THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 20, 1997 TAG: 9701180056
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SERIES: A VIRGINIA REFORM AGENDA
One of a series
LENGTH: 83 lines
Thirty years after Virginia adopted its Freedom of Information Act and close to a decade after the document's last review, the time has come for another major overhaul.
Too often, those elected, appointed or hired to run the government view its internal workings as their private domain. In recent months, court cases in Martinsville and Wise County, actions by some officials in Richmond, and anecdotal evidence from around the commonwealth testify to that unfortunate fact.
Too often, the Freedom of Information Act is viewed as a matter of concern only to journalists probing for information. But open government is a public issue, not a journalistic one.
When, why and how decisions are made is not the purview of an elite group of officials and public employees. Government belongs to the people, and access to the internal workings of government and the information upon which it is based are matters of ``public'' right.
Among the matters that demand attention:
While Virginia law requires public disclosure of most documents, it also allows more than 60 exemptions to that rule. The number has grown steadily. An additional 25 reasons are listed for legitimately closing a public meeting.
Some exemptions, such as those protecting information about the business workings of Medical College of Virginia and University of Virginia hospitals, are overly broad. Some, such as a ban on releasing the subscriber list of Virginia Wildlife magazine, are ridiculously narrow. Exemptions need to be clarified, simplified and whittled down.
Often, the notion that meetings need to be closed or information withheld is more a matter of habit than necessity. North Carolina has only about a dozen exemptions to its open-records law. Tennessee has an open-meetings law with only a single exemption: attorney-client privilege in cases of pending litigation.
There's no reason Virginia government should not be equally accessible to its citizens.
It is too easy to circumvent the intent of the law. The general tenor of Virginia's act is good. It specifies that the mandate for open government is to be ``liberally construed''; any exemptions are to be ``narrowly constructed.''
But intent and practice are too often at odds.
For instance, one exemption protects the ``working papers'' of the governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. But recently, Cabinet secretaries and other state government officials have taken to claiming the exemption as well.
Meanwhile, agencies disposed to secrecy can use the law to delay release of information for weeks. And they're allowed too much wiggle room in deciding what to charge for a document.
The law covering release of public documents needs to make clear that documents are to be provided at or below cost. And there should be greater clarity about when various exemptions apply.
With electronic storage of data on the rise, a whole new section of law is needed to ensure public access to that information at a reasonable cost.
The Virginia Assembly earlier this year made its first foray into monitoring access to computerized records. The lawmakers required public bodies to compile indexes of electronically stored information. Those lists are to be available to the public by next summer. Unfortunately, the agency in charge of drafting a plan dragged its feet in getting started until last fall.
Besides, more than an index ought to be easily available. With a recently passed North Carolina law as a model, the Assembly should make clear that computer records - as well as paper ones - are public property.
There's been a dangerous trend in other states of turning over public data to private firms that enhance the data in some way and then resell the product to the public expensively.
The law needs to protect public-ownership interests in such cases and keep costs low. Taking information that the public has already paid to compile and pricing it too high for the average citizen to afford makes a mockery of public access.
And, finally, several specific adjustments should be made to the law. Candidates for office should be required to file computerized financial reports. The current administration's practice of denying reporters direct access to prison inmates should be disallowed.
Behind all such changes is the principle that the people's government is their own. They have a right to more than an officially sanitized view of how it is working. Governments created by the people are accountable to them. And access to information is essential.