Lawsuits and Ghosting: The Wild West of… Public Records

RICH: Welcome to RVA’s Got Issues, a podcast about politics and public affairs in and around Richmond, Virginia. I’m your host, Rich Marr.  On this episode, RVA’s Got Issues with FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. You know what FOIA stands for?  No, I didn’t know it was an acronym. Do you know the process to FOIA something?  I do not. I do not. How much do you know about FOIA? A fair bit. It’s just a system where you can rec.  documents held by the government that should be publicly available. We’ll talk with two local activists who wanted to know, how free is government info in RVA? We’ll hear their surprising answer. It’s a right, for regular citizens to be able to get reason to believe that an agency is trying to withhold information that the public would want to know about. Then, RVA’s Got Questions about your county board of supervisors. Every county in Virginia has one, but what are they and what do they do? Finally, for our community spotlight, we’ll talk with some urban farmers who are working to bring healthy food to everyone in RVA. All that and more coming up on RVA’s Got Issues.

 

 

RICH: On this episode, RVA’s got issues with FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act. What is it and does it work the way it’s supposed to? To help us, we’re joined by Jesse Perry and Becca Duvall of RVA Dirt, an online collective of watchdog activists and citizen journalists, which, according to their website, is A group of busy women making time to stick their noses into Richmond politics. Welcome Jesse and Becca.

 

JESSEE AND BECCA: Thanks for having us.

 

RICH: So first, some background, right? The Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, is a federal law. It was passed in 1966. It’s been updated a few times since, and it ensures the public’s access to government info. And here in Virginia, we have a version of that law that also means that you should have access to what the government is doing. You make a request to a government agency or public official, we call that a FOIA request. And they’re supposed to provide the documents you’re asking for. Okay. Let’s say you’re at the bar with a friend or your mom calls and says, what’s a FOIA? What do you tell them, Becca? What do you tell them?

BECCA: It may as well be a foreign language when you start telling people, Oh, well I just FOIAed this information. You did what now? You have to be in government or you have to be in journalism really to have first hand knowledge about it, but the idea is, uh, the government works for us, the people, and so the people have access to whatever it is the government is doing.

RICH: Is that how you, see it, Jesse?

JESSEE: Absolutely. Like, I just really feel like at the end of the day, it’s our taxpayer dollars and it’s our right to know exactly where they’re going to, and we should be able to get answers from our government. That’s part of accountability. I think that we all have responsibility as voting citizens. 

MAN ON THE STREET: I think FOIA is important because you know, government and public institutions are self protective, right? So, if they have information that they believe will damage their reputation for whatever reason they have plenty of motivation to obscure that information from the public. I think when utilized well, it both provides that measure of access and also helps keep folks working in these spaces accountable if they’re actually open to what FOIA intends to represent.

RICH:  Uh, so Becca, why do you FOIA?  How did you learn how to do this?

BECCA: When Fox burned down. So, I

RICH: Fox Elementary

BECCA: Elementary School. My kids, I had two kids, um, there. But, uh, realizing sitting in a school board meeting that the board was not very focused on things like how to get my kids back into a physical building, and the timing did not sync up well for them in that it piqued my interest because it was also budget season.  And so very first FOIA is correspondence between the board members Uh, about this budget, and it sort of opened up a world of possibilities. If I can get these emails, I can also get all kinds of answers. And so as I had questions, I didn’t just sort of grumble about transparency, I could do something about it.

RICH: And so it really is just, you send an email to the right person and just ask them for stuff. Fox Elementary School And you can get it.

BECCA: And it is their job. So, one of the barriers that we have in getting information from the government is this sense that,  why are you giving me busy work? Why are you making me go on this, chase for information and emails from two years ago? And, we just need to remember that complying with FOIA is their job.

RICH: And yet at the same time, as you’ve said, not everybody in government seems to think or act like it is. like, What are some of the obstacles you run into? I think on the, on your blog, on  rvadirt. com, you’ve written about how governments might weaponize the costs of a FOIA. Can you talk about what the costs are and how that works?

JESSEE: Yeah,

BECCA: Some FOIAs are expensive for legitimate reasons   if you’re asking for the FOIA officer to track down 200 emails, they also have to read 200 emails and make sure that they’re not giving you information that would compromise anybody else. And then you have times where, well, actually, this is an official document that already exists. I’m not asking you to generate anything. I’m not asking you to.  Go out of your way, and that should be totally free. And so sometimes you’ll, you’ll notice that the fee that work, um, does not seem like it matches up with the request. 

RICH: and the other issue is response time, right? Jesse, you’ve run into problems with FOIAs where it just seems like it takes forever for them to get back to you.

