A lawyer representing the city of Richmond in a high-profile lawsuit about government transparency is arguing a local judge unfairly smeared him by publicly questioning how honest he’s been with the court. In a new motion filed Monday, the city’s legal team called the judge’s impartiality into question, implying she’s created an appearance of unequal treatment in the long-running lawsuit filed by former city Freedom of Information Act officer Connie Clay. Ogletree Deakins attorney Jimmy F. Robinson Jr. — the city’s lead lawyer on the case — asked Circuit Court Judge Claire G. Cardwell to either revise or remove her written remark about his “apparent lack of candor.” As an alternative, Robinson wrote, the judge should consider recusing herself from the case entirely.

City code requires officials to maintain a public database of all city spending. But seven years after that database ceased functioning, Mayor Danny Avula says his administration is still working on a solution to bring City Hall back into compliance. The Times-Dispatch previously reported that the code-mandated spending database had not been updated since 2019. In response to questions, then-Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders said maintenance had stopped because officials in the finance and IT departments had been inputting data manually — a tedious and time-consuming process that was becoming unsustainable. Saunders, at the time, said officials had contracted a vendor to automate that process, removing the burden from finance and IT staff and ensuring that City Hall complied with city code. But nearly two years later, Avula, in his memo, wrote that “the city’s … system and reporting architecture have not been modernized,” adding that officials are still looking to “secure the right technology that automates this function.” What happened between Saunders’ comments and now is not clear. City officials did not provide additional context in response to multiple requests since Friday. Avula directed his letter to 3rd District Councilwoman Kenya Gibson, who, in a March 4 memo of her own, had threatened to subpoena the mayor under state law if he did not respond to questions she’d been asking about the payment database since early January.

A former Chesapeake sheriff’s deputy attempted to publicize jail footage of an incident involving an inmate by sending it to an independent reporter, according to recently obtained court documents filed in a criminal case. According to a criminal complaint filed in Chesapeake General District Court, Jeremiah Harrell solicited the footage from a current sheriff’s employee. The complaint says Harrell specifically asked “a personnel member” to record secured footage of a January incident via cell phone and send it to him through a Facebook messaging app. The Chesapeake Sheriff’s Office last week charged Harrell in relation to allegedly soliciting, stealing, and distributing leaked jail footage and confidential documents. Charges include three felony counts of theft/destruction of public records and one count of disabling computer software, which is a misdemeanor offense. But Harrell’s attorney pushed back against what he deemed politically motivated charges, telling The Virginian-Pilot on Tuesday the video depicts abuse of an inmate and that the sheriff’s charges are politically motivated.