Ginger Stanley, executive director of the Virginia Press Association, told C-VILLE that Senate Bill 207—a bill identical to Delegate Rob Bell’s House Bill 903—was amended today to drop a Freedom of Information Act exemption. The bills would have allowed members of college threat assessment teams to openly discuss medical and criminal records of potential threats but would have exempted records produced by those teams from the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA].
"It is going to be amended to take out any reference that the threat assessment teams would have for an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act," said Stanley. "I would assume that House Bill 903 will be amended similarly when it comes over to the Senate."
The portion of Senate Bill 207 that addresses sharing medical and criminal records "will continue on," according to Stanley. "The Press Association didn’t have an issue with that. Our issue was in the fact that we wanted to be able to have a look back on how these teams react."
UPDATE: Reached at the General Assembly, Delegate Rob Bell said that there is no decision at present about amending the House’s threat assessment bill. The three options, he explained, are "whether to proceed with the bill only containing the information-sharing provision, whether we kick the whole bill over a year until the FOIA stuff comes back, or whether we try to use these next couple of weeks to actually bang out a compromise here." If the bill passes without the FOIA exemption, threat assessment team records will be accessible.
"The question was always ‘How do we come up with a balance that makes sense?’" said Bell, who did not rule out the possibility of amending the bill while the General Assembly was still in session.
"We’ve got a full 30 days. The House took a shot at it, the Senate took a shot at it. We’ll know more in a week or two." Read next week’s C-VILLE for more.
