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“You shouldn’t use email unless you want to be on the front page."
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The Freedom of Information Advisory Council has scheduled two additional training dates for the 2018 FOIA "Records" training in Richmond, Virginia. The training will be held at the Pocahontas Building located at 900 E. Main Street Richmond, VA 23219 near the Virginia State Capitol. The added dates and times for the training sessions are:
Wednesday, October 10, 2018 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
King William County Supervisor David E. Hansen was ordered to hand over video recordings of public meetings that he refused to provide King William Economic Development Authority chairman Brian Hodges via a Freedom of Information Act request. Richmond General District Court and recently designated Virginia Supreme Court Judge Barbara Gaden ordered Hansen to send Hodges the recordings by Aug. 27. Hodges, who represented himself, said that Hansen cannot be exempt from FOIA requests as a county supervisor. In denying the FOIA request, Hansen stated he was recording the meetings as a citizen and was therefore exempt from the law.
Tidewater Review
New Rector Bill Goodwin set the tone for the University of Virginia Board of Visitors at a meeting Monday afternoon. “My plea is to have open discussion, let’s chat, let’s disagree,” he said. “Once we make a decision, let’s rally around it.” The board — sometimes criticized for being secretive — made headlines last summer when it drafted a policy warning members against criticizing decisions the board has made after a vote. Though it did not explicitly name any board members, the proposal came after Helen E. Dragas, former rector and current member, criticized a series of decisions made by the board. The board abandoned it after widespread public criticism. Goodwin also has been critical of the use of the Freedom of Information Act to gain insight into the inner workings of the board, telling The Washington Post in 2013 that the prospect of having his interactions with other members probed by the press is “a deterrent.” Following a briefing and instructional video on FOIA for new board members (standard at board orientations every year) on Sunday, Goodwin asked the new members to try to avoid email, as it creates a public record that could end up in the newspapers. “You shouldn’t use email unless you want to be on the front page,” he said.
The Daily Progress
Marc Edwards, Virginia Tech’s Flint water team leader, is a public figure and because of that and other arguments a defamation lawsuit he filed is “frivolous” and should be dismissed, according to a filing by the defendants. The trio — Yanna Lambrinidou, a former Virginia Tech adjunct faculty member based in Washington, D.C.; Paul Schwartz, a D.C.-based clean water activist; and Melissa Mays, a Flint resident — say in the motion filed earlier this month that because Edwards is a public figure, the “allegedly actionable statements... are protected opinion in the context of a heated public policy and science debate.”
The Roanoke Times
More than 13,000 written comments have been submitted to the state water board since it invited public comment on the sufficiency of federal permits granted to Mountain Valley and the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a similar project that will run through Central Virginia. Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality, the state agency that works with the water board, has posted to its website all of the documents received during a public comment period that ended June 15. But details from the data dump — such as who said what, and in what numbers — will not be made public until the board meeting, DEQ spokeswoman Ann Regn said.
The Roanoke Times
John E. “Jack” Potter, head of Reagan National and Dulles International airports, is one of the highest paid airport executives in the country, with a base salary that outpaces all but one of the nation’s top 10 airport chiefs. Now, newly released documents show just how lucrative Potter’s contract is. Potter’s base salary is just over $474,000, but he is eligible for more than $232,200 in bonuses, which could bring his total salary this year to more than $706,000. (The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority had previously said that Potter’s base salary was $451,776, but said last week that figure reflected his base salary in 2017.) MWAA’s release of Potter’s contract is an about-face; it previously denied multiple Washington Post requests for the details, citing a privacy exemption in its public records policy.
The Washington Post
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