ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 12, 1997 TAG: 9701130022
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
THE ALLIANCE is for print journalists, librarians, broadcasters, lawyers, educators, individuals and electronic information services such as the Virginia-based America Online.
When a budget subcommittee of the Wise County Board of Supervisors convened an executive session May 2, the purported purpose was closed-door discussion of ``personnel matters'' and ``the investment of public funds.''
Instead, thanks to the raised voices of those in the room, reporters who had been shut out of the meeting got an earful:
* County employees probably would get a raise this year, but it would be the last one for a while.
* The sheriff, who had requested $84,000 for three 4-wheel-drive trucks, should instead get $20,000 for one truck.
* Supervisors would try to whittle a clerk of court's request for a $70,000 computer upgrade down to $60,000.
All of those discussions were illegal under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, a Wise County Circuit judge ruled that month.
The county was ordered to pay legal costs of three newspapers that sued the supervisors for holding an unlawful closed meeting: The (Norton, Va.) Coalfield Progress, The Bristol (Va.-Tenn.) Herald Courier, and the Kingsport (Tenn.) Times News.
Those costs totaled $2,000, said Jeff Lester, a reporter for The Coalfield Progress. The judge also enjoined the supervisors from discussing the public's business behind closed doors in the future. They were not personally fined.
Similar violations of the Freedom of Information Act by local governments probably aren't the rule in Virginia, but they aren't the exceedingly rare exception, either, says the executive director of an organization formed recently to promote greater access to government meetings and records.
Forrest Landon, who retired as executive editor of The Roanoke Times in 1995, is spearheading the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, an alliance of print journalists, librarians, broadcasters, lawyers, educators, individuals and electronic information services such as the Virginia-based America Online.
Modeled after similar organizations in place in at least four other states, the 6-month-old group aims to educate the public and lawmakers on Virginia's 29-year-old freedom of information law, field complaints from people denied access to government meetings or documents, tighten loopholes that exist in the law, and lobby for new laws requiring access in the burgeoning area of electronic information.
Open government also is one of the themes of this year's meeting of the Virginia Press Association, which is being held this weekend at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center.
Robert O'Neil, the former University of Virginia president who is president of the new coalition, said one of its principal aims is to unite a broad group of interests under the common goal of open government.
"It's kind of a unique forum that hasn't existed [in Virginia] before," O'Neil said. "We envision being able to present to the General Assembly and local government a set of principles for access and openness."
In general, the Freedom of Information Act requires open meetings except for 23 specific circumstances under which executive sessions are allowed but not required. It takes a similar approach with government records. Sixty-three types of government documents are exempt from disclosure. In all but a handful of cases, the law permits officials to release those documents if they wish.
Landon and O'Neil both recognize legitimate reasons that governments may wish to meet out of the public's view or withhold documents under certain circumstances.
But Landon can also reel off chapter and verse on intentional and unintentional violations of the law by state and local government officials. He collects complaints from the public and news clippings of FOI infractions and publishes them in the coalition's newsletter.
For instance, Roanoke City Council last year unlawfully agreed in an executive session to raise members' salaries. After the violation of the law was pointed out, council reversed the previous action and adopted the pay raise in public.
And the Rocky Mount Town Council for years has routinely included a boilerplate executive session notice on its meeting agendas. Landon said that violates the act, which contains language requiring an adopted motion stating "specifically the purpose or purposes which are to be the subject of the meeting, and reasonably identifying the substance of the matters to be discussed."
One of the problems with the law, Landon added, is the topsy-turvy way in which some government officials interpret it.
"The preamble of the law says, liberally construe this language [to permit access]; narrowly construe the exemptions," Landon said. "Oftentimes, the exemptions get liberally construed."
But that argument was contested at a press association workshop Saturday by one of the state's leading lawmakers, House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell, D-Vinton. The preamble to statutes isn't part of the actual law, he noted.
"You can read that preamble to me all day long, but that preamble isn't the law," Cranwell said.
One of the principal areas the coalition hopes to influence is the development of regulations governing the release of electronic information. In some respects, such as with Department of Motor Vehicles records, that information is already marketed at a profit by the state.
Landon foresees legislative attempts by state agencies and local governments to charge high fees for computer records. The law prohibits fees that exceed "actual costs" of providing the records.
``It's critical to make sure you don't have a society of information haves and have-nots, so that only those with deep pockets can afford to pay for public records,'' Landon said. `` One of the arguments is, `We already already own government information. We've paid for it once as taxpaying citizens.'''
The coalition's board members include media executives, higher education officials, librarians and lawyers. Its membership includes all of the state's major newspaper chains, such as Media General, which owns the Richmond Times-Dispatch; Landmark Communications, which owns The Roanoke Times; and Byrd Newspapers Inc. WDBJ-TV of Roanoke, the Virginia Press Association and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters also are members.
Landon, who will earn $40,000 this year as full-time executive director, has already raised an endowment of $250,000 to help fund the coalition's efforts in future years. He works out of office space donated by The Roanoke Times.
Individuals can join the tax-exempt coalition for $25 annually, said Landon, adding that the organization's influence depends on its ability to attract a large and diverse membership.
Including the public in the coalition may be a key to its eventual success, said Tom Marquardt, a Maryland newspaper editor who in the early 1990s fought to tighten that state's loophole-ridden open-meetings law.
Testimony before the state legislature by individuals who had been shut out of local government meetings had a far greater impact on Maryland lawmakers than the media itself ever could have had, recalled Marquardt, who is managing editor of The Capital in Annapolis, Md.
"Without them, it would have looked like the press coming once again to bellyache about not having enough access to news," he said.
Eventually, the legislature deleted a "catch-all" plank in the law that permitted closed meetings for any reason. The revamped Maryland law also established an open-meeting compliance board, which, since its inception in 1992, has fielded many more complaints from the public than from journalists, Marquardt said.
For more information on government openness in Virginia, contact the Virginia Coalition for Open Government at P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010, or check the coalition's page on the World Wide Web at:
http://www.gateway-va.com/vpa/vcog.htm
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