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After years of trying, Roem's FOIA fees limit bill is moving forward

Members of the House of Delegates are now considering a bill that would create new limits on how much government agencies can charge for a public records request.
 
Freedom of information isn't always free. In fact, sometimes a local government or a state agency can charge so much money for fulfilling a request that transparency is cost prohibitive. That's why Senator Danica Roem, a Democrat from Manassas, introduced a bill that creates a new limit – the median pay within a department for the hourly rate charged to fulfill a FOIA request.

"That is not nearly as far as I and other journalists past and present would prefer us to go," Roem says. "But it's what we can get out."

Roem is a former journalist who has been trying to do this for eight years. This year, after making changes and concessions, she got it out of the Senate and on to the House of Delegates. One of the senators who voted in favor of the bill is Bryce Reeves, a Republican from Orange.

"I want to thank Senator Roem for all the hard work she has done, and we talked about trying to get to a reasonable solution in a very difficult problem where agencies are charging so much that the individual asking for the request can't afford it, and I think this is a reasonable and prudent way to find a compromise," Reeves says. "So, I'm going to be supporting the bill."

And he's not alone. Only two of the 40 senators voted against it, which means it'll now move over to the House of Delegates.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

Michael Pope is an author and journalist who lives in Old Town Alexandria.