Prior to his election as Virginia’s Attorney General in 2009, Ken Cuccinelli was a state senator, representing the 37th district in Fairfax County beginning in 2002.
In the Senate, he was a prominent proponent of improving government transparency and supporting access to information by citizens.
On January 11, in an exclusive interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Cuccinelli spoke about how he is able to pursue these goals in his newer role as the Commonwealth’s Attorney General.
FOIA discussion in Richmond
The General Assembly, he noted, is “going to be dealing with a FOIA discussion this session,” using the common abbreviation for “Freedom of Information Act.”
Cuccinelli said that he is “a strong supporter of a good, strong, and responsive FOIA law.” He has been a member of the FOIA Council since before he was attorney general, and he is “always looking for ways to improve” the statute.
He predicted that, although it may take more than one legislative session, “you’ll see us having a discussion with some” members of the General Assembly about having “an inspector general or a far more robust and initiative-taking auditor, with expanded powers -- most critically subpoena power, which we don’t have in Virginia right now.”
Because of that lack of subpoena power, he added, “we’re suffering for it, relative to where we could be.”
Eliminating the FOIA Council?
When it was pointed out to him that Governor Bob McDonnell’s commission on government reform has recommended elimination of the FOIA Council, Cuccinelli expressed concern.
“Obviously,” he said, “I think that to have a robust FOIA you need some central clearinghouse, so if there’s going to be a substitute, which I don’t really see right now, I think their notion is that every agency will just handle its own.”
The commission suggested that the Office of the Attorney General could handle inquiries and disputes about FOIA matters, but Cuccinelli ruled that out as a realistic possibility.
“That’s a natural fallback,” he conceded, “because everybody would then turn to us and say, ‘Do I have to do a, b, or c?’ That’s got its problems.”
OAG’s workload
Among those problems are the fact that the Attorney General’s office does not “have anybody who could take that on, just as a matter of workload.”
Members of his staff have the expertise necessary, he said, “but there are already a number of things we’re statutorily tasked with,” but without sufficient personnel to deal with them. As a result, he said, “this would be another manpower issue,” adding that, “of course we’re strained for budgets all over government.”
Retaining the FOIA Council makes sense to Cuccinelli, he said, because “I happen to think that the centralization of this particular function is more efficient than expecting 115,000 state employees to each learn FOIA when it lands on their desk.”
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