An Illinois municipal police department denied a FOIA request seeking a video recording of a former deputy chief’s DUI arrest in Virginia citing Section 7(1)(n) of FOIA, which exempts records relating to a public body’s adjudication of employee grievances or disciplinary cases. After the requester submitted a request for review with the Illinois Attorney General’s Public Access Counselor (PAC) challenging the denial, the PAC issued its fourth binding opinion of 2025 concluding that the Village improperly withheld the video recording. (Includes link to PAC Op. 25-004.)
Saying they “deserve their privacy,” Hopewell Mayor Johnny Partin Jr. said the firings earlier this month of the city manager and city clerk were without “cause” but not without “justification,” and because it is a personnel matter, those reasons will not be publicly divulged. “It is true that we did vote for termination without cause, meaning only to award these employees their contractual severance payment instead of accusing them of any misconduct and withholding severance,” Partin said in a statement from the dais during the May 27 City Council meeting. “It does not mean their terminations were without reasons. Council had reasons for this.” He claimed that he and the other councilors who voted May 1 to fire City Manager Dr. Concetta Manker and City Clerk Brittani Williams would like to share those reasons “for transparency, but these are personnel matters for which these former employees deserve their privacy. “It is that reason that we cannot publicly discuss these issues,” he concluded.
As the city has revealed limited information about what caused the third significant issue to impact its drinking water system within a matter of months, records reviewed by CBS 6 could shed light on the problems at Richmond’s Water Treatment Plant leading up to the current boil water advisory. An apparent maintenance request dated May 12 showed that plate settlers, a type of sediment filter at the plant, were noted as needing be cleaned to “remove alum sludge.” But it appears the May 12 maintenance request was not immediately fulfilled.
School Board and superintendent remain silent on secretive plan to censor students.Laughter filled the School Board chamber when Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt suggested that she was “committed to transparency.” For student journalists who packed the room, the punchline landed because of the communications lockdown at Alexandria City Public Schools, where elected officials and school administrators routinely deny media requests for interviews. Their secretive plan to adopt a policy that would allow school administrators to pull the plug on investigative reporting may be at a standstill for now, but it could reemerge at any time to silence the voices of students at Alexandria City High School. THE LACK OF TRANSPARENCY at Alexandria City Public Schools is not new. For years, the school division has denied requests for interviews and tried to communicate through written statements from the School Board chairwoman. That applied to everything from demographic trends to transgender policy. Now that the school system is considering a policy that could deny students their First Amendment rights, the culture of secrecy among the nine elected School Board members shows no signs of breaking anytime soon.
