A court settlement last year was supposed to have brought some order to the wild-west world of Division 1 athletics. For the first time, schools were allowed to share revenue with student-athletes, but the amount per school was capped at $20.5 million a year. But the agreement has done nothing to tame the cost of “name, image and likeness” payments. … Texas Tech, which rode a gusher of NIL money to this year’s College Football Playoff, has budgeted $35 million in combined revenue sharing and NIL payments to athletes in the 2025-26 school year, according to the Athletic. There’s no way to know how Virginia Tech stacks up. Officials in Blacksburg have provided few details about its football finances, including how it spends public funds provided by taxpayers and fees extracted from students. Tech is not an outlier when it comes to secrecy; colleges and universities fear that sharing information could provide an unfair advantage to their on-field opponents. Reporters in North Carolina have used state open-records laws to determine how other ACC schools are distributing their $20.5 million in shared revenue. In Virginia, however, universities have taken a unified stand in refusing to release records related to revenue sharing of public funds. Virginia Tech and other universities have used an expansive interpretation of a “scholastic records” exemption in state open government laws to withhold copies of revenue-sharing agreements or payments, even in cases when news outlets have requested the redaction of all names or other personally identifiable information.

The law, said Andrew Bodoh, is clear. Under city code, City Attorney Laura Drewry is required to provide legal advice to city officials “on any question of law,” providing that advice in written form “as often and as fully as practicable.” And, under the same ordinance, those written opinions are required to “be kept on file in the city attorney’s office,” available to “any person affected by … or having an interest in the opinion.” … Despite that decision by City Council — which directly oversees the city attorney — Drewry’s office this week refused to turn over copies of written opinions issued to city officials in the last year. … Assistant City Attorney John Dickinson said all such documents are protected by attorney-client privilege and work-product doctrine, and thus exempt from disclosure. He did not address questions about city code’s instruction that the opinions be released. … When withholding records, officials are required by FOIA to identify the number and nature of those records. But in his response to The Times-Dispatch’s FOIA request, Dickinson said that city attorneys were not able to identify withheld documents because they could not even determine what records might be responsive to the request. “Nearly any kind of record on any subject could potentially contain a legal opinion,” Dickinson explained, adding that the request lacked “specificity.”

Whitson “Whit” Robinson has resigned from his position as special counsel to the Warrenton Commission on Open and Transparent Government, citing town officials’ effort to remove him from the position and “an impasse” with Vice Mayor William Semple. … Robinson has been part of a months-long conflict over the handling of town email records that contributed to the firing of town manager Frank Cassidy and the resignation of town attorney Chap Petersen, often putting Robinson at odds with Semple, the commission’s chair. In his resignation letter, Robinson describes a debate between him and Semple over how to review town records, highlighting a conflict over whether to use Boolean, a type of keyword search, or new search methods using artificial intelligence. “I unfortunately cannot be a part of the process by which Mr. Semple is under the impression that he has made the ultimate decision to use the limited Boolean search method,” Robinson wrote.

The elected School Board members in Stafford may be the ones who make headlines, but they’re not in class in the county day after day to see how their positions play out. To get that perspective, they look to the student representatives on the board, current students who don’t vote on issues but do participate in public discussions. Stafford’s school division recently welcomed two new student reps to the board for this calendar year and said goodbye to the 2025 representatives, who will still be involved with student issues at the state level. They will replace Gabriella Irish, who was the student representative, and Lillian Eason, who was the alternate. But just because they will no longer be at school board meetings doesn’t mean they aren’t serving. They have leadership positions in a new organization that aims to represent student school board reps throughout the state. That’s the Virginia School Board Student Representatives Association.