The FOIA: Reporters’ Access To Information Breaks Stories
By GORDON HICKEY
Richmond Times-Dispatch 3.12.06
Information is the lifeblood of any newspaper.
In the Internet age, the information is often easy to come by. But sometimes public officials don’t want to share information to which the public has a right.
That’s when we employ the Freedom of Information Act.
Today is the beginning of Sunshine Week, a creation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors that is intended to raise public awareness of the growth of official secrecy. You’ll find coverage of FOIA issues in the news pages of The Times-Dispatch all week as well as a resource page on our Website, www.TimesDispatch.com.
But the Freedom of Information Act is something we employ throughout the year. Over the past year The Times-Dispatch has worked to open closed doors and records, using the FOIA to obtain important documents on behalf of the public.
When an inmate was beaten to death behind a broken jail cell door last May, we were more than ready to cover the story, not only of the inmates involved, but of that busted cell door.
Our story, written by David Ress, Jim Nolan, Frank Green, and Jeremy Redmon, explains what they did:
“A Times-Dispatch review of more than 900 disciplinary records for 2004 found dozens of inmates wandering where they shouldn’t. The records showed some inmates . . . getting out of their cells repeatedly. Jail officials confirm what the records suggest: Dozens of broken locks were on the cells meant for the most dangerous men — like the broken locks that let one inmate out of his cell over Memorial Day weekend and into that of another he allegedly beat to death”
THOSE DOCUMENTS were obtained through the FOIA.
Last April, Robin Farmer reported that by using a new Webpage parents of nearly 200,000 children in licensed day-care centers in Virginia can learn if their child’s center has violations.
But it took a FOIA request from Ms. Farmer to find out that 12 centers were informed that their licenses would be taken away, and that only two centers were actually closed.
Also in April, reporter Kiran Krishnamurthy sought local animal-control department records after an 82-year-old Spotsylvania woman was fatally mauled by neighborhood dogs described by authorities as pit bulls.
The prosecutor in the case denied the newspaper access to any records pertaining to the attack, or previous incidents involving either the accused owner or the victim, citing the records as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
But the newspaper gained access to several thousand pages of other records through the FOIA request.
The records helped inform a stories revealing that in Spotsylvania, pit bulls ranked second behind Labradors in the number of dog-bite instances in the county from January, 2004, through the middle of last month.
In December, we used the FOIA to learn the details of the deal that Fifth District Congressman Virgil Goode helped broker to bring MZM Inc., a defense contractor, to Martinsville.
MZM Inc. was founded by Mitchell Wade, who along with employees, their spouses, and the company’s political-action committee handed more than $90,000 in campaign contributions to Goode, which he has since donated to charity.
In January of this year, reporter Michael Martz used public records to write about the amount of overtime paid to high-ranking sheriff’s deputies. The practice cost the city up to $1.8 million
In February, Krishnamurthy used the FOIA to obtain the results of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s investigation of the deaths of four Scout leaders at last summer’s Boy Scout Jamboree.
ONE OF The Times-Dispatch’s greatest successes was in overcoming an oft-used exemption to the act.
Peter Bacqué reported last July that the Virginia Information Technology Agency proposed to take bids for major parts of the state’s information technology work.
Those proposals, worth potentially $3 billion, could affect 1,200 state employees.
But, the agency refused to release the proposals to the public on the grounds that doing so would harm the state’s bargaining position.
Bacqué continued to hammer away at the story, and by September the agency gave in.
The chorus of public criticism and pressure from the Governor — all reported by Bacqué — forced the agency to announce that it would let the public see some parts of its proposals.
Contact Special Projects Editor Gordon Hickey at ghickey@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6449.