Norfolk ruling cuts both ways

A Norfolk General District Court judge ruled in part for the city and in part for Josh Stanfield in a FOIA suit the latter brought related to his request this summer for records related to a proposed address change for a temporary casino to be built near the baseball stadium. The judge ruled that the city was entitled to require a full address from a requester and "has not received a proper FOIA request until the address is received," even though FOIA says only that a public body can (but is not required to) ask for a requester's address. The judge also ruled that an individual city council member is not required to respond to a FOIA request, though in another part of the opinion, the court confirmed that even a council member is required to do something with any request he or she may receive and that the public body's response timetable starts when the member receives a request. The court sided with Stanfield in ruling that the city should not have required prepayment of a request with an estimated cost of under $200, regardless of whether Stanfield earlier said he couldn't pay for the records.

Read the full opinion on VCOG's website

- M.R.

FOIA requests hit registrars...and VCOG

Local registrars have been fielding more FOIA requests than they used to ever since the 2020 election. But in August and September, they experienced an even higher uptick after My Pillow executive Mike Lindell encouraged listeners to his Frank Speech radio show to send in FOIA requests for "cast vote records" and emails mentioning Lindell. Lindell told people to go to the National FOI Coalition website for information on filing a request in their state, which prompted some requesters to mistakenly believe that either NFOIC or a state open government coalition like VCOG was the custodian of the records. Here's a Twitter thread I wrote about how VCOG gets caught in the middle of these concerted request campaigns.
 

- M.R.

Annual Conference

Higher ed board expectations

Last year, I did a presentation on how boards for public universities should act more like local boards than like state agencies. Here's the gist of it in a blog post I wrote in September for our Substack newsletter.

Pssst: become a paid subscriber while you're there.

Out and about

September found Megan on the road in Petersburg, giving a FOIA presentation to various department heads; participating in a work group trying to streamline public notice provisions in Title 15.2 of the Code of Virginia (the part governing counties, cities and towns); and teaching her annual class on the legislative process, bill tracking and FOIA at William & Mary's continuing education program.

The Spotsylvania Schools Show

The rocky road that is the Spotsylvania School Board continued during September as it became known that the board chair, Kirk Twigg, sent a letter purportedly from the entire board, asking that the former Greene County deputy county administrator -- who has no background in education -- be granted approval by the Virginia Department of Education to serve as a school superintendent. The letter stated that the board was "all in agreement" that Mark Taylor was the final candidate, even though no public vote was taken to that effect and some members were vocally opposed. When the news broke, some concerned citizens had the mic cut off on them during a public meeting or were escorted out of the meeting room after Twigg unilaterally halted any further comment on Taylor's nomination. Meanwhile, Sands Anderson notified the board that it would no longer serve as general legal counsel and the sheriff said it would no longer provide security at school board meetings. Taylor eventually signed a contract with a base salary of $245,000 annually, which is $30,000 more than his predecessor, and which guarantees him at least three years of full pay if he is fired without cause. The contract also says the board cannot discuss Taylor or his performance without him being present.
 

- M.R.

Open Government in the News

Like Tim Kaine before him, Gov. Glenn Youngkin refused access to his non-public travel schedule, citing the working papers exemption, as he visits candidates vying for office in other states. And as it did a decade ago, the media figured out where he went anyway by asking Virginia State Police about the security detail officers provided for the governor. Virginia Public Media obtained VSP records through FOIArelating to Youngkin's travel to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the Bahamas and other places. VSP incurred more than $18,000 in costs during the month of August related to the governor's travel.

The Hanover county attorney gave a presentation to the board of supervisors about the process for removing someone the board had appointed to the county school board. The presentation was prompted by citizen complaints that a school board member violated student privacy laws when he reached out to the Alliance Defending Freedom, according to records obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatchthrough FOIA.

