Flouting the transparency law

A ‘public’ meeting without the public — business as usual for Norfolk school officials

Maybe the Norfolk School Board thinks it’s funny to flout Virginia’s open government laws. Perhaps members don’t feel beholden to state statutes that require them to inform the public about meetings.

Whatever their reasoning, the decision to hold a public meeting last week — the board’s first in-person meeting in about a year — was yet another example of blatant disregard for citizens’ right to know what their elected officials are doing.

Here’s a quick lesson, in case those members need a refresher (as they obviously do).

The Virginia Freedom of Information Act requires government boards to serve notice of any meeting. The law says, “Every public body shall give notice of the date, time, and location of its meetings by:

“1. Posting such notice on its official public government website, if any;

“2. Placing such notice in a prominent public location at which notices are regularly posted; and

“3. Placing such notice at the office of the clerk of the public body or, in the case of a public body that has no clerk, at the office of the chief administrator.”

Note the “and” in there. Every meeting of any public board must be announced to the public. This is so that citizens, who elect members and are governed by the decisions of those members, can participate in or at least monitor the debate and actions of those boards.

In a democratic republic, in which the power of elected officials is conferred by the people, decisions should be made in full view of the public. Such transparency ensures accountability and deters public officials from acting in a manner inconsistent with the public will.

Pretty simple, right? Officials are elected to serve the people and should therefore conduct the people’s business so that the people can see what the heck is going on. That bolsters confidence in those decisions and in government.

The Norfolk School Board clearly thinks all of that is unnecessary. How else could they justify holding yet another meeting without announcing it beforehand — as the law requires them to do?

On March 3, the board met face-to-face. It was a milestone since it was the first in-person meeting since the pandemic began. That should be cause for celebration: government functioning as before.

Should be. Of course, the board failed to inform the public that it would be doing so. Members discussed meeting in person at their previous session, but never posted a notice about it — again, as the law requires.

Board Chair Adale Martin, when asked by Pilot reporter Sara Gregory about it, said the board “didn’t in any way hide” the in-person meeting. But when asked how the public would know about it without notification, Martin said she hadn’t thought about it.

They hadn’t thought about it. That makes sense, given the board’s repeated violations of the open meetings law. The board must have assumed that a return to normalcy — to business as usual — means the board’s usual business of violating state laws.

Recall that in 2019, long before “coronavirus” was a household word, the Freedom of Information Advisory Council issued an opinion that confirmed at least one FOIA violation and suggested a pattern of the board playing fast and loose with its notification requirements. That should have been sufficient warning for the board to do better.

We journalists may be sticklers for adherence to FOIA, but the law wasn’t written for us. Its intent is to empower citizens, to keep the public abreast of their government’s actions and to ensure transparency for the communities that public officials are elected to serve.

This wasn’t an insult to the media, but to the residents of Norfolk — to the people who pay for schools, the parents who depend on the district to educate their children and the voters who elected members of the board.

Maybe the Norfolk School Board thinks it’s funny to act this way, but they should believe us when we say that nobody is laughing about it.