Freedom of Information
The Jefferson County Commission recently discussed the possibility of asking the State Legislature to amend the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to make it more difficult for citizens to obtain information from public bodies (like the County Commission). I hope the commissioners think this idea through very thoroughly and very carefully.
FOIA exists so that the citizenry may know what their government is up to. Any citizen should have the right to request a public document and be furnished a copy thereof.
I understand why public officials blanch at fulfilling FOIA requests. Responding to any request is a bit of a bother, and a tiny minority of citizens seem to enjoy making pests of themselves by regularly asking for just about anything. When I was Deputy Secretary of the West Virginia Department of Revenue, we once got a request that looked familiar. It seems that the very same person had made the very same request about three months earlier, and we had provided every piece of information requested. We politely informed him so, and heard nothing more from him, at least for the rest of the time I was with the Department.
Citizens do indeed have a right to public information, but there should be a rule of reason. Citizens should understand that with that right to know the facts comes a responsibility to be respectful of public officials’ time when requesting information.
I’m told that one of the changes under consideration by the County Commission is restricting FOIA to lawyers. Non-lawyers would have to hire legal counsel to request a FOIA. We see once again a resurrection of an ancient idea in legislative bodies, the Lawyers’ Full Employment Act.
The state allows its agencies and local governments to charge applicants for responding to FOIAs. I mind that in principle, as long as the charges are restricted to the actual cost of responding. Some government officials would like to charge much more than necessary, making FOIA an undue burden on the average citizen. And now that FOIA can be responded to online, is there really much of a cost?
I think it’s untoward of government to charge citizens more for a service it renders than the actual cost of the service. Government is not a profit-making business, was never intended to be such a business and should not be operated like such a business.
This is one of my many bugaboos about the idea of eliminating the state income tax, which produces almost half the revenue that ends up in our state’s General Fund. Most states that lack an income tax charge an arm and a leg for services that cost the state relative pittances to provide. I think it fundamentally wrong to charge a citizen several hundred dollars to renew a driver’s license or an automobile license tag.
When I was in the House of Delegates, I would periodically be contacted by the Clerk of the House to be informed that a FOIA had been filed asking for information about me. My response in every case was to tell the Clerk to provide whatever information had been requested. Often the request had come from someone I knew to be a political operative who would quite likely be supporting whoever would be my opponent in the next election. On occasion, the information appeared on my opponent’s behalf in the subsequent election, sometimes distorted. Each time I saw the occasion as an opportunity to set the record straight.
There is a tendency among small public bodies (county commissions, city councils, school boards, planning commissions, parks and recreation commissions, water/sewer districts and the like) to psychologically see themselves more as private companies than public bodies. I mean no personal criticism of any member of any such body, I think it’s human nature. Perhaps the very size of such a body produces a sense of intimacy among the members that causes them to look inward more often than healthy, and outward less often than optimum.
Whatever the source, this temptation must be ever eschewed. It’s critical for people elected or appointed to government at any level to remember that they are public servants, and that the public that elected them has a fundamental right to know what’s happening.
I urge the Jefferson County Commission to bite the bullet and put up with whatever nonsense it must when it comes to FOIA. Again, a few tweaks might not be harmful. But please be careful.
Reprinted from the Martinsburg Journal, August 11, 2026
