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All Access
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Our annual conference is on April 23rd in Norfolk.
Click the image for details and registration.
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Local
Richmond’s own laws require city officials to post financial data online allowing the public to track specifics on how tax dollars are spent. But the city isn’t publishing that data on its website. The City Council can’t get it either, even after one member floated the possibility of using the Council’s rarely invoked subpoena power. When The Richmonder filed a public records request for the information, the city sent back a bill for thousands of dollars. On March 10, The Richmonder filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the city’s latest yearly payment register. Under the city code, officials have to keep a log of payments the city makes to outside parties, and the FOIA request sought the exact document the city is supposed to publish. In a response two weeks later, the city provided no records and said it would cost The Richmonder at least $5,732.40 to proceed with the request. A few hours before that FOIA response, Mayor Danny Avula’s administration released a less detailed subset of the data The Richmonder requested. The financial data the city released doesn’t list the names of companies being paid with public funds or specifics on what the city was buying.
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Local
Virginia’s attorney general has declined to step into the escalating legal battle surrounding suspended Martinsville Mayor L.C. Jones, leaving local officials searching for a new special prosecutor as both civil and potential criminal proceedings remain unresolved. Commonwealth’s Attorney Patrick Flinn said Friday that the attorney general’s office formally refused his request to take over the case, which includes both a citizen-led petition to remove L.C. Jones from office and a related criminal investigation. Flinn had argued that state involvement was necessary due to legal constraints and potential conflicts of interest, but said those limitations now leave the case in a complicated position.
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Higher Ed
Old Dominion University officials declined to say Friday how many students answered a questionnaire asking them to disclose their criminal histories. The university sent the two-question form to its roughly 24,000 students last week, a few days after the fatal shooting on campus, and asked them to respond by Thursday. When asked how many had responded and how many had said they had been convicted of a crime, vice president for university communications and chief marketing officer Kimberly Osborne said all responses were confidential. “No other information will be made available regarding the student questionnaire,” she said.
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In January, videos emerged from Minneapolis that captured the shooting deaths of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti by agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. In the immediate aftermath of the killings, Minnesota law enforcement officials tried to collaborate with the FBI on investigations into the twin deaths, but they were shut out by the bureau, which took sole control of the probes. The FBI’s refusal to cooperate prompted me to file a public records request with the city of Minneapolis for documents that I hoped would shed light on the matter. Earlier this week, city officials turned over 332 pages of emails and other documents from Minneapolis Chief of Police Brian O’Hara. The documents contain noteworthy bits of information. For example, there’s a set of talking points the Minneapolis Police Department’s public information officer wrote for O’Hara in advance of a press conference on Jan. 24 after Pretti’s killing. Some of the messaging appears to be more pointed than the city’s public comments.
FOIA Files
“Democracies die behind closed doors.” ~ U.S. District Judge Damon Keith, 2002
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