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“From a transparency standpoint, the important thing is we have access to this information so we know what is being spent by whom and for what.”
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Although Charlottesville isn’t the only Virginia municipality to issue credit cards to its elected officials, the practice isn’t standard operating procedure across the state. While officials in Albemarle County don’t have cards in their names, those in Roanoke do. In Harrisonburg, City Council members receive a card for expenses on business trips, which is returned to the city after the trip. Tedd Povar, associate director of the Virginia Institute of Government, wrote in an email that the organization doesn’t know how many places have the practice, but it “would not be totally unusual.”Megan Rhyne, director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said the credit cards don’t present a transparency concern. “It’s up to citizens to decide what to make of the information in them,” she said. “From a transparency standpoint, the important thing is we have access to this information so we know what is being spent by whom and for what.”
The Daily Progress
Scrolling through the staff directory on a Campbell County school’s website allows people to see teachers’ and staff members’ names and titles, but as of early November they no longer have ready access to email addresses. As a way to better improve cybersecurity, the division decided to take all teacher and staff email addresses off school websites. Campbell County Public Schools is the only division in the Lynchburg area that doesn’t provide staff and teacher emails on schools’ websites. Director of Instructional Technology Mark Slusher said cybersecurity experts at a variety of seminars he and other division staff members have attended recommended the removal of email addresses. Joe Goldman, supervisor of technology for Amherst County Public Schools, said he doesn’t know if the division has had a conversation specifically about removing emails from websites but “what we talk about a lot is we are public figures and government employees, and we need to not hide information like email addresses and our names.”
The News & Advance
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