Governor Youngkin Sets New Standard for Secrecy
The Governor's office takes secrecy to the next level in denying access to their 2024 FOIA log.
If you’ve ever participated in a FOIA workshop, you may have encountered the classic exercise of sending a FOIA request for a public body’s FOIA log — the document tracking FOIA requests to that government entity. It can be, after all, interesting to see the details of FOIA request processing, and it’s generally an easy record to get ahold of for a novice exercising their rights under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
If you’ve never seen one of these logs, here are a couple of examples. In 2020, I received this FOIA log in response to a FOIA request to the City of Staunton:
As you can see, this log from Staunton isn’t very detailed. But compare it to the following FOIA log produced by Richmond Public Schools to journalist Tom Nash of MuckRock News in 2019 as covered in his article “Virginia school system stalled release of its secret budget”:
In my experience, not all public bodies in Virginia maintain FOIA logs. But I can’t recall ever being told that a FOIA log existed but was being withheld.
Until yesterday.
The Governor’s 2024 FOIA Log
On June 2, 2025, I sent a FOIA request to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s (R) office seeking “a copy of the Governor's Office FOIA log or any other record used to track FOIA requests and responses” in the 2024 calendar year.
On June 6, 2025, I received a response from Denise Burch, FOIA Officer, Office of Governor Glenn Youngkin:
We are in receipt of your FOIA request of June 2nd.
Please be advised that the requested records are being entirely withheld pursuant to Virginia Code Section 2.2-3705.7 as working papers and correspondence of the Office of the Governor.
The volume of records being withheld is approximately 29 pages.
The state of secrecy in Governor Youngkin’s office is such that even a FOIA log must be shielded from public view, a FOIA log that likely contains information about my own FOIA request from 2024.
But that doesn’t mean the public won’t be able to see it, potentially as soon as next January.
Extracting Public Records from the Library of Virginia
The Library of Virginia maintains retention schedules pursuant to the Virginia Public Records Act which govern how records are to be maintained and for how long. Records Retention and Disposition Specific Schedule No. 121-001 details policies for records retention and disposition in the Office of the Governor, and it’s clear from the schedule that records like FOIA logs are to be permanently maintained and archived.
You can download Specific Schedule No. 121-001 here:
Even though the Governor’s records are to be permanently archived by the Library of Virginia, once he’s out of office, the Library theoretically begins processing his papers. If you were to send a FOIA request to the Library for these papers of a former governor, you’d likely be informed that Va. Code § 2.2-3704(J) exempts these records transferred to the Library from FOIA until they’ve been fully archived and/or catalogued.
Recall that, as recently as 2020, former Governor L. Douglas Wilder (D) went as far as to accuse the Library of racism in order to expedite the archiving of his own gubernatorial papers. As the Richmond Free Press reported at the time:
All of Gov. Wilder’s predecessors and successors in the governor’s office are Caucasian. The library has finished work on the collections of his successors, former Govs. George Allen, Jim Gilmore and Mark R. Warner. Former Gov. Tim Kaine’s collection remains a work in progress.
Ms. Treadway said she didn’t know how few of Gov. Wilder’s papers had been processed and made public until Gov. Wilder’s son, Larry, contacted her earlier this year.
“This is something. Now that I know about it, it’s going to be a top priority,” she said.
Given the pace at which the gubernatorial archiving apparently takes place, it could be a while before Youngkin’s papers are fully catalogued, archived, and thus available from the Library via FOIA.
Spanberger’s Chance to Lead
But let’s say, hypothetically, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger is elected governor this November and takes office next January. In that case, Va. Code § 2.2-126(B) shows us how we might get Youngkin’s FOIA log despite the Library’s archival backlog.
As you can see, Va. Code § 2.2-126(B) would give a future Governor Spanberger the power to have staff review and copy Youngkin’s 2024 FOIA log at the Library, and she could then release the copy to the public (either proactively or in response to a FOIA request).
But why stop there?
All of the organizations, activists, and everyday citizens who’ve been refused access to public records by the Youngkin Administration on a variety of topics, or who have records in mind they’d like to see, should start compiling lists to send to the next governor.
Then Spanberger could, in one mass public disclosure, obliterate Youngkin’s new standard — while sending the message that Virginia’s Executive branch doesn’t operate entirely behind a shroud of secrecy.