Just one month after Michael Bailey’s visit to Richmond City Hall, a city official emailed colleagues cautioning them that the organization’s funding application “scored very low.” Others warned against giving money to what they said was a vaguely defined organization that didn’t provide enough paperwork detailing how it would use it. But the group had a champion in Councilwoman Ellen Robertson (6th District), who made amendments to city budgets for the organization to receive funding, even as she was aware of internal concerns about the organization’s lack of documentation. As officials raised internal concerns about the group’s lack of paperwork, Robertson intervened and urged the city to send the money anyway, according to emails and memos The Richmonder obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests beginning in May.

Times-Dispatch review of asbestos inspection records for Richmond Public Schools has revealed that officials between 2004 and 2021 missed at least 90 federally mandated inspections for the carcinogenic fibers across the district’s schools. Records for dozens more inspections, which school officials say were performed in compliance with federal law, are missing, The Times-Dispatch found. The Times-Dispatch reviewed the management plans for 39 of RPS’ school buildings. The plans are kept at RPS’ facilities headquarters on Commerce Road, and each contains hundreds of pages. Officials allowed Times-Dispatch staff two hours to read through them.

New emails obtained in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveal emails “Riki Cox” sent to an Arlington School Board member late last year. According to Arlington police, prosecutors, and Arlington school staff, “Riki Cox” is an alias that registered sex offender Richard Cox used late last year. Late last year, the Arlington County Public Schools (APS) pool staff allowed Cox, a biological male, to use female locker rooms at two high schools that have pools open to the public outside of school hours because Cox claimed he was a transgender woman. APS’s policy allows people to use bathrooms and locker rooms based on their gender identity if they so choose.

Federal agencies’ regular online disclosure and routine management of the Freedom of the Information Act are expected to fade as the government shutdown lingers on. Reviewing and redacting documents takes staff, many of whom are the first to be furloughed during a funding lapse. And as more federal employees get sent home, government websites grow glitchy and public records requests gather dust, creating an increasing pile of work that civil servants will have to slog through when they’re back on the job. Margaret Kwoka, a law professor at Ohio State University, believes the spending stop is “potentially a major setback” for the FOIA process, depending how long it carries on.