Requiring a mailing permit or circulation audit imposes an undue burden on me...





On March 15, 2019, Brian Wheeler, the FOIA Officer for the city of Charlottesville emailed me to inform me that I am required to produce either a second class mailing permit, or an audit of circulation from an independent auditor before the city might follow-up with even more additional inquiries in order to determine if my online news magazine qualifies as having circulation in the state of Virginia. Circulation literally means "the public availability or knowledge of something".








If you happen to be in the state of Virginia and are reading these very words you have just confirmed the circulation of my content in the state of Virginia. The verification process detailed by Wheeler can not be found in the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. I also checked the "FOIA Bible" that Mr. Wheeler shared with incoming Charlottesville Police Department Public Information Officer Tyler Hawn and it makes no mention of these absurd "requirements". In fact, I question whether this standard has ever been applied to any journalistic outlet ever in the history of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. 










Requiring a mailing permit or circulation audit imposes an undue burden on me. Every day that I am prevented from exercising my First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press I am being harmed by the city of Charlottesville. To my knowledge, no other journalists are being prevented from investigating and reporting facts. The government is clearly barred from interfering with a free press by the First Amendment, and yet it seems they are eager to disregard our Constitution. I intend to investigate this matter in depth. How often, if ever, has this standard been applied to journalistic outlets before they are granted the "privilege" of requesting and receiving the people's information?






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The University of Virginia apparently hates Freedom of Press...

Image
It's happening again. The University of Virginia is ignoring follow-up inquiries on multiple Freedom of Information Act requests that I have submitted going back to February of 2020.  The hill that the University of Virginia wants to die on is the "You aren't a resident" hill. Meanwhile, the they are completely ignoring my First Amendment guaranteed right of Freedom of the Press. Despite multiple follow-up emails, UVA doesn't seem interested in following the Virginia FOIA law. I hope they have a change of heart because there are other legal remedies available. Denial of my FOIA requests is in my opinion a creative way to stop the public from getting information about the government they are paying for and which belongs to them. Public servants believe that they can use law to actually stop the public from learning what exactly they are doing with the power they have been given by us. Foolish. 
Read more

My advisory opinion from the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council is in...

Image
The Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council has weighed in with an advisory opinion on the scenario I laid out regarding the city of Charlottesville, Virginia's absurd denial of my First Amendment rights. The opinion was written by Alan Gerhardt, Esq., the Executive Director of the Council. Essentially what the opinion says is that no, the city of Charlottesville can't do what they are doing to me, but in the same breath, yes, they can keep doing it until you force them not to, through legal action (assuming a judge rules in my favor.) They are more or less thumbing their nose at me saying, "Go ahead and do something, we dare you. LOL!" We may get to that, but first, I need to continue to gather facts. In the short time since the denial, I've gathered some interesting ones that likely won't look very good for the city of Charlottesville who coincidentally won't even acknowledge emails from me any longer, or at least they haven'...
Read more