Transparency News, 3/8/2022

 

Tuesday
March 8, 2022

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

state & local news stories

 

VCOG's annual
bill chart

 

Gov. Glenn Youngkin has demanded he be involved in the hiring of next head of the Virginia Community College System, expressing concern over declining enrollment and jobs going unfilled. The State Board for Community Colleges will name a new chancellor this summer, replacing Glenn DuBois, who in August announced his retirement. The search committee has begun to interview candidates. Youngkin says his office has been excluded from the hiring process. In a letter to Nathaniel Bishop, chair of the State Board for Community Colleges and the head of the search committee, dated Sunday and obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Youngkin asked for a briefing of the board’s strategy, a discussion about the search, and a list of candidates and their qualifications. “Our exclusion from this process demonstrates misfeasance, and I would be derelict if I did not express that the next chancellor should be aligned with the governor” on issues of workforce development, transparency and expanding educational opportunities. In a statement, Bishop called the hiring process “confidential” but said the board shares Youngkin’s desire to hire a chancellor who collaborates with the administration.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A local political action group announced on Monday that it will seek to have a Loudoun court force the release of an "independent review" of the school division's handling of a pair of sexual assaults that occurred in two Loudoun County Public Schools, according to a March 7 news release. LCPS, which commissioned the review, has previously said the report would not be made public. The petition for an injunction does not seek the release of exempt materials or information related to the victims, but rather non-exempt materials and information related to the review. “We have repeatedly called for the release of the results of the so-called independent review, with appropriate redactions for privacy, only to watch LCPS claim that the review was actually nothing more than legal advice protected by attorney-client privilege," said Ian Prior, executive director for Fight for Schools, said in a prepared statement.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

Spotsylvania County School Board Chair Kirk Twigg requested a four-week delay in the consideration of a plan to spend $14 million in carryover funds from the school division’s fiscal year 2021 budget. In an email sent the morning of Jan. 11—the day after he was elected School Board chair—to Supervisor Timothy McLaughlin, Supervisor David Ross, County Administrator Ed Petrovitch and Deputy County Administrator Mark Cole, Twigg wrote, “We request that you allow four weeks [February 20] to compile this specific list of itemized investments from the available $14M.” However, Twigg has said at subsequent meetings that he did not ask for a delay in considering the carryover request. In a statement made at the beginning of the School Board’s Feb. 14 meeting, he said, “I would like to inform the community that I did not tell the county staff to reschedule the public hearing on the carryover.” In that same Jan. 11 email, which was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, Twigg wrote that the new “cohesive board majority, dedicated to serving both you and the citizens of this community with servitude, excellence and professionalism” wished to “guarantee specific itemized costs that the past school superintendent & school board majority failed to present you, the county board, toward enhanced fund distribution throughout the school system.”
The Free Lance-Star

"Currently the bad guys have most of our critical systems locked up," Dave Burhop, director of the division of legislative automated systems, told Senate Clerk Susan Schaar and then-House Clerk Suzette Denslow in an early morning email on Dec. 13. The "extremely sophisticated malware" temporarily crippled legislative agencies, but never spread to the rest of state government. The legislative IT agency didn't pay a ransom to restore the system but found ways to work around the malicious malware to run the assembly on backup networks to ensure the "continuity of government" in case of disaster. Burhop said he can't comment on an ongoing State Police investigation into the attack on the legislative IT system or the extent of the damage. Burhop welcomed a legislative debate over investments in the state budget that "will help strengthen the defenses that protect the assets the public entrusts to us."
Richmond Times-Dispatch

 

 

Categories: