It all started with the usual spring-time conflicts over school funding. But before it was over, Stafford County’s rancorous school-budget debate prompted The (Fredericksburg) Free Lance-Star to urge all sides to “halt an unseemly feud.”
Backers of a sharp increase in Stafford’s school funding dragged their political foes into court, invoking the Freedom of Information Act to stop three Republicans on the school board from meeting secretly (the three said their FOIA violation was unintentional).
But it was the lawsuit’s public-records request that forced a full disclosure of the partisan battle occurring behind the scenes — and triggered an unusual denunciation of Virginia’s open-government laws.
For whatever reason, the Republican school board members and their supporters expressed “shock and dismay” that public officials’ e-mails or other correspondence had to be disclosed when dealing with public business, even when private citizens were part of the correspondence or e-mail discussion.
Prior to the lawsuit, they claimed, “Stafford residents were comfortable that they could air their concerns with their elected representatives without fear that their written communications, including their private e-mails, would be disclosed under the FOIA.”
That assertion was hard to believe, given the Fredericksburg area’s many previous FOI battles (and the requirement that public officials be familiar with FOIA rules).
What was even more improbable was an assertion that constituents would no longer communicate with school board members, having belatedly learned that their e-mails might be a public record.
“The only privacy right these officials want to protect is their own,” declared Patricia Joshi, attorney for the group that brought the lawsuit.