Transparency News, 1/3/2023
Tuesday
January 3, 2023
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state & local news stories
ICYMI: VCOG's recap of the month that was is online here.
Amigo Wade, director of DLS, suspects the desire to work in government must run in his family. His younger brother is a City Council member in Charlottesville and previously was a longtime School Board member. Wade has worked at DLS for more than 20 years, and a frame on the wall in his office doesn’t let him forget. A few years into his work for the division, Wade says, he couldn’t remember exactly when his first legislative session was (it was 1998). So a colleague, Maria Everett, took a marker and wrote the date of his first legislative session on the wall in his old office. “Just before the old General Assembly Building was demolished, Maria cut what she had written from the wall, framed it, and gave it to me as a gift,” he said. And in his time working for DLS, he’s enjoyed how his division helps legislators translate their ideas into actionable policy.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Virginia is home to some of the nation’s oldest documents, squirreled away for centuries on the shelves of its 120 circuit courts. But encasing many of the pages of the volumes stored on those shelves is an unlikely and unwelcome material: a form of plastic known as cellulose acetate that was used between the 1930s and 1990s to laminate aged and delicate documents. Once seen by archivists and conservators as a cutting-edge form of preservation, cellulose acetate lamination today is known to be a major threat to the conservation of documents because of the damage it causes over time. “If not addressed now, records that managed to survive three centuries of wars, courthouse fires, and natural disasters will not survive another three centuries,” said a report from the Library of Virginia to the General Assembly this December.
Virginia Mercury
New accommodations await the Halifax County Board of Supervisors for their first meeting of the new year. The board will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in a revamped space in the county administration office building at 1050 Mary Bethune St. The first sights that will greet the board of supervisors walking into their new quarters are large flat-screen TV monitors mounted to the ceiling, the words “Halifax County Board of Supervisors” in bold lettering with the county’s emblem below the wording on the wall behind them as they take their seats in executive-style boardroom chairs in front of newly refinished faux-granite countertops. “The sound system is much more reliable with microphones that will pick up all discussions in the room,” County Administrator Scott Simpson explained. “There are multiple TV monitors for both the board and the public to view, providing better opportunities to display mapping, presentations or site plans for a solar project.” The new board room also provides the ability to incorporate people into the meeting via Zoom. For instance, if a board member cannot attend the meeting in person and needs to participate via Zoom, he/she can do that. If an outside group has a presentation on the meeting agenda and cannot physically attend the meeting, that group may tune in via Zoom and give their presentation using that online meeting platform, Simpson stated.
The Gazette-Virginian
