Thanks to VCOG’s Laurence E. Richardson Legal Fellow, Laura Wood, for her help with these news blurbs.
More than a year after receiving a report looking into Martinsville’s finances — which led to the firing of the former city manager — the city released a summary of the report in early July. The full report is still under wraps. The city assured the public that steps were being taken to address weaknesses in their financial processes, but when the Martinsville Bulletin filed a FOIA request for records about those steps, the paper received an invoice for $1,318, which included 40 hours of work from an “accounting specialist,” four hours for the FOIA officer, and two hours each for the deputy city clerk and the purchasing manager. The charge prompted an editorial rebuke from the Bulletin; an editorial said the invoice and explanation for the amount of work it would take amounted to “transparency with a cover charge.”
Internal emails from Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality revealed that the agency director took steps to undermine a Piedmont Environmental Council report warning of data center pollution. DEQ received the report prior to its publication and immediately mobilized to “do a defensible critique” of it. Later that month, DEQ issued its own report claiming the health expert’s concerns are unfounded. A former DEQ director characterized the events as “unusual” and “not the department’s job.”
Botetourt County residents said they were misled after records they received through FOIA didn’t line up with what they had been told in public meetings about a proposed data center’s water usage. Emails between Google and the Western Virginia Water Authority revealed an estimated use of 10-11 million gallons of water per day, while residents were told 2 million gallons per day would be the maximum use. The Executive Director of Western Virginia Water Authority claims that the higher numbers are from early conversations and have since been negotiated down to only 2 million gallons per day.
On April 9, an equipment malfunction at a medical sterilization facility released 600 pounds of toxic gas in Eastern Henrico County. On June 2, the county’s deputy manager for public safety emailed the Department of Environmental Quality, saying he was upset he had not been informed earlier. A FOIA request later revealed that the Henrico Fire Department was notified the same day the leak occurred but took no action. The deputy county manager said he stood behind the decision not to notify the community because “there could be sensitivity around lots of issues” and he didn’t want to cause “unnecessary alarm.”
Recent FOIA requests revealed that Richmond has been purchasing their citizen’s cellphone geolocation data from a location-analytics company to determine how many visitors the city’s parks receive each year. Meanwhile, residents used FOIA to obtain police reports detailing how investigators accessed cameras aimed at Richmond public housing over 800 times in the last year to observe tenants. While normally officers would need to file a written request to gain access to these camera feeds, there has been increasing use of an exception that allows officers to give oral approval instead. Investigators claim they use the video footage to pursue suspected criminal activity.
Over the past two months, the Greene County sheriff’s office has detained 75 individuals in exchange for $350,000 in federal funding from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Many in the community are now calling for the sheriff’s office to demonstrate how the money is being spent, while others are still requesting that the identities of the 75 detained individuals be released. To deal with the backlash, some of which comes from nearby Charlottesville residents, Greene County considered restricting public comment to only county residents, and would have required them to provide their full name, address, phone number, voting district, email address and the topic they would be speaking on. The board of supervisors ultimately tabled the proposal and directed the county manager to research the use of residency requirements by other localities, according to residents who spoke to VCOG.
Richmond Public Schools disclosed an internal investigative report about possible misconduct by the former director of facilities after a judge ruled the report was not exempt from disclosure under FOIA. The report called for the employee’s immediate termination for suspected embezzlement.
Northampton County’s administrator changed a meeting between the county and its towns about communication of housing needs from in-person to virtual because he believed some residents had an “intent to disrupt” the meeting. The administrator told a local citizen-activist that because the meeting did not include “a public body conducting business” it was not a public meeting.
Note: Local governments are not allowed to hold public meetings about public business entirely online.
Three localities in Northern Virginia — Fairfax City, Fairfax County and Loudoun County — moved to encrypt police dispatch radio communications, commonly referred to as scanner feeds. Law enforcement representatives said the move was needed to protect officer safety and to thwart bad actors from misusing the data. FFXnow pointed out that it has used feeds to inform the public on developing incidents and events that aren’t officially reported by police. Loudoun Now added that total encryption isn’t necessarily the norm, pointing to other localities that leave some feeds unencrypted.
Richmond police refused to turn over information related to why a man’s van was taken from his apartment complex or how and why it was returned. The police would not give the owner the name or license number of the tow truck operator, and though images captured by Flock cameras would likely show what happened, that footage is being withheld from the owner as records that are part of an open investigation.
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula expanded the pool of information that he would include in a financial transparency plan. A city ordinance requiring checkbook-level detail on city spending has been ignored for many years. The mayor’s office has vowed to start it back up but initially said the data would not include vital information. In July, Avula said the data will now include payment dates, account descriptions, account codes and line-by-line detail instead of aggregated amounts. The mayor’s plan must be approved by the city council before it can go into effect.
The Commonwealth’s Attorney for Danville filed charges against the director of the Danville Area Humane Society, accusing her of falsifying records in her role as humane investigator. The CA said the director filed 22 identical quarterly reports, purportedly dating back to 2021. The records were allegedly uncovered by a citizen who filed a FOIA request for them and seemed to indicate the director created all the documents over a two-day period. The director issued a statement setting out the timeline of events.
The Newport News judge who presided over the trial against the former elementary school assistant principal sued by the teacher who was shot by her 6-year-old student agreed to unseal a video played for jurors during the trial. The Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot argued that since the video was used at trial, it was part of the public record. The judge agreed, but insisted the video had to be redacted to blur out the student’s face. The judge would not, however, agree to release the names of jurors in the case, saying that she promised them that she wouldn’t.
According to records obtained by The Virginian-Pilot through a FOIA request, six Virginia Beach business owners filed for reimbursement for losses suffered during the city’s temporary curfew measures. All six were denied, but the city redacted all the amounts the businesses said they lost.
Documents obtained by BizSense revealed a handful of data centers under consideration in Petersburg. There had been no public mention of the projects, even among some members of city council, who later said they only learned about them from the news story. “We talk about transparency, and yet it’s like we’re in a cave with the lights out,” said one council member.
The Southampton County School Board’s Transparency Committee gave an update on its work, noting that a recurring topic at their discussions has been streaming the meetings and the overall audio and video quality of those meetings. The committee also suggested putting information about committees and committee meetings on the school division’s website.
According to the Virginia State Registrar, more than 150 people took advantage of a new law that allows those who were born in Virginia and later adopted to more easily obtain their original birth certificates. Prior to the law’s July 1 effective date, Virginia kept such records under seal, making it difficult to access them.
Three members of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors expressed frustration when a fellow member added an item to the agenda without giving them advanced notice. One member said it was “not acceptable, period,” another said he felt “blindsided” and that he didn’t “like surprises,” and the third said it put everyone in a “horrible position … where none of us had the chance to think it through.”
The Richmond Times-Dispatch secured records through FOIA that detailed the dismantling of a proposed series of basketball games between VCU and NC State. Emails and contracts showed that NC State paid VCU $190,000 not to play in Richmond this coming season after NC State beat VCU 85-79 in Raleigh.
