Martinsville officials continue to grapple with mounting questions surrounding the handling of investigative documents tied to former city manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides. Aretha Ferrell-Benavides Those questions include an increasingly public dispute with her legal team over a long-awaited forensic audit. The controversy surrounding the firing of Ferrell-Benavides escalated this week after new public-records disclosures, conflicting explanations from city officials, and a sharply worded statement from Ferrell-Benavides’s attorney challenging the legitimacy of the city-commissioned forensic audit. Last week, the Martinsville Bulletin contacted Interim City Manager Rob Fincher after Cardinal News published what it described as a redacted version of the Sands Anderson investigative report — something the Bulletin originally requested through FOIA in August but never received….Hours later, Martinsville FOIA Officer and Management Analyst Kaylin Hernandez provided the Bulletin with a 28-page document containing virtually no substantive content apart from headers and a handful of administrative lines.

Twice in the past year, supervisors have signed nondisclosure agreements with companies exploring projects in Fluvanna County. While the agreement with Tenaska has largely expired, the NDA covering Amazon’s proposed warehouse, known publicly only by the code name “Project Hoops,” may remain in effect for another two years, even as construction moves forward. Supervisors said the prolonged secrecy creates awkward situations when residents ask for information about visible or widely rumored developments. “I literally stood on the property beside it yesterday with people, and I couldn’t tell them what the sign said at the entrance to the property,” Chris Fairchild (Cunningham) said. County Attorney Dan Whitten told the board the NDA allows only a narrow, preapproved script. “You can say Amazon,” he said. “You can say the word. We have a specific sentence we can say, but that’s all we can say is that particular script. We can say the word.” Economic Development Director Jennifer Schmack said the restrictions stem in part from how Virginia handles economic development incentives. Projects receiving state incentives must remain confidential until the governor makes the formal announcement, and early disclosure can jeopardize those incentives. Companies “can lose all of their incentives,” she said, noting that such losses “have happened in several cases throughout the state.” Fairchild urged the county to create its own guidelines for future NDAs so boards are not bound by open-ended or overly restrictive terms written by companies.

Just hours after the Warrenton Town Council hired an interim town attorney, members considered terminating the employment of another attorney: special counsel Whitson Robinson. A surprise attempt to fire Robinson during the Dec. 9 meeting of the Warrenton Town Council was tabled until January on a 3-2 vote. Terminating him was a last-minute add to the agenda Dec. 9, introduced by Vice Mayor William Semple, who said the town government has very little to show after spending $42,000 for Robinson to conduct a legal discovery process into three land use decisions: rezonings and special-use permits approved for the Amazon data center, the Warrenton Village Center apartments, and the Arrington residential development’s annexation. The council also voted in November to suspend the work of the Commission on Open and Transparent Government. Though a majority of council members present Dec. 9 supported firing Robinson, including Michele O’Halloran and Roy Francis, Semple did not have enough support to schedule the vote that day.

Your humble columnist doesn’t get many bright ideas….But every now and then a journalist gets a bright idea. This one concerns good-government legislation in the 2026 Virginia General Assembly. I’m looking for the best state lawmaker to sponsor it. The measure is simple, clean and transparent: It would prohibit Virginia elected officials from making any written agreements with pimps, dope pushers or gamblers during any executive session at any time or place. The “No Pacts with Pimps, Pushers or Gamblers Act” is rooted in the quaint notion that elected officials shouldn’t enter into secret contracts to withhold information from voters. That could easily be viewed as a conflict of interest, or worse — a betrayal. Oddly, existing Virginia law doesn’t already forbid such agreements. We know this, because earlier this year Roanoke City Council members signed a nondisclosure agreement with a casino operator during an executive session.

A prominent conservative legal firm with close ties to the Trump administration took aim on Wednesday at a little-noticed Environmental Protection Agency rule from the Biden administration that it says created an improper, preferential fast-track for certain public records requests under the banner of “environmental justice.” America First Legal, the firm founded by President Donald Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller, filed a major Freedom of Information Act request and a companion petition for rulemaking challenging the EPA’s 2022 decision to let requesters claim a so-called “environmental justice–related need” as a basis for expedited processing. The group says that carveout opened a political pathway to faster access to federal records, contradicting FOIA’s requirement that agencies handle requests in a content-neutral manner.