Botetourt County maintains that the notice provided for a planning commission meeting Oct. 5 met Virginia Freedom of Information Act requirements, after criticism from some residents that the meeting was held illegally. The Virginia Freedom of Information Act requires that public bodies — like the Botetourt County Planning Commission — provide advance notice of their meetings on the locality’s official website, as well at the office of the clerk and in a prominent public location where notices are regularly posted. These notices must include the date, time and location of the meeting, and they must be posted three “working days” prior to the meeting. … During the commission’s Tuesday meeting, over a week after the work session, Buchanan District commissioner Mark Tyson claimed that he had not been able to get an answer to his question about where the proper notice was posted. … He also alluded to having been shown a notice that did not fulfill legal requirements. He told The Roanoke Times on Friday that he was directed to a post on the county’s website that summarized a previous meeting and included just the date of the work session.

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors called its colleagues on the county school board to task at a special October 15 meeting, asking Virginia’s Department of Education to scrutinize Albemarle’s troubled school district. Supervisors unanimously approved a resolution that “responds to community concerns about alleged failures to comply with mandated child abuse reporting requirements and questions about compliance with transparency laws,” the board said in an October 16 statement. … Supervisors further asked the school board to review how well it follows laws governing Freedom of Information Act requests, and to set up a formal crisis management plan with a clear timeline for what steps the district will take, and when, to address its problems.

Purcellville Vice Mayor Carl “Ben” Nett may access grand jury testimony and certain records from law enforcement agencies ahead of his criminal trial, a judge has ruled. Visiting Fairfax County Court Judge Randy Bellows granted the motions from Nett’s attorney at an Oct. 15 pretrial hearing. The two-day trial on felony charges of computer trespassing is scheduled to begin Oct. 26 in Loudoun Circuit Court. Bellows ruled Nett may access the grand jury testimony in the presence of his attorney, Ryan Campbell, but may not make any additional copies of the transcripts. The transcripts must be returned to the court and destroyed after the trial. A judge had previously allowed Nett to access the transcripts in the presence of the court clerk. … Bellows also granted Nett access to certain records related to his case he had subpoenaed from the Purcellville Police Department, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and Virginia State Police.

In recent audit logs from Marion and Monongalia counties’ Flock Safety network, searches for “Welfare Check” were queried more than 200 times. Welfare check queries by the Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office ranged from local cameras (1-29 networks) to broader searches spanning more than 1,000 networks, according to this year’s records obtained by Jonathan Lynch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and provided to 12 News. The single largest concentration of welfare checks in Monongalia County consisted of over 50 consecutive overnight queries, between 3:57 and 5:50 a.m., across 1,019 networks, with one specific search, “Welfare Check Welfare Check Rlaph Clark,” at 7:17 a.m. across 1,022 networks the same day.

Welcome back to FOIA Files! This week, I’m returning to the scene of the alleged crime: the “potential destruction of presidential records.” That’s the subject line from a set of emails I finally obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice in response to my four-year-old Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agencies. The emails center on records then-former President Donald Trump removed from the White House and stored at Mar-a-Lago, which later formed the basis of former special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump. They also cover what the National Archives and Records Administration discovered when investigators retrieved 15 boxes of documents, many of which were highly classified. The emails contain intriguing new details about an aspect of the case that has received little scrutiny.