JESSEE: It’s supposed to be that they respond to you within five business days, not counting holidays, or at least they’re supposed to tell you that they have an extension or request an extension from you because it’s going to take too long.  And it’s just very frustrating because it’s like, there’s not a lot of recourse in those situations of how do you get someone to respond to an email? You can’t find a phone number to start calling someone necessarily, but how do you get someone to respond other than you just keep sending the same email or you take it to someone else? To court.

RICH: And so you folks noticed this over your work and decided to do a little experiment, right? Uh, Jesse, you want to take us through that experiment?

JESSEE: Yeah, so Becca had this great idea. She was, um, foiling, I believe, Richmond public schools and she decided to ask the same question of the other school districts in the area. And at the same time, there was. Whistleblower lawsuit where the FOIA officer is basically saying there was retaliation against her. So there’s obviously a breakdown in the city of Richmond. Exactly. So we kind of talked about it and realized maybe we should do this not just for Richmond Public Schools, but for the local government agencies in general and see, you know, is this just Richmond getting picked on by not responding to FOIAs or is this like, uh, A rampant issue, Richmond. you actually

RICH: FOIAed about FOIA, right? You requested information from each of these local governments about their FOIA requests. that right?

BECCA: Yeah. So, the two questions we asked was, how much money did you make off of FOIA last year?

RICH: Like how many fees did you, how much money and fees did you collect for doing this

BECCA: Yes. And then how many FOIAs did you process? And the idea is, very simply let’s divide the number the amount of money by the number of FOIAs and get an average cost of FOIA. And it was, in, in the city of Richmond, the average FOIA was something like 18, it’s 17 and some change. And in Chesterfield and Henrico, it was more like 7 to 9. And that, should raise eyebrows. I think.

RICH: you also tried to measure response time, right? And Jesse, where did that end up?

JESSEE: Well, it might not be a surprise, but Richmond City, um, Overall, it took 16 days for Richmond City to actually get the information back to me, but I got every single FOIA back from all of the other departments of Hanover, Chesterfield, Henrico, an acknowledgement the same day. And then also I got the response on the fifth business day for the main government entities. but I’ve also had other experiences emailing Richmond City Council, and it’s interesting because Richmond City Council, their person for this responds literally at the five day mark. Every single time. Doesn’t matter what the question is, but I will get a response at the five day mark every single time. Um, with them, most of the issue I’ve had is the cost when I’m asking for like emails is like 400 and there’s a point where I’m like, you know what? My question is not worth 400. 

RICH: So Jesse, you’ve. Wrangled FOIA requests out of the city of Richmond. What’s that experience been like for you? Didn’t you almost file a lawsuit against them?

JESSEE: Yeah, absolutely. So Richmond City has  a centralized FOIA process, but also somewhat decentralized. You have to go to their website and figure out who the FOIA officer is for each individual agency. But most of them, up until recently, were this person  named Petula Burks. And she is the FOIA officer for the city, and she’s the one that’s supposed to be responding to these that you email to her. I Emailed a city attorney to be like, Hey, I’m about to file this lawsuit. Like, I intend to pursue this. It’s the fullest extent of the law, trying to use strongly worded legal language to get their attention. And I just had absolute silence from them. And it got to the point where I told my fiance, I was like, all right. Okay. I have emailed her. I have been promised a deadline by her.

JESSEE: So I don’t know exactly what’s going on in Richmond City, but it is not a good consumer or citizen friendly experience whatsoever.

RICH: out which local government was the big winner of the RVA DIRT FOIA experiment when we come back on RVA’s Got Issues.  This is RVA’s Got Issues. We’re back with Becca Duvall and Jesse Perry of RVA DIRT learning about which local governments do the best and worst job of responding to Freedom of Information requests. So who is the big winner?

JESSEE: Drumroll.

BECCA: Hanover did a spectacular job not just a, hey, thanks, Jesse, good to hear from you and we’ll be back within the next five days. Twelve minutes later, it was, here you go.

JESSEE: Some of the departments in Hanover actually responded within five minutes. Like, I’m convinced that there is someone there that was there. Like, aha, my FOIA spreadsheet is finally coming into play. waiting for this day for five, years.

RICH: And they just were like, so excited that they just like responded immediately.

JESSEE: You guys want to find that person and make friends with them, don’t. Yeah. I’m like, this person is a person after my own heart, honestly. I also found Hanover was a little bit helpful, honestly, because they, um, in the email that I requested, they actually responded and were like, Hey, by the way, you actually also need to FOIA all of these other city government departments because they’re separate from what I’m going to give you. So I thought it was really cool that they were actually trying to help me get more information than what they Instead of just saying like, hey, they’ve asked me specifically and I’m not including the fact that there’s about five or six other government agencies that aren’t going to be included in this. So it’s just interesting  how different it is and how non standard the practice can be.

