After Richmond’s auditor found numerous problems with how the city gives money to local nonprofits, the budget Mayor Danny Avula introduced last month would repeal legal safeguards meant to prevent the misuse of public funds given to charitable groups. The pending budget would also repeal a rule requiring the city attorney’s office to produce written legal opinions and make them available to anyone “affected by the opinion or having an interest in the opinion.” Several City Council members have asked for more detailed information on how nonprofits are using the public money they receive. But the mayor’s proposal eliminates a rule requiring the administration to submit yearly reports to the council on how city-funded nonprofits performed. Josh Stanfield — a political activist and transparency advocate who has battled City Hall over a Freedom of Information Act request he filed with former City Council candidate Paul Goldman — has called attention to a section of Richmond’s city code that requires the city attorney’s office to produce written legal opinions and make those opinions broadly available. That rule would be axed under Avula’s budget.

The budget Mayor Avula proposed to City Council on March 27 accidentally included several major policy changes that were not supposed to be included in the document, according to a text sent by Avula to the nine councilmembers Wednesday. In the text, the mayor told his Council colleagues that many of his administration’s ideas were in need of “more conversation and workshopping,” and that he hadn’t meant for them to end up in the budget ordinance.

More than a week after a sheriff’s deputy removed council member Aaron Rawls from an open session, Martinsville Mayor L.C. Jones held a press conference Thursday evening to provide his own account of the incident. Flanked by community members outside of Martinsville’s municipal building, Jones’ press conference was the second stemming from the March 25 incident. Both councilors Rawls and Julian Mei held their own press conference at the same location a week prior. Toward the end of the March 25 regular session, Jones took issue with Rawls’ comments about city manager pay and offered a warning. A sheriff’s deputy then approached Rawls and removed him from the meeting. Initially people believed Jones or Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides signalled the deputy to do so. Both Ferrell-Benavides and Jones said this was not the case. “Who gave the call, who said what, who did what, the major thing we’ve got to pay attention to is that somebody put themselves in that position,” Jones said, adding that the incident would have been different had Rawls not been removed. “I would have given him another warning, at least a third warning. Then I would have called for a recess or a closed session so that we could discuss what the issue is.”

It’s the people’s building — sort of. While Richmond’s City Hall is a public facility built and maintained at the expense of taxpayers, residents do not have unobstructed access to most of its offices or the public servants who work in them. Those limitations are perfectly legal, according to Andrew Bodoh, an attorney with Thomas H. Roberts and Associates who specializes in constitutional and public records law. “The city, even though it’s a public entity, is the property owner and has the rights of a property owner,” Bodoh said. “There are secure areas where they do not invite the public into, or you need a special invitation.” But while it remains relatively easy for residents to make payments to the city, the updated security protocols mean they cannot access their representatives (with City Council’s offices on the third floor), visit Richmond Public Schools’ headquarters (located on the 17th floor), speak with code enforcement teams (located in the basement) or review public records on a walk-in basis.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary source of federal support for the nation’s museums and libraries, is one of the several entities included for elimination in Trump’s March 14 executive order to cut government waste, along with the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Minority Business Development Agency. In the order, Trump directed the government entities to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” and to “reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel” to the minimum required by law. Virginia received at least $6 million in grants from IMLS in 2024 to help fund educational programs and digitize historical records, according to agency records. Those funds were provided through the Library Services and Technology Act, which is designed to support library services, technology, access and literacy programs for underserved communities. The funding has also supported higher education institutions like Old Dominion University, Virginia Tech’s libraries, Virginia Union University’s Center for African American History and Culture & Library Services, George Mason University’s Virtual Library of Virginia and the University of Virginia Library.

The Virginia Department of Corrections is instituting a hiring freeze and working to cut “unnecessary spending” due to the surging costs of inmate health care, according to an internal memo obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The announcement comes months after an internal report found VADOC facilities are “critically and dangerously short-staffed,” causing some state prisons to be out of compliance with department policies on medical treatment and staff and inmate safety. In the memo, issued Thursday, Director Chadwick Dotson said VADOC officials will be “slow(ing) the recruitment, selection, and hiring process for vacancies across the agency” — although Dotson noted that the freeze will not apply to corrections officers, which the department will continue hiring.

The Richmond VA Hospital fired 34 probationary employees in February as part of a wave of President Donald Trump-directed reductions. Then, last month, it rehired them in order to comply with court orders. None of the employees appear to have been direct clinical staff, and the Richmond VA hospital continues to show job openings for doctors and nurses. Most of the laid-off workers were support staff involved in the day-to-day running of the hospital. … The VA released the records in response to a public records request seeking details about the February layoffs. The VA redacted the names of the terminated employees, with an agency FOIA official saying that privacy concerns outweighed public interest in the layoffs. Previously, the hospital would not say how many employees had been laid off.