For transparency advocates, March Madness can sometimes be more like March Sadness, as challenges to people’s access to government records and meetings — so that they can learn about how their government is spending their money and making decisions that impact them — march along unabated. Last month, local governments resisted disclosing public records, about board vacancy applicants and severance payment details, UVA redacted gobs of information from reports it has fought for more than two years to keep secret, and Richmond redacted a severance pay-out spreadsheet to protect recipients’ privacy, and a grant disbursement report to protect the nonprofits’ ability to fundraise.

Legal battles over FOIA access persisted, some going the way of government, others not: A judge reaffirmed her ruling against Prince William County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney for multiple FOIA violations, but the Court of Appeals ruled against a former VDOT employee seeking administrative investigative records and against homeowners challenging the process by which a grocery store distribution center was approved. The FOIA Council issued three opinions in March, and VCOG’s Megan Rhyne was busy on Substack.

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After 2.5 years, the University of Virginia finally released the nearly 200-page investigative reports produced by outside attorneys at the behest of the Board of Visitors to look into the events leading up to and following the shooting deaths of three UVA football players by a fellow student. However, the reports are extensively redacted — more pages than not. The university insists that redactions are necessary to protect the shooter’s “federal student privacy protections,” even though the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA) is not nearly so broad. Though a university spokesperson said that the shooter did not “waive his federal student privacy protections,” the investigative attorneys apparently had access to information about him, as did the members of the Board of Visitors and administration officials. The redacted information also appears to cover information that was in the public domain from extensive reporting about the incident.

*photo from C-VILLE Weekly

The fiscal impact statements attached to proposed legislation can give insight into an impacted entity’s opinion about the bill. Case in point: While other universities have said they could absorb costs associated with a proposal to post data about animal-testing violations, ODU said it would cost them $225,000 per year and UVA $82,600. Luckily, the governor signed the bill anyway.

Every state has its own public records and public meetings laws. They can be vastly different and are always applied differently across local and state entities. But states nonetheless face a number of common problems: fees, vexatious requesters, public comment periods and the tendency of what’s going on at the national level to suck the life out of what’s going on here.

The Court of Appeals for Virginia ruled that VDOT could assert an exemption for the first time on appeal because the exemption contained a prohibition against release of specific information; it was an ‘other law’ that prohibited release. The exemption at issue is § 2.2-3705.3(7): ““Investigative notes, correspondence and information furnished in confidence, and records otherwise exempted by [VFOIA] or any Virginia statute, provided to or produced by or for . . . internal auditors appointed by the head of a state agency.”

Lee Albright
Bonnie Alexander
Tom Blackstock
Boone Newsmedia
Cardinal News
Paul Casalaspi
Christian & Barton, LLP
Roger Christman
The Daily Progress
Maria Everett
Mark Gruenwald
The Harrisonburg Citizen

Joshua Heslinga
Megan Rhyne
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Sage Information Services
SPJVA-Pro Chapter
Jeff South
Thomas H. Roberts & Associates, PC
Virginia Association of Broadcasters
Virginia Poverty Law Center
WHRO, Norfolk
Willcox & Savage
WTVR, Richmond

FOIA doesn’t include any provision that would prohibit an attempt to ask a judge to issue a declaratory judgement to resolve a FOIA dispute.

Private university police forces aren’t subject to FOIA, but other state laws require them to release certain information upon request.

Does a meeting of three or more members of a school board to discuss “right sizing” trigger FOIA’s meeting requirements? Is “right sizing,” considered “public business”?

A story in the Richmond Times-Dispatch in early March said that the number of bills that died without a recorded vote — usually in the form of a pocket veto, where bills are assigned to a committee but never put on that committee’s agenda — “rose sharply from previous years.” It found that 190 bills died this way in the House, up from 100 in 2023. Though assessment measures may be different, Transparency Virginia ran reports like this (authored by VCOG’s Megan Rhyne) from 2015 to 2021 and found this year’s numbers still well below not-so-distant peaks.
(R) 2015: 117
(R) 2016: 153
(R) 2017: 152
(R) 2018: 296
(R) 2019: 248
(D) 2020: 207
(D) 2021: 116

Despite a 2024 law initiated by VCOG that requires local public bodies to release the names and resumes (or similar application materials) of those being considered to fill a board vacancy, Fredericksburg refused to do so until after the fact. With its new member appointed without providing that information, the city council voted in late February to release the materials in response to a citizen’s FOIA request. The Isle of Wight County Board of Supervisors also refused disclose the names of people who were applied or nominated to fill a vacancy on that board.

A state lawmaker complained about the confidentiality agreement he was required to sign in order to visit the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center. Del. Mike Jones said he understood why he’d be asked not to disclose information that could impact the privacy of the young residents, but he noted the agreement also prohibited him from publicly discussing “all information presented, observed, or discussed on the tour,” meaning he wouldn’t be able to tell the public about things like programming, staffing and conditions at the facility.

