Ginny and others, Thanks for your continued interest in the Public Records Act legislation recently before the General Assembly. HB 209 included the changes that grew out of the two-year study by the legislative study committee. SB 461 was an initiative that came out of the Attorney General's Office during the session. It is my understanding that the intent of SB 461 was to address identity theft issues. Several different wordings were proposed and the strongest discussions of the impact came from the lobbyists for the Clerk's Association. The final text of SB 461 literally emerged at the very end of the session. Lisa Wallmeyer, attorney for the joint subcommittee, has written at article "Revisiting the Virginia Public Records Act," for the Journal of Local Government Law (Vol. XVI, no 3, Winter 2006). Lisa says that the journal is read by most local government attorneys in Virginia. A colleague told me today that Megan Rhyne of the Coalition of Open Government has an article in the January-March, 2005 issue of Virginia Libraries. "PRA Workgroups Do the Heavy Lifting: Joint Subcommittee Brings the PRA in to the Twenty-First Century" gives an excellent overview of the process used to study and revise the Virginia Public Records Act. I checked today and found that SB 461 has not been signed by the Governor. The proposed additions to 42.1-86.1 are: B. Each agency shall ensure that records created after July 1, 2006 and authorized to be destroyed or discarded in accordance with subsection A, are destroyed or discarded within six months of the expiration of the record's retention period in accordance with the provisions of this chapter. All records previously authorized to be destroyed shall be destroyed in a timely manner. 2. That the Librarian of Virginia shall report to the chairs of the Senate Committee on General Laws and Technology and the House Committee on General Laws on or before October 1 of each year concerning the destruction of records in accordance with the provisions of this act. None of us here at the Library have had the opportunity to fully discuss the implications of the changes to this section. We would certainly benefit from your thoughts on this too. Here are some points that come immediately to my mind (and this doesn't represent anything but my thoughts right now). * Section B relates to records created after July 1, 2006. For the majority of records concerned, the destruction would be in 2009 or later. * The section directs that destruction be within six months of expiration of the record's retention period. This only directs what most of us should be doing with the records anyway. The original language proposed that the records be destroyed "in a timely manner." * The Librarian is to report on compliance with the act. I take this to mean the entire act, not just the sections about disposal of records. I see this as a positive step, especially for those of you concerned with compliance in your agency or locality. * As long as a record series in a general or specific schedule is under review, I would recommend that the six month time line be suspended until approval of the revised schedule. Reevaluating and renegotiating the schedules should be an on-going activity, especially the general schedules, and they should reflect professional consensus. If a retention period is out of whack for you, it's probably not helpful to other colleagues and needs to be changed. * I think the intent of SB 461 is to rid offices of records with lots of personal information in them as soon as possible. If there is a way to give such records attention and priority, we are serving our fellow citizens well. Megan Rhyne says in her article "I learned something this year that I didn't know before: when it come to parsing language, lawyers can't touch librarians." Or records managers, I suspect. I'm sure we'll have more discussions on this. Conley ******************** Conley L. Edwards State Archivist Library of Virginia 800 East Broad Street Richmond, VA 23219 Telephone: 804-692-3554 Fax: 804-692-3603 E-mail: [log in to unmask] ******************** To UNSUBSCRIBE, change options, or subscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-rol.html (If using Netscape, must have version 6.1 or higher to view the above page)