Charlottesville
held public interviews of its three finalists for the city manager position.
The Norfolk school board
has held four meetings in the past six months without giving public notice. The board is suffering from internal strife, too, as three members called a special meeting to discuss their concerns about the board's practices. That meeting was not live streamed, as other meetings are,
because the board chair ordered the feed cut.
A federal trial judge in Harrisonburg ruled that Virginia's FOIA exemptions for meetings do not create an independent attorney-client privilege.
Read the opinion on VCOG's website.
Richmond Public Schools
finally released its budget, days after the superintendent said the it could be withheld under FOIA's personnel records exemption. Despite heavy criticism, including from school board members, the superintendent
said it was the humane thing to do since the budget would reveal which jobs were going to be cut.
Citizens who logged in to view video of Charlottesville City Council meetings were
greeted instead by a short anti-abortion film.
An alert citizen watching a Danville City Council meeting on her iPhone was the one who called city officials' attention to the fact that a vote the council took to establish the Danville Neighborhood Development Corporation had been taken without the requisite public hearing advertised in the local paper. The city corrected its mistake and revoted a month later after proper notice.
In January, a member of the Vienna Town Council issued a press release calling for a ban on private meetings between council members and developers who would be submitting applications for a special zoning plan. The town council's attorney confirmed in March that while members may choose not to meet with developers,
the council cannot ban such meetings without running afoul of the First Amendment.
As reported by the
Register & Bee, a year after receiving public records requests and scrutiny, the Pittsylvania County Social Services Board is in talks with the county about
receiving county official email addresses for its board members to better respond to open records requests.
The trial of a 14-year-old boy charged with voluntary manslaughter in the death of a 12-year-old
may be open to the media, a judge with the Portsmouth Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court ruled in mid-March. The request, which was made by
The Virginian-Pilot, was opposed by prosecutors but not by the defense.
Shortly before the Front Royal-Warren County Economic Development Authority
filed a $17.6 million lawsuit against the EDA's former director and various businesses, in response to a FOIA request by
The Northern Virginia Daily, the EDA's interim executive director confirmed that
there was no contract supporting the $540,269 the EDA paid towards the now-canceled Skyline Criminal Justice Academy. Meanwhile, a county circuit court judge
impaneled a special grand jury to investigate possible criminal activity.
Though Henrico and Chesterfield Counties both quickly handed over records to WTVR on how much money employees make in overtime,
Richmond refused to provide such data.
The Norfolk Police Department
refused a request for records of use-of-force incidents from the past decade, citing the exemption for "administrative investigations relating to allegations of wrongdoing by employees of a law-enforcement agency."
The abrupt departure of Portsmouth's police chief, the first black female to lead a municipal police department in Virginia, was met with public silence by city council members. At a public meeting, members did not respond to the comments and complaints made during the public comment period,
but instead went into closed session to discuss the matter. Later, the city's video of the meeting
edited out the comments of one particularly vocal critic. The city said the man used language that could get the city in trouble with the FCC.
The Charlottesville Police Department is
adding more information about people who are arrested to a recently unveiled open data system.
The FOIA Council has issued two opinions this month: One on the interaction of FOIA and other code provisions when it comes to access at a public hospital to your own medical records, and one on how two public bodies might meet to mediate a dispute.
Read them on VCOG's website
The Supreme Court of Virginia recently accepted two FOIA-related cases
The Petersburg City Council named a new FOIA officer after it learned the newly hired city attorney was rejecting FOIA requests,
saying the city attorney's office had a possible conflict of interest. “Typically an attorney (and his staff) representing a locality cannot serve in this role as most (if not all) of the records over which we have control are excluded from requirements of production as work product or attorney-client privileged information,” the attorney wrote in an email to a local requester.
A roundtable discussion between the governor and African-American leaders in Danville was billed as being closed to the press,
though the Register & Bee was eventually allowed in.
For years, Fairfax County Public Schools reported to the federal government that no students were physically restrained or trapped in an isolating space, but
records obtained by WAMU revealed hundreds of cases where children were restrained or put in seclusion. When asked about the discrepancy, Fairfax school officials said there was no requirement for the district to report the data to the state.
Fairfax County
received 8,469 FOIA requests — an average of 34 requests per working day -- during 2018. The county has implemented a custom-made, centralized tracking application, which officials credit for reducing response times to an average of three working days.
