Former Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons, who resigned in March, is receiving more than $100,000 in severance payments from the state, according to information obtained from the governor’s office through a public records request. Before Coons resigned as chief executive of the Virginia Department of Education on March 14, the department had violated state procurement laws, failed to publish teaching materials for the new history standards that the department promised to teachers last year, and hemorrhaged longtime staffers since Coons’ arrival two years ago. The governor’s office in 2023 shared Balow’s severance terms in response to a public records request from the Richmond Times-Dispatch. But the governor’s office denied a nearly identical public records request from the newspaper two years later regarding Coons. The governor’s office said it was entirely withholding a 10-page document regarding Coons’ severance, citing personnel information. The governor’s office fulfilled a subsequent public records request for the payments made to Coons related to the severance deal.

Virginia’s inaugural audit of campaign finance reports raises almost as many questions about state oversight than it does in answering how accurately a group of seven randomly selected candidates listed their contributions and expenses. In a report to the General Assembly released Tuesday, the Department of Elections suggested changes to the audit law, providing more time to complete future reviewing and updating the agency’s computer systems. Officials at the Department of Elections said early Tuesday morning that they would have no comment on the report. They stuck to that message, even after being told that Cardinal News found apparent inaccuracies in some findings. “The Department will not be available for press interviews,” said Andrea Gaines, the agency’s FOIA officer.

Between April 11 and June 17, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent seven letters to University officials, according to documents obtained by The Cavalier Daily through a Freedom of information Act request. In these letters, the Justice Department sought confirmation that the University had removed affirmative action from its admissions policies and had ended Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives. Some letters also alleged that the University had failed to protect students against antisemitism. The letters did not confirm whether or not the Justice Department’s demands had been met.

An internal audit of the city of Richmond’s fuel purchasing cards found lax oversight of how employees were using them, identified at least $44,000 in “questionable transactions” and led to multiple people being referred to the inspector general’s office for a deeper look at whether wrongdoing occurred. The report released Tuesday by the office of Auditor Riad Ali examined the fleet fuel program, through which thousands of purchasing cards are issued to employees to refuel city vehicles at pumps run by the city’s fuel vendor. A lack of effective controls on the cards and oversight of how they were used, the audit found, put the city “at a heightened risk for fraud, waste, and abuse.” “The city lacks a structured approach to monitoring fuel card transactions, allowing irregularities and policy violations to go undetected,” the report said.

The nine months that Stacey Davenport spent as King William County’s administrator will cost the county almost a quarter of a million dollars, records show. According to a Freedom of Information Request by the Tidewater Review, Davenport’s salary was $190,000 a year, $15,000 more than her predecessor Percy Ashcraft. Davenport abruptly resigned June 13. The county is facing the financial fallout from the resignations at a time when it has raised concerns about its coffers and hit taxpayers with a 3.5-cent increase in real estate bills for fiscal year 2026. Davenport, the former commonwealth’s attorney in Chesterfield County, was appointed as King William County’s administrator by the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 23 last year after Ashcraft quit in August. After Davenport’s resignation, the board waived a three-month notice requirement but approved a severance package equivalent to six months’ salary, about $95,000.

A discussion of three simple reforms that would strengthen Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act and make it easier for citizens to enforce their rights in court: (1) Explicitly Allow Declaratory Relief, (2) Eliminate “Technical Violations” and (3) No Discretionary Withholdings if the Government Broke the Law.