Transparency News, 10/6/2022
Thursday
October 6, 2022
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state & local news stories
The political advertising agency behind Glenn Youngkin’s successful bid for Virginia governor, which created his branding and specializes in work for Republican candidates, received a $268,600 contract from a state agency to produce a tourism video that heavily features Youngkin himself. The contract between the state tourism department and Richmond-based Poolhouse is its first such contract for the state agency. The advertisement features Youngkin at the Richmond Raceway, his voice also narrating the ad. State tourism officials “reached out to Virginia-based entities it believed could produce a high-quality product within a short time frame,” Mike McMahon, Virginia Tourism’s vice president of operations and finance, said by email. Poolhouse responded with a bid on May 5, the same day Virginia Tourism Corporation sent the request, according to state records obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The state’s May 5 bid request includes several phases with tight turnarounds for work, the records show.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Intermittent computer network problems led to a recently discovered backlog of voter registration applications, Virginia officials said Wednesday. The glitch has been resolved and no voter registration data has been lost, Susan Beals, commissioner of the Department of Elections, said in a statement. But the issue has increased the workload for local registrars, who process the applications.
The Virginian-Pilot
The Hanover School Board requested more than $12,000 from the county’s Board of Supervisors in response to a question about whether School Board members have disclosed private student information. Treating the question like a Freedom of Information Act request, the School Board said it would need to search through 4,900 emails in order to survey any potentially responsive emails. The correspondence follows allegations that Hanover School Board Chair John Axselle violated federal student privacy law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The School Board says Axselle did not violate FERPA when he sent private student information that he received in his professional capacity from his personal email address to the conservative legal advocacy organization Alliance Defending Freedom. Supervisors also asked for the unredacted emails that Axselle sent from his private account to ADF, or alternatively to allow one or two supervisors to view the unredacted emails in a secure setting. The School Board denied these requests, and reasoned that it would be a FERPA violation.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Three members of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors failed to show up for a closed session to discuss candidates for the now vacant Banister District seat. Boycotting the meeting were Supervisors Ron Scearce, Bob Warren and Tim Dudley — the three who make up the minority voting block that had loosely formed in January after the Board publicly fired former county administrator David Smitherman. Dan River District Supervisor Tim Chesher, out with COVID, attended via phone. Chairman Vic Ingram and Callands-Gretna District Supervisor Darrell Dalton attended in person. The Board is tasked with finding a replacement for Jessie Barksdale, who resigned last month due to personal reasons. Last month, the Board asked those who lived in the Banister District, and were interested in serving, to apply. “We talked about this in detail at our last Board of Supervisors meeting on Sept 20. We agreed at that meeting that we were going to give the applicants two weeks ... to submit their applications. Then we would meet today during this special meeting, which they agreed on, to discuss the applicants and then to agree on how to move forward as far as the selection," Ingram said. Ingram said the goal for the evening was to weed through the applicants to see if they qualified, but not pick a candidate.
Star-Tribune
