Redactions raise questions

Office of State Inspector General should operate free from interference

Virginia officials who want to deter the release of information to the public have a lot of arrows in their quiver to do so. They can delay, but only for so long. They can charge fees, but only so high. They can use exemptions in state law — there are about 180 in Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act — to avoid disclosure.

Or they can heavily redact the information, effectively rendering it all but unusable. It’s a tactic that attempts to demonstrate transparency without ever being transparent — call it “Transparency Theater” — and it’s all too commonplace with public records requests.

Recent reporting by the Virginia Mercury suggests this was the arrow selected by the Northam administration earlier this year to blunt the impact of a critical report into the actions of the Virginia Parole Board.

At issue is a review conducted by the Office of the State Inspector General into the parole board amid the coronavirus crisis. The board was one of two entities reviewing inmate cases with an eye toward early release to reduce prison populations and limit the spread of infection.

The Department of Corrections examined a pool of about 2,000 individuals who had a year or less to serve and meet certain other criteria approved by the General Assembly. The parole board’s job was less straight-forward since the commonwealth eliminated parole in 1995, and members’ decision to release several violent criminals brought it under heightened scrutiny.

The OSIG report, released in July, focused on the board’s decision to grant parole to Vincent Martin, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1980 for killing a Richmond police officer. The board, then under the direction of Chair Adrianne Bennett, voted in April to grant Martin parole then twice delayed his release, the second delay coming after the OSIG began its review.

The report was unflinching in its criticism of the board’s policies and procedures, concluding that members should have been more thorough in their efforts to contact the commonwealth’s attorney in Richmond and did not honor a scheduled meeting with the family of Officer Michael Conners. The OSIG also said the board did not keep minutes as required by law.

Very little of that was clear when the report was released due to heavy redactions throughout, rendering the document all but indecipherable. Republican lawmakers, who had voiced support for the OSIG inquiry, objected strenuously, calling for release of the full report.

Now, the Mercury’s Graham Moomaw indicates those redactions came at the suggestion of the governor’s office. An email from the OSIG advising the administration about the report’s pending release “appeared to set off a chain of events that would delay the report’s release and end with the redaction of nearly everything in it,” Moomaw reported on Monday.

There are two problems here.

First is interference with a warranted review of the parole board, which deserved closer scrutiny. The parole board pushed back against the report’s findings, and lawmakers have proposed legislation that would change its operations. Those should be the subject of robust public debate, and the full report is a critical component of that discussion.

Second is independence of an office that serves a vital role in the commonwealth. The OSIG is a gubernatorial appointee and the office is in the executive branch, which was considered a potential problem at its creation in 2012. Those fears now seem prescient.

Virginia needs someone looking into allegations of waste, fraud and abuse in state government, as the OSIG is charged to conduct. But that work and those findings should be as free from possible from political influence to ensure those conclusions are viewed as trustworthy.

If the Northam administration meddled in the release of this report, as the Mercury’s reporting indicates, it should admit that error and hold those responsible accountable for their actions.

And this should prompt Virginia to consider how to better insulate the OSIG from such interference, to ensure confidence in that office’s important work.