Opportunity Zone Communications
| Submitted | Dec. 20, 2019 |
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Communications
From: Jonathan Banister
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:
1. Written or electronic communications to and from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership from Dec. 1, 2017 through today (Dec. 20, 2019) relating or referring to the Opportunity Zones program created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
2. Written or electronic communications or other records from Dec. 1, 2017 through today (Dec. 20, 2019) relating or referring to potential investments in designated opportunity zones and or Qualified Opportunity Zones businesses in the commonwealth of Virginia.
The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.
In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.
Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Banister
From:
Mr. Banister – It will take a significant amount of time, across a vast number of activities, initiatives and projects to find everything in our public records that might relate to your broad request regarding Opportunity Zones in a 2+ year time period. It is likely to be an expensive endeavor for you. Might you be able to narrow your search? For example, most everything that we have through the earlier months will relate to the selection of census tracts as Opportunity Zones. Much of that information is online at the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development: https://www.dhcd.virginia.gov/opportunity-zones-oz. Do you want every reference to an OZ in a presentation or listing that we may have created? In the later months, we might or might not know whether a project in an OZ intends to take advantage of the OZ, so we will need to search our records for all of those projects. We do not simply have a listing of projects taking advantage of OZ funding.
Depending on what you are actually interested in, it is likely to be well into January before we can assemble the materials for you. Again, depending on the breadth of what you are actually interested in, it is likely to be several hundred dollars’ worth of time to collect and prepare all of the materials.
How would you like us to proceed?
Sandi.
Sandra Jones McNinch
General Counsel
Virginia Economic Development Partnership
Direct: 804.545.5617 | Mobile: 804.543.3583
www.vedp.org<http://www.vedp.org/>
From: Jonathan Banister
Hi Sandi,
I apologize for my delayed response on this, I had to consult with my editors about the best way to proceed. I understand that my request was broad and I am willing to work with you to narrow it. We are looking to gain more insight into how states chose which areas to designate as Opportunity Zones after the law was first enacted, so you can narrow the time frame to Dec. 1, 2017 - April 19, 2018, because that is when Gov. Northam announced the selections.
Since that is a 5-6 month time frame, it is significantly shorter than the 24 months I initially proposed and should hopefully help reduce the overall amount of documents that need to be searched through. If that is not narrow enough, I would be happy to hop on a phone call to talk about other ways we could make the search more feasible.
Thanks,
Jon Banister
jon.banister@bisnow.com
781-724-7980
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Virginia Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on Dec. 20, 2019. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Virginia Freedom of Information Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on Dec. 20, 2019. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Virginia Economic Development Partnership
Mr. Banister – I have provided you with a link to the information regarding Virginia’s Opportunity Zones on the website of the Department of Housing and Community Development.
As background, I have attached the documents that were provided to the Governor’s Office by VEDP and DHCD that supported the selection of the Virginia OZs.
I trust that this information will serve your needs.
Sandi.
Sandra Jones McNinch
Direct: 804.545.5617 | Mobile: 804.543.3583
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