Transparency & Accountability

As your local newspaper reporter for the Gainesville Times and Prince William Times from 2006 to 2015, the First Amendment was the backbone of doing my job. When I ran for office in 2017, I promised you I would bring a reporter’s eye to Richmond because, as we say in journalism, sunshine is the best disinfectant.

I fulfilled my campaign promise to introduce and pass legislation increasing government accountability and transparency and pledge to make our local and state governments more accessible, accountable and transparent.

Among my 32 bills signed into law, we passed my Shield Law to prevent reporters from being jailed for protecting the identity of a confidential source and another bill to prevent child welfare fraud.

We also passed two of my bills in response to the horrific situation in Thoroughfare that results in desecrated gravesites. First, local governments will now have to conduct outreach to descendants of those buried in cemeteries on public land before they go up for sale so they have the opportunity to purchase the property. Second, local governments will also be required to include in their public notices for public property going up for sale whether there is a known cemetery on the land.

I’m also excited to see the results of my bill to create a publicly searchable statewide Cold Case Database finally come to fruition as the public now has a new tool to see every unsolved homicide, missing person and unidentified person case logged by Virginia State Police. If even one of these cases is solved from a tip stemming from the database, then the investment will have been worth it. This is a huge win for community safety and transparency in government.

Lastly, I have fought all five years I’ve been in Richmond to make the Freedom of Information Act more accessible to the requesters of public records. Reforming FOIA is perhaps the most challenging topic I’ve encountered in the General Assembly because it’s inherently about convincing legislators to give up some of their own power and the power of local governing bodies so the pendulum of access is much closer to the center between the custodians of records on the one side and requesters of records on the other side.

I am going to continue calling for a FOIA Ombudsman at the statewide level to mediate FOIA disputes and to reduce/eliminate FOIA fees whenever possible so your government stops using those fees as a deterrent instead of covering actual costs. We won a 10-3 vote in favor of recommendations from the FOIA Advisory Council in 2021 for my plan to reduce FOIA fees. Now it’s just a matter of convincing my colleagues to do the right thing for their constituents. That’s my remaining work.