 

RICH:  Uh, Megan Ryan is a local, uh, nonprofit person here in Virginia. She directs the Virginia coalition for open government. And what she says is that government. Uh, too often looks at, at providing information as a distraction. I mean, it is kind of how you described it, Becca, earlier. It’s something they, that distracts them from their real work. And, and she says you need to create a culture where it really is seen as, as part of their work. It sounds like the way you’re describing Hanover County is that, Somehow, they’ve seemed to have adopted this view that it is part of their work, whereas some of these other counties and localities maybe haven’t done that. Does that sound like a way it might solve it,

 

JESSEE: See, I think that it actually needs to be at a, a higher level of the Virginia government. I feel like we need to improve our FOIA laws and maybe the FOIA council needs to be a little bit more of not just like a helpline of like, Hey, I have a question about this, but maybe a little bit more of, I don’t know if policing is quite the right word, but like regulatory authority.

 

RICH: this FOIA Council is a kind of advisory board that exists to investigate some of the problems that come up sometimes. Is that

 

BECCA: yeah, and they were established, they were established to try and, and resolve some of these issues and try and help, um, the local government understand what the FOIA law is too because a lot of the times these people just are not all trained in FOIA, The issue that I think a lot of FOIA offices run into is really high turnover.  We can see that in the Richmond uh, Uh, headlines over the last couple of months. There’s just a lot of turnover. And it takes some learning curve. So when we’re talking about reforms that we do need, the federal government has a, Congress gets a briefing every year about how well they’re conducting their FOIAs and complying with FOIAs. And that’s because it’s, it is monitored by a central office, all the agencies. And, and we don’t have that.

 

JESSEE: I think a great example is, Becca, you had actually requested during our experiment, you went to the FOIA council because Henrico County Public Schools and Henrico County government doesn’t keep like logs of their FOIA pricing.  So it’s just interesting where her question was basically, Is this legal? Like, do they have to do this? And the answer is no. There is absolutely no regularity with which there is, um, interactions between these governments. That’s why we’re seeing such different things, is I feel like there’s not a centralized regulatory authority that we can go to that’s really monitoring this. Because maybe they could find out that, hey, Hanover County has this great system where they have decentralized their FOIA process. Which is something that, um, coming out of the FOIA whistleblower lawsuit with Connie Clay in Richmond City, um, that they have now decided to decentralize Richmond’s FOIA process, which is quote unquote in process. Um, so maybe people are starting to see the light of this is a better way to do this, but maybe we don’t have to figure this out on a locality by locality basis.

 

RICH: Some state action sounds like you’d be looking for with this FOIA Council, maybe with standardizing the process. so what would it take to change this, to make it so that government officials here in RVA actually take this responsibility seriously? 

 

BECCA: So I do think the federal government has these extra reforms in place because the system wasn’t working for them and because they had national scandals associated with them. So we’ve had big waves of reform after 9 11, we had big waves of reform after Watergate,  and, and,

 

BECCA: We don’t have that at the state level. We don’t really have big statewide scandals that are pushing us to ask, Why wasn’t press allowed to monitor this? Why weren’t the people allowed to monitor this? And so you, it’s just, it’s up to journalists and it’s up to FOIA nerds like us to come in and, and recognize things like, things aren’t really working in Richmond City. Um, and if, if the people, uh, uh, fellow Virginians want to help make the system better, um, I think we need to raise the alarm a bit. I think we need to have our eye on what are we allowed to have access to and what are we not, and what are some common sense, um, reforms that I can ask for of my legislative body because they’re not going to do it if we don’t ask.

 

RICH: Jesse Perry and Becca Duvall are part of RVA dirt. You can find them at RVA dirt. com. Thanks to you both.

 

BECCA: Hey, thanks so much!

 

JESSEE: Thank you so much. 

 

 

 

RICH: Hi, on this episode, RVA’s got questions about county boards. And here to help us ask this question is our producer, Amber Coles. Hello, Amber.  So what’s her question?

 

AMBER: Alright, this week’s question is from our listener, Anne Hardy. Anne’s question is, What is the history and purpose of the County Board of Supervisors? A question I also have. Are they bound by duty and or law to represent their constituents?

 

RICH: Amber, you live in a county here.

 

AMBER: live in Chesterfield County. I have no idea what my  Board of Supervisors does.

