Transparency News, 12/8/21

Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin will be inaugurated on January 15, 2022. One of the first things on Youngkin’s agenda is to shake up the state agency that has the power to grant inmates an early release from prison. Nixon Peabody, the law firm that conducted the investigation into how the inspector general’s office handled the probe of Martin’s parole, has suggested that OSIG should have its own general counsel. Currently, that office is represented by the attorney general, who also represents the parole board.
WTVR
(Note: The AG’s office also represents state agencies in FOIA disputes.)

In an 8-1 vote, the Richmond School Board formally recognized teachers’ rights to negotiate contracts, ending a decades-long restriction. Jonathan Young cast the lone dissenting vote in a meeting that was at times contentious. The commotion began when Dawn Page, who represents the 8th District, said she had concerns about voting on Monday. She said the district risked sabotaging itself if it didn’t study how much collective bargaining would cost first. “We tend to pick and choose when to follow processes,” she said, criticizing her colleagues for not having a full board discussion on the recommendations from an ad-hoc committee. The objection drew a sharp rebuke from the audience in support of bargaining, with exclamations that the School Board was attempting to stall. They also chanted a demand to vote on Monday night, and School Board Chair Cheryl Burke called a 10-minute recess. Some School Board members had a side conversation during the recess.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Loudoun County School Board members on Monday heard introductions and took public comment on 15 candidates seeking to fill the vacant Leesburg District seat. The selection process is expected to continue Tuesday evening when the board was scheduled to ask questions of the applicants. The vacancy was created with the Nov. 2 resignation of Beth Barts. The person appointed by the board to replace her will serve until a special election is held in November. The winner of that election will complete Barts’ term, expiring at the end of 2023.
Loudoun Now

A search warrant King William County authorities obtained in August for records from online giant Google relating to covert recordings of closed Mattaponi Tribal Council meetings will be voluntarily rescinded, an official said Tuesday. “We’re not pursuing it,” said King William Commonwealth’s Attorney Matt Kite. The warrant, issued by a magistrate in James City County and served on Google’s Mountain View, California, headquarters, sought to identify who provided surreptitious audio recordings of three Tribal Council meetings late last winter to the Mattaponi Voice, a YouTube channel that serves as an independent, online publication serving the Mattaponi people which made the recordings public. Google owns YouTube. The Voice was unaware that the source of recordings of Tribal Council meetings on Feb. 6, Feb. 20 and March 20 of this year was the subject of a search warrant until November, more than two months after the warrant was issued, said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, a lawyer and former Virginia ACLU executive director representing the Voice pro bono. The effort by the King William Sheriff’s Office to gather a wide array of data about how the secret recordings were made public comes amid deepening tensions within the tribe over the unelected and secretive governance of the sovereign Mattaponi reservation.
Virginia Mercury
 

A divided Delaware Supreme Court ruled Monday that at least some of the the uncatalogued trove of records from his 36 years in the Senate that Joe Biden donated to the University of Delaware are not subject to the state’s Freedom of Information Act. The papers are not categorically “public records,” the court says, noting that FOIA’s definition of “public records” is different for the university than it is for other public bodies. The definition applicable to the university depends on whether the content of the document relates to the expenditure of public funds, not whether public funds are used to maintain the documents. The court did, however, send the case back down to the lower court to determine whether an adequate search was performed to determine whether some of the documents do meet the limited definition.
Supreme Court of Delaware