Accomac -- The Accomac Board of Supervisors voted to publish the county’s legal notices in the Eastern Shore News rather than the Eastern Shore Post -- even though the Post has higher circulation. Supervisor Wanda Thornton said it was determined that the Post is less available because its popularity makes it next to impossible to find a Post just hours after copies have been put out, whereas the News is still on newsstands much later.

Blacksburg -- Town council began discussing a developer’s proposal for a Blacksburg school site in closed meetings in September. The Montgomery County board of supervisors discussed the proposals in closed sessions in October and November. Nobody went to the school board to talk about it -- even though the school board still owned the site, school board member Wat Hopkins said. He didn’t know there was interest in the property until The Roanoke Times published stories about the county and town ’s discussions with developers.

Culpeper County -- Sheriff H. Lee Hart got more than $70,000 in anonymous gifts over a four-year period. Under mounting pressure, he revealed that the money came from two sources: SWIFT, an international monetary company with a Culpeper branch, and a county resident, Sumner McKnight. The county rules committee later approved a proposed "hear-no-evil, do-no-evil" policy for dealing with such funds. The new rule requires that anonymous funds be funneled through a third party, such as an attorney or a charity.

Fairfax County -- The county’s watchdog agency for consumer rights apparently needed a watchdog of its own. As reported by The Washington Post’s Lisa Rein, the Department of Cable Communications and Consumer Protection had been so poorly run that its top managers falsified records and spent money in countless lavish ways -- including on favored employees doing improper duties at public expense -- and intimidated others who questioned the wrongdoing. In an editorial, the Post said, "Fairfax County has some serious bureaucratic housecleaning to do if it hopes to maintain its reputation as a model of good management. "

Harrisonburg -- Selections for mayor, vice mayor, city manager and city attorney were decided long before the city council’s organizational meeting. The two incumbents and three council members-elect met after the May election to decide the issue in private. It was all perfectly legal: Private meetings among three or more council members are forbidden under Virginia law, but because the three newcomers had not yet been sworn in, the meeting was legal. Attorney General Jerry Kilgore tried to get General Assembly approval to extend FOIA to members-elect, but the 2004 House of Delegates balked. The private session was needed, local officials told The Daily News & Record, "to avoid the public discord seen at the last two organizational meetings. ’

Haymarket -- Laptops are a blessing -- within reason. But members of town council discarded open-government principles when they turned on Instant Messaging during council’s public meetings. Randi Delotte Reid, editor/publisher of The Bull Run Observer, wrote town officials: "If IM has nothing to do with the public’s business, then it is clearly inappropriate and unethical for public officials to be conducting private business on the public’s time and public’s payroll. If IM concerns the public’s business, then conducting a closed IM discussion within a public meeting clearly violates the letter and spirit of FOIA. "

Henry County -- A school board member secretly taped a board meeting in Richmond last summer, causing a stir among some other board members. Board member Mary Martin said she recorded the board’s July 19 meeting because she was concerned about the meeting’s legality (next time, she said, she’d put her tape recorder out in the open). School board attorney George Lyle said, "if someone wants to record a meeting, they can, as long as it doesn’t interfere with a public meeting." The school superintendent said proper notice was given because a Martinsville Bulletin reporter was present at a July 1 board meeting when the Richmond trip was set. However, state law requires that all meeting notices be posted in a prominent place and at the office of the superintendent or her clerk. The meeting also was not listed in the board’s schedule on the system’s Web site. A Bulletin editorial called for an end to out-of-town work sessions: "We suspect few area residents would be willing or able to drive about three hours to hear a discussion that, by all rights, should have been held in Henry County. "

King George County -- Squabbling between the school board and the board of supervisors surfaced this fall when the school superintendent filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the supervisors. School board members directed her to invoke FOIA to get a copy "of any centralized purchasing ordinance (that) the Board of Supervisors contends is applicable to the School Board." Minutes of any meeting where the ordinance was discussed also were sought. Under Virginia law, governing bodies have the same access rights as anybody else -- but routine document-sharing seldom requires a formal FOI request.

Louisa County -- When a reporter for The Lake Anna Observer sought minutes and other public documents from the local planning commission, he was accused of harassment. When his wife, the paper’s county editor, asked some related questions (at the entrance to the county office building), she was accused of trying to hinder a commissioner’s performance of duties. The commissioner, P. T. Spencer, then distributed a four-page statement at the next meeting, demanding that the paper (and only the paper?) be charged for all public documents, even including minutes -- and disclosing that he’d asked the local prosecutor to investigate his harassment charges (the prosecutor nixed that idea). The paper reported, among other things, that a work session had been held without proper notice, work-session minutes were not kept as required, and the agenda packet was not disclosed properly. At one point, Spencer threw down a FOIA handbook and suggested that the reporter, a former commission member, did not understand the law. "I’ve got no problem with freedom of information; I think it’s the best thing in the world," Spencer said. "But when you start using it to abuse people, because you think you’re a big shot in the press, that don’t cut it. We’ve not denied those people anything, and we ’re not going to."

Lynchburg -- Lynchburg College Dean John Eccles ordered that all copies of an independent, student-produced newspaper be confiscated -- and recycled, all because it lacked permission from the school administration to even exist. Student Editor Rich Danker said he was going to keep publishing, without permission. Columnist Barnie Day had a suggestion: If the private college invoked constitutional rulings to be "as ham-handed as it wants to be," the students should buy a bulk U.S. mail permit and mail the paper to every box address on campus. Day promised to help raise the money.

