Sun will shine on House subcommittees
House Speaker William Howell, R-Stafford, issued a statement in mid-December announcing that subcommittee votes will be recorded during the 2009 session. Since 2006, a House internal rule allowed legislation to be killed in subcommittee on an unrecorded voice vote.
The press hammered the practice, noting the Senate records its subcommittee votes and refuting accusations of partisanship.
“Open, transparent government is always — repeat, always — a good thing, no mmatter who’s trying to pry open the window for the public to peer in.” the News Advance in Lynchburg editorialized while hailing Americans for Prosperity for putting pressure on House Republicans to change the rule.
Legislative preview
What’s a legislator to do? Economic times are tough, so any bill that involves new or additional spending will have an uphill battle. Will legislators thus reduce the number of bills they file? Or, will they submit more bills that tweak, amend, subtract from or add to existing code sections, like the Freedom of Information Act.
This much we know so far: several bills are expected to come out of the FOI Advisory Council. Presumably these will be carried by Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, the council’s chair, and/or Sen. Edd Houck, D-Spotsylvania, the council’s vice chair.
The Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act. Mostly technical changes, but also a change in the deadline (from July 1, 2009, to July 1, 2010) for state and local governments to comply with new requirements for the collection, disclosure or display of SSNs. The FOI Advisory Council and the Joint Commission on Technology and Science sent surveys to state and local government asking them to identify records in their possession that had SSNs on them, and whether their collection of the SSNs were required or authorized by state or federal law. The response to the surveys has been huge, bringing into stark relief the job before the council and JCOTS to catalog and sort through which uses have been proper or improper. Governments also face a tough job in retooling their records.
E-meetings for DEQ. Last year dozens of stakeholders signed off on a massive rewrite of the water- and air-permitting process. At the last minute, the group inserted a provision that allowed the boards to meet electronically to decide whether or not to review the board chair’s decision on whether to grant a public hearing on a permit. The provision allowed the boards to meet from the privacy of their offices or homes, in direct conflict with FOIA’s rules for e-meetings that allow remote participation, but only from locations open to the public. The rules also changed the requirement of where a quorum must be physically assembled. Despite opposition from the stakeholders, who oppose reopening the bill — referring to the “blood oath” they all took not to touch the bill for a year — the Advisory Council agreed with a proposal to open the remote locations up to the public.
Meeting minutes. In response to the growing number of local governments using services like BoardDocs to record their meetings and post recordings and all related meeting materials online, the council considered whether a recording of a meeting satisfied FOIA’s requirement that minutes must contain a “summary” of action discussed or taken. The council eventually concluded that use of BoardDocs should be encouraged, but that minutes themselves should be “written.”
Indexing agency databases. In 1997, language was added to FOIA to require state government to annually compile an index of computer databases maintained by the agency. The index was to include a massive amount of information, and in light of the fact that so many of the government’s records are not stored electronically, the requirement had become so burdensome that most had given up on it. Further, the Library of Virginia, tasked with providing indexing guidelines, was further overwhelmed. The council is recommending new language that will require state agencies to post on their Web sites “a general description, summary, list or index” of the types of records the agency maintains, as well as the exemptions they most frequently cite.
Several additional legislative proposals were presented to the council at its legislative preview meeting. Final language for the following was not available at press time:
The Department of the Treasury seeks an exemption for the Commonwealth’s agency risk-management and internal control standards assessments. This is information the Treasury fears could lead to actual theft of assets.
The Virginia Economic Development Partnership seeks an exemption for trade secrets revealed by private businesses as part of an economic development entity’s business-retention program. The VEDP has purchased a software system that will collect and analyze data about a business’ plans to stay in or leave an area, to grow or to downsize. Several meetings and e-mails between VEDP, the Association of Counties, the Municipal League, the Press Association, the Association and Broadcasters and VCOG have come to an agreement about adding “retention” to the current exemption for economic-development records, but no agreement has been reached on whether and how the trade secrets will be designated and granted confidentiality.
Prince William County School System seeks an exemption for the database that will be generated by the school system’s new electronic visitor identification system. Under a new system, school visitors will show a state-issued ID that will be scanned and linked to other databases to determine, for example, if the visitor is a registered sex offender.
The Virginia Municipal League seeks an exemption for complaints of possible building code or fire prevention code violations. This exemption would build on the existing exemption for zoning-violation complaints.
From news sources, we have also learned of two possible bills.
Prince William County School System says it wants to tweak the current requirement that salary information for employees making over $10,000 be released upon request. PWC would like to see the floor set higher (e.g., $100,000) or to apply only to certain types of employees, like administrators, principals, etc.
Loudoun County will seek an exemption for “personal correspondence.” According to Leesburg Today, the exemption would include: “Correspondences, messages, or other records created or recorded by a public official that relate to private matters and do not address public business are not public records and are not subject to the requirements of this section, even if they are physically or electronically stored with other records that are public.” Roger Wiley, a local government attorney and FOI Advisory Council member, came up with the language, but also noted that the bill would likely be referred to the council for study.
The county’s move was prompted by a court decision in February 2008 the burden is on the public official to explain why a record was being withheld as private. A district court judge ordered two supervisors to turn over all of the e-mails sought by a local activist. A circuit court judge agreed with the supervisors that they could keep confidential some private e-mails, but also said, according to Leesburg Today, that in claiming confidentiality, the supervisors had to “describe the nature of the record not produced or disclosed in a manner that, without revealing the information or contents of the record itself, will enable the party making the request and the court to assess whether or not the record was prepared in the transaction of public business.”