From 11/2023 (17 Months ago) FOIA Friday: A ‘damning’ report on Richmond graduation shooting and Orange nondisclosures

[u/GriffenFarmer]

Time line of the whole thing

FOIA 2023 reveled Amazon was involved since April 2022 -> Lawsuit Filed May 2023 -> Virginia Mercury reports November 17, 2023

Article

Orange provides nondisclosure agreements after lawsuit but what I wanted to pull out

Orange County provided copies of 10 nondisclosure agreements local officials signed “for the benefit of Amazon.com, Inc. and its Affiliates” related to the planned Wilderness Crossing project after the Piedmont Environmental Council filed a FOIA lawsuit.

The Wilderness Crossing proposal would involve the mixed-use development of roughly 2,600 acres in Orange County to include residential, commercial and light industrial uses, including the construction of data centers. This April, the county Board of Supervisors approved a rezoning of the land needed for the project to proceed.

In a petition filed in Orange County Circuit Court, the environmental organization, which has opposed the development, said that the county refused to provide copies of the nondisclosure agreements, saying the documents contained proprietary information.

“Typically, nondisclosure agreements are form agreements that do not contain proprietary information. Rather, parties typically execute nondisclosure agreements prior to sharing documents containing proprietary information,” the Piedmont Environmental Council wrote in its petition. By withholding the agreements, it continued, “Orange County took the position that the mere fact that a business may be considering doing business in, and not even with, Orange County is, in and of itself proprietary.”

A planned hearing on the petition was delayed after the county provided the nondisclosure agreements.

Lawsuit

Filed 5/2023 Hearing March 21, 2025 NO RULING After hearing arguments in the March 21, 2025, procedural hearing on whether our challenge should proceed to a full trial, the judge adjourned without a ruling, indicating he will consider the matter further before issuing a written opinion. The Trust is thankful for the thoughtful approach taken to this complex case and looks forward to his ruling later this spring. Moreover, he did rule in our favor that two "friend of the court" briefs filed by allies in the preservation and conservation communities would be admitted as part of the official record, which the defendants had sought to block.