The petition to remove Martinsville Mayor L.C. Jones from office will remain under the purview of Commonwealth’s Attorney Patrick Flinn and not a special prosecutor. In a late Thursday evening email, Flinn confirmed his office’s jurisdiction over a citizens’ petition to remove Jones from office. Patti Covington, the lead petitioner, said she and her team secured the minimum number of 375 signatures after a petition campaign lasting almost two months. Flinn said he asked the circuit court on Jan. 14 to refer the petition to a special prosecutor. The court denied that request the next day.

King George County residents came out in droves for a public hearing to discuss a proposed data center during the most recent board of supervisors meeting. Residents spoke from the podium at the Revercomb Building, where the meeting was held. They also called in to express their concerns and had their emails read by board members. They discussed every potential pitfall of data centers, from electricity and water use to noise disturbances. … Supervisors Ken Stroud of the James Madison District and William Davis of the Dahlgren District said they understand the desire of the residents to maintain agriculturally-zoned land, but each added that the county has many expenses that will require tax revenue from projects like data centers. … “Demand, demand, demand, demand,” Davis said. “And when someone comes with an offer to give us a solution to some of those issues, everyone says ‘No, no, no,’ but no one ever says, ‘Well, we should do this instead.’” … The meeting went on for more than six hours. While the applicants attempted to answer the community’s questions about the project, Board Chair David Sullins encouraged them to return with answers when the supervisors are slated to vote next month.

In December, The Times-Dispatch submitted a request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act seeking all of Richmond Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald’s ChatGPT sessions for 2025. Officials said no such records existed. Because Donald accessed the service as a guest user and had not registered an account, none of his sessions were saved, officials said. A request for sessions from City Council President Cynthia Newbille, Vice President Katherine Jordan and City Attorney Laura Drewry also returned no responsive records. So instead, the newspaper requested chat sessions by Meghan K. Brown, who, as City Hall’s director of budgeting and strategic planning, oversees the annual process of assembling the mayor’s proposed financial plan for Richmond.

When most people think about the Freedom of Information Act, they imagine journalists prying loose hidden facts or activists holding officials accountable. But FOIA is also a workhorse tool for lawyers. As two law firms’ 2025 FOIA filings with the Food and Drug Administration show, the same statute can serve very different legal purposes. In 2025, Siri & Glimstad and Hyman, Phelps & McNamara were the leading law firm submitters of FOIA requests to the FDA, according to PoliScio Analytics’ competitive-intelligence database FOIAengine, which tracks FOIA requests in as close to real-time as their availability allows. The two firms accounted for 13 percent of the 1,098 requests to the FDA made by 368 law firms last year. Their numbers are similar – but dig a little deeper and the contrast becomes sharper. One firm uses FOIA strategically, for navigating drug approvals and market competition. The other wields it more like a searchlight, constantly illuminating the inner workings of government decisionmaking in search of courthouse wins.