Republicans in the Virginia House of Delegates are making a push to shed light on a former governor’s time at Capitol Square in Richmond as he looks to make a possible presidential run in 2020. Just three weeks before the state legislature convenes on Bank Street for the 2019 General Assembly session, pre-filed bills are foreshadowing some of the topics legislators will be taking up in the 45-day session.
“In the era of the Internet and with technology being as advanced as it is today, Virginians are still being forced to wait 10 years to have access to official correspondence from past governor’s administrations,” said the main sponsor of the bill, House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah).
Pre-filed on December 12, House Bill 1702 would require that the Library of Virginia, the “disposition of official correspondence of the Governor,” to “catalogue (sic) and make accessible to the public all correspondence and other records required to be delivered by an outgoing Governor within one year of the delivery of such correspondence and records.”
For years, the library has lacked the staff needed to process the huge amounts of emails and other gubernatorial records as fast as many would want, even with a recent $600,000 boost from the state budget for digital catalog upgrades. Under state law, however, the records are not required to be released under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests while being cataloged.
In fact, the Library of Virginia is still in the process of cataloging the records of Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who was governor from 2006 to 2010, and just ran as the vice presidential nominee for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 General Election.
Now, another friend of the Clintons and former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D), who left office in January of last year, is coming off travelling across the country helping elect Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. While in Iowa, some speculated that he is in the bullpen of potential Democratic presidential candidates.
In the Republican-led General Assembly that was often at odds with Governor McAuliffe, a “timely release” of his gubernatorial records would almost certainly paint him with close scrutiny if he were to make his intentions for 2020 any clearer. The media pounced over a partial release of Kaine’s records during the 2016 presidential election.
Nevertheless, Parker Slaybaugh, a spokesman for the GOP leadership, said in a report from AP that the legislation is “just about good governance,” and not specific to a McAuliffe run at the White House.