Meet Eric Bonds, a University of Mary Washington sociology professor, and the City of Newport News, our 2026 citizen and government annual award winners.

The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services has released nearly 100,000 police records to a nonprofit newsroom to settle a public records lawsuit, opening more transparency into the discipline and training of law enforcement officers across the commonwealth. The suit by the Invisible Institute sought police rosters, certification and other professional information as part of a nationwide effort to track police misconduct and prevent wayward cops from obscuring their pasts and landing jobs with new departments. The DCJS initially withheld officers’ names and other identifying data from the request – a move the journalists said created a virtual secret police in Virginia. The records include names, departments, certification and active duty status. The journalists did not seek personal information. … The agency asserted in court that the state was not required to release officers’ names because, at any given time, they may be called to do undercover work. The Virginia Court of Appeals ruled in a separate public records case that the reasoning was overly broad and ordered Henrico County to release the information to a police watchdog organization.

Tim Calhoun has resigned from Surry County’s Board of Supervisors. Roughly fifteen minutes into the board’s April 2 meeting, Calhoun announced his resignation would be “effective immediately.” Reading from a prepared letter, Calhoun said that his decision came “after careful consideration” and that he no longer has “confidence in the board’s ability to operate in a fair and respectful and transparent manner.” Specifically, he alleged a “lack of fair election processes for the chairman and vice chairman positions,” “repeated disregards of motions I have made for the benefit of the county, which are often ignored and not responded to” and “failure to provide sufficient and timely information necessary for informed decision-making.”

Mecklenburg County Public Schools will conduct a forensic audit of the school division’s books in the wake of a police investigation into possible embezzlement by two top administrators. Investigative documents presented in court by a Virginia State Police special agent identified more than $120,000 in questionable purchases using school funds, all tied to MCPS Assistant Superintendent Christy Peffer and Director of Finance Amber Barbour. … On March 20, VSP investigators executed search warrants at the MCPS Central Office in Boydton and at the homes of Peffer and Barbour in Nelson and Emporia, respectively. A police affidavit accompanying the search warrants, filed in Mecklenburg County court and obtained by The Sun this week, provides a long list of suspect purchases using school funds. The merchandise ranges from farm tools and equipment to household electronics and day-to-day items such as groceries and arts supplies, bought through online retailer Amazon.

With the problem of long wait times and burgeoning backlogs looming in the background, Connecticut legislators have recently considered a bill to study how long state agencies are taking to respond to FOIA requests. Though similar versions of the bill have passed out of committee with bipartisan support, including during the current session, to date, the legislation has not made it to final passage. Nor is it likely to this year with a projected General Fund deficit, a legislatively-approved budget implementer that exceeds baselines proposed by Gov. Ned Lamont, and an estimated price tag of up to $300,000 in fiscal year 2027 to study state agency response times to FOIA and FOIC complaints involving unreasonable processing times. While state officials taking issues surrounding open government seriously would be a welcome sign, passage of the legislation isn’t necessary to gain a better understanding of how long state agencies are taking to process requests and to better gauge the types of requests agencies are receiving, because agency FOI logs can themselves be FOI’d.

“I know what it is to be kept in the dark, being a resident desperately fighting to be heard, even in a small town of fewer than 4,000 people. The democratic process where my voice is supposed to matter has been hijacked by big tech.” That’s Aubree Derksen of Pine Island, Minn., testifying before a legislative committee about a proposed data center in her community. City officials there knew about the project for two years before residents were let in on the secret, thanks to nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) the officials had signed. … NDAs are not unique to data center development, of course, but have become particularly abusive in that industry, springing potentially harmful projects on communities across the country as tech firms expend nearly limitless resources in pursuit of AI profits. As my organization detailed last year, data centers can be extremely extractive, collecting massive tax subsidies, driving up utility costs, creating few permanent jobs and little economic activity, and displacing more productive economic development projects.