One of the biggest newspaper publishers in the nation is taking on Virginia’s court administration in a lawsuit filed Tuesday. The First Amendment action by Lee Enterprises and Courthouse News challenges a statute that prohibits attorneys from sharing public court records. Lee Enterprises is the fourth-largest newspaper chain in the nation with 12 newspapers and 100,000 subscribers in Virginia. Lee and this news organization claim in a federal court complaint that the Virginia law violates the First Amendment and a basic principle of British common law prohibiting prior restraints on speech.

During a two-and-a-half hour meeting on Monday, the Fredericksburg School Board worked on updating its existing governance norms and drafting new ones, but did not officially adopt anything—nor did it have time to delve into a list of 20 protocols….On the subject of generating significant work for staff, board member Katie Pomeroy brought up the fact that requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) require more work for staff when School Board members use their personal accounts, instead of their school-issued accounts, for school division-related email correspondence….Samantha Bosserman, deputy executive director of the Virginia School Board Association, said that the VSBA “strongly suggests” that School Board members use their school-issued email accounts, specifically so that they can be responsive to FOIA requests.

Purcellville Vice Mayor Carl Ben Nett, who had been serving as an office in the Purcellville Police Department until April, has been added to the Virginia law enforcement decertification database list, as of Dec. 2, according to a document obtained by the Times-Mirror through a Freedom of Information Act request. It states that Nett was added to the list for being “terminated or resigned while the subject of an (Internal Affairs investigation) into serious misconduct and conduct that compromised credibility, integrity and honesty. Nett has the right to appeal the decision and have a review hearing, according to Department of Criminal Justice Services. The Times-Mirror has attempted to reach Nett for comment but has not yet received a response.

Top economic development officials in Michigan may find their communications under scrutiny following a recent investigation by Attorney General Dana Nessel, which involved a raid at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) offices amid allegations of earmark embezzlement. However, many of these communications may never see the light of day due to a state policy that automatically deletes messages exchanged on Microsoft Teams after 30 days. Unlike emails, which are retained for seven years and can be accessed via the Michigan Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), chats on Microsoft Teams are purged quickly, often rendering them inaccessible for public records requests. A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget, the agency responsible for state technology systems, stated that the swift deletion of Teams chats is a matter of storage efficiency, not an attempt to obscure information from the public.