(C) Virginia Mercury This story was originally published by Virginia Mercury and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . FOIA Friday: Richmond schools’ secrecy over graduation shooting [1] ['Staff Report', 'More From Author', '- August'] Date: 2023-08-04 One of the less noticed features of the Virginia Way is the long-running tendency of the commonwealth’s leaders to conduct their decision-making behind closed doors. While the Virginia Freedom of Information Act presumes all government business is by default public and requires officials to justify why exceptions should be made, too many Virginia leaders in practice take the opposite stance, acting as if records are by default private and the public must prove they should be handled otherwise. In this feature, we aim to highlight the frequency with which officials around Virginia are resisting public access to records on issues large and small — and note instances when the release of information under FOIA gave the public insight into how government bodies are operating. Richmond Public Schools redactions After the graduation day shooting of Richmond Public Schools student Shawn Jackson and his stepfather as graduates left the Altria Theater in downtown Richmond, CBS6 reporter Tyler Layne asked the public school system for a variety of emails concerning the alleged shooter, Amari Pollard, Jackson and the “homebound instruction” program in which Jackson was enrolled through the school system. Layne also asked for copies of internal reviews and investigations of the graduation shooting and a separate April shooting in the parking lot of George Wythe High School. Richmond Public Schools withheld 120 pages of relevant emails and provided heavily redacted copies of the internal shooting reviews. Among the redactions were two entirely blacked out recommendations in the graduation shooting review that RPS said “contain identifiable student information.” An unredacted version provided to Layne by a source revealed that while a single line contained identifiable student information, the remainder focused on general programmatic and policy decisions, including recommendations to “develop a clear protocol for determining whether a student should participate in a graduation ceremony” and “require principals to personally review and sign off on all graduation participants using” a suggested protocol. Layne was charged $166.77 for the documents. After he sent the division further emails, RPS agreed to remove some redactions but argued the remaining redactions “are permissible because the redacted information is directly related to a student – and is therefore a ‘scholastic record’ – and it concerns an identifiable individual.” Augusta County Board demands member hand over closed-session recordings According to The Staunton News Leader, the Augusta County Board of Supervisors passed a unanimous resolution Aug. 2 demanding Supervisor Scott Seaton hand over recordings he made of closed sessions and any notes or communications related to the recordings going back to Jan. 1, 2020. Seaton, who was previously censured by the board for making the recordings, was absent from the vote. The Augusta board is arguing that because the recordings are public records, they belong to the county and must be provided under Virginia FOIA. Seaton told The News Leader he believes the board is misapplying FOIA and that he would only turn the records over if compelled by a court order or in response to a FOIA request from a member of the public. In a first-person account in conservative outlet Bearing Drift, he called the recordings “my notes of the closed meetings for my use alone.” “I believe most of these recordings should be made public; however, the board refuses to release them to the public,” he wrote. Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act allows public officials to discuss certain specific issues in closed session but prohibits votes from being taken in private. Officials must notify the public what specific exemption of the law they are invoking to go into closed session and then take a public vote when they return to open session confirming they only discussed that issue and not others. This June, a local judge handed down a rare fine to the Gloucester County School Board for privately discussing matters not permitted under FOIA after a member recorded a closed meeting on his phone. The Mercury’s efforts to track FOIA and other transparency cases in Virginia are indebted to the work of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit alliance dedicated to expanding access to government records, meetings and other state and local proceedings. Emails show high-level dispute over doomed VCU Health development deal Communications the Richmond Times-Dispatch obtained through FOIA show the former chief executive officer of Virginia Commonwealth University Health raised red flags in 2021 about a doomed plan to develop a 17-story office tower in downtown Richmond to house part of the health system. “I am concerned that the agreement being pushed by the developers essentially puts us on the hook for most, if not all, of the project’s costs and risks,” former VCU Health CEO Art Kellerman said in an email that went to VCU President Michael Rao. In another email, a different VCU official said “the political stakes are high,” noting the project had potential to be the “biggest economic development accomplishment” of Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney. VCU Health ended up signing the deal, but had to pay $73 million to back out when leaders determined it didn’t make financial sense. Have you experienced local or state officials denying or delaying your FOIA request? Tell us about it: [email protected] [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2023/08/04/foia-friday-richmond-schools-secrecy-over-graduation-shooting/ Published and (C) by Virginia Mercury Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/virginiamercury/