by Michael Barnes
Liberty Headlines

Vermont must pay whopping $66,000 in attorney’s fees for failing to provide public documents…

The practice of blocking access to public records just got expensive for Vermont’s chief law enforcement officers.

In a landmark ruling with extenuating circumstances involving consecutive Vermont Attorneys General, ExxonMobil and disgraced former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Vermont Superior Court judge has ruled that the state Attorney General’s office must pay a whopping $66,000 in attorney’s fees for groups who sued for public records after being wrongfully denied access to them under Vermont’s freedom of information law…

The $66,000 penalty stems from three cases brought against the Vermont Attorney General’s office by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, a nonprofit litigation and government accountability organization…

“Because of AG Sorrell’s unwillingness to turn over public documents required under Vermont’s public records laws, E&E Legal was forced to seek remedies in the Vermont courts,” said Craig Richardson, president of  E&E Legal, to Liberty Headlines in an email.

“We won at nearly every stage, which was memorialized by the court’s recent decision to award us cost and fees since we ‘substantially prevailed’ in several cases,” Richardson said.

Read more.