Halifax County residents asked the board of supervisors at the Tuesday evening meeting to be transparent with them and consider livestreaming meetings in the future. “I think we need some transparency. I know this board is opposed to public livestreaming; I would again ask that we do that,” said Linda Shepperd, a resident of the county’s Election District 5, during the citizens’ comments portion of the meeting. “If you don’t like what we say, turn off our mics, but we need to be able to hear what you say. Not everybody can get to this meeting. If school boards can do it, churches can do it, the federal government can do it, the state can do it, then so can you.” A standing-room-only crowd attended Tuesday’s meeting held in the supervisors’ meeting room inside the Halifax County Administration Building. The room was so packed that the county’s emergency services coordinator Jason Johnson announced prior to the meeting that some people would need to move out into the hallway, to remain in compliance with the fire code.

State Del. Delores McQuinn, a Democrat who previously served on the Richmond City Council, told city officials she doesn’t mind the black snakes that come onto her Henrico County yard from an overgrown lot the city owns next door. The venomous copperheads are a different story. “I believe cleaning that space up will help assist in keeping down the population of reptiles,” McQuinn wrote in a letter last year asking if she and her husband can buy the lot to “make it an extension of our yard space.” The Council seemed poised to approve the sale to McQuinn as part of its consent agenda, but first-term Councilor Andrew Breton (1st District) asked for it to be delayed so the city could entertain other offers on the property and “get the best market price.” Richmond’s city code says the Council cannot consider an ordinance to sell land in response to an unsolicited offer unless the Council has first voted to declare the property surplus. A surplus declaration sends a signal the city no longer needs a property and is open to selling it. The Council didn’t follow that step for the property sought by McQuinn. The ordinance before the Council Monday effectively waived the rule. If passed, it would have declared the property surplus and authorized the sale to McQuinn at the same time.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents made 4,264 arrests in Virginia in the first seven months of the year, nearly three times the number for the entire previous year, according to an analysis of federal court records. That figure exceeds the combined total of ICE arrests in Virginia during the same seven-month period across each of the four previous years, from 2021 through 2024, according to the Deportation Data Project, a nonprofit research collective based at UC Berkeley. Data from the Deportation Data Project, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, may be the only publicly available source that provides a detailed look at ICE enforcement activities on a case-by-case level. The anonymized data includes arrest date, location, any past criminal records, country of origin, age and other case information.

A multimillion-dollar plan to revamp Arkansas’ child welfare information system ended in failure last year, but state officials say the current system still meets their needs. The Arkansas Department of Human Services terminated its contract with Chicago-based RedMane Technology last September after the contractor did not deliver the product the state wanted, according to documents obtained via the state Freedom of Information Act. RedMane Technology inked a $44 million deal with Kansas in July for a similar project. Emails and reports obtained from DHS document RedMane’s lack of progress on the project and state officials’ subsequent frustration over the course of two years.

The Energy Department is being sued over its plan to purge old Freedom of Information Act requests. The nonprofit group American Oversight filed the suit in U.S. District Court last week. It challenges DOE’s effort to require individuals to re-confirm their interest in FOIA requests. In an August notice in the Federal Register, DOE announced that those with a FOIA request submitted prior to October 1, 2024, must email the agency within 30 days to keep the request open. American Oversight argues the move violates the law and would open the door for other agencies to sidestep their obligations under FOIA.