A stranger comes to Rappahannock County and starts walking into public offices. “Can I have a copy of the superintendent’s employment contract?” she asks the receptionist at the Rappahannock County Public Schools administration office. “I’d like a list of all property owners delinquent on the real estate tax,” she asks the county Treasurer’s Office. She makes similar requests at every county, town and constitutional office while others on her team seek documents at the Rappahannock-Rapidan Regional Commission in Culpeper and the RSW Regional Jail in Front Royal serving Rappahannock, Shenandoah and Warrenton counties. These requests for public records were part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) audit that Foothills Forum conducted on Feb. 18 and 19 to test how responsive local offices are to in-person records requests from the public. The results appear during national Sunshine Week March 15-21 which focuses attention on the importance of freedom of information at both the state and federal levels. While response times are growing for documents requested under federal FOIA and many state FOIA laws, the results of this local audit were encouraging. Responses for the most part were prompt, friendly and complete.

Former Shenandoah County Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda Wiseley pleaded guilty Wednesday to spending almost $9,000 of office money on personal items and not claiming the income on her taxes. … In his proffer statement of the evidence the commonwealth planned to present had the case gone to trial, Alexandria Coummonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Porter said Wiseley made an agreement with the towns of Mount Jackson, New Market, Strasburg and Woodstock to prosecute traffic cases brought by each jurisdiction’s police department. In exchange, the towns would reimburse the office for the expenses related to her office’s prosecution of the cases. However, instead of the money going to her constitutional office, Wiseley opened a checking account to which the funds were deposited. She used the county’s tax ID number for the account, according to Porter’s evidence. No one associated with the towns, the county or the circuit court knew about the account. County officials did not know about the agreement Wiseley had with the towns, Porter said. Wiseley used the money to buy office supplies and it was difficult to determine if all the items were for her office or personal use, Porter said. However, Wiseley spent a large portion of the money on items such as yoga equipment, pet food and diapers among other items more likely to be for personal use, Porter said. Wiseley ordered many of the items through Amazon and the multiple boxes would be left at the courthouse, Porter said.

A Jacksonville North Pulaski School District (Arkansas) parent is raising concerns over how the district has handled her FOIA requests. Kristian St. Clair says the district wants her to pay around $35,000 for documents related to the arrest of former Bayou Meto Elementary janitor Harold Butchart, who was accused of inappropriately touching three young girls last year. … On March 17, the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office took a report from St. Clair regarding her FOIA requests. To get the files, the district cited fees totaling $35,000, a practice law professor Robert Steinbuch says is illegal. … “Arkansas FOIA is quite explicit in that it only permits fees for the actual cost of the paper or the toner, but that’s it, no labor,” he said.

Americans strongly support the right to access government information. Most have never tried to use it — and don’t know much about how. Those are among the headline findings from a new nationally representative survey released at Sunshine Fest 2026 in Washington, D.C. on March 16. The Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project and the Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults on their beliefs, attitudes, and experiences with freedom of information. These are pre-publication findings from a year-long message design and testing initiative. A peer-reviewed version is in development.

Governments are failing their residents not only through bad policy but through bad language. In 2023, Florida sent Medicaid termination notices that directed residents to a website a federal court later found did not contain the information they needed to understand or contest their termination. More than 1.9 million calls flooded the state’s Medicaid line in a single month; fewer than a third reached a live agent. That is language failing people at the moment of loss. … At a moment when public trust in federal institutions has reached historic lows, state and local governments hold something genuinely valuable: proximity. People can walk into their city hall. They know which building to go to, which number to call, which official made the promise. But most governments squander that proximity by communicating the same way Washington does.