Does Virginia FOIA Require Notice of the Specific Location of Public Meetings?
At what point does a "location" become functionally useless for citizens who want to attend public meetings?
The Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Service Council was set to meet on December 4, 2024, and citizens interested in attending the meeting were informed by the Council’s website that the meeting was taking place in “Charlottesville.” But Charlottesville comprises over 10 square miles of land, and if a citizen wished to attend the meeting, how would they know where to go?
The Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Service Council website, in multiple locations, provides notice of future meetings, but they list the location as simply a locality. You can find out where the meetings took place, after the fact, by reading the minutes on the website (the December 4 meeting was apparently at the Boar’s Head Resort).
I sent a FOIA request to the Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Service Council on December 5, 2024 and requested “copies of any public notice(s) released concerning yesterday's Council Meeting.” I received the following response from Jane Chambers informing me that “[p]ublic notice of our meetings can be found on our public agency website: www.cas.state.va.us.”
The Virginia Freedom of Information Act requires public bodies to post the location of a public meeting at least three working days in advance of the meeting. And although Va. Code § 2.2-3707(D) makes it clear that “[e]very public body shall give notice of the date, time, location, and remote location, if required, of its meetings,” it doesn’t seem to require any degree of specificity when it comes to the location of the meeting.
The Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Service Council apparently believes “location” can be reasonably interpreted as meaning simply the locality in which the meeting will take place. I wonder how far this logic goes: could a public body list a region (e.g. “Central Virginia,” “Southwest Virginia”) or even just “Commonwealth of Virginia” as the location of a meeting?
The practical result of listing vague locations of public meetings is the erection of yet another barrier to citizens attempting to access their government.
Last week, I submitted a request for an opinion from the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, essentially posing two questions for their analysis:
(1) Does the Virginia Freedom of Information Act require any degree of specificity concerning the "location" of a public meeting?
(2) Does simply listing the locality in which a public meeting will take place satisfy the location requirement in Va. Code § 2.2-3707(D) given the policy statement in Va. Code § 2.2-3700(B)?
Although Va. Code § 30-179(1) requires the Council to “[f]urnish, upon request, advisory opinions…regarding the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (§ 2.2-3700 et seq.) to any person or public body, in an expeditious manner,” in my experience it may take as long as a year for an opinion to materialize.
Until then - or until a court rules on the question - some public bodies will likely continue to read the location requirement in Virginia FOIA in a way that necessarily restricts public access to open meetings.
Thank goodness for Josh Stanfield's vigilence in highlighting the need for more transparency by our public officials.
Once upon a time, I had to vote on the choice of a new executive director for a facility whose board I sat on because I was a good Dem. I was out of town during the conference call, but the rep from the AG's office said the notice had to include not only the address of the beach condo, but the room number. Never mind that you had to get through a locked gate and a locked door just to get to the relevant hallway. I took the call on the beach, in Delaware, so the vote was probably null and void because of the inaccurate notice, but the person I voted for was gone in a year so it didn't matter. Sounds like the CA's go in the other direction.