Local, state, and federal officials held a closed-door meeting on July 1 to discuss the next steps for managing Shoosmith Landfill in Chesterfield, which is leaking 50,000 gallons a day of toxic leachate and is poised to spur an “environmental catastrophe,” Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-Chesterfield, said. … At the July 1 meeting with officials, residents who live near the facility agreed that test results from water and soil surrounding the landfill should be made public. That testing was confirmed by the bankruptcy trustee, according to Sturtevant, but the results haven’t been disclosed. Releasing that information is critical, Sturtevant said, “so we can know exactly what it is that they are testing for, and then we can find out if there are things that they are not testing for that should be getting tested.”

The Madison Town Council meeting’s sharpest political tension came during public comment, when county resident Roderick E. Sharp accused council members of spending the past year and a half trying to force Mayor Jennifer Campbell out of office. … Council members pushed back later in the meeting. Councilor Nancy Knighting said the body had tried to help Campbell, while Councilor Charles A. Carter Sr., said a petition involving the mayor did not originate with council itself. “The solution to that petition is now in the hands of the courts,” Carter said. “Not in the hands of this council.” The petition filed in the Madison County Clerk of Court’s office on June 16, lists 21 town residents including all council members except Debra Byram, all planning commissioners, and two of the five board of zoning appeals members. Former Mayor William E. Lamar also signed the petition. Campbell was elected in the November 5, 2024, election and took office on January 1, 2025. She defeated Dustyn “Slim” Hickman by a 60-44 margin. At the December 2024 Council meeting, outgoing council members joined Knighting and Carter in approving a new Rules and Procedures for the Conduct of Town Business, that stripped the mayor’s post of everything except attending council meetings and officiating the meetings. Hickman, along with William M. Pattie – the town planning commission vice-chair – collected the signatures over a six-day period in June.

Public records are the backbone of American journalism. From the Pentagon Papers to campaign finance reports to investigations exposing corruption at home and abroad, some of the country’s most consequential reporting has relied on documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. But journalists and transparency advocates say the system is buckling. As wait times stretch from months into years and FOIA offices struggle with staffing shortages and growing backlogs, records that belong to the public are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Once submitted, requests are added to an already mountainous backlog. An analysis of publicly listed wait times for FOIA requests found that the average “complex request” takes 257 days to process, meaning most information requests take more than two-thirds of a year. That assessment comes from 328 of the federal government’s 410 individual FOIA offices.