“I am not sure what this means,” Culpeper County General District Judge Edward K. Carpenter said about FOIA in an Oct. 22 ruling against The Culpeper Citizen.

The Citizen filed suit against the board of supervisors in early October after the board went into closed session to talk with the school board’s architect about construction alternatives for a new high school. The Citizen claimed that the motion to go into closed session did not properly identify the subject matter of the closed meeting, and that no exemption would apply.

Roger Wiley, a local government attorney with Richmond’s Hefty & Wiley, argued that FOIA allowed the board to go behind closed doors to discuss “changes” to the architect’s contract with the board. He also argued that FOIA allowed the school board, the board of supervisors and the architect to iron out their differences.

Citing a lack of guiding case law, Carpenter sided with the county.

The Citizen announced in mid-December that it would be appealing Carpenter’s ruling with the financial backing of the Virginia Press Association.