Virginia Coalition for Open Government

FOI Blog

  • This dog won’t hunt

    You don’t have to have a dog in the hunt to be ticked by this story This story should really bother you. It should bother you, not because you know any of the people involved, the city or the situation that prompted it. It should bother you on principle: A court order was secured to prohibit…

  • ICYMI: when FOIA, archiving, former governors and budget cuts collide

    Want records from past governors? Get ready to wait.  by Robert Zullo, Richmond Times-Dispatch, March 31, 2018 Want emails, voicemails, memos or other documents from former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration that easily should have been obtainable under open records law while he was in office? Get ready to wait. Maybe for a decade. That’s what…

  • Community journalism essential to transparency

    by Jeff Lester “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Before he became a Supreme Court justice, Louis Brandeis wrote those words more than a century ago in a Harper’s Weekly article on the need to uncover corruption in the nation’s financial system. Since then, advocates for open government have invoked the metaphor…

  • Guest column: History through public records

    by BOB GIBSON In recent months, Virginia’s best known presidential plantations added enhanced public tours that more realistically explore the lives and the many contributions of enslaved workers who built Monticello, Montpelier, the University of Virginia and much of the South. James Madison’s Montpelier and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello offer new tours that look at plantation…

  • Not the worst, but not the best, either

    When I get together with my counterparts in other states — such as the Florida First Amendment Foundation, Open Oregon, the New England First Amendment Coalition, or the Ohio Coalition for Open Government — I often imagine us as residents of a nursing home sharing our ailments. We nod and tsk-tsk as we exchange tales…

  • Jan 30 subcommittee chart

    Below is a chart of positions VCOG is taking on bills being heard by a FOIA-centric House subcommittee today, Jan. 30, 2018

  • The judiciary’s really not that different

    GUEST COLUMN: Practicing lawyers have reason to want to keep judges happy and to fear judges’ displeasure. Accordingly, VCOG agreed to post this contribution from one of its lawyer members anonymously.   In 2013, the Supreme Court of Virginia wrote that the benefits of public access to judicial proceedings have been recognized for hundreds of…

  • An awkward position

    Tuesday, the FOIA and procurement subcommittee of the House General Laws Committee considered 21 bills, including 12 that are on VCOG’s watch list.   Several of the bills were FOIA Council recommendations, all of which passed. VCOG opposed one of those recommendations: HB904, which creates a trade secrets exemption that extends not just to trade…

  • UPDATED: Letter to governor re: Charlottesville rally information

    VCOG urges the governor’s office to be more forthcoming with information related to the Aug. 11-12 Unite the Right rallies in Charlottesville.

  • Time should be on your side

    By Shelley Kimball Time. In the world of public records requests, this can be an obstacle both to the requester and the records custodian. And this is not just an issue in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I have been conducting research on the interactions between requesters and custodians for years. One constant complaint from records…

  • Tracking legislation at the General Assembly

    By Megan Rhyne   (This is the second in a two-part series on tracking proposed legislation. Read the first part here.)   For my last blog entry I wrote about how you at home can watch the legislative process unfold: how the committee system is structured, how a committee meeting works, how to watch the…

  • How to watch the General Assembly in action

    By Megan Rhyne (This is the first in a two-part series on tracking proposed legislation. Find the second part here.) As the “oldest continuous law-making body in the New World,” the Virginia General Assembly is steeped in history and tradition. That tradition is awe-inspiring on the one hand, while on the other hand, it can…

  • Digital tools for managing FOIA requests

    By Jeff South Overcoming recalcitrant bureaucrats isn’t the only challenge for people who seek public documents or data under the Freedom of Information Act. Another challenge is managing your paperwork: crafting and filing your FOIA requests and tracking responses. Fortunately, a bevy of online tools is available to help you with those tasks. Here is…

  • Strong words on FOIA violation

    We’re all winners and losers with Abingdon’s recent FOIA ruling Bristol Herald Courier editorial, August 20, 2017 http://www.heraldcourier.com/opinion/we-re-all-winners-and-losers-with-abingdon-s-recent/article_b95d9fb8-8c74-5bf2-86fe-aacebc81e57e.html   Sometimes, even when something works in your favor, everyone still loses. That’s certainly the case with Abingdon Town Council’s recent FOIA violation. On Tuesday, Abingdon Town Council, three council members and the town attorney were found…

  • Strategies for finding and using public information

    By Dave Ress For the record (as we like to say). We call it the Freedom of Information Act in Virginia, but it’s good to remember that it’s about information that’s in a public record or revealed in a public meeting. One thing that can really help get information, as Cherise Newsome points out in…

  • Court rulings ignore common practice

    Once again, a court has looked at an isolated provision of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and decided that it means something completely different from what had been commonly accepted in the past.   This time a circuit court judge in Henrico County has held that state senators (and presumably, by extension, delegates)…

  • Nuisance requests an obstacle to access to public information

    By Shelley Kimball There are certain kinds of requests for records that access professionals hate so much they wish they could find ways to outlaw them. Requests that frustrate them so much they wish they didn’t have to respond to them. Let’s call them nuisance requests. We know that citizens are routinely blocked from access…

  • A view from both sides of a FOIA request

    By Cherise Newsome There are two sides to every FOIA request. I’ve seen them both. As the public information officer for Portsmouth Public Schools, I serve as our FOIA compliance officer. Therefore, I manage the requests that come into the school division. I’ve been here about six months, and I’ve logged more than 50 requests…

  • Trade secrets exemptions discussion open to public

    Join in the discussion with Virginia’s Freedom of Information Advisory Council to determine how to define which business records may be blocked from public access. The meeting, which is open to all, is Monday, May 15, in the Virginia State Capitol.

  • Responding to denials to public records requests

    Anyone who has requested public records regulalry has faced denials from government offices. An open government activist discusses how best to manage and respond to denials.

  • Education privacy law used as excuse to used to conceal records

    Education privacy laws, while intended as protections for students’ records, are being used by institutions to conceal wrongdoing and mismanagement.

  • Using Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act

    In the latest installment of Truth in the Field, a veteran journalist explains the basics of how to use Virginina’s Freedom of Information Act and where to go for help

  • Put government spending information online

    Being able to find information online is becoming the default expectation. Government spending should be no different.

  • Truth in the Field debut

    Welcome to VCOG new blog, Truth in the Field, a series of columns that explain how journalists, citizens, academics, and activists have accessed and used government information.

  • What a difference a year makes

    What a difference a year makes.   Last year, a Senate subcommittee on FOIA advanced one bill after another that restricted the public’s access to government information. It recommended a bill to exempt police names, one to limit which state salaries could be released and in what format, and one that created a month-long procedural…