Two months after three Fauquier County school officials were put on leave in the wake of a criminal investigation few details have been released, and parents are demanding answers. “The community is full of speculation, and the lack of communication is only fueling the conversation,” one parent of two students, including a member of the football team, wrote in a March 7 email to Kettle Run Assistant Principal Timothy Miller after news of the investigation broke. The parent’s name was redacted by the school division in the copies of emails obtained by the Fauquier Times. “Even if all the details cannot yet be shared, some form of communication from the administration would go a long way in reassuring parents that these issues are being taken seriously,” the parent wrote. “In a situation like this comes across as dismissive.”

Less than 24 hours after The Times-Dispatch reported on another investigation into potential financial abuse, Richmond Mayor Danny Avula announced a “reset” of the city’s employee purchasing card program. The program allows certain employees to buy items using city funds. Last year, a city watchdog found Richmond’s election registrar had misused thousands of dollars on furniture, bodyguards and meals. And on Tuesday, The Times-Dispatch reported that an employee with the Richmond Fire Department was under investigation for allegedly spending at least $40,000 at a straw supply company registered to his home address. On Wednesday afternoon, city spokesperson Ross Catrow said that the program reset had been in the works well before The Times-Dispatch reported on alleged fraud in the Fire Department.

For 2½ hours on Tuesday, Stafford County residents asked their local elected officials about everything from proposals for new development, including data centers and the mega convenience store, Buc-ee’s, while they also expressed a desire to be part of the decision-making process. “We want our voices heard, we want you to know our worries, our concerns,” said Carolyn Whittaker. Held in the library at Colonial Forge High School, the Joint Town Hall was the first of its kind, said Deuntay Diggs, chair of the Stafford Board of Supervisors. It was the brainchild of Tinesha Allen, board vice chair, who hosted the event with Diggs and Maureen Siegmund and Maya Guy, chair and vice chair of the School Board.

Theogony, the Alexandria City High School student newspaper, along with other ACHS student publications, is facing censorship of its coverage by Alexandria City Public Schools administrators and the School Board, according to student journalists at Theogony. The School Board plans to amend its policy on student publications to enforce stricter rules on coverage of controversial issues, such as transportation, the High School Project and transgender policies, these journalists said.

Federal agencies received a record 1.5 million Freedom of Information Act requests in fiscal 2024. That’s according to the Justice Department Office of Information Policy’s latest summary of federal FOIA data. Agencies nearly kept pace by processing 1.49 million FOIA requests last year. Still, the governmentwide FOIA backlog increased to 267,000 cases by the end of fiscal 2024.

A Michigan government agency that oversees dozens of state-owned office buildings will not disclose how many state employees were actually present in those facilities, even amid heightened scrutiny regarding the state’s remote work policy. The Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget largely denied a public records request and a subsequent appeal from The Detroit News seeking the daily occupancy reports of state buildings, aggregated from employee key card swipes, for five random days last year. DTMB Director Michelle Lange argued in her public records denial that disclosing such data, even up to a year later, would pose a risk to the security of those buildings.

Office renovations, travel expenses and emails with expletives and vulgarities, such as the N-word and “towelhead,” were among the dozens of public records requests sought from Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s Office since March by opposition groups working against his gubernatorial campaign. Duggan, on April 14, slammed the Democratic Governors Association at the Detroit Free Press Breakfast Club Series event for shelling out millions of dollars to smear his independent party bid in the Michigan gubernatorial race by filing these Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests. However, the organization’s spokesperson would not confirm to the Free Press whether the DGA submitted those requests, or any requests, for records — filed under the name Ryan Luther, whose name appears across dozens of government-related FOIA requests across the nation.