 

RICH: so you’re not alone. This is like a mystery box for people. But it’s actually the basic answer is pretty simple. The County Board of Supervisors  is the legislative body of the county. They’re like the Congress for the county. They pass the laws. And in fact, counties are the oldest form of local government we have. They’ve been around since before the American Revolution. Yeah.  Here in Virginia, cities are separate from counties. So that’s especially confusing for visitors from out of state. But each county has its own county government. Council, this Board of Supervisors.

 

AMBER: Okay, so we’ve got the history. What do they do?

 

RICH: They do all kinds of things. The main thing is that they do what other legislative bodies do, which is set the budget for the county, right? How much money they’re going to spend for the year. And that could be big money, right? It, Hanover’s a small county, so it’s about 8 million, which is a lot of money to you and me. Chesterfield is 2 billion.  County boards also set the zoning rules. Like, can we build a walmart here or where can we put new housing? They said school policies right now. Hanover County is getting a lot of attention about their policies about books and in school libraries. You know, anything from how high your grass can get before they force you to cut it down to what kind of pig you can own.

 

AMBER: I do have a friend who is very interested in what pigs she

 

RICH: Okay, well if she’s in Chesterfield, there’s a whole section in the county code that says about pigs and what pigs you can own. And apparently it’s a big deal and you can look up the county code. You just have to look online. You can just Google for Chesterfield County code and it has all the laws, all the things that they cover. So the bottom line here is that the board of supervisors are the lawmakers for your County.  So if you have time, you Amber, you Ann, our listener, any of our listeners, you have time, go to a meeting or, watch one online if you can.

 

AMBER: I’m probably going to go ahead and look that up so I can probably watch online. Because it’s good you have to be informed about these things.

 

RICH: Yeah, it’s good to, to check it out. So I, I hope we answered uh, Ann here, Amber, how do you feel? Do you know a bit more now?

 

AMBER: I feel better, and if you as a listener also want to feel better, send us a question at rvasgotissuesatvpm.  org.

 

 

RICH: For this episode’s community spotlight. We welcome Anna Ibrahim, executive director of Shalom Farms, a nonprofit that helps to build healthy communities by growing and sharing food with folks who have limited access. Anna, welcome.  

ANNA: Thank you.

RICH: So we’ll get to the mechanics of urban farming in just a minute, but I’m really struck by Shalom’s goal to provide meaningful access to healthy food. So could you unpack that term for our listeners? What’s meaningful access?

ANNA: We think about, I think we use the word meaningful as a shortcut, because when we talk about access, we’re talking about five different dimensions. We’re talking about affordability, so access in terms of price. Is it at a price that folks can afford? We’re talking about time, so is food showing up at times and in places, locations, where it’s easy for folks to find fresh food. we’re talking about appropriateness. Is the food culturally appropriate? Is it food that folks are actually looking for? Or is it food that doesn’t fit into their plans or their recipes or their lifestyles? The meaningful piece is that,  it’s fresh food that people can get at in ways that make sense for them.

RICH: So how does that play into where you operate and who you work with?

ANNA: So we work specifically within the city of Richmond. We are in the north side, we are in the east end, and we are in the south side. These are neighborhoods that we know were redlined, were historically divested from and often neighborhoods where there are not good grocery stores or good places to find fresh food. Our mobile market program specifically is going to those neighborhoods and trying to hit places that are public access points. Places where people gather naturally anyway. So that might be outside a public library, that might be outside an elementary school, that might be at a community center or at a health center like Massive Cancer Center, for example. Or it might be at a housing development where a lot of folks live and thus are going to be coming home and needing to find food close to them.

RICH: And you mentioned the kind of history of Richmond and we talked to a lot of folks about the sort of map of segregation, redlining, health disparities, food access. It’s the same map, right? It’s always the same map.

ANNA: That is absolutely right. If you were to lay them on top of each other, we’re all talking about the same thing.

RICH: So speaking of maps, right? You folks operate two urban farms, right? There’s one in Midlo right by 288 and there’s one right in Richmond, right? There’s one on the North side. Right off Brooke Road. Are people still surprised to find you tucked in there?

ANNA: Yes, they are. And we actually, on staff, we call it Narnia. The Northside Farm, because you can’t see it from the road. And when people step in, they’re like, What? What is this? And so, both farms are magical, but that one has this, like, extra level of a production based farm in the middle of the city is not something folks see very often. It’s about five acres. We’re farming on an acre and a half of it right now.  And I think the sort of beautiful thing about that is that it’s on a bus line. So, people can,  access that again in many different ways and be able to experience a farm,  without having to go too far outside their neighborhood.

