Under a new state law, some candidates have been put on notice that they may be called upon to provide bank records, invoices and other documents to verify their fundraising and spending. The state Department of Elections will soon release a report on the first-ever outside audits of campaign finance disclosures. In this first round, seven candidates who ran for local office last fall were randomly selected for review. Once the process is completed, the public’s understanding of the audits will be limited to the contents of the agency’s annual report. Department of Elections officials contend that all financial records submitted by candidates during a review are not covered by the state’s Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Virginians have long had easy access to candidates’ campaign finance disclosures, but until now, voters had to trust that candidates accurately reported where their funds came from and how they spent them.

In February 2024, The Times-Dispatch reported that, amid public outcry over issues with Richmond utility bills and meals tax collection, officials under then-Mayor Levar Stoney removed the city’s staff directory from the city website. The directory contained the names, phone numbers and email addresses of City Hall’s many department directors. Without it, Richmond residents were unable to directly contact their highest-paid, most visible and most responsible public servants. At the time, then-Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders said the decision to scrub the directory was made for security reasons. Justifying the move to a dubious City Council, Saunders said bad actors could target department directors’ emails with phishing and other scams. He did not explain the removal of the phone numbers. Officials at times have voiced varying amounts of interest in restoring the directory. But 16 months after it came down, that still hasn’t happened, leaving frustrated residents with no recourse but to dial 311 or general department numbers — and, in many cases, wait on hold for hours. Now, The Times-Dispatch is publishing its own database of department directors’ desk and cellphone numbers. These are public records. Richmond residents’ tax dollars pay to maintain the phone lines, and pay the salaries of the public servants who use them. And, under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, any Virginia resident is entitled to obtain these records at any time.

A former Richmond city employee spent more than $2 million of city funds at three businesses — one registered to his own home and two others registered to the Prince William County home of a woman he met while serving in the U.S. Navy. Officials are investigating all three businesses, which are associated with Reginald Thomas, a former management analyst with the city’s fire department. The Times-Dispatch previously reported that Thomas had used city credit cards and purchase orders to spend nearly $840,000 at RPM Supply Co., LLC, which is registered to his own house on Stevens Street in Henrico County. Now, investigators in City Hall’s Office of the Inspector General are probing an additional $1.2 million in expenses at two separate Virginia companies registered to a house on Harmsworth Drive in Dumfries. According to transaction records obtained by The Times-Dispatch through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, Thomas spent $480,415.18 at a company called McCoy & Ambrose, LLC and $739,394 at a company called J&E Enterprise of Virginia between 2021 and December 2024.

A closely divided Norfolk School Board voted Wednesday to remove Superintendent Sharon Byrdsong as the school system faces demands from Norfolk City Council to close at least 10 schools. The board also unanimously voted to appoint Chief Academic Officer James Pohl as interim superintendent. The vote was a surprise, as it was not included on the board’s meeting agenda — rather members voted to add it to the meeting agenda. But word about the possibility of Byrdsong’s firing got out ahead of the meeting, and the school board meeting room was packed with Norfolk City Council members, teachers, school system employees and other community members who showed up in support of Byrdsong.

A decision by Hopewell City Council to not overrule an opinion that the May 1 firing of the city manager was proper has apparently set the stage for that former employee to file a wrongful-termination lawsuit. The 4-3 decision after a June 10 closed session followed the same lines as the vote to terminate Dr. Concetta Manker. It was done in response to a request from Manker’s attorney to reinstate her by June 20 or the lawyer would see them in court. However, that vote could also validate one of Manker’s potential suit claims that the ouster violated Roberts Rules of Order about the timeliness of a motion to reconsider an attempt to fire Manker Feb. 12 that failed on a 3-3 tie. City Attorney Anthony Bessette advised council that while the termination vote was effective, the reconsideration vote was not because it did not adhere to Roberts Rule 36 requiring any vote reconsiderations to occur on the same day the vote was taken or the next day if a business session was continued. The move came after a closed-session meeting in which Manker’s letter was added to the agenda.

Members of the Martinsville City Council are remaining largely quiet about the federal lawsuit filed by council member Aaron Rawls against the city manager and city sheriff’s deputy. Council members each cited the pending litigation as their reason for not commenting on the suit that Rawls filed against City Manager Aretha Ferrell-Benavides and Deputy Reva Keen. Other council members also declined to comment. The council’s Tuesday meeting was the first public meeting in which Rawls, Ferrell-Benavides and the rest of the council were in attendance. Neither any of the council members nor the pair of residents who signed up to speak at the meeting mentioned the suit. It was business as usual among officials and staff, who all conducted themselves no differently than in past meetings.

In a flurry of contracts inked a decade ago, some of Illinois’ most powerful political figures declared it was time to fix their obsolete and expensive computer systems. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle called for an online method to deliver error-free property records and tax bills. Then-Clerk of the county Circuit Court Dorothy Brown wanted seamless technology so everyone could read and file cases on their laptops. And the Illinois Supreme Court sought a single unified dashboard linking the appellate courts with all 102 county courthouses from Cairo to Galena. In a three-year window starting in 2015, executives of a little-known Plano, Texas, corporation — Tyler Technologies Inc. — persuaded all three to give them the crucial job. The collective price tag was initially $75 million and what officials called the “go-live” deadlines were three to five years out. But since then, an Injustice Watch and Chicago Tribune investigation found, the cumulative projected cost swelled to more than $250 million while execution was dogged by slowdowns and shortcomings. Two of the projects have yet to reach their declared finish line, and the third is still in need of fixes.