|
|
0 7 . 0 7 . 2 5
All Access
4 items
The FOIA Council and its two subcommittees meet today, starting with the meetings subcommittee at 11. The full FOIA Council will meet at 1:00, and the records subcommittee will meet 15 minutes after the council meeting ends (or at 2:30, whichever is later). The full council meets in House Room B in the General Assembly Building, while both subcommittees will meet in Room 210 at the GAB.
The “agenda bill” is on the meeting subcommittee agenda, now with new draft language being proposed by VCOG, which has been working with Fairfax and Arlington Counties, as well as with input from the Virginia Municipal League and the Virginia Press Association. FOIA Council member Ken Reid has put forth his own proposal, and the Virginia School Board Association has submitted a letter that characterizes the problem of taking final action on items that weren’t on the agenda made available to the public as anecdotal and rare.
The records committee will consider a definition of “personal information” and whether/how to deal with “vexatious” records requesters. The full council will discuss how other organizations can provide FOIA training under a new law VCOG initiated.
The materials for both subcommittees can be found here, and materials for the full council meeting are here. To watch any/all of the meetings, click here.
|
|
|
|
Local
When the Richmond City Council chose to part ways with former inspector general Jim Osuna earlier this year, there was no public vote or discussion of why the city’s public watchdog was suddenly leaving the job. Behind the scenes, the city made a deal with Osuna that includes secrecy measures so sweeping they prohibit both sides from even disclosing the deal exists, according to a series of responses to public records requests from The Richmonder. Megan Rhyne, the executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said attempting to conceal the very existence of a government document flies in the face of Virginia’s transparency laws. Even when there might be a valid legal reason not to release certain information, Rhyne said in an interview, it’s unusual to claim a document can be concealed so completely no one can know it’s there. “To say that you can’t even say whether it exists is taking it one step too far,” Rhyne said.
|
|
|
|
Column
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula ran on a platform to clean up City Hall and be a transparent mayor, but so far he has done little to differentiate his administration from that of his predecessor, who wrote the book on how to master obfuscation and ignoring the public’s right to know. Avula could easily have announced demonstrated a new attitude and instituted a new policy towards transparency that would have matched his lofty rhetoric from the campaign trail that would bring a new day and let the sun shine down on City Hall. He had the perfect chance to take a huge first step and demonstrate the need for sunscreen by settling and ending an ongoing lawsuit filed last year by the city’s former Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) officer who was fired by Mayor Stoney in January 2024 after about six months on the job. The city has stood firm in denying wrongdoing and say Clay’s allegations are without merit. Meanwhile, the bills for the city keep escalating. And yet, Avula is choosing to go to court and spend zillions of dollars of public money on a lawsuit that was the result of the Stoney administration’s intransigence. He could simply drop the case and promise a new era of transparency and openness, but he has instead chosen the Stoney way.
|
|
|
|
In other states-Delaware
Earlier this year, Delaware state Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton became curious about the financial interests of a fellow Delaware lawmaker. So she went to the website of the state’s Public Integrity Commission. That’s the government body, known as the PIC, which receives and keeps the financial disclosure statements filed annually by some 350 elected and appointed state officials and candidates for Delaware office. Under Delaware law, the filings are public documents. But when Wilson-Anton searched the PIC’s website for the lawmaker’s reports, they were nowhere to be found. That’s because to see the reports, the Bear-area Democrat had to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the state. Wilson-Anton said that requirement is ridiculous — that the reports should be posted online, for viewing by anyone, at any time.
|
|
|
|
Federal
A Freedom of Information Act request has produced letters that the US Department of Justice sent to Google, Apple, Amazon, and several other companies in order to assuage their concerns about breaking a law that banned US web services from working with TikTok. The documents — obtained by Zhaocheng Anthony Tan, a Google shareholder who sued for their release earlier this year — show Attorney General Pam Bondi and her predecessor Acting Attorney General James McHenry III promising to release companies from responsibility for violating the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required US companies to ban TikTok from app stores and other platforms or face hundreds of billions of dollars in fines. The law was intended to force a sale of TikTok from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, due to national security concerns. Additionally, the letters say the Justice Department will step in to prevent anyone else from attempting to enforce penalties, a promise that includes filing amicus briefs or “intervening in litigation.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
