Data centers dominate headlines in Virginia these days. Should we or shouldn’t we. Central to many of these headlines is how much transparency around the process there is. This month we saw a court ruling based on the adequacy of notice published in a newspaper and a form-letter advocacy campaign that didn’t go over well with decision-makers.

We saw two more unpublished opinions from the Virginia Court of Appeals. While such rulings are not precedential, they reveal how judges are viewing disputes over access to government records.

Managerial turmoil was a recurring theme this month. The Martinsville city manager’s status took several twists and turn, while resignations in Chatham and Franklin were chalked up to “back-room deals” and “bullying.” 

Read all about these trends below, and check out stories on an attempt to halt further FOIA requests in a Richmond dispute, attorney billing and an outdoor public meeting. Finally, don’t forget to check out our thoughts on governments daring citizens to sue them and our annual report.

The Court of Appeals of Virginia issued two unpublished opinions on FOIA in August. Unpublished opinion are not supposed to have precedential value.

In State Conference Virginia NAACP v. Youngkin, a case involving the working papers exemption and a voting rights restoration database, the court ruled on Aug. 5 that because the trial court did not make a ruling on attorney fees, the case was not over yet and an appeal was premature. 

And on Aug. 30, the court upheld the lower court’s denial of an injunction as a remedy for Augusta County’s failure to respond to a FOIA request within the required deadline. The trial court called the failure to respond a “technical violation” of FOIA and not likely to be repeated. It also said the plaintiff didn’t substantially prevail on the “main object” of its petition, which was to force disclosure of records the court agreed were exempt under the personnel information exemption, and thus wasn’t entitled to attorney fees.

VCOG issued its 2025 Annual Report, which reviews where it’s been over the past year, and where it’s going in 2026. Click on the image below to read the report on our website.

My husband likes to tell the story of him as a 6-year-old scamp (his mom would say hellion) standing amongst a group of older kids, watching them scamper up and down a utility pole courtesy of climbing spikes some workers left behind. Mom-of-Scamp sees the kids through the window and marches out to shoo everyone away. For good measure, she points at Scamp and says, “And don’t even THINK about touching that pole.” … In the end, the question isn’t whether the Scamps of government will keep testing the limits of FOIA — they will. The real question is whether enough people will turn around, like my mother-in-law did that day, and call them on it.

A Prince William Circuit Court judge voided the Board of Supervisors’ December 2023 decision to rezone part of the county to allow for development of a data center corridor (“PW Digital Gateway”) in part because the public notices required by state code were defective. The county has not yet said whether it will appeal. The project is on hold for the time-being. Meanwhile, the Prince William Times reported that the county’s attorney warned them by email before the December vote that the public notice ads had not run in The Washington Post as planned and that any decision could pose a “significant risk.”

Meanwhile, FauquierNow has compiled a database of approved and pending data center applications in the so-called “Gigaland” development in the Remington area of Fauquier County. The database includes status updates and links to official documents, using information provided by the county’s Department of Community Development as of Aug. 1. County supervisors were taken aback by an email campaign initiated by the project’s developers resulted in dozens of messages flooding inboxes. The nearly identical messages included two purporting to be from county employees who denied sending them or even being aware of them. 

Two weeks after placing its city manager on administrative leave, the Martinsville City Council voted to terminate the manager for cause, following a two-hour closed-door meeting and a briefing related to a financial audit. A week later, the council switched the manager’s status from fired to suspended, which they said was necessary to comport with the city charter. By the end of the month, the manager’s status was still in limbo and the council failed to pass a motion that would have released the investigatory information related to spending in the manager’s office.

In tendering his resignation, the Chatham town manager said there was an environment of “back-room deals, secret discussions” and “silly games” being played.

A member of the Franklin City Council objected to the city’s attorney’s advice to hold a closed session about the city manager’s resignation. “I think the people want to know what this is all regarding,” said council member Gregory McLemore. In response, Councilmember Jessica Banks said that if the discussion were to be public, “I’m going to excuse myself, because that sets the city up for a lawsuit.” Through FOIA, The Tidewater News obtained a copy of the manager’s resignation letter, which cited the city’s financial status and “bullying, disrespect, and aggressive behavior.”

