Sunshine Report for March 2023

Meet VCOG's 2023 FOI award winner

Laura Mollo spent years fighting for transparency and accountability in Richlands. Many in the town resented her and what she was doing. But along the way, she picked up concerned citizens who had finally had it with the status quo. Read about Laura here. We'll present Laura with the award at our 2023 conference in Charlottesville.

VCOG annual conference

Civilian review boards, the FOIA behind the story, paying attention to state politics, tech solutions to FOIA fulfillment. It's all here at VCOG's annual conference, March 16, in Charlottesville. Join us by registering today or support us by becoming a donor or sponsor. Click the image below.

General Assembly adjourns amid lost opportunities 

The 2023 General Assembly adjourned Feb. 26 without a complete budget and without taking full advantage of legislation offered to make citizen access to records and meetings easier or better. There’s nothing super egregious, but there’s also not as much to get excited about, either.

Because access is not a partisan issue — neither the Republicans or the Democrats are traditional FOIA allies — the fate of these bill wasn’t a casualty of a divided legislature. Good and bad bills passed and failed in both chambers.

On the plus side, . . . 

Continue reading our legislative wrap-up on our Substack newsletter.
 

Eye roll of the month

Again, Loudoun County supervisors urged the county school board to release the report the board commissioned about its response to two sexual assaults in 2021. Again, the school board refused. One board member justified her vote not to release it by saying that a significant portion of the report would need to be redacted to comply with federal law, which would then lead to more questions about what was left out.
 

VCOG joins effort to open up electronic court records

The Virginia Coalition for Open Government joined a coalition of news outlets in a friend of the court brief penned by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in support of Courthouse News Service, which is challenging the Virginia Supreme Court's rules that allow only lawyers to access electronic case files, not any member of the public.

Open Government in the News

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education on behalf of Ben Paviour and VPM News over the department's withholding of 87 of 90 emails related to new policies on transgender students. Many of the records were withheld under the claim that they were the working papers of the governor.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership said it had at least 1,700 emails and documents related to the possibility of Ford Motor Co. building a battery plant in the Danville area -- a deal called off by the governor, who said the company was a joint venture with a Chinese company and was a "front" for the Chinese Communist Party -- but it was withholding them all under a broad exemption for economic development.

A Richmond man, Jeff Thomas, won a FOIA suit against the University of Virginia over the school's delay in responding fully to his request for emails related to Bert Ellis, recently appointed to the Board of Visitors at the time of Thomas' request in August 2022. The university said the delay was an oversight, yet continued to fight the lawsuit after it was filed. When ordered to turn over the messages, the university then turned its criticism towards Ellis.

The Spotsylvania School Board was back in the spotlight in February, first when a budget work session was repeatedly recessed whenever board members -- who were only allowed to ask three questions and who are frequently at odds with the chair --spoke beyond allotted time limits, and ending with the arrest in late February of the former chair (still current member) for forging a public record. Though details were scarce, the offense date coincided with when changes were made to the terms of a contract with the interim superintendent.

A member of the Loudoun County school board has attended only one meeting in person since March 31, 2020. She has been calling in -- or attending via Zoom -- using the part of FOIA that allows members to call into an unlimited number of meetings because of a temporary or permanent disability. The member told the Loudoun Times-Mirror that while she was "grateful" that the news outlet was writing about it, she was "not at liberty" to answer any questions.

Members of the Nottoway County board of supervisors argued over whether to go into a closed session about the water authority. One member balked, saying, "Everybody knows what’s going on. Everybody knows where Blackstone stands, where Crewe stands, where Burkeville stands, where the state stands, where Prince Edward stands. I feel like we shouldn’t take anything about water-related services into closed session." Others agreed and there was no closed meeting.

As part of the ongoing lawsuit between South Hill and a Richmond lawyer about emails regarding the town manager, a judge ordered the town to produce two of the documents, but said others could remain secret. The review comes after the Supreme Court of Virginia set up some parameters on the use of the personnel records exemption and told the trial court to look at the records at issue under those new parameters.

Norfolk refused to say whether its former planning director was fired or whether he resigned after a national organization for city planners revoked his credentials for what it said were ethics violations.

It's not unusual for localities to hand-pick people to fill vacancies on their boards, interviewing them privately, holding applicants' names close to the vest. It's not unusual, but it's not required. And it's difficult to square the internal maneuvering with the fact that the citizens who will be represented by the new person do not get a say. In February, the Charlottesville mayor personally pared down a list of 20 applicants to fill a vacancy to a list of six and then met one by one with fellow council members to get input on their favorites before a final selection was made (in public).

The Prince William County board of supervisors backed off its attempt to change the rules on public comment periods to restrict speakers to one public comment slot per month.

Luray's town council adopted a change to its meeting format, adding a section called "Council Comments" after the section for "Citizen Comments." The council opted for that format over responding to citizens during their comment period.

A document the chair of the Arlington County school board prepared suggests that members should "err on the side of vague" when talking to the community, and to tell the chair if they "are contemplating" responding to press inquiries, and instead let staff public relations personnel do it. The chair said the document was meant to serve as a discussion guide.

The former attorney for Chesapeake warned city council members that they were putting the city at risk by not turning over records they talked about during -- but which were not prepared exclusively for -- a closed meeting. Though one member sent the requester photos of the records, the city's failure to turn over the actual records led to a FOIA lawsuit that is now pending. “It is difficult to overstate the vulnerabilityof both the city and the council member in light of the prior, inaccurate FOIA responses,” the lawyer wrote.

Tempers flared among members of the Lynchburg city council when one was caught on a hot mic saying to another, "You're the stupidest person I've ever seen." Dueling "how dare you"s followed.

A Richmond police internal affairs document admits policy violations by officers during the 2020 protests over the death of George Floyd. The report was made public by the police accountability database OpenOversightVA.

According to a review by Inside NoVa, the Prince William County Economic Development Department signed 11 non-disclosure agreements in 2022. Most were related to data center developers. Copies of one of the agreements, which the department's director said are routine, had the name of the company redacted, though it had a contact point, and another was redacted to make identification of the company impossible