Current Headlines

Text messages enter public-records debate
By Ledyard King, Gannett News Service
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireless/2008-03-15-textmsgs_N.htm

WASHINGTON -- Those supposedly private messages that public officials dash off on their government cellphones to friends and colleagues aren't necessarily private after all.
Courts, lawyers and states are increasingly treating these typed text messages as public documents subject to the same disclosure laws -- including the federal Freedom of Information Act -- that apply to e-mails and paper records.

FOIA used to expose megasite
By Cleve Wiese
The News Virginian
Sunday, March 16, 2008

When Middlebrook farmer Betty Jo Hamilton first started hearing rumors in 2006 about a massive new industrial development planned for Augusta County, she knew her rights -- and she knew how to exercise them.

"If you know what questions to ask, you can sometimes figure out what’s going on," she said.

Revelations found in public records
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/154773

Virginia's Freedom of Information Act presumes that all government records -- unless specifically exempted -- are open to the public.

16Profiles in opening government
 
Sunday, Mar 16, 2008 - 12:09 AM Updated: 12:16 PM

By KATHERINE CALOS AND WILL JONES
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITERS

Waldo Jaquith is a political junkie who got frustrated when he tried to keep track of the legislation introduced by his own legislators.

"I wanted to be notified every time they filed a bill," he said. "I found that the General Assembly site made it difficult."

Virginia Press Association's editorials on HB407 (Glenn Oder's bill allowing UVA to keep confidential the names of anonymous donors to the public side of the school's operations) and HB1007 (Dwight Jones' bill making all information housed at the Fusion Intelligence Center confidential).

Madison County General District Court judge levies fines in FOIA case. (Culpeper Star Exponent)

"It does not meet the purpose of FOIA that the official can decide what is public or private."

The council members attended a three-day retreat to address long-term concerns.

Good old boys and good government
The Virginian-Pilot
  September 22, 2007


The indictments handed down this week against three former officials at the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries ought to reassure Virginians that the good old boys no longer rule state government.

Unfortunately, many Virginians will conclude that exactly the opposite is true. Attorney General Bob McDonnell has himself to blame for the cloud that remains over his office's investigation of the agency.

The wheels of justice

September 23, 2007

The allegations were serious. Why, we wondered, had there been no legal action?

But it was just a matter of time.

A grand jury has indicted three former Game and Inland Fisheries employees - including the department’s ex-director - on charges alleging misuse of state funds.

This is an important milestone in a story that began four years ago.