Government agencies would have to explain their public records cost estimates in more detail under a proposal endorsed Monday by a Virginia advisory subcommittee. The Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council’s Records Subcommittee recommended requiring an itemized breakdown when someone requests an estimate. The proposal now goes to the full council and would need legislative approval before becoming law. … Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, brought the proposed wording to the subcommittee. She said knowing how an agency reached its estimate could help residents narrow a request. A breakdown would also help a judge review the charges if a dispute goes to court. Lola Rodriguez Perkins, the council’s local government representative, questioned whether itemization would create additional work at the estimate stage. She requested guidance showing agencies what they would need to provide.

A procedural mistake will extend a decision and give the public another opportunity to comment on a large housing development that could double Elliston’s population. A public hearing on the proposed development — which was not planned — is set for Nov. 10 after information about a piece of the property was mistakenly omitted in a legal advertisement published ahead of an Oct. 13 board of supervisors meeting, according to a Montgomery County news release.

Arlington police expect to release footage of a fatal officer-involved shooting by Friday after sharp remarks from County Board members over the weekend. Police Chief Andy Penn on Tuesday (Oct. 20) told County Board members that plans to release body-worn camera footage of the May 8 incident are in their final stages. Police also intend to seek public comment on a policy that will guide the handling of such incidents in the future. … County Board members in late September said they wanted to have footage publicly released by Oct. 16. That deadline came and went, leading to criticism from Board members at their Oct. 17 meeting. At the Oct. 20 session, the mood was less hostile, but Board members were insistent the footage be available as soon as possible. “Getting this done this week … is a burning priority, it is a top priority,” Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said. … Three times during his brief appearance before Board members on Oct. 20, Penn said it was not his intent to make excuses for the five-month lag in making the incident footage available. But he did offer reasons, including, in recent weeks, the department’s preparations for handling the Army 10-Miler, Marine Corps Marathon, Halloween and Election Day. He added that the department was working with a contractor on getting the video ready, which had added to the complexities involved.

When the Star-Tribune published the list of Danville employee salaries earlier this month, astute readers pointed out that city council members were nowhere to be found. We asked Danville Public Information Officer Arnold Hendrix to explain, and to supply us with the compensation for council members and any other people paid by the city who would not have appeared on the original list. “All City and Constitutional employees active in payroll at the time of the request were provided on the original spreadsheet. The City Council was excluded because they are not City employees,” Hendrix wrote in an email which included the council salaries:

New stop arm data shows tens of thousands of motorists are failing to stop for school buses in Hampton Roads. The data, which 10 On Your Side received via a Freedom of Information Act request, was collected from six school divisions in Hampton Roads: Williamsburg-James City County, Suffolk Public Schools, Portsmouth Public Schools, Newport News Public Schools, Chesapeake Public Schools, and Virginia Beach City Public Schools. Stop arm cameras are mounted on school buses and record cars that illegally pass when buses stop to pick up or drop off students. The relevant media is then sent to local law enforcement for review and, if approved, a $250 citation is mailed to the perpetrator.

The City of Fairfax’s public meetings are currently inaccessible online after the platform that hosts its videos and agendas detected a vulnerability in its web programming language. “Granicus has identified a PHP vulnerability and temporarily took all Media Manager services offline as a precaution, while they assess any potential impact,” the city said in a notice issued this morning (Wednesday). Recordings and agendas for past meetings of the city council and other governing bodies, along with documents for upcoming meetings, are unavailable for now. … The FBI’s cyber division warned the vulnerabilities could allow malicious actors to remotely execute code in the programming language, PHP, which powers websites and web applications. That raised the risk of sensitive data and networks being compromised, said the agency, which recommended that operators take websites offline if they can’t update them immediately. … The Town of Vienna, which also uses Granicus to host recordings of its public meetings, might’ve been affected by the PHP vulnerabilities as well. Attempting to access an audio recording of the town council’s work session on Monday (Oct. 19) leads to an “unexpected error” message.

Richmond Public Schools on Wednesday morning experienced a cybersecurity incident that forced the shutdown of the district’s internet access and compromised phone and email service, Superintendent Jason Kamras said in a Wednesday afternoon statement. Multiple RPS employees sent The Times-Dispatch images of on-screen messages that had appeared on school laptops Wednesday morning. “We have gained access to your network, extracted sensitive data … including personal, financial and operational information, and encrypted your critical files,” the message read, giving RPS a 72-hour deadline to contact the allegedly responsible parties and have a “secure chat for negotiation.”

An independent investigation is underway after a high-level Prince William County employee was accused of sexual harassment and misconduct during the county’s Procurement Expo on March 4. The accusations came to light in an anonymous letter mailed to members of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in early October. A “top member of executive leadership” is cited in the letter as engaging in “physical pushing and [a] demeaning verbal attack, touching and blatant sexual contact” that was “alarming” during the March expo at the Hylton Performing Arts Center near Manassas. … InsideNoVa obtained the letter from the county via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Transparency Update is largely critical of how public agencies handle Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It has unfortunately been our experience that particular agencies routinely abuse the law, and writing critically about how agency officials handle requests pressures them into producing documents. Just as it is important to call out officials when they fail to uphold their FOIA duties, Inside Investigator also wants to applaud those who are working diligently to uphold the law. And in the last year, the University of Connecticut (UConn) has gone from being a problematic agency to one we’re able to count on to produce documents in a timely fashion. Last December, UConn was fined $500 for mishandling a FOIA request submitted by Inside Investigator in 2023. We waited 540 days after submitting a FOIA request for records related to investigations of sexual misconduct allegations to receive responsive records. Those records, when initially produced, came only after we had filed a complaint with the Freedom of Information Commission. … Less than a year later, UConn has completely turned it around. UConn recently turned over documents for a larger request seeking records related to the school’s investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct and subsequent disciplinary actions, similar to those we sought in 2023, within six months. And we’ve received other similar but narrower requests back in shorter time frames, the latest in a week. UConn’s communications department has also been proactive in responding to related questions and providing updates on the status of FOIA requests.