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Greetings, Friend of VCOG!
Support HB788: Open Virginia's
FOIA to requests from out of state
The Supreme Court may have said Virginia FOIA's limitation barring out-of-state requesters was constitutional, but it did not say the law was a good one.
HB788 would amend FOIA to allow out-of-state requesters to ask for and receive records.
With a nod toward some agencies' concerns that they might not get paid, the procedures allow prepayment for any out-of-state request over $10.
And, with a nod toward local governments' concerns that staff would be burdened by the increased number of FOIAs, the bill gives them 30 days to respond to a request, instead of the usual 5.
We strongly support the bill:
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Virginia is out of step with the 44 other states that allow requests from around the country.
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The real burden on government is when they end up processing two requests: the first when they tell an out-of-state requester "no," the second when that requester finds someone in Virginia who will make the request for him and the government must respond to that one...and within five days.
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A person's interest in a state does not end when he crosses the border. She may live in another state but has a family member in a Richmond nursing home; own property in Pulaski County; live in Bristol, Tenn., but work in Bristol, Va.; consider Norfolk home but had a military transfer to another state; or is a co-owner of Fairfax business.
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The limitation hampers comprehensive research, including studies on elections, epidemiology and racial discrimination.
Please contact the House General Laws Committee to voice your support.The members, with links to their contact pages, can be found here. The committee meets TUESDAY afternoon.
Updates to the Virginia General Assembly 2014
A Senate subcommittee did not recommend reporting SB212, which would havelimited the scope of the General Assembly's working papers exemption. The exemption would remain, but the bill would have said it could be used only for matters dealing with the drafting and amending of legislation.
The full Senate General Laws committee will nonetheless hear the bill today.Contact the members if you want to express your support.
Any effort to open up the State Corporation Commission's records will likely be through the SCC's statutes instead of through FOIA. Two bills that would have placed the agency under FOIA are stalled in the House Commerce & Labor Committee. Meanwhile, two other bills that place responsibility for records-release under the SCC's title -- though with the response-time limits of FOIA -- have sailed through the Commerce & Labor Committees of both houses.
A House subcommittee advanced to the full committee on Rules a recommendation that the FOIA Council study the continued usefulness of the Freedom of Information Act’s 172 exemptions for records or meetings.
FOIA has not been comprehensively reviewed since 1999. At that time there were 102 exemptions. Only 16 members of the current House of Delegates were serving in 1999.
The bill requires the FOIA Council to report back to the legislature in December 2016 which exemptions should be eliminated or changed.
In other FOIA news at the legislature, the same subcommittee advanced a bill torequire state agencies to post on their websites an explanation of the fees that can (and cannot) be charged for FOIA requests. The vote was unanimous.
The subcommittee reported a bill related to certain data held by the Department of Rail & Public Transportation. The bill has been amended to narrow the scope of the exemption, which would have included Amtrak passenger data. A similar bill was recommended to report from a Senate subcommittee
The House subcommittee wrangled over the permission granted to local government officials' use of the "emergency" and "personal matters" optionto connect electronically to a public meeting instead of attending in person.
The subcommittee approved one version of the bill, which deletes the requirement that a majority of the public body approve the remote participation, and replaces it with a requirement that the local government must prepare a policy on remote participation and apply it consistently. A different bill, which would have kept the approval, but also required the reason for approving/disapproving remote participation to be recorded in the minutes, was withdrawn by the patron. There is a Senate bill that tracks this latter bill, so the debate there will continue.
Finally, the House omnibus ethics reform bill includes a provision to create a publicly accessible online database of financial disclosure forms.
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