Monday
February 20, 2023
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state & local news stories
VCOG’s annual conference
FOI Day — March 16
Charlottesville
Info and registration here
Nearly a century ago, Virginia archivists launched an effort to preserve aging documents — some hundreds of years old — stored at local courthouses in Hampton Roads and beyond. Despite those intentions, the method used to preserve the records could damage them in the long run. “For the last five years, we have been visiting the circuit court clerk’s offices around the commonwealth and identified a number of volumes, and we have had been having conversations with the clerks making them aware that these are something that are in need of preservation,” said Greg Crawford, state archivist and director of Government Records Services at the Library of Virginia. “The lamination needs to be removed.” Crawford said coastal areas of Virginia — such as Hampton Roads — tend to have more documents preserved this way because cities and other municipalities near the water tend to be older than inland locales. “As part of the inventory report that we submitted, we identified over 1,500 volumes and the vast majority of those are found on the eastern side of the state,” Crawford added. “These are definitely the oldest in the commonwealth — the oldest court books, deed books.”
The Virginian-Pilot
Town of Warrenton Interim Town Manager Christopher Martino released a press release Friday morning to clarify details about 3,142 town emails that were withheld after recent Virginia Freedom of Information Act requests were filed by the group Citizens for Fauquier County. The question of the emails and why they were not released was brought up repeatedly — by town council members and by residents — during a Feb. 14 to 15 public hearing about Amazon’s proposal to build a data center on a 42-acre, industrial-zoned property in Warrenton. “The 3,142 fully exempted emails were not emails between Ms. [Brandie] Schaeffer [former town manager] and Amazon representatives,” Martino said. “The town has never stated that they were…. The 3,142 emails were emails sent between Ms. Schaeffer and anyone else, on any subject of town business. That is town staff, town council, town attorney, citizens, businesses, or organizations.”
Fauquier Times
A recently announced project involving a pair of circa 1850s homes aims to digitize and contextualize wall markings left behind during the Civil War. The Graffiti House in Brandy Station and Historic Blenheim in Fairfax will be the focus of the work enabled by a $60,000 planning grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, according to a recent release.
Culpeper Star-Exponent
After the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech that claimed 31 lives, then-Governor Tim Kaine assembled an independent review panel of eight experts to investigate the incident. After the Nov. 13 shooting at the University of Virginia that left three student-athletes dead, the commonwealth has hired lawyers from the global law firmQuinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to conduct an independent investigation that could cost as much as $1.5 million, according to documents The Daily Progress obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The Daily Progress
County Chair Phyllis J. Randall (D-At Large) criticized the School Board’s response to repeated sexual assaults in high schools as “too slow” and not transparent at a meeting of both boards Thursday evening. Although the stated purpose of the meeting was to talk about the division’s $1.67 billion fiscal year 2024 budget request, Randall addressed the School Board’s vote Tuesday night to not release the results of an independent investigation into the school district’s handling of those assaults. “There is obviously an elephant in the room,” she said. “In fact, an entire zoo might be in this room today, and I don’t think we should ignore that.” Randall said some have suggested defunding the school system as the solution but noted she did not agree with that suggestion. But she said as the funding source for the school division, the Board of Supervisors has every right to ask hard questions and expect answers.
Loudoun Now