Transparency News, 2/6/2023

 

Monday
February 6, 2023

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter
Contact us at vcog@opengovva.org

 

state & local news stories

VCOG's annual legislative chart of FOIA and access-related bills

The apparent lack of evidence against Rock Creek pastor John Blanchard in a prostitution solicitation case is a lie, according to a Virginia Beach attorney who says his belief is validated by emails he received through a Freedom of Information Act request. According to attorney and Del. Tim Anderson, the new evidence is a video which, according to a Jan. 17 email from Chesterfield County Police Chief Capt. Jeffrey Katz to Davenport, "incontrovertibly validates our assertions that Blanchard knowingly sought to engage in sex with an underage girl in a Chesterfield County hotel room on the day of his arrest." Anderson submitted a FOIA request for all police memos and internal documents related to Blanchard, and received around 350 pages of documents.
WAVY

Newly obtained documents shed light on behavioral problems with a 6-year-old boy in the months leading up to when police said he intentionally shot his first-grade teacher at a Newport News elementary school. 13News Now obtained documents from the school division through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. In our request, we asked for emails between Zwerner and school administrators regarding behavioral reports and concerns about the boy who fired the shot. The documents include dozens of emails between Zwerner and school administrators throughout the school year. 
WRIC

Tracing family history is more popular than ever. But it is not easy for everyone, especially for many of the descendants of enslaved and free Black people in Virginia, according to historians. Despite the challenge, there are people in Richmond working to make sure the documents that do exist are available to everyone. Lydia Neuroth spends her days at the Library of Virginia taking the documents that do exist, piecing them together and making that data accessible to help to piece together Virginia history that has been hidden in boxes for decades. Neuroth is the project manager for Virginia Untold at the Library of Virginia. The initiative provides digital access to records and documents for some of Virginia's enslaved and free Black people.
WTVR

A judge has tossed out a Shenandoah County supervisor’s invasion of privacy charge that a prosecutor called a “retaliatory” move by the elected official’s accuser that lacked standing. Woodstock attorney Bradley Pollack appeared in Augusta County General District Court for a hearing on his misdemeanor count of invasion of privacy. Pollack represents District 3 on the Shenandoah County Board of Supervisors. Retired Judge Lucretia Carrico dismissed Pollack’s charge, which stemmed from a local resident’s complaint filed last summer. The resident, Michael Donovan, identified Keezletown resident David Briggman as co-defendant. Briggman stood charged with a dozen misdemeanors, including computer-related offenses, some stemming from Donovan’s complaints. Carrico also dismissed all charges against Briggman. Donovan alleges that Pollack used a computer to invade his privacy by allowing Briggman to use his login credentials to access the circuit court online system. Donovan alleges that Briggman posted a sealed circuit court opinion letter on his social media page. Sealed files are not accessible through the online system. The letter indicated it should be sealed. The clerk’s office had not immediately sealed the letter.
The Northern Virginia Daily
 

editorials & columns

"The important thing in those situations is to promptly accept ownership of a misstep, do what’s necessary to clean up the mess, and make the changes necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again."

Incompetence or malevolence? These are the two most plausible reasons why the Youngkin administration plunged school districts across the commonwealth into fiscal uncertainty last week. All signs point to the former, that bureaucratic ineptitude resulted in public schools expecting $201 million more than the state plans to provide. But Youngkin’s relentless assaults on Virginia’s schools — his preoccupation with tip lines and “divisive concepts,” rewriting history curricula and banishing the non-existent boogeyman of critical race theory — fuels suspicion of the latter. Adding to that suspicion is the fact that the administration didn’t bother to inform local school districts until Jan. 27. That was weeks after someone in the executive branch — the governor isn’t saying who — identified the error and sounded the alarm. What happened in the interim? Oh, only much of the hard work of building a state budget — a budget that now must be amended to accommodate the administration’s enormous math error. Hey, mistakes happen. Nobody’s perfect. The important thing in those situations is to promptly accept ownership of a misstep, do what’s necessary to clean up the mess, and make the changes necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
The Virginian-Pilot


 

Categories: