Tuesday
September 27, 2022
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Contact us at vcog@opengovva.org
state & local news stories
The Warrenton Planning Commission announced Thursday the work session it had scheduled with Amazon to discuss the company’s application for a special-use permit to build a data center in town has been postponed indefinitely. According to town staff, Amazon requested to postpone the Sept. 27 work session. The commission did not comment on when the work session may be rescheduled. John Foote, a land-use attorney with the Arlington-based law firm Walsh Colucci Lubeley & Walsh, which represents Amazon, declined FauquierNow’s request comment when asked why the applicant requested a deferral.
Fauquier Now
Nottoway County’s former election registrar and one of her assistants have filed separate federal lawsuits claiming they were wrongfully fired from the elections office last year and should be reinstated to their old jobs. The pair of suits, which both name several county boards and local officials as defendants, were filed last week by Angela Stewart, who served as the county’s registrar for nearly three decades until she was terminated almost exactly one year ago, and Sharon Caldwell, a longtime Nottoway officer of election who served as an assistant registrar for two years. The lawsuits — which include claims of due process violations, wrongful termination, free-speech violations and defamation — are the latest development in a long-running fight over the rural county’s elections office. With two factions lodging broad accusations of skullduggery and illegality against each other, the litigation could shed more light on who has the law on their side.
Virginia Mercury
stories of national interest
Boston’s practice of citing its own inaction to throw out public-records requests started in Spring 2021 and ran through this summer, when it halted after a Herald inquiry, the city said after an internal meeting Monday about the now-scrapped procedure that the secretary of state’s office suggested was “unacceptable.” Boston’s records office actually shuttered 35 requests in which it gave its own inaction as a reason this year, the city said on Monday, up from the 22 instances it handed over to the Herald last week. These are instances in which the city cited its own laggardness by closing out records for public requests with an email saying: “A review indicates no recent activity on this request.” That’s the city using its own inaction — which in each case was already in violation of state law — as the reason why it was closing out these requests.
Boston Herald