Current Headlines

A Radford Circuit Court judge has ruled that the city violated the state's Freedom of Information Act when it redacted portions of two documents supplied to The Roanoke Times.

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina plans to release records to state legislators about previously undisclosed flights that he took on planes owned by friends and campaign donors, his lawyer, Butch Bowers, said. That announcement came a day after the State Ethics Commission charged Mr. Sanford, a Republican, with unspecified ethics violations — a factor for legislators considering whether to try to impeach him, the New York Times reports.

Should metadata be considered a public record like most other government documents? Yes, said the Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday, overturning a lower court decision that denied a police officer access to performance reviews, written by his superiors, to find out who accessed the documents when.http://www.law.com/jsp/legaltechnology/pubArticleLT.jsp?id=1202435052835

New addition to our brief bank on the federal appeal of a case challenging Virginia's FOIA residency requirement: Appellants brief.

State Sen. William Wampler is one of eight among the Assembly's 140 members who earn income from state colleges and universities, according to documents produced by Virginia's 39 public two- and four-year schools in response to a FOIA request by the Virginian-Pilot. Read the story here.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center will file a friend of the court brief in support of BJ Ostergren, also known as The Virginia Watchdog. Ostergren obtains the Social Security numbers from public records and publishes them on her Web site to protest government posting personal information online.

Thanks to Peter Vieth of Virginia Lawyers Weekly and Valerie Garner of Roanoke Free Press for sharing their photos of Access 2009. Right now, the photos are on VCOG's Facebook page, but we'll post them to our Web site soon.