My name is Alice Minium and I strongly support HB159. clarifications regarding enforcement procedures for petitions filed regarding the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. I am a citizen who regularly files VFOIA requests to local law enforcement agencies and publicizes basic records of these agencies to facilitate public access, and I can speak from personal experience regarding the subject of this bill. When I first tried to file a FOIA petition in Chesterfield General District Court, the process was arduous and different each time. The second time my petition was dismissed, it was for exactly what this bill addresses: a failure to issue proper service. This "loophole" was used by the government to first delay the hearing, then to dismiss it entirely when the Chesterfield Sheriff's Office reportedly "could not locate" the Chesterfield Police Chief Jeffrey Katz to serve him. The Chief was by no means in hiding, but because he was unable to be served, this astoundingly resulted in a dismissal of the case. When intending to take a FOIA dispute before a judge, I notify the party to be named in my petition and their relevant county attorney's office that I intend to do so by providing a copy of the petition I will file. Even if localities were generally unaware of their own names appearing on a docket, common sense demands we acknowledge that if they're notified, they're aware. I have since learned to pay for private process service since at times, astoundingly, a locality cannot be trusted to locate its own employees. The case I described, which was dismissed because the Chief of Police could not be located for service (as VPM and the Virginia Mercury reported at the time), is not the only case I've filed nor the only one in which the very first claim the government makes in court is that the petition was not properly served. To prohibit this outright by clarifying what's required through a simple, explicit change to the language of the statute like that proposed in this bill will not only make proceedings unfold more fairly, but it will simply save everyone time.

Generally, HB 159 provides extreme clarity that when citizens (“requestors” in VFOIA parlance) seek to enforce the statute in court against officials who refuse to comply with legitimate records requests, they do NOT have to go through cumbersome and arcane litigation-type service of process requirements. This was never intended in the legacy statute’s wording, but somehow the rotten got in with the good. When more costs are wrongfully imposed on the community by way of a false and corrupt imposition of a "service of process" requirement (through manipulation of judicial 'bench books'), you can achieve delay well beyond the statutory shot clock and, frankly, defeat a citizen’s enforcement effort in the womb. When the law firms monopolizing the VFOIA transparency and accountability market vertical advise their institutional government clients, as they clearly are, to be contumacious with respect to complying with the law -- and I am putting that very benignly -- then shot clock urgency disappears in the usual costly chasing of scofflaw officials who magically escape service for days or even weeks. This may benefit law firms' scheduling preferences -- the obvious goal -- but never rank and file citizens. By injecting service of process slop into the enforcement context, the firms put the litigation on advantageous terms for defendants and themselves at the expense of the citizenry. Imagine your surprise in court after doing everything imaginable to get legitimately requested records and duly notifying the officials of the need to come to court when the lawyers show up with their empty bankers boxes: "Our client was never ‘served’ with process; despite whatever the ‘statute’ says – the benchbook makes clear that service is needed; in any event, now that we’re here, perhaps this can be scheduled for hearing a few months from now pending, of course, proper service of process by the plaintiffs…” Yuck – the precise destruction of the baked-in urgency the VFOIA's language was deliberately crafted to reflect. That happened to us in our County in 2023-24 and our community never received Justice despite Herculean efforts. All this mess that true VFOIA compliance would have avoided, or at least substantially mitigated, was paid for by taxpayers. It's our money paying for our frustration, for our despair, and our diminishing trust in the integrity of our institutions and governance. It puts us at our wits’ ends when we KNOW that government doesn’t work and that we’re paying handsomely for that failure. The VFOIA is ours -- not the law firms' and the scofflaws. It is a DIY that aids in the transparency and accountability portions of our system of self-government by ensuring that public officials produce factual records associated with their performance of duty. VFOIA is the kind of “lance” that MLK, Jr. talked about in Letter from a Birmingham Jail, that, once applied, exposes injustice to the “medicines of air and light.” Our community didn't get the benefits VFOIA was crafted to provide. But, with a serious effort behind HB 159, future members of our Commonwealth communities should. Future families and stakeholders need a VFOIA they can enforce. Coach Theo Marcus Citizen of the Commonwealth

Freedom of information act . Requesting information is easy receiving information is not everything is a record of incarnation which makes it nearly impossible to get the information I need i don't think they are able to constantly use this if we have freedom of information what information can we get everything that is listed says we can get it but when asking for it they say it's a record of incarnation can we fix this

HB159 is a good bill. It removes pointless obstacles to enforcement of Virginia FOIA rights.

FOIA laws are an important part of data center fights, as many deals are made out of view of the public and shrouded in non-disclosure agreements. Currently in the Roanoke Valley there is a lawsuit pending brought by a local news organization, the Roanoke Rambler, against the Western Virginia Water Authority for redacting Google's water usage rate numbers from contracts obtained by FOIA. We currently support HB160 with the expectation that a judge will correctly evaluate a government official's responsibility in fulfilling FOIA requests.

HB160 Specify criminal actions and jail time (mandatory) as that will force compliance. HB463 Quorum means the govt can hide more things and be less transparent.

Freedom of information act . Requesting information is easy receiving information is not everything is a record of incarnation which makes it nearly impossible to get the information I need i don't think they are able to constantly use this if we have freedom of information what information can we get everything that is listed says we can get it but when asking for it they say it's a record of incarnation can we fix this

HB160 Specify criminal actions and jail time (mandatory) as that will force compliance. HB463 Quorum means the govt can hide more things and be less transparent.

Give us freedom to request and receive the information . A record of incarnation is all I get where is the information