…That’s where a public audit comes in. … Obtaining full incident reports from local law enforcement in person proved difficult for our auditors. The auditors walked into police departments and sheriffs’ offices across our area and asked the front desk for the opportunity to view incident reports from the past 24 hours. Some auditors were given a flat “no” and were denied access to these records — after lots of questions about why they wanted to see the report. In Blacksburg, Christiansburg, Danville, Lynchburg, Pulaski County and the town of Pulaski, auditors were unable to view the day’s incident reports in person. In Blacksburg, the auditor was immediately denied his request. In Christiansburg, the auditor was told that incident reports were unavailable without going through a court process. In Pulaski County, four police officers questioned our auditor repeatedly about why they requested incident reports, before denying the request. Only Bristol and Radford provided a print-out of their recent reports to auditors in person. … In Danville, the auditor was told to look online for incident reports. Danville’s police department posts weekly updates to the city’s website with incident reports from the previous week. … A public audit is not a “gotcha” story waiting to happen. It’s the opportunity to show how even smaller towns have used the internet to make more information easily available to the public, and to give credit for these positive changes in government behavior which we’ve come to take for granted.

The Virginian-Pilot asked seven Hampton Roads cities for copies of their 2025 FOIA logs, to include a description of information sought. Such logs can provide insight into the type of information residents are requesting, and journalists often use them as a source for story ideas. But responses varied wildly among the seven cities. Some cities, such as Suffolk, provided the full, unredacted FOIA logs with requester names and full text of the requests. Others, such as Virginia Beach, provided some of the information but gave general descriptions of the requests, rather than the exact text. But other cities indicated they would charge fees to obtain and redact some information in the logs. Norfolk provided the highest cost estimate, asking for almost $40,000 to complete what FOIA office staff estimated would be more than 1,000 hours of work. Government entities are allowed to bill requesters for the work required to obtain and process the records requests, per Virginia FOIA law.

A Richmond judge didn’t take long to decide that she won’t back down from her public criticism of a lawyer who has been representing the city government in her courtroom. In an order Wednesday, Circuit Court Judge Claire G. Cardwell denied a request to either retract or revise a comment in a recent court order in which she faulted the city’s lawyer for an “apparent lack of candor.” … It’s still possible the two sides could settle the lawsuit before a trial scheduled to happen in June. It’s unclear what the chances of a settlement are given the lingering hostilities, but plaintiff Connie Clay’s attorneys moved this week to ease one aspect of the case. The original suit named both the city and Petula Burks [Clay’s previous boss] as defendants, but newly filed court paperwork shows Clay’s attorneys are dropping Burks from the case. Burks is no longer a city employee. As a private individual, she would presumably have less ability to pay the type of damages Clay is seeking from the city, which remains a defendant in the case.

Richmond’s creation of a new FOIA Library may seem like a step toward transparency, but there are questions about the city’s commitment after it left the same officials subject to records requests in charge of curating which records might be released. Faced with a plan to post all of the city’s eligible public records released under Virginia’s “sunshine” law, the Richmond City Council instead opted to go with the mayor’s alternative proposal. That plan lets the mayor’s administration — the same one that might be the subject of those records — decide what’s worth posting to the library. Instead of providing access to all public records that the city released under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, the library will only contain a subset that officials believe meet certain criteria, including records that the administration deems “relevant” to city business or that would aid “accountability.” The city cites concerns that “transparency without context” might be too confusing for the average citizen. Forgive us for having more faith in Richmond residents than its leaders do.