Virginia's new nuclear agency gets cloak of secrecy

[bananas]

http://www.dailypress.com/news/politics/dp-nws-cns-virginia-nuclear-agency-20130412,0,5679816.story

State's new nuclear agency gets cloak of secrecy

By Stephen Nielsen, Capital News Service

9:20 p.m. EDT, April 12, 2013
RICHMOND –—

Virginia is creating a new agency to support development of nuclear power – a move that has upset environmentalists and open-government advocates, because the entity won't have to comply with the state's Freedom of Information Act and other laws.

For the past year or so, companies that work with nuclear energy have been speaking with experts at Virginia universities with nuclear engineering programs and at industry-related nonprofit groups. The goal was to foster collaboration among nuclear-energy advocates, according to Del. T. Scott Garrett, R-Lynchburg.

In January, Garrett introduced a bill to create the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium Authority. Sen. Jeffrey McWaters, R-Virginia Beach, sponsored companion legislation in his chamber. Both bills were passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Bob McDonnell.

Under the new law, the authority will create a nonprofit corporation, the Virginia Nuclear Energy Consortium, which will consist of experts from the private sector, nonprofits and higher education. The consortium will collaborate on workforce development, educational opportunities, research opportunities and other issues concerning nuclear energy.

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This is sleazy.

[Kolesar]

1. Rec, but don't like...eom

[StrayKat]

2. Is this something other states have done or is it unique to Virginia? n/t

[FBaggins]

3. Sleazy?

It's not all that different from how they set up the offshore wind group. They just did a better job of protecting proprietary information.

Anything that's going to become public policy necessarily goes through the authority (and then up the food chain)...and all of that would be subject to FOIA requests anyway. anything from public universities or state departments that participate in the Consortium.

All they're really saying is that the Authority is part of the state government... while the Consortium is not. Both of which happen to be true statements. Anything from public universities or state departments that participate in the Consortium would be open, while private organizations/companies that are currently not covered by FOIA would not lose that right to confidentiality by joining the consortium.

Not at all a big deal... let alone "sleazy".