Poole, VPAP honored
The 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 its inception in 1997, David Poole has been VPAP’s executive director. Under his leadership, VPAP has revolutionized campaign-finance disclosure, beginning with statewide and legislative elections and, more recently, extending to local contests.
The non-partisan, non-profit project maintains an online database detailing the source of financial support for candidates and how the funds are spent.
Throughout its history, the project has pushed the technological edge in its pursuit to make politics more transparent. VPAP is now a national model for enabling the public to track campaign contributions.
Its Web site, www.vpap.org , is free to the public and is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in the political process.
Culpeper sends Feds packin’
Secrecy seems at an all-time high in the federal government these days. But the Town of Culpeper recently reminded the Feds that excessive secrecy is not for everybody. Two officials from Homeland Security came to Culpeper to discuss a federal immigration training program for local police. There was just one condition: town council had to go behind closed doors for the presentation. Council balked at that, and the Feds went home. Nobody ever quite indicated just why a discussion of police training should be off-limits to Culpeper citizens. “I find it hard to believe that the federal government can come down here to use our resources but not tell the citizens what the requirements (of this program) to the community would be,” Town Councilman Jim Risner said. Mayor Pranas Rimeikis reminded council there was no provision under the state’s Freedom of Information Act that would have allowed the council to go into closed session for the presentation.
Boucher touts Shield law
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-9th District, is leading a bipartisan effort in the U.S. House of Representatives to create a privilege in federal court proceedings to protect news reporters’ confidential sources. Thirty-two states already have laws protecting sources; another 17, including Virginia, have similar protections in common law. In the past, media groups hoped the Supreme Court would provide a First Amendment guarantee of confidentiality.
That did not happen. Now, said Boucher, the media industry is united in support of a federal law to help bring wrong-doing out of the shadows. Boucher’s bill includes exceptions to prevent an imminent and actual harm to national security; guard against an imminent death or significant bodily harm; or to determine who has disclosed trade secrets, personal health or financial information in violation of law. An exception to the privilege will only apply if a court determines that the public interest in withholding information outweighs the public interest in news gathering and maintaining the free flow of information.
Activist acts, Suffolk acts
Former Councilman Thomas Woodward hauled the City of Suffolk into court when it refused to release a big part of an independent financial analysis that the city commissioned several months earlier. City Manager Jim Vacalis claimed the records were exempt as “working papers.” Other city officials decided it wasn’t worth a court fight and agreed to pay Woodward’s $2,800 in legal fees.
The Suffolk News-Herald said in an editorial, “This incident substantiates the need for an office to deal with FOIA requests. An office that portrays clear and open government is a noble idea and if managed well can only strengthen the municipality’s credibility.” The new FOI office got up and running May 1. Hopefully, said the editorial writer, “taxpayers won’t have to pay any future bills for something as simple as denying public information to a citizen.”
The FOI office is patterned after one created earlier by the City of Virginia Beach. Mayor Linda Johnson said she was grateful to Woodward for the FOI challenge. “It emphasizes what I’ve been saying for some time. We need a centralized office to handle FOIA requests.”
Doing it in the open
Some school boards and governing bodies have the good sense to fill their vacancies out in the open, lots of others do not. (Varying legal opinions have addressed the applicability of FOIA’s “appointment” exemption, but there’s still no definitive court ruling.)
With two candidates vying for an open seat, the Loudoun County School Board kept its appointment process transparent. As a result, the public got to hear the views of each candidate. School board members subjected the two to four rounds of questions. Questions ranged from a board member’s response to a parent’s complaint, to No Child Left Behind policy, to the importance of a School improvement Plan.
A 9-minutes record?
When a citizen asked the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (by e-mail) for a 60,000-record list, he got it — nine minutes later!
The citizen wrote: “DPOR in a very deliberate way has been not only meeting the requirements of the FOI Act but also retooling itself to be truly customer friendly. While agency heads over the years have been extremely supportive the credit lies with the staff who open the doors every day. They are the standard all government should strive to achieve.”