Orange County issued a press release announcing the hiring of its next county administrator even though there was no mention and no public vote on the decision at the meeting held the night before.

Purcellville’s vice mayor lost his bid to personally obtain grand jury transcripts, however a Loudoun County judge said the defense and prosecution attorneys could obtain them. There’s a catch, though. The judge said the attorneys could not provide copies physically to the vice mayor or anyone else. The vice mayor and the town manager have been indicted on various charges, including bid rigging.

Records obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through FOIA showed that Chesapeake spent just over $110,000 in 2023 and 2024 on an outside law firm, primarily to defend two lawsuits, including a FOIA case brought against the full city council and an individual member.

For the second time, but also maybe unique among all Virginia localities, the Town of Elkton held its regular August meeting outside. The Daily News-Record reported that approximately 40 people showed up for the meeting at the Downtown Marketplace. The first outdoor meeting was held two years ago on the lawn of the town hall.

A Lynchburg parent and activist appointed to an ad hoc committee on the achievement gap resigned from the committee and walked out of the committee’s Aug. 6 meeting. The parent had at one time been banned from speaking at school board meetings after he went over his allotted time at the June 3 meeting, saying he would only sit down after the school board agreed to meet with him to discuss the achievement gap between Black and white students in Lynchburg.
https://newsadvance.com/news/article_e28bf909-23e7-4132-b9f0-73224c3d1636.html

The attorneys representing Richmond in the whistleblower case filed by the city’s former FOIA officer asked Judge Claire Cardwell to bar the officer from filing FOIA requests during the litigation. The city accused Connie Clay of leaking information taken from the records she received to the press; using the information to gain insight into the city’s litigation strategy; and intending to “humiliate and harass” Clay’s former boss, who no longer works for the city. Cardwell was also asked by Clay’s attorney to force the city to disclose text messages allegedly withheld when requested. Cardwell ordered the city to turn over two phones where the messages are supposedly stored to her for in camera (Latin for “in private”) review.

The Alexandria Redevelopment and Housing Authority did not make the required motions to go into a closed meeting during an all-virtual emergency public meeting to discuss allegations that the authority’s CEO was living in an ARHA property against authority policy.

The lieutenant governor did not respond to FOIA requests that asked for records relating to free trips that were not previously disclosed on her required ethics filing. Meanwhile, her office produced a 297-page, mostly blank PDF in response to VPM’s request for her schedule. A spokesperson for the office said of the claim that all 297 pages were exempt as “confidential correspondence of and working papers,” that the office was “committed to transparency in government, but must also adhere to statutory provisions in place to safeguard information of a sensitive nature,” even though the working papers exemption is discretionary.
https://richmond.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/article_4417e2b6-b9ba-4ab7-8c6d-298a1528b433.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
https://www.vpm.org/elections/2025-08-20/election-2025-winsome-earle-sears-youngkin-harris-foia-public-records-request

Following advice from the town attorney, the Smithfield Town Council met in closed session under the “consultation with legal counsel” exemption to discuss what one member later said was a matter that should have been talked about in public. Darren Cutler suggested a process for a pre-closed meeting closed meeting to discuss whether a closed meeting was necessary, and that minutes should be taken in closed sessions. The town attorney came under fire later in the month when The Smithfield Times revealed he had been billing the town at a rate more than what the town contracted for a year-and-a-half earlier. There was town council vote on an increase and a FOIA request for records discussing an increase was met with a response that no emails matched the request.

Contained within a lawsuit filed by two former Halifax County animal control employees against the board of supervisors that fired them are allegations that the defendants encouraged local citizens who were “friends and political allies” to “publicly condemn” the employees at public meetings.

Through text messages obtained through FOIA by the FXBG Advance, an elementary assistant principal’s salary was increased following an exchange between his father, a school board member and the school superintendent.

The Augusta County School Board approved several administrative hires in early March on 4-0 votes, but with three abstentions. Asked how they would explain their abstention to their constituents, one member said it was a personnel matter. “I’m not going to give a reason. I have reasons but I’m not going to give it,” one member replied.

Meetings take place in the General Assembly Building at 9th and Broad Streets in Richmond and they will be live-streamed. Agendas are on the FOIA Council’s website.

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