introduction and passage, maybe a…

John Edwards wins Press Association awardJohn B. Edwards, VCOG board member and editor and publisher of The Smithfield Times, has been named the winner of the Virginia Press Association’s 21st annual D. Lathan Mims Award for Editorial Leadership in the Community. Edwards previously won the award in 1998-99 and 2002. He has won the Mims…

The latter half of 2007 was good to Virginia citizens exercising their rights under the Freedom of Information Act, with the pro-access rulings of the Supreme Court and two circuit courts.John Fenter asked for records authorizing signs around the Norfolk airport roadways that vehicles were subject to search. Within five days, as FOIA requires, the…

The 2008 Virginia state legislative session was not a good one for defenders of freedom of information. Bills that would have improved public access to information died. Bills that chipped away at Virginia’s FOIA through small exemptions passed into law with little opposition from lawmakers. To make matters worse, a couple of really bad access-damaging…

By Frosty Landon, Former VCOG executive directorVirginia’s state legislators want us to believe there’s more openness than ever before in the “oldest continuous law-making body in the New World.”It’s hard to argue the point. A generation ago, whole committees still met secretly — so secretly, in fact, that even legislators themselves could not find out…

By Bill Atkinson, Virginia Press AssociationWho would have thought that “the Grim Reaper” would have such a positive vocal tone?Jennifer L. Perkins, who spent four years on Capitol Hill as assistant and counsel to two senators, is the new executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government.Perkins, who assumed her new duties July 1,…

Hopkins named VCOG president; Moncure fills McMasters vacancyDr. Wat Hopkins (left), professor of mass communications at Virginia Tech, is the new president of Virginia’s Coalition for Open Government, succeeding Paul McMasters.McMasters retired this year, after serving as First Amendment Ombudsman for the Freedom Forum. He served four years as VCOG’s president.Tom Moncure, a former Stafford…

by Megan RhyneThough many thought that the compromise hammered out by a FOI Advisory Council subcommittee last summer on electronic meetings was to be the last word on the subject for at least a few legislative sessions, several bills seeking to relax the rules even further were introduced during the ’07 session.The evolution of the…

by Matt Haynes, VCOG InternThe Freedom of Information Advisory Council has issued six opinions from January to early July. The opinions addressed a variety of issues, including the ability of a public body to close meetings, to charge for redactions, and to refuse to disclose certain portions of an electronic mail message.AO-01-07 answered a question…

by Megan RhyneIn February an Albemarle County resident contacted the Coalition for help getting the accident report for an incident involving her parked car and a drunken driver. Though she knew the driver was eventually arrested, the resident wanted to know the driver’s name, the charge filed against him and/or the court date.She called the…

Poquoson, James City County, Hampton offer good Web sitesDaily Press editorialThe Internet is a great tool for keeping up with government, and keeping an eye on what it’s up to. Specifically, it can be a great way to find out what your local governing body – city council or board of supervisors – is getting…

Two long-simmering FOIA cases came to an end since the last issue of NEWS.In mid-January, Culpeper County agreed to pony up $93,000 in legal fees to the lawyers for Virginia’s press, who won a unanimous Virginia Supreme Court ruling against the county.The county board of supervisors begrudgingly approved the payment on Jan. 16. Despite the…

BEDFORD COUNTY — Just a few months before voters would elect a new member of the board of supervisors, the sitting supervisors slammed the door on their deliberations to name an interim member. A dozen citizens stepped forward to fill the seat, but the board shut the public out of the process. For several days,…

Poole, VPAP honoredThe Virginia Public Access Project received the annual Excellence in Government Award for Public Information, sponsored by the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Policy at Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU Dean Robert Holsworth presented the award at a luncheon attended by more than 500 people at the Richmond Convention Center. Since…

The panel formed to grapple with the fallout from Seung-Hui Cho’s murderous rampage on the Virginia Tech campus April 16 faced a serious stumbling block: access to Cho’s mental-health records.Retired Col. Gerald Massengill, who pulled an embattled Department of Game and Inland Fisheries out of the muck of a public-accountability scandal, headed the panel and…

Police compliance triples, but many localities still withhold public records or improperly ask requesters who they are and why they want the recordsIn September 2006, like they did in 1998, reporters from newspapers across the state converged on all 134 cities and counties asking for public records under the Freedom of Information Act. As in…