Middlesex County -- In still another squabble between school systems and boards of supervisors, Middlesex County Administrator Charles Culley complained that he could not get a copy of the county’s proposed school budget, yet he could read about it in the local paper. Acting School Superintendent Cynthia Pitts replied, "I can’t give out a copy of our budget without board approval." (The newspaper had a reporter at the school-budget workshop meeting.)

Norfolk -- Secret summits happen for the silliest of reasons, but Norfolk City Council hit a new low when it pulled City Treasurer Tom Moss and City Manager Regina Williams behind closed doors to try to settle a feud over city windshield decals. (Moss wants them eliminated; Williams worries about lost revenue.) The Virginian-Pilot noted in an editorial that no open-meeting exemption exists that permits the council to hold a secret summit between warring department heads. Nor is there one that permits city council members to go behind closed doors "to insult each other -- or, for that matter, for Mayor Paul Fraim to lecture them on how to behave in public." City Attorney Bernard Pishko "claimed the private airing was permitted under an exemption for talking about legal action that conceivably might arise." The legal-action exemption can be invoked only when there ’s a pending lawsuit or a known likely litigant.

Northumberland County -- Faced with a neighborhood fight over parking for a B&B, a three-member majority of the board went into a secret discussion -- without ever leaving the meeting room. Chairman Ronald Jett and supervisors Joseph Self and Richard Haynie began an inaudible discussion, whispering comments back and forth rather than speaking loudly and clearly. When the deliberations were complete, the board had agreed to add a condition to the B&B proposal, providing that all parking for the bed and breakfast would be on the street and that a shared driveway.would stay open. A citizen later asked the supervisors to please speak up and to invest in proper microphone equipment. A similar request had been made three times before.

Orange County -- Following a closed meeting, the school board voted 3-2 to fire Superintendent David Baker (by not renewing his contract). In doing so, it spoke in code that would make the CIA proud. Its public vote came on "personnel decision 45-50," which never identified Baker by name. In a later recess, Baker’s supporters learned from a dissenting member what had happened. One citizen called it "the most underhanded procedure" she had ever experienced. Supporters rushed the dais and began to yell at the board majority. The chairman insisted the anonymous action met disclosure requirements since part of the wording called for the school division to advertise for the position of superintendent.

Portsmouth -- General District Judge Archie Elliott Jr. was barred from his courthouse at least temporarily, and reportedly was asked to undergo a psychological evaluation. Perceived threats by Elliott against Judge Morton V. Whitlow, apparently stemming from disagreement over who should be the head judge, were said to be at the heart of the action. Elliott wrote and distributed letters to his colleagues, legislators and other judges, saying the selection process was unfair, The Virginian-Pilot said. Everyone in authority was mum. As a Pilot editorial noted, "That’s the ludicrous state of affairs when the Virginia Judicial Inquiry and Review Commission (JIRC) suspends a judge." Judges, it added, should have no more right to anonymity than private citizens when allegations evolve into official action. By law, the review commission’s work is secret unless the commission recommends that the Virginia Supreme Court censure or remove a judge.

Richmond -- After being forced to resign his office, former House Speaker S. Vance Wilkins wanted a private Saturday morning unveiling of his official portrait. There was just one problem: the Capitol is a public building. Legislative leaders turned thumbs down on a private ceremony; editorial writers reminded everybody the $7,500 portrait had been paid for with public money; a Times-Dispatch editorialist suggested that art connoisseurs might better spend time at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Smith Mountain Lake -- Supervisors from Bedford, Pittsylvania and Franklin counties and their staffs repeatedly met behind closed doors to discuss re-licensing for the Appalachian Power Co.’s hydroelectric dam on the lake, The regional committee said it was discussing "possible or probable" litigation and was thus exempt from holding public meetings under the Freedom of Information Act. The license expires in 2010. Before then, Apco has to file with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and take input from environmental, civic and governmental groups. Under its current license, the company controls all of the lake and the shoreline. What the three counties want comes down to one thing: control of the lake’s future development. Officials refused to take public comment, deciding instead to advertise the need for citizen participation at a federal hearing in Gretna in late January.

Staunton -- Invoking a FOIA exemption allowing governing bodies to discuss information in private if the information is related to possible terrorist activity, city council held a closed meeting to talk about possible present or future gang activity in the community. The Staunton News Leader questioned "the use of a Sept. 11-inspired law to bar the public from a meeting where city council would discuss something that -- depending on which version of the story you believe -- either was something going on far from here or happening in our backyard." "There were some things that came up that should’ve been kept in a closed session. But a lot of what was discussed could have easily been made public. That’s where I have the problem with this," Councilman Dickie Bell said. "If this is such an important issue, and it is, then we need to be sharing what we can with the public." Bell credited news-media pressure for forcing a later public forum. "We don’t have a problem like in L.A. or Fairfax, but we do have some indicators that are showing up in the community," Police Chief Jim Williams told the forum crowd.

Staunton -- When closed meetings end, governing bodies must publicly certify members have only discussed permissible topics and subjects, properly spelled out before discussions ever began. But to what ends must elected or appointed officials go to swear publicly that they’ve not broken the law? City council assumed it was okay simply by opening its work-room door, taking a certification vote, then going home. But there was a problem: according to The News Virginian, lights were turned off in the adjoining room, public and press routinely waited in a lobby area some distance from the closed meeting, and nobody could know when a closed meeting had ended. As the FOIA office’s Maria Everett said, "if they don’t notify the public, it’s not clear what they’re doing." Council fixed the problem; lights in the adjoining room are turned on, doors are opened and council members wait a few minutes for reporters to enter the small work room to witness the certification vote. But the paper said, "Council members would earn more credit if they’d just do what their neighboring localities do: Go into the larger council chambers, face the people, and certify. "