As the director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government — a 29-year-old nonpartisan, nonprofit devoted to helping the public navigate the ins and outs of access to state and local government records and meetings — I’m often asked which state has the best open records or open meetings law. It’s a fool’s gambit to give a conclusive answer. The words on the page of any given state law may look fine. But those words can be stretched to the point of breaking by some local government, school district or state agency. Meanwhile, just one city over, or at another agency even within the same building, those words may be applied within both the letter and the spirit of the law. State by state. Locality by locality. It’s going to be different. Nonetheless, regardless of the strengths or weaknesses of each state’s laws, there are a few challenges every state faces. To start at the very top, the constant drama that characterizes our national political scenes sucks the oxygen out of state transparency efforts.

Happy Sunshine Week, everybody! As they say, “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” and I want to share a little bit about arguably one of the best tools for transparency in state politics: the Virginia Public Access Project. I’ve returned time and time again to the Virginia Public Access Project, affectionately known as VPAP, to gain an understanding of campaign spending and fundraising in critical state and federal elections, legislation and the lawmakers who introduce it, and to keep up with political news in a fast-paced news cycle. And that’s just a sampling of the tools offered by VPAP.

Richmond city officials finally followed through on Mayor Danny Avula’s promise to release records for eight years of severance payments, but because of limited details in the records, the Richmond Times-Dispatch is not able to determine whether the payments comply with the rules that govern severance. The disclosure came on Tuesday night, 232 days after The Times-Dispatch first requested the documents. The information, compiled in a spreadsheet, includes the positions and service years of the employees who received severance under former Mayor Levar Stoney, as well as the dollar amounts the city paid them. But the spreadsheet does not identify the employees by name, or indicate their salaries. The latter omission prevents The Times-Dispatch from determining whether the payments complied with city code, which includes a salary-based formula to determine the dollar amount for which departing employees are eligible.

Former Richmond communications director Petula Burks broke no city policies when she bought media production services from two companies owned by one of her former business associates, according to a recently released report from Inspector General James Osuna. Osuna’s investigation into the transactions concluded Burks didn’t violate any city policies on procurement and conflicts of interest. She disclosed her connection to the companies, Osuna found, and the work the city received after spending a little more than $350,000 with the two companies was “high quality work at a competitive price.” Osuna’s review looked specifically at whether policies were violated due to the relationship between Burks and Chicoye and the amount of money spent with firms operated by Chicoye. “The former director does not profit from the media production companies and is not professionally affiliated with them other than hiring them to work for the city,” the report says.