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"Petersburg's commonwealth's attorney said she’d fielded numerous complaints from people who said Williams told them he wasn’t responsible for responding to their inquiries about city government records."
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The Supreme Court of Virginia recently accepted two FOIA-related cases.
- Transparent GMU v. George Mason University: the court accepted 4 points of error having to do with the interrelationship of GMU and its foundations for purposes of FOIA requests.
- Batterson v. Voorhees: the court accepted for review a question about not awarding attorney fees in a FOIA case, but Batterson's attorney is asking the court to reconsider taking two more questions, one having to do with the delayed assertion of exemptions and the other having to do with giving the requester a privilege log when submitting records under seal to a judge.
After weeks of confusion over who in Petersburg government is responsible for handling Freedom of Information Act requests, city officials this week designated a city employee to handle public records queries. The Petersburg City Council made the move Tuesday after learning the recently hired city attorney viewed fielding open records requests himself as a possible conflict of interest. On Wednesday, city officials updated their website to reflect that the FOIA contact is Tanesha Flowers, an administrative assistant in the office of City Attorney Anthony C. Williams, whose hiring was announced in January. Tuesday’s council vote came less than a week after Petersburg’s commonwealth’s attorney, Cheryl Wilson, warned city officials that they needed to clarify who handles records requests. Wilson said she’d fielded numerous complaints from people who said Williams told them he wasn’t responsible for responding to their inquiries about city government records. Wilson noted that the city’s website has said the city attorney’s office is tasked with handling requests.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam met with local African-American leaders for a roundtable about the issues in Danville on Wednesday in an event that was billed as closed to the press. The Danville Register & Bee gained entry, however.
Register & Bee
EARLIER: Gov. Ralph Northam visited Danville on Wednesday, where he took a secretive tour of CBN Security Technologies Inc. before holding a roundtable discussion at Bibleway Cathedral with community leaders that was closed to the press. At the business, employees told a Danville Register & Bee reporter waiting to see the governor to leave the property. Later, inside the church, a man wearing a business suit told the reporter that the meeting was off limits. Asked why the meeting was closed, the man replied: “I can’t tell you, sir. It’s a private meeting — you can’t come in.” Details of the governor’s visit were shrouded in mystery even to Mayor Alonzo Jones, who was invited to the discussion but said Wednesday morning that he didn’t know where it was going to be held.
Register & Bee
Strasburg Town Manager Wyatt Pearson changed the town’s conflict of interest policy after a former council member requested records revealing that the town paid Mayor Rich Orndorff Jr. to provide food for several events in 2017 and 2018. On Jan. 10, former councilman Seth Newman requested through the state’s public records law that the town provide a copy of all receipts for food supplied for town functions in 2017 and 2018. Newman stated in an email that he “heard through the grape vine that once again our mayor is paying himself with town funds for catering town functions.” The records he received, which the Northern Virginia Daily obtained, showed that between 2017 and 2018, the town paid Orndorff to cater at two board and commission dinners and the retirement picnic for its former director of finance, Dottie Mullins, and reimbursed him for the cost of food for two community dinners.
The Northern Virginia Daily
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