Interesting point to think about, however the % mix of funding source has little to do with whether employees of an organization are classified as civil servant

Interesting point to think about, however the % mix of funding source has little to do with whether employees of an organization are classified as civil servants. An example of this would be departments of transportation or other toll collecting public agencies - generally tolls and fees provide the bulk of the funding with taxpayer dollars making up a smaller percentage, yet the employees are very clearly civil servants. Since UVA employees's salaries are publicly available through FOIA (see http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virginia-state-employees-details/ http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virgi...) I think that's one pretty good indicator of civil service status. In Virginia, the University is required to report salary information, etc, to the Virginia Department of Human Resources Management. They are able to adjust how they report salary information for employees who are paid a portion through endowments and other outside sources. Now, I have no idea or information about the specific case with Mann - who knows, maybe he was being paid exclusively by some special endowment and so his records would not be subject to a FOI request - but I would have thought they would have used that in part of their justification for not complying with the request. Also - I don't consider myself a libertarian so I won't speak for them - I'm just a big proponent of government transparency.