Herring’s Bill: $19,501 For Sweet Briar College FOI

VA Governor
COST OF TRANSPARENCY: Attorney General Mark Herring’s office wants $19,501 to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence with Sweet Briar College officials.

Attorney General Mark Herring’s office wants $19,501.50 to fulfill a Freedom of Information Act inquiry into his lawyers consulting with Sweet Briar College officials in the months leading up to the decision to close the women’s school.

A letter from Herring’s “Compliance and Transparency Counsel” itemized the costs of compiling three months’ worth of communications between the attorney general’s office and officials of the private college.

The price list conveyed to Kathleen Bell, a Virginia resident, included “the cost of a 30-minute search conducted by each of the office’s 181 attorneys,” along with “two hours of review by each OAG attorney.”

Pam Auble, a 1998 Sweet Briar graduate and a leader in the effort to save the historic college, wondered, “Why are 181 attorneys all searching the same information when only a handful may have been involved in these discussions, and any server-based information will yield the exact same results?”

“I’ve been involved in the legal discovery process in searching for specific names, keywords and dates/time frames within email and other electronic information,” Auble said. “It has never taken 90.5 hours of dedicated time, even years ago when using physical backup tapes that had to be swapped out after every search.”

Some of those searches, she added, spanned several years.

Herring spokesman Michael Kelly said in a statement:

“We have fulfilled two of Ms. Bell’s previous requests, but she has not been responsive to our numerous attempts to work with her to refine this particular request to ensure she receives the records she seeks in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost.

“We remain ready and willing to work with her to fulfill the request in a manner that is consistent with the law,” Kelly said.

Bell will not pay the $19,501 fee and disputed Kelly’s account. She said her first inquiry elicited a $16,000 fee. An amended request produced “two irrelevant documents on economic development” at no charge, Bell said.

She said a subsequent request came back with the notation: “No documents are responsive.” Bell said the AG’s office had not communicated with her about the latest FOI filing.

Sweet Briar alumnae and friends have criticized Herring’s role in the precipitous announcement that the school would close. College supporters, many of whom say they voted for the Democrat in 2013, have described the attorney general’s response to their concerns as “condescending.”

Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, called the AG’s $19,501 bill “a pretty spectacular estimate.”

Characterizing Bell’s request as “broad,” Rhyne acknowledged that the AG’s office has “attorney-client issues that no other state agency has.”

Still, Rhyne noted, “The fact that the AG’s office does not have the ability to conduct a centralized global search is concerning.”

Kenric Ward is a national reporter for  Watchdog.org. Contact him at (571) 319-9824. @Kenricward

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