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A tangible (and colorful) way to give.

Printer ink is expensive! Black and color ink for our copier/fax/printer by far takes up the  biggest chunk of our office supply budget. We buy house brand refills when we can, save as many files electronically as possible and squeeze every last drop out of cartridges we buy. But some things we can't avoid printing: invoices, letters, correspondence, forms, reports, bills, etc., and the ink keeps dripping away.

Consider donating to the Virginia Coalition for Open Government this holiday season. Read about what we do here at VCOG and why every penny counts.

http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/560788/e9ff536f91/282550247/d5b8798474/

(Note: Laurence Richardson was a founding member of VCOG)

Call For Entries

"There are citizens and members of the media who are convinced that all of us in this room are ... criminal[s]. They will never change their mind. You could give them the key to your entire filing cabinet and they'll still think you're hiding something.

"But on the flip side, you have public officials who, when a citizen comes and they pull into the parking lot and they want the budget, what the local official hears is, you want to come into my living room and look at what?"

The following is a statement issued by ASNE, the sponsors of the yearly effort known as Sunshine Week (March 14-20). If you know of a Virginia "local hero," please pass that information on to VCOG at vcog@opengovva.org.

Next year's national Sunshine Week (March 14-20) will highlight local heroes across America who have played significant roles in fighting for open government, the American Society of News Editors announced Friday.

Back when he was still roaming the halls of the Virginia General Assembly, and keeping everyone laughing along the way, Del. Chip Woodrum added a nice little provision to the law governing purchases made under the Virginia Public Procurement Act.

Election results of contested seats in Virginia's House of Delegates. Results were taken from the State Board of Elections' Web site, current as of 9:30 a.m., 11/4/09.

An asterisk indicates the incumbent candidate. Bolded names indicate the contest winners.

District

Democrat

On Monday, Oct. 26, the Advisory Committee on Rules of Court, a committee of the Judicial Council of Virginia, issued a revised proposed rule on the confidentiality of juror information. The new rule eliminates the blanket use of anonymous jurors in all criminal cases and reworks a few of the provisions regarding subsequent use of juror information sheets by the attorneys in a case.

A copy of the revised proposal is posted here.

Valerie Garner at Roanoke Free Press did an outstanding job writing up summaries, linking to other news articles, taking pictures and posting videos of VCOG's annual conference .... all on her own. But that's Valerie for you! She's as dedicated to open government in Virginia as VCOG is. Take a moment to look through the materials Valerie's assembled here, as well as some of the links below. And give Valerie a thanks if you ever get the chance.

Thank you to Bob Corso, Ed Reams and the other folks at WHSV in Harrisonburg and Staunton for having me on as a guest for their daily one-on-one feature for the 5:00 news.