All Access

Law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to withhold the names of their employees from the public. That’s the result of a ruling issued on Tuesday afternoon by the Virginia Court of Appeals, which found that “the names of law enforcement personnel are not exempted” from public records requests made under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. In a 10-page explanation, a three-judge panel said that public records law has clear instructions for personnel records. They also cited a 2017 statute “amended to specifically provide … public access to the ‘name’ of law enforcement officials.” Judges wrote that hypothetical future operations don’t justify secrecy. The county did not prove a hypothetical operation tomorrow would be jeopardized by the knowledge of an officer’s name today, the judges said.

The Advance has, through a request under the Freedom of Information Act, uncovered an exchange of emails involving Board members April Gillespie and Lisa Phelps, as well as Superintendent Clint Mitchell, that raise questions about how often Gillespie and Phelps attend designated “two-by-two” meetings with Mitchell. In the wake of the Board’s reorganization meeting on January 13, 2025, Phelps wrote in a January 15 email that the process for electing the new chair and vice chair at the meeting had “set a confusing tone,” and that “I was not given any information from the chair nor Superintendent of the [sic] their change up with the nomination process of Chair and Vice Chair….” The following morning, January 16, Superintendent Clint Mitchell responded to Phelps and challenged her statement that the information about the election process was not made available to her. Mitchell wrote that, “The process for electing Board members to new positions was thoroughly explained during … two-by-two meetings,” which are individual meetings between the superintendent and each Board member. However, Phelps and Gillespie apparently chose to not attend these meetings.

While the Virginia Freedom of Information Act allows for some secrecy around political appointments such as the one Isle of Wight County supervisors are about to make to temporarily fill the seat left vacant by the death of colleague William McCarty, the law by no means requires it. And supervisors must resist any temptation to be less than fully transparent about arguably the most important decision they will make in 2025. While Virginia FOIA allows discussion about the District 2 vacancy and even secret interviews of prospective appointees, supervisors must commit to complete transparency throughout the process. There’s simply no good reason to meet in closed session for a political appointment. Those who drafted the state’s FOIA law, which spells out a number of circumstances in which a public body can go behind closed doors, very intentionally used the word “may” instead of “shall” to instruct public servants’ use of the closed-session option.