FOIA Friday: Unsealed cannabis warrants and ‘highly variable’ transparency policies

File cabinets. (Getty)

One of the less noticed features of the Virginia Way is the long-running tendency of the commonwealth’s leaders to conduct their decision-making behind closed doors. While the Virginia Freedom of Information Act presumes all government business is by default public and requires officials to justify why exceptions should be made, too many Virginia leaders in practice take the opposite stance, acting as if records are by default private and the public must prove they should be handled otherwise.

In this feature, we aim to highlight the frequency with which officials around Virginia are resisting public access to records on issues large and small — and note instances when the release of information under FOIA gave the public insight into how government bodies are operating.

Unsealed warrants shed light on Southwest Virginia cannabis sweep

Last fall, officials announced a large-scale drug operation in nine Southwest Virginia counties targeting businesses involved in the cannabis industry.

Many of those search warrants were sealed for 180 days, according to Cardinal News , and some recently unsealed documents “detail weeks of undercover buys and catalog the seizure of ATMs, thousands of dollars in cash and containers of plant materials bearing labels like ‘Grease Monkey’ and ‘Stomp Purple.’”

Other documents related to the operation remain sealed however, and officials gave Cardinal News conflicting information about whether any charges have been filed. A spokeswoman for the Virginia State Police said there were no charges, but an investigator with the Scott County Sheriff’s Office said charges had been filed in that county but refused to provide names.

Several officials didn’t respond to inquiries from Cardinal News seeking more information about the results of the law enforcement searches described as part of an “extensive, ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of money laundering and illegal narcotic distribution network by retail establishments.”

The Mercury’s efforts to track FOIA and other transparency cases in Virginia are indebted to the work of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government , a nonprofit alliance dedicated to expanding access to government records, meetings and other state and local proceedings.

Martinsburg reverses course on compensation for former city attorney

After documents released under FOIA showed that Martinsville’s former City Council majority approved a plan to boost the compensation of the departing city attorney in 2022, the current City Council voted to settle the matter by paying him $110,000, according to the Martinsville Bulletin.

The former attorney, Eric Monday, had “initially demanded that the city pay him $3,025 every month for the rest of his life,” the paper reported.

Modifications to Monday’s employment contract in late 2022 gave him full time credit for years he had spent working part time.

“While this dispute was unfortunate and could have been avoided, we made a decision that was in the best interest of the residents of the city of Martinsville,” Councilman Lawrence Mitchell said as he read from a prepared statement. “As we move forward to solidify and strengthen the city with fiscal and policy best practices, it is our belief that this settlement of $110,000 is in the best interest of our community.”

RVA Dirt digs into differing FOIA responses

The activist watchdogs at RVA Dirt , a site that covers local government in the Richmond area, filed FOIA requests throughout the region to gauge the responsiveness of various agencies.

A blog post reporting the findings notes that the results were “highly variable,” with some agencies responding within hours and the city of Richmond blowing the full five-business day window for legally acceptable response times.

The exercise also revealed major differences in how local governments process FOIA requests and what kind of fees they charge for their time.

Even though FOIA seems like something only journalists and activists care about, RVA Dirt opined, it affects citizens too.

“It’s tempting, then, to dismiss this as someone else’s problem,” the post reads. “But FOIA hits local media’s headlines the way your car hits potholes: both are easy to ignore, both reveal a level of government failure. It’s only after you hit too many that you know you’ve got a real problem on your hands.”

Have you experienced local or state officials denying or delaying your FOIA request? Tell us about it: info@virginiamercury.com

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