According to a review of meeting minutes by The Virginian-Pilot, members of the Portsmouth City Council who also serve on other city boards and commissions had spotty attendance records for those entities' meetings. In particular, city council members collectively attended only around a quarter of the meetings held by the Planning Commission, Redevelopment and Housing Authority, Ports and Industrial Commission and Parking Authority.

A divided Gloucester School Board adopted revisions to its meeting procedures in an attempt to clamp down on the public sharing of matters discussed in closed session.

South Hill Town Council members squared off over transparency at council meetings, but the source of the tension goes back several months to a burn site near the wastewater treatment plant where one member says town documents were being burned. The town's attorney said in June that the documents were trash. The town is currently involved in a FOIA lawsuit at the Supreme Court of Virginia, according to the South Hill Enterprise.

A Richmond man filed a FOIA lawsuit against UVA for its alleged failure to timely respond to a request for records related to newly appointed board of visitors member Bert Ellis.

As part of his lawsuit against the former superintendent of Prince William County Public Schools, the former chair of the school board has been filing subpoenas against current members of the board. In September, the members asked a court to quash the subpoenas, which seek documents the school system has otherwise refused to turn over.

According to documents obtained through FOIA by WTVR, the Richmond police chief received talking points for his press conference on an alleged plan for a mass shooting on July 4 approximately 47 minutes before the conference began, not the 7 minutes the chief later claimed. The difference is relevant to how long the chief had to digest investigators' findings, which suggested the target of the plot was unknown. The chief definitively stated that the target was Dogwood Dell amphitheater.

A Shenandoah County resident is suing a school board member for allegedly deleting emails related to the renaming of two county schools. The resident claims the messages were deleted to avoid having to turn them over.

When asked by a reporter looking into how some incumbent legislators are having to consider moving their residence to adjust to newly drawn voting districts, the clerks of the House and Senate both said lists of lawmakers' addresses are not open to the public. They are personnel records, according to the House clerk,

Angry that his colleagues on the board of supervisors scheduled a budget work session for a Wednesday night, the same night as his weekly Bible study, a King George County supervisor said the others were "basically excluding" him and that it was not "fair to make me have to choose between Jesus and this board."

Parksley Town Council members argued over whether the July council meeting minutes should be amended to include the fact that one member stated her opinion that the council had gone into a closed meeting improperly. The assertion was countered by the claim that the member's objection was made in the closed meeting, not in open session.

The Amherst County Board of Supervisors did not vote in public to fire its county administrator. Instead, in a straw poll taken during a closed session, according to a board member, the board leaned 3-2 in favor of asking for the administrator's resignation. The administrator obliged, 

Two line items in a budget amendment approved by the Nelson County Board of Supervisors in mid-September as transfers from the general fund may have been to reimburse the county sheriff and a deputy for legal fees they incurred fighting charges related to a physical confrontation with a Nelson County High School student. Virginia State Police investigated the incident and closed the case without filing any charges. After the budget amendment was approved, the sheriff would neither confirm nor deny that the money was related to the NCHS incident.

According to emails obtained through FOIA by WTVR, the Richmond Fire Department warned leaders with Richmond Public Schools that Fox Elementary School suffered from "extreme neglect" to fire safetyand that there had been a "complete lack of effort" to ensure the school was in compliance with fire codes. Weeks later, the school was destroyed by fire. Additional records showed that the school facilities head received a $30,000 raise during the period referred to in the fire department emails and the subsequent fire.

Emails obtained through FOIA by Virginia Scope showed that a special prosecutor assigned to investigate allegations that the Colonial Heights police chief had inappropriate interactions with students when he was serving as a coach on the high school softball team did not file any charges because the statute of limitations had expired.

A supervisor on the Prince William County board complained of Amazon's lack of transparency and accountability in dealing with resident noise complaints from its Manassas data center. Related, Prince William officials have signed non-disclosure agreements barring them from discussing Amazon details. Officials there and in other localities use code names to hide the identity of various data center projects in the region.