Friday
March 3, 2023
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Contact us at vcog@opengovva.org
It’s not a lot,
but it’s a LOT
VCOG’s annual conference
FOI Day — March 16
Charlottesville
Info and registration here
The Richmond Police Department demanded a police accountability website pay $7,873.14 as a fee deposit in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for the department’s general policies. Many police departments already post their policies on their websites, and others provided them at no cost. Sharon Carr, the Richmond Police Department’s general counsel, wrote that it would take her 151 hours to read the policies for possible redactions under FOIA. At a rate of $52.14 per hour, she wrote to OpenOversightVA, the department would need a deposit for $7,873.14 before continuing work on the FOIA request. And the costs could end up being higher, Carr warned. Andrew Bodoh, a Richmond attorney specializing in FOIA, noted that the time Carr estimated it would take her to review her department’s policies was far longer than it takes to read the entire series of Harry Potter books out loud. He called Carr’s fee estimate “absurd.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
FOIA is not extra or other. FOIA is a statute — with penalties for noncompliance — on par with any other statutory requirement. It is not an opportunity cost unless some other statutory duty canNOT be done.
cont’d Megan Rhyne on Twitter
Every state — red, blue and purple — is facing challenges to their open records and meetings laws.
NFOIC on Twitter
Meanwhile, perhaps our best tool for combating propaganda and misinformation — the Freedom of Information Act — continues to get treated in the Virginia General Assembly like a bureaucratic nuisance. Each year, open government advocates and a handful of FOIA-friendly lawmakers attempt to strengthen and streamline the so-called “Sunshine Law” but get repeatedly rebuffed. Since its passage in 1968, countless bills have passed adding exemptions to FOIA, making it easier for elected officials and government agencies to restrict what information is released to the public. Bills that add transparency get discarded, or defanged before passage. “It can be depressing,” says Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. “People in power don’t want to give up the power of the message.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch