Sunshine Report for August 2016

FOIA Council updates

At the July 18 meeting of the FOIA Council’s committee on meetings, committee members delayed taking any action on a proposal to require local governments to post meeting minutes online within three days of their final approval. When local government representatives worried about smaller localities without the ability to quickly or easily access their websites, VCOG suggested eliminating the three-day time. Two of the committee members (Kathleen Dooley from the City of Fredericksburg and Shawri King-Casey from the Attorney General’s Office) however, expressed concerns that the proposal was an unfunded mandate and was an attempt to codify what should be left up to best practices. Committee member Marisa Porto of the Daily Press disagreed. The committee is short two members (due to term limits, two members stepped down July 1), so the three remaining members agreed to postpone a final recommendation until the committee seats are filled.
 

The council’s workgroup on trade secrets has been unable to reach consensus on whether a single exemption could be crafted to encompass the many separate exemptions. The Virginia Press Association has advocated for a definition of trade secrets and proprietary records to address, in part, the uncertainty created by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s interpretation of “proprietary records” in the context of a FOIA request for a former academic’s email while at the University of Virginia. Despite concerns about confusion, state agencies feel more comfortable with the status quo, according to FOIA Council Executive Director Maria Everett.
 

The FOIA Council issued an opinion to Daily Press reporter Travis Fain that concluded the list of felons whose voting rights were restored by order of the governor in April was not a working paper of the governor’s office, but that it could be properly withheld by the State Board of Elections.

The opinion was rendered prior to the Supreme Court of Virginia’s 4-3 ruling striking down the governor’s order. The majority opinion noted the issue of standing was complicated by the failure of the governor’s office to release the list, and in dissent, Justice William Mims said he would have remanded the case to gather more evidence on standing, which would necessitate the release of the “full database of individuals with restored voting rights.”

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Please join us September 22 at Rocketts Landing in Richmond to celebrate VCOG’s 20th anniversary dinner. In addition to recognizing founding and former board members, we will also pay tribute to Ginger Stanley, who served on VCOG’s board for all of its 20 years until she retired as head of the Virginia Press Association July 1.

And thank you to our two major sponsors so far:

Officers in touch

VCOG has launched a listserv for state and local government employees who have been designated as their entity’s FOIA officer, pursuant to HB 818. The listserv — currently an announce-only and not interactive — is administered through the Library of Virginia and will be used in the near term to advise subscribers of upcoming meetings and training opportunities. The listserv will eventually allow for members to ask questions and share tips and experiences with one another. The subscriber list was copiled from the contact information the officers shared with VCOG through a query on Google Forms.

Also in response to HB 818, localities have been posting a FOIA rights and responsibilities page that sets out the basics of filing a FOIA request with the entity, including contact information and an explanation of the most frequently cited exemptions.

You say “slush fund,” I say “strategic investment fund”

Former UVA Board of Visitors Rector Helen Dragas caused a ruckus when her term on the board expired and she penned an op-ed in the Washington Post
alleging that the board quietly maintained what she called a “slush fund” of more than $2.3 billion. Current members of the board defended the fund, saying it has never been kept secret. “It’s been a very transparent process,” said Patrick Hogan, UVA’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “This has all been out in the open with the board.” Dragas, meanwhile, insists talks about where the fund originated and how funds in it should be spent were improperly held in closed session.

Open government in the news

Members of the Richmond Retirement System advisory committee resigned in protest over what they said was blocking of information to the panel by the system’s executive director.

Questions arose over the sudden resignation of the Dumfries town manager but Mayor Jerry Foreman refused to elaborate or discuss what was said in closed session. When asked what was meant when he said the council would “proceed as directed,” Foreman said he could not comment further and that it meant “proceed as directed.”

Developer Lucas Ames and SmartCville have have teamed up with Albemarle County to launch an app to visualize how the money a citizen pays in taxes is used to fund county services. “As more communities open budget data, it could foster cross-municipality research that analyzes fiscal strategies,” Amesb said.

Faced with the revelation that a member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors was texting members of the county’s Transportation and Land Use Committee during the committee’s deliberation over a land use application, the county attorney’s office had recipients of the texts read them into the meeting minutes. Delegate Randy Minchew, acting in his capacity as a lawyer for the applicant, suggested the texts were an illegal electronic meeting under FOIA but the county attorney — after talking with the FOIA Council and VCOG — concluded they did not constitute a meeting.

The nomination of Sen. Tim Kaine as the Democratic candidate for vice president raised the profile of the Kaine Email Project @LVA, a searchable online archive of the former governor’s and his administration’s email correspondence. After receiving approximately 1.3 million records from the administration, the first-of-it-kind archive is continually sifting through and posting them in batches.

The Richmond City Council and the mayor’s office reached an agreement to post documents and contracts for major city projects on a centralized website. The proposal applies to any capital project with a budget of more than $5 million. The biggest concession, according to the proposal’s sponsor, was the elimination of a public comment forum. While the public can still share its thoughts on a plan, comments will not be published online.

Norfolk is considering a proposal, backed by the local commonwealth attorney, to release certain police body camera footage. Greg Underwood said he supports releasing videos of police shootings once criminal investigations are complete and his office has either prosecuted or cleared the officers.

Instead of holding a public presentation on alternatives for relocating the general district court in Albemarle County, County Executive Tom Foley said the presentations would be shared with each affected jurisdiction’s governing body in closed session.

An employee of the Virginia Inspector General’s office and two independent contractors filed a whistleblower complaint that alleges many deficiencies in the investigation of Jamycheal Mitchell’s death in a Portsmouth jail cell. Among the allegations raised by employee Cathy Hill was one that FOIA requests related to the incident were mishandled by denying that records existed when, in fact, they did.

NFOIC comes to D.C.
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The National FOI Coalition (NFOIC) will hold its next annual summit in Washington, D.C., Oct. 7-8, at the Dupont Circle Hotel. This year’s conference is being hosted by the D.C. Open Government Coalition and will feature timely panels on federal and state access issues. The public is welcome and encouraged to attend. Keep checking this page for programming and registration updates.