Sunday, March 15, 2009
FOIA: the wedge that keeps government's door open
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
It's time for the annual recap of news you know because it is your right to know it.
Today marks the beginning of Sunshine Week, the seven days set aside each year to celebrate citizens' access to their government and to complain that they need more. It's true: We newspaper types are never satisfied. This isn't simply because we have a defective curiosity gene that knows not when to rest. Rather, we take seriously our charge that as your surrogates we should leave few questions unanswered, especially the ones that people in power would rather we not ask. Sometimes that means pounding hard on doors closed to the public or hiring an attorney to fight in court for your records.
Editorial Page Editor Dan Radmacher, in his accompanying column, will tell you about a particular pet peeve of our editorial board: the way Roanoke City Council hires firms for lucrative contracts. I'll leave the details to him.
Also on this page, our Voices of the Valleys panelists debate whether people who are appointed to authorities, boards and commissions should be vetted in public.
Throughout the week, our editorial page will hit on a number of open government topics, starting today with information on how you can use the Freedom of Information Act to learn more about your community.
For now, I'll share a few local stories that came to you over the past year courtesy of the open records law.
When last we talked FOIA, Roanoke was in the midst of the Alfred Dowe double-billing scandal that reporter Laurence Hammack uncovered through a records request of council members' expense reports. As we meet up this year, Roanoke has just replaced Dowe's replacement, Alvin Nash, because a conflict of interest was uncovered by Hammack through, you guessed it, another FOIA request.
City staff and Nash's Blue Ridge Housing Development Corp. are in a dispute over whether the agency owes the city $333,000 in program income from a grant. Nash, who had recently resigned from Blue Ridge, decided to fight for its honor. He rejoined the agency and resigned from council.
Whew. Here's hoping council got the new, new appointment right with Rupert Cutler, but, in any case, voters will get a crack at it next year.
Judging by the recent city election, they better pay attention. Last May's elections prompted FOIA requests. Reporter Mason Adams made what ordinarily is a bread-and-butter search of campaign finance reports. But with a campaign that was anything but white bread, irregularities surfaced in then-Councilman Brian Wishneff's report regarding the accounting of funds used to pay for ads.
Wishneff later admitted placing the ads -- smear jobs against his opponent -- under the made-up name of Joe Smith. He's now facing criminal charges, and he and others might be assessed civil penalties of up to $4,600 -- information that Hammack obtained through yet another FOIA request.
Not all FOIA requests deal with political intrigue. Sometimes mice can be as menacing as men. Last September, the city on a Friday evening abruptly closed the City Market Building "for fall cleaning." Reporters talked with health department officials and learned the mysterious cleaning was cover for a mouse infestation. People, especially those who had just eaten lunch there, were incensed: How long had this been going on?
A FOIA request of health department inspections, complete with pictures, let diners know just how long and how many mouse pellets littered the building.
Of more importance, though, is that more people now know that they, too, can access health department inspection records online to check the places they frequent.
Not all the attention was focused on Roanoke or municipal government. Requests were made to Radford University, Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, gathering information regarding athletic budgets. Some requests were made for mental health and police records. Not all were filled by the agencies, nor were all fulfilled requests turned into stories. Not all agencies handle similar requests the same way. In one high-profile police case, simultaneous requests were made of Roanoke County and Franklin County for audio copies of radio traffic between dispatchers and officers related to the Feb. 29, 2008, shooting involving Micah B. Sword. Franklin complied; Roanoke did not, citing an ongoing investigation -- a common reason police agencies use to turn down FOIA requests.
Most FOIA requests cost little money to fill or require a nominal copying fee that most citizens can afford. Sometimes, though, a request leads to a court entanglement, such as the one The Roanoke Times is engaged in with the city of Radford. Reporter Tim Thornton requested copies of correspondence, including FOIA requests, between May 1 and July 21 that dealt with a harassment complaint. Thornton received heavily redacted copies that in one example had blacked out two pages of a 212 page document.
Radford officials claim that the FOIA request Thornton seeks to see is now considered a personnel record and is exempt from his FOIA request. It's an inventive, twisted way to keep hidden what officials do not wish to be public -- even if it is the public's business.
We think you have a right to know what they wish you didn't know.
We'll show you how to discover even more on Page 2.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
