Virginia and Maryland have both flunked in a national survey of public access to information, with Maryland ranking 46th and Virginia 49th.
Both states got “F” scores.
Virginia scored poorly, according to the State Integrity Investigation project, because of these and other problems:
The law doesn’t spell out a way for people to appeal if a government agency turns down their request for a record;
There’s no “established institutional mechanism” in state law through which people can request records;
State law lacks a watchdog to make sure governments are following the law;
Citizens often don’t get responses to information requests within a reasonable time period.
Those are just some of the problems. You can see the whole list for Virginia here and for Maryland at this link.
In Maryland, state law does give a citizen a right to appeal if they’re turned down for a record, the survey found, but there’s no watchdog and there’s no “established institutional mechanism” for requesting information.
The only state worse than Virginia, the survey said, is South Carolina. Meanwhile, the state with the best score was Connecticut, which got a B+.
The State Integrity Investigation is a joint project of the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity, Public Radio International and Global Integrity.
Jennifer Peebles is the Washington Examiner’s data editor. Contact her at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @DCPeebles.