Lynchburg officials will examine whether they will be able to provide livestream coverage and recordings of the meetings of the city council’s committees on finance and physical development. 

Homeowners who have been fighting with Hanover County since 2020 over its COVID-era approval of a Wegman’s distribution center lost their latest round in the litigation when the Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled against them. The plaintiffs won on a standing issue at the Supreme Court, but the case was sent back to the trial court, which ruled for Hanover, and the Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling. Among the several issues was whether the county’s social-distancing policies implemented at the public hearing on the permit application violated FOIA. The court said it didn’t because some of the homeowners, plus their attorney, were able to attend in peson and others were able to submit written comments that were read out loud at the meeting.

A member of the Surry County Board of Supervisors said that she was intentionally staying away from public meetings to make a point: “I am attempting to right numerous wrongs by illustrating publicly through my absence who in fact is running the county.”

A former Richmond city employee has been charged with grand larceny and misusing public assets worth more than $1,000 last year, but officials aren’t saying what happened. The Commonwealth’s attorney insisted that she wouldn’t be providing details because “we don’t try cases in the media,” even though it is not uncommon for CAs to provide basic information about cases they are pursuing.

After 232 days, the City of Richmond finally released records of severance payments. The city provided information on eight years’ worth of payments, though it redacted the names of the employees receiving the payments and their salaries. The mayor said the redactions were needed to protect the employees’ privacy. The salaries part is important to oversight because city code says severance payments are to be based on salaries. Without salary information, it can’t be determined if the payment exceeded what was allowable.

The governor vetoed HB 2039, which would have directed the FOIA Council and law enforcement representatives to come up with standard models for use of encrypted radio communication, presumably to leave some feeds available to the public.

The Richmond Audit Committee issued a report criticizing the city’s process for giving public funds to charitable organizations. The city’s response was not that they should improve the process, but that they should call the disbursements “gifts or donations” instead of “grants.” The auditor responded, “Whether you call them grants or contracts, you have to monitor it, that’s not going to take away our recommendation.” The city released a redacted spreadsheet of the grants for FY 2023 that showed several organizations that got money may not have met the criteria. Individual score sheets have been destroyed, and the names of some organizations, plus the names of employees who assessed them, were redacted. The city originally said the spreadsheet could be withheld from disclosure under FOIA as “working papers,” and later it said the redactions were necessary so as not to compromise the organizations’ fundraising abilities.

The Richmond inspector general cleared the city’s former spokeswoman of any wrongdoing related to the hiring of her former business partner to provide media services to the city. The IG found the work provided was “high quality work at a competitive price” and that the spokeswoman did not profit from the transaction.

The Virginia Department of Health cited the governor’s working papers exemption to withhold records that revealed how agency officials were reacting as Richmond officials were disclosing the findings of its investigation into the water crisis of early January. The VDH is not listed among those who can take advantage of the working papers exemption.

The editor of Cardinal News drove several hundred miles throughout Southwest and Southside Virginia, then sent FOIA requests to localities to ask for Flock camera data of his own vehicle. Staunton, Martinsville and Augusta County all provided the data. But the City of Roanoke and the sheriff of Botetourt County filed declaratory judgment actions in Roanoke City Circuit Court asking the court to declare that they do not have to give out the information. According to Cardinal News, “they fear that fulfilling the request would be running afoul of their agreement with Flock, as well as the policies of each locality, and could be considered a felony.”

The Shenandoah School Board engaged in an hour-long debate over whether board members should have to pay for their FOIA requests, whether board members had the right to receive information to do their jobs, whether FOIA requests had to have the backing of the full board and whether board members can use electronic devices during closed session.

It took a FOIA request for a check invoice to determine how much Henrico County paid to ($225,000) settle a lawsuit with a man held in jail for two days after phone location data proved he was innocent of the crime he was arrested for in 2023.

The Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney did not convince the judge who ruled in February that she had violated FOIA multiple times and ordered her to pay more than $22,000 in attorney fees and costs to reverse her decision. Instead, Chief Judge Angela Horan upped the amount due to $25,000. The judge rejected an assistant Commonwealth’s attorney’s use of “Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword” as an argument in favor of dropping the attorney fees because the plaintiff ultimately received the records she wanted. The prosecutor says she is considering an appeal.

As conflicting reports swirl around the resignation of the University of Virginia Health System’s CEO, the university confirmed that it would not be releasing the findings of its investigation into allegations against the CEO, though the Board of Visitors does get to see it.

A member of the Martinsville City Council left a meeting after a sheriff’s deputy approached him on the dais and laid her hand on his arms. The member had been complaining about a pay raise for the city manager, which prompted the mayor to tell the member to “fall in order.”

Residents of Purcellville launched a recall effort aimed at a majority of the town council members. Among the reasons cited to support the petition is that council members are having small-group meetings out of sight of the public, communicating via encrypted group chat apps and avoiding FOIA requests.

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