Charlottesville residents will have to keep waiting for the first public hearing on the city’s tax rate for the upcoming fiscal year due to another advertising error. This is the second time the city has postponed the hearing. The new hearing date is set for April 21. The original meeting date, scheduled for March 17, was postponed last month to April 7 because the city’s newspaper advertisement for the hearing ran in the wrong section of The Daily Progress. This time, a notice for the hearing was not posted in City Hall within the appropriate time frame as required by law, a representative from the city attorney’s office said on April 7. On Monday, during a special meeting in which Charlottesville City Council adopted its 2026 fiscal year budget, City Manager Sam Sanders took responsibility and apologized for the errors. Sanders also made sure to “dispel the rumors” that the city was “dragged into court” to fix the advertising errors.

The former director of the Galax Department of Social Services (DSS) has been arrested and charged with 13 felony counts of embezzlement from the City of Galax.

Wilmington (Del.) City Council members are asking state lawmakers to pass legislation allowing them to meet behind closed doors outside of Delaware’s open meetings law. But opponents say there needs to be more transparency, not less. Wilmington City Councilman Coby Owens sponsored a resolution calling for lawmakers to approve a bill allowing the council to caucus like members of the General Assembly are allowed to do under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. State lawmakers are the only people currently allowed to do that. Republicans and Democrats in each chamber have their own caucuses, respectively, where they can discuss legislation and count votes without it being considered a public record.

Following a lengthy discussion and a vote on the rules governing its subpoena process, members of the Michigan House Oversight Committee on Tuesday authorized a subpoena to the Department of State as part of an ongoing request for documents used to train election workers. During a previous meeting of the committee in March, House Election Integrity Committee Chair Rachelle Smit (R-Martin) detailed her frustrations regarding a request she made with the Michigan Department of State in November while serving as the minority vice chair of the House Elections Committee where she requested information used to train election workers. Smit said she was asked to submit a Freedom of Information Act — or FOIA — request for the information, with the Department of State confirming on Nov. 20 that Smit’s office submitted a FOIA asking for “electronic copies of all training materials offered or otherwise provided to elections clerks.” The department denied the request on Nov. 21 due to a lack of specificity and offered the opportunity to resubmit the request. According to the department, Smit submitted a refined FOIA request on Dec. 10, 2024, with the Bureau of Elections sending a letter on Dec. 18 requesting an extension in fulfilling the request. On Jan 7, 2025 the department sent Smit an estimate of the cost for fulfilling the FOIA request, saying the request would take 140 work hours to fulfill, with an estimate cost of $8,781.75

Who is paying for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s trips around the world? The 7News I-Team has been asking that question for months and has gotten different answers from the mayor’s office. Through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the 7News I-Team has uncovered who paid for the mayor’s trip to Dubai in 2023, and it ended up costing a foreign country $61,930 in travel expenses, but the District has no record of how the expenses broke down for the mayor or four staff members.

Public support for the U.S. government or tech companies taking steps to restrict false information online has ticked down slightly since 2023 after increasing in the years prior. A diverging bar chart showing that, since 2023, Americans have become slightly less likely to favor restrictions on false information online. Support has also decreased for the government or tech companies taking steps to restrict violent content online, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Today, about half of Americans (51%) say the U.S. government should take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information. This is down from 55% in 2023.