The People's Right to Know

There is a little two lane road somewhere in rural America where this story begins.

Maybe it's a winding highway through the mountains of Southwest Virginia. Yesterday there were hayfields, cattle, and a mailbox leaning just enough to tell you the snowplow clipped it a few winters back. Today there are survey flags tied to fence posts, drilling rigs beside the road, and strangers in hard hats studying somebody's pasture like they've discovered gold under the orchardgrass.

By suppertime, the talk has started at the diner.

"What are they building?"  "I heard it's one of them computer places."

"My cousin says they're buying up a thousand acres."

Then somebody asks the question that gets asked whenever big money rolls into a little town: "What did the county government promise them?"

That's when things get quiet.

The county administrator may know. The economic development folks may know. The lawyers and the company certainly know. The power company probably has a pretty good notion. Meanwhile, the taxpayers whose dollars may help pay for roads, water lines, electric infrastructure, or incentives are left piecing together rumors between coffee refills.

Ask enough questions and you'll eventually hear words like confidential, proprietary and non disclosure agreement (NDAs). Everybody smiles politely and keeps their mouth shut tighter than Granny guarding the recipe for her apple butter.

That's where the history of the Freedom of Information Act runs headfirst into modern rural America.

FOIA wasn't created just to make life easier for newspaper reporters. It grew out of the Cold War, when the federal government had developed quite an affection for secrecy. Congressman John Moss of California spent more than a decade challenging that culture. His work eventually led to the federal Freedom of Information Act, signed into law in 1966.

The idea behind it was simple but revolutionary: government records generally belong to the people, and the government needs a lawful reason to keep them secret. Watergate later showed Americans exactly why that mattered. After learning how secrecy could hide abuses of power, Congress strengthened FOIA in 1974.

Virginia adopted the same philosophy. The Commonwealth's Freedom of Information Act says, "The affairs of government are NOT intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy." Then it goes even further: "The people of the Commonwealth do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them."

That's pretty plain English for Richmond or the county courthouse.

Today's fight isn't necessarily about whether data centers are good or bad. Tomorrow it could be a battery plant, manufacturing operation, industrial park, or something nobody has invented yet. Rural communities understandably compete for projects promising jobs, tax revenue, and investment. Companies also have legitimate reasons to keep some negotiations confidential while deciding where to locate. Nobody expects county officials to play poker with their cards facing the other players.

The problem comes when private negotiations turn into public obligations.

A deal can involve tax incentives, roads, water and sewer expansions, electrical infrastructure, zoning changes, land use decisions, or other commitments lasting decades. At that point citizens have every reason to ask what is being promised in their name and with their tax dollars.

That's why Freedom of Information laws matter.

Virginia law recognizes that producing records costs money. Public bodies can charge reasonable amounts reflecting their actual costs of accessing, duplicating, supplying, or reviewing requested records. That's fair. If somebody asks for boxes of documents and hours of staff work, those costs don't disappear because somebody hollered "FOIA."

But fees aren't supposed to become a locked courthouse door with a price tag hanging from the knob. Virginia law says charges cannot exceed the actual cost to the public body. When a citizen, community group, or small newspaper receives an estimate running into thousands of dollars, the practical result can be the same as denying the records. Most ordinary folks don't have several thousand dollars lying around for a fishing expedition through county files. Around here, if we had that kind of spare money, we'd probably fix the back porch steps.

Whether any particular charge is excessive depends on the request and the work required. Still, the larger principle shouldn't be controversial. FOIA was created to provide meaningful access to public records, not access only for citizens wealthy enough to afford the admission price.

That's the balance rural communities now have to wrestle with. How much confidentiality does economic development legitimately require, and how much transparency does democracy demand before public money and resources are committed?

Reasonable people can disagree about exactly where that line belongs.

The projects will change. Yesterday it was an automobile plant. Today it's an A.I. data center. Tomorrow it'll be something we haven't heard of yet, probably with a name nobody at the diner can pronounce.

The question won't change: How much should the people know before the government makes promises on their behalf?

Maybe that's the next chapter in America's Freedom of Information story. It won't necessarily be written in Washington. It'll be written in county courthouses, planning commission meetings, packed school cafeterias and little diners where the waitress knows everybody's coffee order and probably knows more about what's going on than half the courthouse.

If the government truly belongs to the people, asking questions isn't being nosy.

It's acting like an owner.

John W Peace II

www.JohnWPeace.com