Advisory Council
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-10-02
a list of delinquent real property taxpayers with parcel ID, legal description, and owner’s name with mailing address is a public record under FOIA. If government maintains a record on a computer disk, a requester can agree to receive a requested record in that form and pay a reasonable cost for it, not to exceed…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-11-02
The FOI Advisory Council does not have authority to interpret the First Amendment. A circuit court is subject to FOIA. If the clerk’s office maintains a digital database of land conveyances, that database must be made accessible to a requester.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-08-02
City manager may poll council members for advvice on how to spend money in the manager’s discretionary fund. Motions to go into closed session must state the general exemption, the purpose and the subject matter of the meeting. No public discussion or vote is needed where a further action is not predicated on council action.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-09-02
Ironbridge Acres, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Petersburg Hospital Authority is a public body subject to FOIA.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-07-02
Timesheets that reveal more than an employee’s job classification and rate of pay are exempt as personnel records rather than open under the FOIA provision mandating disclosure of salary info for employees making more than $10,000 annually. The Library of Virginia’s Records Management and Imaging Services classification of records does not affect their status as…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-06-02
Public body members may waive notice for themselves, but not for the public. Meetings are to be open to both the public and the press, not one or the other. A meeting of three or more members of a public body to discuss public business is to be open to the public, and the notice…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-05-02
A public body cannot include employee fringe benefits — such as insurance, retirement and vacation benefits — when assessing the fee charged for searching, retrieving and supplying records to a requester.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-04-02
Because no general exemption or agency-specific exemption under FOIA, nor a confidentiality mandate in the Virginia Public Procurement Act, applies, draft documents and other records related to the negotiation of contracts must be disclosed. Whether such disclosure would threaten the government’s bargaining position is a matter to be taken up with the General Assembly.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-03-02
Expenditure records of the Department of Housing and Community Development are public records. Where detailed records exist, a summary of the information is not an acceptable response to a request for the actual records.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-02-02
Meetings of private organizations are not subject to FOIA. The attendance of elected officials at a private meeting does not convert the gathering to a public meeting as long as the officials did not arrange their attendance to discuss or transact public business.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-01-02
FOIA requires the release of records of position, job classification, official salary or rate of pay, and records of allowances or reimbursements for expenses paid. Records pertaining to the retirement of school employees may be withheld as personnel records.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-49-01
A record custodian can, in his/her discretion, create a record where none exits, but he/she cannot charge the requester for the new document without prior notification. Nothing prevents and nothing requires one governmental entity to forward the records responsive to a requester’s request to another governmental entity, however, the first entity cannot charge the requester…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-50-01
A county administrator, as the chief executive officer of a county, can withhold correspondence between her and the board of supervisors under the working papers exemption.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-47-01
A school district’s two-business-day advance notice for record requests comports with the general FOIA requirement that requests for information must be answered within five working days.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-48-01
A nonprofit hospital’s line of credit obtained from an industrial development authority is not enough to establish that the hospital is supported wholly or principally by public funds. A local board’s authority, consisting only of reappointing hospital directors when others resign does not make the hospital into an entity that is performing the board’s delegated…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-46-01
Though meetings with staff and government employees are not usually subject to FOIA, they are if they include a quorum of a public body’s members. Informal gatherings – pre-meeting, post-meeting or some other time – are still meetings that must comply with FOIA if their purpose is to discuss public business.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-45-01
A motion to go into closed session that meets the procedural requirements of FOIA must still concern a topic that is actually a proper subject for a closed meeting. Discussion of financial incentives a locality is considering offering to lure a new business to the area is a proper subject for a closed meeting.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-44-01
The name of a physician at a particular correctional facility is public information.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-43-01
Notice of future meetings must be posted at the clerk’s office and a prominent public location. Though FOIA encourages the use of electronic communication via the Internet, the town’s Web site does not qualify as a prominent public location under FOIA’s meeting notice provisions.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-41-01
Though a lcoal chamber of commerce is not a public body, records it keeps on tourism at the request and as an agent of a city council are subject to disclosure under FOIA. The chamber, not the city council is the custodian of the records where the city is not statutorily required to maintain tourism…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-42-01
There is no exemption in Virginia’s FOIA, and apparently not one in the federal FOIA either, for a list of names of individuals who have requested records under either act.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-40-01
A gathering of four of five members of a governing body prior to a regularly scheduled meeting is prohibited if the members are discussing public business, but is not prohibited if public business is not being discussed.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-39-01
A public body cannot charge a request fee unless it has determined in advance that the fee accurately reflects the cost to search and provide a requested record.
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-38-01
It is not a violation of FOIA for public body members to reach a consensus in closed session, but nothing is official until a vote in open session has been taken; a motion to close a meeting listing only the purpose and the statutory citation is inadequate because it does not also identify the purpose…
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FOI Advisory Council Opinion AO-37-01
An agency remains the legal custodian of records it is mandated by law to maintain, even if it does not retain physical custody of the records.