Citizens of Warrenton wondered why Amazon thought it could cut down trees on the site of its proposed Amazon Web Services development without first obtaining a permit. The answer became clear from 111 pages of email correspondence a citizen obtained through FOIA showing that the town’s development director told Amazon that they could. Warrenton inspectors did not inspect the site until two weeks into the tree-clearing.

After the collapse of the Enrichmond Foundation, which served as an umbrella organization for dozens of small nonprofit groups in the Richmond area, many of those smaller entities were left scrambling to make up budget shortfalls and to wonder what went wrong. Some banded together to form the Enrichmond Accountability Project and obtained more than 200 pages of financial documents and other records about Enrichmond through FOIA. The project members hope to make redacted versions of those records available to the public.

The Gloucester County sheriff said he will show body camera video of a March incident where officers shot an allegedly armed suspect, but “I will not be allowing video or photographs.”

The interim town manager of Purcellville abruptly quit during a town council meeting after a council member made a motion to lower the cost of living raise for staff members from 5% to 2%. The motion was made outside the established budget deliberations, the manager said. In the same meeting, the mayor criticized the police chief because she did not take seriously his request to eject a citizen from the meeting. The citizen had shouted out disapproval of the cost of living decrease but walked out of the meeting on his own. Two weeks later, the town refused to disclose how many people have applied for the permanent town manager post.

Lynchburg announced that it would hold interviews of candidates to be appointed to the city’s school board during open meetings. The city council did not take a vote on the vice mayor’s request, but instead, according to The News & Advance, the body “moved forward with consensus” since no one opposed it.

The Virginia Department of Elections said “human error” led to the inadvertent disclosure of the state’s registered voter list to a third party. That party, who originally asked for vote history data for a specific district, notified the department of the disclosure and destroyed the data.

The Suffolk City Council held a two-day retreat in early April with what appeared to be inadequate notice to the public. The council adopted a motion at its March 15 meeting, and, according to the city’s mayor, who called VCOG, notice was posted on the city website’s “message board,” he was unaware whether notice had been posted in the other places designated by FOIA or sent to those people who have signed up to received email notices of meetings. No minutes of the public meeting appear on the city’s website.

VPM analyzed inspection records obtained through FOIA by the Richmond Fire Department to better understand what violations were cited at various Richmond public schools from 2015-2022. Fox Elementary School was destroyed by fire in February 2022. It had been cited for multiple deficiencies in prior years.

Three years after the COVID emergency declaration, and long after most Virginia localities have returned all of its public bodies to in-person meetings, Charlottesville unanimously voted to join them. The city council has been meeting in person for months, but some boards and commissions were still meeting virtually. The city acknowledged the September 2022 change to FOIA that allows so-called advisory boards to meet electronically in certain circumstances but prohibits local governing bodies, school boards, planning commissions, architectural review boards and zoning appeals boards from doing so.

A Chesterfield police officer has filed a defamation lawsuit against a woman who used TikTok and Twitter to accuse him of stalking her. The woman said he was retaliating against her for criticizing the way the police department handled a report she made of suspected child abuse. The woman later apologized when she realized she misidentified the officer. The officer is seeking $50,000 in damages.

The Office of State Inspector General released a letter as part of a 23-page report on its investigation into the Virginia State Police’s hiring of Austin Lee Edwards, the so-called Catfish Cop accused of killing three people in California. WRIC noted that the OSIG disclosure contained only information from VSP and none of OSIG’s analysis or the result of OSIG’s external investigation.

A Fairfax County judge ruled that psychological reports from a sanity evaluation that have been admitted into evidence in an uncontested plea of not guilty by reason of insanity are open to public inspection as court records.

After taking the full five days, plus a seven-working-day extension, to respond to a FOIA request for emails about the governor’s involvement in the primary-versus-convention dispute in a local Republican primary, the Youngkin administration identified just six pages of records and chose to withhold them all, citing the working papers exemption at the “attorney/client privilege.”

A Frederick County woman filed a federal lawsuit against Del. Bill Wiley and his legislative aide, claiming they violated her First Amendment rights by hiding comments she made on the delegate’s campaign Facebook page. Hidden comments can be seen by the person who wrote them, but not by others.

Richmond police announced it would begin releasing body camera and surveillance footage that depicts any fatal police shootings within two weeks of the incident. The department did say it might take longer than that if circumstances warranted it.

Isle of Wight’s planning commission proposed changing its bylaws to mirror the board of supervisors’ governing documents by adding a provision to prohibit citizen remarks during a regular meeting’s public comment period on matters that are subject to a public hearing. The county attorney suggested the change after two speakers used the public comment period at a March meeting to speak in favor of a proposed solar farm that had been the subject of a public hearing in February.

The Roanoke City Council shelved a proposed resolution on abortion access last year, but the city attorney would not release a copy of it, saying it was protected by the FOIA exemption for attorney advice.