Freedom of Information bills
HB 2152 (Carr) provides that any legal counsel for a public body who is also designated as the public body’s FOIA officer shall complete a training session or online course offered or approved by the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council. Current law provides that FOIA officers must be trained on a regular basis.
HB 2275 (Ennis) increases the minimum and maximum civil penalties that may be imposed upon an officer, employee, or member of a public body for violations of certain provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The bill also adjusts the minimum and maximum civil penalty for such second and subsequent violations, in addition to increasing the minimum and maximum civil penalties that can be imposed on a public body for violations related to certifying a closed meeting.
VACo opposed SB 876 (Ebbin) as introduced because it did not provide for the addition of, and action on, agenda issues that were emerging or required swift attention. The bill in its introduced form expands current notice information required of Public Bodies providing that the notice shall include a proposed agenda listing all items expected to be considered by the public body at the meeting and that agenda items shall be sufficiently descriptive to give the public reasonable notice of the matters to be considered at the meeting. What is particularly problematic about the bill is added language that provides that amendments to the proposed agenda may be made prior to the meeting, but the public body shall not take any final action on those amended or additional agenda items. This provision would essentially prevent modifying the agenda at a meeting and would prohibit a local public body from responding promptly to issues.
Operation of local government requires action on issues that come with the day-to-day complexities of safely and efficiently operating of local government functions. Requiring public bodies to wait until the next meeting, which may be a month away, to take action, is unreasonable at best and a public safety concern at worst.
The patron considered concerns raised by VACo and other public bodies and introduced a substitute to the bill which provides in part that the agenda and any subsequent revisions shall be posted on the public body’s official public government website, if any, and made available to the public prior to the meeting. It also provides that any items added to the agenda after the meeting commences may be considered and discussed at the meeting, but final action shall not be taken on such an item unless the matter is time sensitive. This new language would allow action on matters added to the agenda that are time sensitive, but all other matters added cannot be acted on until a subsequent meeting.
To express concerns about your county policies as they relate to this bill contact the Patron Senator Ebbin or your legislators.
SB 1029 (Roem) is a revised version of past bills introduced by the patron and opposed by VACo to provide free or reduced requester fees for FOIA requests to public bodies. The Introduced version of this bill is based on a work group of stakeholders that held a number of meetings over the past year under the umbrella of the Freedom of Information Act Advisory Council. The council did not take a position on the bill as it lacked a quorum at its last meeting before the session. The bill limits the fees that can be charged for producing public records to the median hourly rate of pay of employees of the public body, or the actual hourly rate of pay of the person performing the work, whichever is less. It also provides that a public body may petition a court for relief from this fee limit, if there is no one who can process the request at the median hourly rate of pay or less.
The bill also amends existing law providing that a public body may petition a court for additional time to respond to a request for public records to allow such petitions to be heard in either general district or circuit court, to give such petitions priority on the court’s docket, and to toll the response time while such a petition is pending before a court. As part of the workgroup, the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory (FOIA) Council staff has published best practices guides pertaining to access to public records under FOIA, FOIA charges, and making requests for public records.
VACo does not endorse the workgroup product as reflected in this bill. To express concerns about your county policies as they relate to this bill contact the Patron Senator Roem or your legislators.
Public Notice
VACo supports HB 1996 (Bennett Parker), which allows the second public hearing notice that a planning commission publishes for certain planning and zoning actions to be published no less than five days before the date of the meeting. Current law requires such notice to be published no less than seven days before the date of the meeting and this time frame was problematic for several localities due to the deadlines of the local newspaper.
KEY POINT
- The slightly shorter notice period will allow more timely action on these matters by the Public Body.
Conflicts and Ethics bills
SB 1349 (Srinivasan) proposes changing the filing deadline for statements of economic interests and financial disclosure statements from February 1 to December 15. The bill requires the forms to be made public within 30 days of the filing deadline; currently, this is required within six weeks of the filing deadline.
HB 1745 (Watts) and SB 1357 (Ebbin) provides that a personal interest in a transaction exists, for purposes of the State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act and the General Assembly Conflicts of Interests Act, when a subject of a transaction is the spouse of the officer, employee, or legislator, regardless of whether a financial benefit or liability is accrued by the spouse as the result of such transaction.
SB 1170 (Salim) directs the Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council to require the disclosure of digital assets on the Statement of Economic Interests form. The bill defines “digital assets” to mean any digital representation of value recorded on a cryptographically secured distributed ledger or similar technology.
VACo Contact: Phyllis Errico, Esq., CAE