York County School Board members used a loophole in the state’s public meetings law to agree privately on how they would limit comments by one of their own at board meetings. In a move aimed at avoiding a lawsuit from the school superintendent, the board has been waiving the comment period used by board members to talk about anything they choose since their March meeting. Board members told us they wanted to limit comments from board member Lynda J. Fairman, who voted against the change. At the March 24 meeting, the board began removing the regular agenda item that allowed board members to bring up anything they wanted to at their meetings. This decision appears to have been made in a series of conversations by board members talking two at a time. Doing so allowed them to use a loophole in Section 2.2-3701 of Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, which lets elected officials discuss policy outside of public view as long as there is no quorum present.
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As dust continues to stir on last week’s firing of Hopewell’s city manager and city clerk, the city’s top prosecutor warned in a letter to City Council that the motion to terminate Dr. Concetta Manker may have been made improperly, and because it was, Manker should still be in office. Citing Rule 36 of Robert’s Rule of Order, Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Newman said the motion made at the May 1 meeting did not follow the direction about either the time frame for making the order or the authenticity of the motion made by Ward 4 Councilor Ronnie Ellis. According to the code, which Hopewell follows for the conduct of its meetings, Ellis should have been disqualified from making the motion to reconsider because he did not take part in the original vote on Feb. 13 to oust her.

Two responses to the James Blair Middle School (JBMS) renaming survey used the n‑word in expressions of hate speech targeting Black people. These comments weren’t included in public reports of the survey results and only came to light when I pressed for unredacted records. In March, the Williamsburg‑James City County (WJCC) division surveyed students, staff, parents, attendance zone residents, and community members about renaming JBMS due to Blair’s role in institutionalizing slavery in colonial Virginia. The school division compiled these survey results into a presentation which was shared with the volunteer renaming committee and the WJCC school board. Curious, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the survey data spreadsheets. When I scanned the spreadsheets, I noticed two instances where the comment section read “(Comment redacted because of profane language).” I followed up with the school division to clarify what code citation justified these redactions. The Records Coordinator replied with the unredacted files, writing, “My apologies. I didn’t notice that the file I released was the ‘redacted’ version.”

Connecticut lawmakers are considering a long list of bills that could change which government records are accessible to the public or alter how public meetings are conducted in the state. Altogether, lawmakers have advanced more than a dozen pieces of legislation that seek to restrict the types of records that people can obtain through the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which was passed in 1975 to provide an avenue for the public to learn how their state and local governments are operating. Those bills, which passed out of several legislative committees earlier this year, would eliminate access to higher education records, information on Connecticut Lottery winners, the identities of people involved in hate crimes, the location of domestic violence centers, complaints about police and corrections officers, and the home addresses for numerous groups of public employees.