Your FOIA Rights
- You have the right to request to inspect or receive copies of non-privileged public records, or both.
- You have the right to request that any charges for the requested records be estimated in advance.
- If you believe that your FOIA rights have been violated, you may file a petition in district or circuit court to compel compliance with FOIA.
Requesting Records from the VPB
- FOIA does not require that your request be in writing, nor do you need to state specifically that you are requesting records under FOIA. From a practical perspective, written requests are preferred. It can be helpful to both you and the person receiving your request to put your request in writing. This allows you to create a record of your request. It also gives us a clear statement of the records you are requesting, so that there is no misunderstanding over a verbal request.
- Your request must ask for existing records or documents. FOIA gives you a right to inspect or copy records. FOIA does not apply to a situation where you are asking general questions about the work of the VPB, nor does it require the VPB to create a record that does not exist.
- Please cooperate with any efforts by the VPB staff to clarify the type of records that you are seeking or to attempt to reach a reasonable agreement about a response to a large request. Making a FOIA request is not an adversarial process, but we may have to discuss your request with you to ensure that we understand what records you are seeking.
The VPB’s Responsibilities in Responding to Your Request
- The VPB must respond to your request for information within five working days of receiving it. "Day one" is considered the day after your request is received. The five-day period does not include weekends or holidays.
- FOIA requires that VPB make one of the following responses to your request within the five-day time period:
- We provide you with the records that you have requested in their entirety.
- We withhold all the records that you have requested because all of the records are subject to a specific statutory exemption. If all the records are being withheld, we must send you a response in writing.
- We provide some of the records that you have requested but withhold other records. In that instance, we may redact the portion of the record that may be withheld and must provide you with the remainder of the record.
- We inform you in writing that the requested records cannot be found or do not exist (we do not have the records you want). However, if we know that another public body has the requested records, we must include contact information for the other public body in our response to you.
- If it is practically impossible for VPB to respond to your request within the five-day period, we must state this in writing and explain the conditions that make the response impossible. This will allow us seven additional working days to respond to your request, giving us a total of 12 working days to respond to your request.
We cannot ask you why you want the records.
The reason for your request for public records is irrelevant. We cannot ask you why you want the records. However, FOIA does allow us to ask you for your name and legal address. The VPB requires that you provide your name and legal address with your request.
Your request must identify the records you are seeking with "reasonable specificity."
This is a commonsense standard. It requires that you be specific enough so that we can identify and locate the records that you are seeking.
Your request must ask for records or documents.
FOIA does not apply to a situation where you are asking general questions about the work of the VPB. In addition, we are not required to create a new record if the record does not already exist.
You may choose to receive electronic records in any format used by the VPB in the regular course of business.
For example, if you are requesting records maintained in an Excel database, you may elect to receive those records electronically, via e-mail or on a physical storage medium, or as a printed copy.
Costs
- A public body may make reasonable charges not to exceed its actual cost incurred in accessing, duplicating, supplying, or searching for the requested records and shall make all reasonable efforts to supply the requested records at the lowest possible cost. No public body shall impose any extraneous, intermediary, or surplus fees or expenses to recoup the general costs associated with creating or maintaining records or transacting the general business of the public body. Any duplicating fee charged by a public body shall not exceed the actual cost of duplication. Prior to conducting a search for records, the public body shall notify the requestor in writing that the public body may make reasonable charges not to exceed its actual cost incurred in accessing, duplicating, supplying or searching for requested records and inquire of the requester whether he would like to request a cost estimate in advance of the supplying of the requested records as set forth in subsection F of § 2.2-3704 of the Code of Virginia.
- If we estimate that it will cost more than $200 to respond to your request, we will require you to pay a deposit, not to exceed the amount of the estimate, before proceeding with a response. We will advise you of any anticipated cost that will exceed $200 even if you do not ask for an estimate in advance. The five days that we must respond to your request does not include the time between when we ask for a deposit and when you respond.
- You may request that we estimate in advance the charges for supplying the records that you have requested. This will allow you to know about any costs upfront or give you the opportunity to modify your request to lower the estimated costs.
- If you owe VPB money from a previous FOIA request that has remained unpaid for more than 30 days, VPB may require payment of the past-due bill before it will respond to your new FOIA request.
- Fees are assessed based on the hours of personnel time needed to provide a full set of responsive records, which includes searching for, reviewing, and redacting if needed. An administrative hourly rate is used in most cases. However, if the request can only be completed by a specific employee, that individual employee's hourly rate is used to assess the fee.
- If you would like the records mailed to you, a price per page fee may be added to our fee. If shipping is required, the actual amount of the shipping cost may be added to the fee as well. There is no additional fee for records produced electronically.
- Please note that the Virginia Department of Corrections maintains a large portion of data that is available to the Virginia Parole Board. Any FOIA requests that will require the Virginia Department of Corrections to collect data on our behalf may be subjected to additional fees payable to their Agency.
Please cooperate with staff
If we have questions about your request, please cooperate with staff to clarify or to attempt to reach a reasonable agreement about a response to a large request.
For Legal Inquiries and General FOIA Questions
If you have questions about making a request for records, or if you need guidance on where to send your request, contact:
Herman Davis
(804) 887-7839
Email: FOIA@vpb.virginia.gov
Virginia Parole Board
6900 Atmore Drive
Richmond, VA 23225
In addition, the Freedom of Information Advisory Council is available to answer any questions you may have about FOIA. The Council may be contacted by e-mail at foiacouncil@dls.virginia.gov, or by phone at (804) 225-3056 or toll free at 1-866-448-4100.