A Victory for Transparency
by James A. Bacon
Kudos to Danny Avula, City of Richmond mayor, for upholding government transparency in the release of documents sought by the Richmond Times-Dispatch that had been withheld on the grounds that they were executive “working papers.”
The University of Virginia should pay heed. Just because you legally can refuse to turn over working papers doesn’t mean you have to. (See my previous post for the blanket use of the working-papers exemption to withhold information on how decisions are made at UVA.)
The documents sought by the RTD shed light on the use of taxpayer dollars to fund nonprofit organizations. The city’s practice was to grade the groups seeking financial support and to fund those scoring over 75. The city auditor found that many groups receiving taxpayer dollars fell short of the score, but the city’s FOIA officer refused to turn over spreadsheets with the details. The working-papers exemption, she said, shields records and correspondence “prepared by or for a public official … for his personal or deliberative use.”
Avula overruled the advice of his FOIA officers. “The team’s recommendation was, ‘these are all the mayor’s working papers, you don’t need to release them,’” Avula explained to the RTD. But after speaking with members of City Council, he concluded that transparency was necessary for “stewarding taxpayers dollars.”
“I’m working to push our organization to more transparency,” he said. “More transparency and more collaboration with the media actually serves everybody.”
Avula did agree to redact some information in the documents, including the reasons stated for rejecting requests for funds. The details, he said, could harm reputations and compromise groups’ fundraising efforts.
The moral for UVA (and others): Sensitive information can be redacted. Partial transparency is better than no transparency at all.
Avula’s decision creates a precedent that I implore leaders at UVA and Virginia’s other public universities to heed. But the Richmond case study is interesting in its own right. Who knew that the city funded dozens of nonprofit groups, some to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Although the city auditor sought to block the release of the spreadsheets, he did raise significant issues. Some nonprofits missed deadlines for submitting their applications but received funding anyway. Auditors also identified a lack of safeguards against conflicts of interest between city officials assigning the scores and the organizations themselves.
What other government agencies across Virginia are funding community nonprofits? How much money are we talking about? What are their missions? How many are advocacy groups promoting an ideological agenda through “educational” programs? How many are platforms for promoting left-wing or right-wing causes? To what extent are state and local taxpayers funding programs that are politically and philosophically antithetical to what they believe?
