Governor Bob McDonnell is due to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for minutes and other information about a series of closed meetings over the past six weeks that involved members of his Government Reform Commission.
Like so much of the state code, Virginia laws on open meetings can be complicated, perhaps even to the point that the lawyers who advise the governor can go astray when interpreting them. After first defending the closed meetings at which recommendations for the Government Reform Commission may or may not have been drawn up, the McDonnell administration backtracked, saying the meetings might have been illegal and committing to complying with the law in the future. Governors are certainly entitled to work in private says Maria Everett, with the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council.
“The governor or any sort of single elected or appointed official can certainly appoint a group to advise them, and for the purposes of open meetings law, that would not be a public body in terms of having to give notice and meet in public,” says Everett.
But if three or members of a public commission turn out for meetings – and this case they were doing so – things change, she says. “And then when it came to light that the commissioners were actually in sufficient number on the work group that changed the work group into commission meetings – that’s where the problem arose, and hiding things when you’re trying to talk about transparency in the same breath – it doesn’t pass the sniff test.”
There was something else that didn’t sniff well, at least not to Democrats, party spokesman Brian Coy explains. “There were a couple of Democrats who were on the commission itself, the larger body, but when the McDonnell administration decided to adopt this new work group approach, it just so happened that none of the Democratic members of the commission were invited to join those work groups.”
Democratic Delegate David Englin asked Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for an investigation into the legality of the meetings but he said there was nothing he could do since his office had no legal authority in such things. Now – FOIA requests – Democrats are not only trying to get details about the Reform Commission meetings but also looking for other commissions that might violated the law and asking to see any correspondence between the attorney general and the governor on the question.
Legal points being what they are, Common Cause president Bob Edgar believes there are other considerations at least as important as whether the letter of the law was followed. “I don’t think this is a question legality, I think it’s a question of morals, ethics, it’s a question of propriety. Why would you exclude particular persons simply because they were in the other political party or the independent field. If you’re gonna work on reform I think you do it from a non-partisan, bi-partisan basis,” says Edgar.
And, he adds, in public view. “We want transparency in these meetings. We want the minutes but more importantly we want the doors open.”
Governor McDonnell has agreed to open the doors whenever three commission members are present. If only two are on hand it appears he has every right to keep the doors closed.
–Fred Echols
Virginia Public Radio 