Why is the city attorney withholding its most recent reports on the compliance of Suffolk’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) office? And why, since 2022, has the FOIA office only produced two state-mandated reports about the functioning of its office when it should be providing them to City Council twice a year?
Care4Suffolk has written about several FOIA violations previously. It has become such a problem for us trying to obtain information, that we looked into what is required by the FOIA office as far as reporting is concerned.
It turns out that the FOIA office is required by law to provide a FOIA report each January and July. These are required to contain any errors or withholding of documents. We put in a FOIA request to look at this report, using the most recent date.
There were no responsive documents, which is the way they phrase it when there is no document to provide.
There was no report done by the FOIA officer as required in July 2026. We decided to dig a little deeper. We next asked for any and all FOIA Reports from the FOIA Officer to City Council from the years 2022 to 2026. We received ONLY TWO records even though there should have been two per year for those five years, or a total of ten expected reports.
The oldest report dates back to January 12, 2022 and then the other report dates from January 7, 2026. (See attached pdfs to read the reports). The 2026 report should have contained errors and withheld documents that we know we were on the receiving end – but they were omitted from the report!
We then requested the reports from the City Attorney during that same 5 year period. At first we received an estimate that it would cost us $32.74 to have a lawyer review the reports. To avoid the charges, we limited the scope to just this calendar year. We received back an email stating that the two documents from this year have been withheld in their entirety using the Virginia State exemption Code Section 2.2-3705.1(2) which is Client-Attorney privilege,
We have run into this problem with the City of Suffolk previously. That time it was an email that was withheld in its entirety, to the point where we were unable to even determine if there was even a lawyer included on the email. When we did finally get the record, it turned out that there was no lawyer even on the email distribution list. You can read more about this here.
This report clearly has a lawyer involved, since we are seeking the report specifically from the attorney, but are they really prepared to stand behind the claim that the entire document, every part, needs to be withheld under client-attorney privilege. It does make you wonder what must be in that report – a standard semi-annual report. The irony of hiding a standard reporting document on the functioning of the FOIA office behind client-attorney privilege.