RICH: Yeah, So when let’s say I do come off the bus and come into the farm What am I seeing? What’s going on at the farm on a

ANNA: Yeah. Um, So there’s a lovely gate you get to walk through and you’ll see a hoop house and a greenhouse and lots of

RICH: A hoop house? 

ANNA: hoop house. There’s many names for this thing, but a place to grow things in a protected environment where we can control the temperature. So often what winds up in the hoop house are the things that are a little more sensitive and need a little more love, your tomatoes, your eggplant, that sort of thing. And then a greenhouse where all of our starts happen and lots of fields  so you’re going to see kale, you’re going to see broccoli, you’re going to see lettuces. We have a blueberry patch. The Northside Farm has blueberries, Powhatan has strawberries.  you’re going to see a packing barn where our mobile market vans are going to be coming in and out. Our Northside Farm kind of acts as our hub. What gets grown at Powhatan gets brought into Northside and from Northside all of our mobile market vans pack up and go out into the city to distribute the produce. For

RICH: yeah, So let’s talk about the mobile market you mentioned that you go to places where the public are, right? You might meet them at a library. But you’re also not just working on your own, right? You’re partnering with other farmers. Right,

ANNA: And is really the brainchild and execution of our program director, Alistair,  alistair has really worked to develop relationships with local farmers and we’re really focusing on folks who have been marginalized in other ways. Black, brown, queer other small farms, women owned farms to bring additional products to our mobile market.

RICH: So, we have Alistar Harris here. Alistar welcome.  Can you tell us a little bit more about this mobile market? Where do you folks go?

ALISTAR: We go into a variety of neighborhoods in the city of Richmond, and the idea with the mobile market is that you take a farmer’s market and you take it into a community where people are closest. And instead of having to drive to get to the farmer’s market, we bring the farmer’s market to them. And so in the city of Richmond, we have 15 different locations, and they range a few of them in the north side. A few of them in the East and East Richmond, and then some in South Richmond.

RICH: So years ago, I used to get this box of produce every week and I would throw half of it out because I don’t know what to do with five pounds of beets, right? So you folks work on that. You work on educating and letting people know what to do with the food. Tell us about some of the programs you do that work with. What about produce RX?

ANNA: ProduceRx is in partnership with Clinical Partners, so these are folks who have some sort of diet related disease, where a healthy diet would hopefully help improve health outcomes over time. So we work with clinical partners because they’re going to collect the data, they’re going to be the clinical coach that’s working with somebody on whatever that diet related issue is, and we make sure to provide the produce. So it’s generally a weekly bag of produce, it might be a four week cohort, a six week cohort, a twelve week cohort, it depends on the healthcare partner and then if they don’t have any nutrition education on staff, we’ll also provide them with cooking classes. So an opportunity to say, right. Um, what do I do with these beets? What do I do with this kale? Um, how do I make it into something that’s easy, right? Not, it’s not just about the nutrition, but like, is this simple for me to do? Folks are coming to those classes, With their own recipes and their own ways to share how things should get cooked or what they do that works for them.

RICH: You also do a bit of advocacy work, right?  Alistair, could you tell us a little bit about the hunger action coalition?

ALISTAR: Yes, The Hunger Action Coalition is a statewide network of organizations and mission aligned participants that think about how do we best create policies and help move the work of reducing hunger in the state, for all of us. At Shalom Farms, we are one of the participants who contribute to the network and to the coalition to think about. All those areas within the state where people are experiencing hunger and in particularly, experiencing food insecurity, what are some of the programs and practices and policies that can help move the needle on that? And that’s what all the members and the stakeholders within the coalition are trying to do.

RICH: So our listeners can come visit and volunteer or also purchase produce.

ANNA: Our mobile market schedule is on our website and folks are welcome to come and purchase produce. We have what we call a tiered pricing system.  It can be at an affordable price that works for folks and people can use their SNAP and EBT benefits. If folks want to pay it forward and pay a supporter price to keep the work going, they’re also welcome to pay that price.

RICH: Anna Ibrahim. is the executive director, and Alistair Harris is the network engagement director from Shalom Farms. Thanks. You both.

 

 

RICH: That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Becca Duval and Jesse Perry of RVA Dirt and Anna Ibrahim and Alistair Harris of Shalom Farms. RVAs got issues, but we need you to tell us what those issues are. Tell us about it at RVAs dot [email protected]. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Washerman and Amber Coles. Meg Lindholm is our executive producer. Gavin Wright is VPM’s managing producer of podcasts, and Steve Humble is VPM’s chief content officer. I’m your host, Rich Marr. Thanks for listening.