Budget meetings

Budget meetings

In this space during the past month we have twice discussed the threats to the state’s Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation — particularly the attempts by Richmond lawmakers to hold closeddoor budget meetings despite their illegality.

Last week in Richmond, Judge Randall G. Johnson threw out a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union that attacked a Feb. 20 budget meeting presided over by Virginia Senate Finance Committee Chairman Hunter Andrews, D-Hampton. When reporters from papers in Lynchburg and Newport News tried to enter the conference room they were physically .barred at the door by Sen. Andrews.

The judge ruled that the fact that the reporters couldn’t see behind doorman Andrews — and therefore testify that yes, there was a meeting inside — that he could not be certain any such meeting ever took place. A man of Sen. Andrews’ integrity and position should not be allowed to hide behind a legal technicality, especially when it concerns a violation of the very laws he is sworn to uphold. Was there a meeting inside those walls, Sen. Andrews? The people of Virginia deserve your response.

The second issue, the legality of a Dec. 28 meeting at a secluded Chesterfield County hunting lodge, is still alive. Judge Johnson said

court last w^ekt. “I’U tell you right now, you can’t convince me the ‘meeting’ was a social gathering,” according to a report in Virginia’s Press, the newspapers of the Virginia Press Association. He will be determining if the meeting was formal or just a bunch of senators getting together to play cards a few weeks before the 1991 session began. I

Obviously it was not a social gathering. Dividing up Virginia’s tax revenues at the lodge meeting were the most powerful men in Richmond: state senators Andrews, Benjamin Lambert III, Dudley J. Emick, Clive L. Duvall II, Joseph B. Gartlan Jr., Elmo Cross Jr., Stanley C. Walker, Richard J. Holland and Howard P. Anderson.

Judge Johnson gave the ACLU and Common Cause 14 days to file a brief outlining their opinions of the lodge meeting, and the Attorney General’s Office will have seven days in which to respond.

Hopefully Judge Johnson will rule in favor of greater openess and public accountability, clearing the way for the taxpayers of Virginia to see exactly how their money is being divided. There is every likelihood, however, that instead he will decide that the “informal” tone of the hunting lodge summit exempts it from FOI legislation.

There is no longer any reason for state budget decisions to be made in smoke-filled rooms (or hunting lodges). Perhaps next General Assembly session they won’t be.

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