Newspapers test FOIA
Brian January 1st, 2007
Mr. Hammack, of the Roanoke Times, reports here on a recent project by Virginia newspapers to gauge citizens’ availability to local government information.
The lucky media representative that pulled Dickenson County apparently had an interesting pursuit of some fire inspection reports.
Here are the applicable quotes:
At a Dickenson County elementary school, Wytheville Enterprise reporter Mary Beth Jackson was asked if she was with a company or the fire marshal’s office. She recited the standard line about being a citizen interested in the community. A few minutes later, school Superintendent Damon Rasnick was summoned.
“I’ve never seen you before in this community, and I’ve been here for 34 years,” Rasnick told Jackson. “I consider you a threat to my school.”
Eventually, Jackson was allowed to see the fire inspection reports — which showed no safety violations — as the superintendent, the school principal and the maintenance supervisor all hovered around her.
Rasnick said he was wary of Jackson because she would not immediately give her name. Jackson said she gave her name when first asked.
“You people don’t need to come in schools like that,” Rasnick said later after being told that Jackson was part of a newspaper project. “We’ve had a lot of things go wrong in schools with people we don’t know.”
Although Rasnick said he regretted treating Jackson the way he did, “I felt I was protecting my children, and I have no regrets about that.”
I know Superintendent Rasnick. He is a good guy, probably knows about everyone in the county, and had the best of intentions.
I suspect that any reporter, who identified him or herself as such, would not have had any problems seeing the reports. Likewise, if it had been someone locally, he or she would have not had any problems.
Personally, I am glad to see our school officials erring on the side of caution.
Brian,
I typically agree with you, but I am surprised by your comments on this subject. IMO, officials need to follow the act and provide the information … period. (Of course, the officials may also require the person to provide their name, address …etc.) In the above senario, the bigger issue seems to be inadequate school security. Why isn’t there at least a “buzz” system in place. (Hmmm … maybe the reporters will be back out testing this soon?)
Kelly, I agree fully that officials should follow the Act and provide the information.
But, I suspect that the reporters had to be a little mysterious with their requests so as to cloak their purpose. And I also suspect that the officials sensed some of this and were a little more careful than they otherwise would have been.
I can’t agree with you on this one, Brian. I agree with both you and Kelly that there’s a potential problem.
But ‘erring on the side of caution’ is a perfect definition of a slippery slope, and if you look at the Commonwealth’s performance overall, it seems a lot of people are erring in that direction… and most of them, from the sheriffs who (abusing the power of their office) ran background checks on the requesters before providing information to secretaries at schools and town halls, would have thought they were merely being protective.
As far as reporters cloaking their purpose - the purpose doesn’t need to be cloaked, because FOIA has no requirement that one be provided.
“Curiousity,” “I just do” and “none of your business” are just as valid as “I’m a reporter seeing if you’re going to obey the law or not.”
In fact, testing whether people would comply without giving a purpose should have been high on the list of things to be tested.
I forgot to add that I’m actually quite pleased with the results here in our corner of the state.
And the fact I work for a newspaper, even if it’s in the advertising department, may be coloring my view a bit.
R. Hubbard is right. A Virginia citizen should be able to see a public record with no headaches from the people who work for us.