No-strings access has long been an underlying principle of Virginia's 35-year-old Freedom of Information Act.

In the '03 legislature it almost fell by the wayside  until Gov. Mark Warner intervened, and a lot of legislators had second thoughts.

By a 21-19 vote, the state Senate tacked a "purpose of access" question onto an Internet privacy bill in mid-February  with no prior public notice or public input.

Sen. Edd Houck (D-Spotsylvania) immediately saw it as a "radical departure from the public's having access to public documents." All 16 other Senate Democrats agreed; so did two Republicans, Kevin Miller (R-Harrisonburg) and freshman Jay O'Brien (R-Fairfax Station).

The House of Delegates rubber-stamped the change, 91-8, despite similar warnings from Del. Chip Woodrum (D-Roanoke) a long-time supporter of open government.

Editorial pages, seldom in agreement on other public policy issues, spoke with one voice in denouncing the so-called Bolling Amendment, offered by another longtime supporter of open government, Sen. Bill Bolling (R-Hanover).

"Once the notion is set in law that government has the right to know why a citizen wants one piece of information, it will be much easier to demand to know why he wants another," the Virginian-Pilot said.

The purpose amendment "serves no good purpose," observed the Times-Dispatch.

"Is the intent to intimidate citizens?" asked the Daily Press. "Or to suggest that access might one day depend on whether government approves of an individual's reason for looking at documents?"

John Edwards, a member of the FOIA Council and editor of the Smithfield Times, wrote in early March, "government officials are custodians, not owners" of public records. "But with the Bolling Amendment, (House Bill 2426) has become a statement that government can now judge your reasons for wanting to see a public record. There is no empowerment to judge a reason as good' or bad,' but it is a dangerous move in that direction."

Gov. Warner heard the outcry. So did House Speaker Bill Howell (R-Fredericksburg) and the Republican leadership in the Senate. The House stripped the "purpose of access" question from the bill, 82-18; the Senate killed the language, 37-2. Only Sen. Steve Newman (R-Lynchburg) sided with Bolling.

Almost lost in the fight were the Internet privacy issues that had spawned the debate.

Dissatisfied with first-year results of a study committee's work on Internet court records, Del. Sam Nixon (R-Chesterfield) had called for a sweeping prohibition of any online government record containing "(i) an actual signature; (ii) a Social Security number; (iii) a date of birth identified with a particular person; (iv) the maiden name of a person's parent so as to be identified with a particular person; (v) any financial account number or numbers; or (vi) the name and age of any minor child."

Almost nobody quarreled with the idea of keeping bank and credit card account numbers or Social Security numbers off the Web, though police quickly gained an exemption to allow continued posting of the SSNs on their "most wanted" lists.

Nixon's other prohibitions had much more serious implications  for e-government and public records of every type.

In the end, a much-amended measure got approved, exempting educational and historical records, protecting genealogical research, and ordering clerks of courts to restrict online access to the disputed records by use of paid subscriptions.

The restriction is to last just 18 months, beginning this January.

Clerks also got a "fix" for the long term. As of July 1, they can reject any public document unnecessarily bearing a SSN.
Meantime, the study committee, chaired by Del. Jeannemarie Devolites (R-Fairfax) (Nixon's also a member), got the extra two years it was seeking. Its assignment, as before: to try to find the right answers for handling sensitive personal information in the Information Age.

That two-year timetable also enables Devolites to run for an open State Senate seat this fall.

To help move the process along, the Virginia Law Foundation has just agreed to provide a $12,000 grant for the e-filing/e-access study. An advisory committee is to be named by this fall, and Rob Baldwin, executive secretary of the Virginia Supreme Court, hopes to submit proposals to the full committee by March 2003. Baldwin is an ex-officio member of the legislative study.

A full summary of HB2426 votes and its many amendments is at this Web site:
http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?031+sum+HB2426