The Richmond City Council voted Tuesday to slim down a 2015 law that required the city to publish an online list of payments made with taxpayer dollars. Officials had stopped publishing the so-called payment register in 2019 after concerns it was taking up too much staff time and putting the city at risk of accidentally exposing sensitive or confidential information. .. The goal of the revised payment register, according to the Avula administration, is to clearly exclude payments to individual people like tax refunds or social services assistance, while keeping information about public funds being paid to vendors. Reimbursement payments to city employees would still be included. … In the most significant change, the payment register will no longer include an “invoice description” field containing specific information about what was being purchased. An earlier version of the proposal left out more categories of information, such as transaction dates. However, the Avula administration restored some information in a round of amendments made over the summer. … Though the new payment register won’t allow the public to see exact purchase descriptions, the mayor’s office has said it will still include funding codes and cost center descriptions that will give users at least some idea of the nature of each purchase. The city was able to publish the original version of the payment register from 2015 to 2019 without any major public controversies about confidential information being exposed. When the city revisited the matter this year, officials said some Social Security numbers were getting into the data. … The new payment register also won’t include any information about money spent to settle lawsuits or legal claims against City Hall.

Among the most critical roles of the City Council president, according to veteran Richmond political analyst Bob Holsworth, is engaging with the press — and, through it, the public. “The president is not only a powerful individual, but is also a voice for the City Council,” Holsworth said on Monday. “It’s their responsibility to explain themselves to the media so that the public has a good handle on their justifications for what they’re doing.” For that reason, Holsworth finds it “very unusual” that Richmond City Council President Cynthia Newbille has repeatedly disregarded requests for comment on issues ranging from local tax rates, staff hirings and firings, free speech and the day-to-day affairs of local government. … She isn’t alone. In a study published in May, researchers with the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute found that 76% of surveyed journalists had experienced “refusal to speak from a politician, government official or organization in the past three years.”

Following a month of growing public opposition, Gordonsville Town Council will soon vote on whether to terminate the town’s 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. … On Wednesday, Town Clerk Janet Jones confirmed to Charlottesville Tomorrow that the item has been added to the agenda. It will be the first formal action that Council has taken on the agreement since Votaw signed it on May 15. … Concerns about a lack of transparency around the agreement have grown since August, when the local email newsletter Byrd Street broke the news that Gordonsville police had been cooperating with ICE for three months without notifying the public. Charlottesville Tomorrow’s investigation found further failures in transparency: discussion of the agreement between Votaw and Town Council took place in closed session, and when a pause on active participation in the 287(g) program was lifted, even Town Council didn’t find out until weeks later. At the Oct. 5 meeting, both Brooks and Votaw took responsibility for not being more transparent. Brooks said he should have notified the public sooner when the contract was initially signed in May. “I feel like once the chief brought that to council, it was my job to bring that to the public, and I didn’t do that. And so, I will put that on my shoulders,” Brooks said.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday took up the Trump administration’s bid to prevent a watchdog group from seeking information about the Department of Government Efficiency, which played a key role in firing thousands of federal workers and canceling government funding. The court agreed to hear a Justice Department appeal that sought to prevent Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington from obtaining the records. The underlying litigation focuses on whether DOGE is an agency that is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. A ruling is due by the end of June.