Readers have been prodding me to do the FOIA thing with the University of Virginia to find out what school officials were doing behind the scenes with respect to the shuttered Federal Executive Institute property.
Quick reset: the Trump administration originally decided to give the space to Charlottesville City Schools at no cost, with the plan from the school system being to turn the property into an early learning center.
Then, predictably with this administration, which doesn’t know what it’s doing from one minute to the next, it reversed course, and decided to give the property to UVA instead.
The local community is fired up mad, mostly at UVA, which has maintained that the news of the reversal came as a complete surprise.
“Our assumption prior to Friday was that the Charlottesville City Schools’ proposal had been approved, and that was the end of the matter,” said Bethanie Glover, a spokesperson for UVA, in a statement last week.
UVA, which has more money than god and Elon Musk combined, is planning to use the gifted space for its School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for its ROTC programs.
Like UVA needs the federal government to do it a favor, right?
Where our readers were prodding me was to try to find out if UVA really was surprised at the change of direction from the Trump administration, with the sneaking suspicion being that, no, the folks there weren’t surprised, and that they were still actively lobbying the Trumpers even as they were voicing support publicly for the local school system.
So, my FOIA request, submitted on May 13, a week ago today:
“I am writing to request records of email communications from staff regarding the Federal Executive Institute building dating back to Feb. 10, 2025. Please give me an estimate on the costs to fulfill this request.”
The response back, today, from Faith Hill, a 2006 UVA alum who serves as the FOIA officer and e-discovery manager for the Office of the University Counsel:
“I am reaching out regarding your recent FOIA request concerning FEI email communications. Our preliminary review has identified at least 14 custodians with potentially responsive records. An initial keyword search returned over 6,000 results, and we estimate that collecting and reviewing these materials would require more than 100 staff hours.
“Given the scope of the request, the associated costs are expected to be in the thousands of dollars. Would you like to consider narrowing or amending your request?”
Short answer: no, I’m not going to commit “thousands of dollars” to this.
But even not going that route, man, so, there are 6,000 emails involving 14 people at UVA discussing the Federal Executive Institute property since it came on the market three months ago?
That’s a lot of back and forth about a property they supposedly didn’t even want, if you ask me.
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Chris Graham
