Megan Rhyne is executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit group that seeks to promote expanded access to government records and meetings at the state and local level. How do open records laws serve the general public?
If you want to know about restaurant health inspections [or] the sex offender registry … [it] is about collecting all that data in one place. Land records and assessments — that kind of everyday use — that’s something that anyone can be interested in.
Are there any specific examples in the state?
Right now, in Fairfax there are all these parents who are angry about a school division’s decision to close an elementary school, and they want to be as well informed as possible. Businesses, lawyers — they all use it to make decisions as well. Businesses might use it to find the lowest bid on a construction contract.
What about political parties using them for opposition research?
It’s one of the good things about FOIA — it doesn’t matter what you want to use the information for. It may seem kind of icky and yucky and not particularly fair, but I can’t imagine not having that option, because the alternative is to start asking people why you want the information and what you want to do with it.
What are your thoughts on late-night, closed-door meetings on issues like redistricting?
That makes me uncomfortable. I know they have different rules, and they were meeting as representatives of their caucuses, which are exempt. Those kinds of arguments are hard to deny, but something as big and important and overarching as redistricting — things that affect everybody — that makes me uncomfortable when meetings are conducted behind closed doors.
What advice can you give to the general public?
I think the advice in general is to become politically aware, and I think a lot of people see that as you have to label yourself or identify yourself as a party. Political decisions are being made — your government is making decisions that affect your everyday life. You also have the power to go to the original source and go to that government record or that government meeting and find out why it happened. Then you can make an informed decision about whether it should have happened.
– David Sherfinski
