The proposed legislation to come out of the FOI Advisory Council will not be the only legislation that seeks to amend FOIA or otherwise restrict access to public information.
Prompted by a 2006 court case, the council agreed with council staff that a clarification of FOIA’s venue rules was needed. In Shaw v. Casteen, Louisa County resident William Shaw sued the University of Virginia in Louisa County Circuit Court over an alleged FOIA violation. It had always been assumed that UVa. was a state entity for FOIA purposes, thus making it subject to venue (i.e., the place where a FOIA lawsuit could be filed and tried) in the district or circuit court where the plaintiff lives, or in Richmond, under §2.2-3713(B). The Louisa judge apparently felt that UVa. was a local public body, thus the venue provisions of §2.2-3713(A) applied and required Shaw to file his suit in Charlottesville, where UVa.’s board of visitors sits. The Virginia Supreme Court did not take up Shaw’s appeal.
The FOI Advisory Council unanimously agreed to propose legislation clarifying that UVa. and other institutions of higher learning are state agencies for purposes of FOIA, so FOIA plaintiffs can sue either where they live or in Richmond.
The City of Fredericksburg and the Virginia Municipal League will be asking the 2007 General Assembly for a meetings exemption under FOIA to match the record exemption for public building-security issues, including related budgets.
An association representing taxi drivers is seeking a FOIA exemption for records of certain tax payments that, while normally exempt from disclosure by the Tax Code, are being required by some localities to be incorporated into other public records.
Del. Kenneth Alexander, D-Norfolk, will be carrying legislation that would exempt from FOIA both accepted and rejected applications for voter registration. The Election Code already requires the redaction of Social Security numbers from voter registration records, and it allows individuals to use a P.O. box instead of street address when registering.
The proposed legislation was prompted by a June 2006 ruling by a Norfolk Circuit Court judge that rejected applications were subject to inspection under FOIA. The proposed language would cut off public inspection to rejected applications, thus also cutting off the public’s ability to monitor whether a local registrar is improperly rejecting certain voters.
The clerks of court are again seeking to tweak the system allowing for subscription services to land records that contain sensitive personal information. Their latest proposal would allow clerks to deny access to subscribers seeking databases of the clerks’ land records or other records kept by the clerk.
The clerks claim they are worried by subscribers, especially “off-shore” ones, who want to get a database, repackage or repurpose it, and then re-release it into the public domain with SSNs, dates of birth, etc., in full view.
Money could also be at stake, seeing as how it costs much less to get an entire electronic database than to get one record at a time.