An XXX Rated City Council Agenda
Judge should scold Suffolk for secrecy
Public records are public records, period. They should be made available to the public.
That point seems to be lost in the city of Suffolk, which is withholding public records from a plaintiff suing the city over a zoning decision. The suit is over Suffolk’s refusal to let Gregory A. Sakas, a North Carolina businessman, open an adult book and novelty store.
Consultants for Sakas say the city denied his constitutional rights when they blocked him from opening his store. Citing the state Freedom of Information Act, they requested meeting minutes, videotapes, reports and laws, among other city records, all of which are commonly available. They presumably would use that information in their lawsuit.
City officials assembled the requested information, but declined to hand it over after an outside counsel advised against it.
The city seems to be saying that certain public records became unpublic when they were requested for use against the city in court.
Friday morning, Circuit Court Judge Rodham T. Delk Jr. is expected to consider the matter. Surely the judge will see through this charade and hold that public documents are public even when they paint city officials in an unfavorable light.
To do otherwise would give municipal officials a green light to cover their tracks, hide their errors and silence critics.
Two state open-records law experts both say the city should not have withheld records just because they are part of a court case.
“My understanding,” said Frosty Landon, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, “is that once something is a public record, it stays a public record.” That seems self-evident.
Suffolk city government is generally noteworthy for its competence and eagerness to meet public needs, but it also tends to be more secretive than other cities in the area.
City governments should err on the side of openness, not the other way around. The FOIA states that its provisions “shall be liberally construed to promote an increased awareness by all persons of governmental activities and afford every opportunity to citizens to witness the operations of government.”
In other words, government should be as open as possible, not as closed as it can legally get away with.
