Statewide

Report says police resistant to change in Virginia

Three years after the death of George Floyd, a committee tasked to survey police accountability in Virginia says there’s work to be done because of resistance from police departments, sheriff’s offices, training academies and legislators. The report also flagged weak oversight of police departments by DCJS, which does not use data to monitor the behavior of officers or police departments, including pretextual traffic stops. And it underscored Virginia’s opaque transparency laws, which critics say shield nearly everything police-related from public view. Valerie Slater, executive director of the RISE for Youth Coalition, told the committee that “even gathering basic information” is difficult under Virginia’s current laws. Those laws protect police personnel records. Police misconduct in Virginia is entirely handled by internal affairs units, or, on some occasions, in the courts when a complainant brings a federal lawsuit. The Richmond Police Department settles a number of these each year, typically with nondisclosure agreements that gag complainants.

richmond.com

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Local

Search for new registrar sparks debate and allegations of political motives

The Pittsylvania County Electoral Board met in Chatham on Monday evening to interview a candidate for the position of general registrar in closed session. At the beginning of the meeting, Anita White (D), board chair, shared a concern she had received about the rules surrounding having a board meeting on the date of a county holiday closure. According to the Pittsylvania County government website, all county offices were closed as of 5 p.m. on Friday, June 30, and would reopen at normal times on Wednesday, July 5. Board member David Law (R) asked, “Election Day is a holiday, as well, but all of us work on Election Day, right?” “That’s not the point I’m making tonight,” White said. “But you said there’s a question that we shouldn’t be here because it’s a holiday,” Law said. “I didn’t say today was a holiday. If I get a question from the community, I need to be able to respond to it,” White replied. “Right now, I can’t.” White asked for a motion to amend the agenda allowing for public comment after the closed session. “As long as I’m chair, we will have public comment, whether I put it on the agenda or not,” White added. Arlene Burkhardt (R), board secretary, said that she would make that motion only if there was a time limit on public comments.

chathamstartribune.com

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Local

KG Supervisor Collins wants county residents exempted from FOIA fees

A conversation about new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requirements led King George Supervisor T.C. Collins to express firm opposition to the county charging its own citizens for documents, and to push for information on the possibility for change. The conversation began with the County’s attorney, Kelly Lackey, informing the Board that, as of July 1, all public bodies are required to have a written policy that explains how charges are assessed and what fees are applied for responses to FOIA requests. King George already has such a policy that has been in place since 2018, but given the new law, Lackey said she just wanted to dust it off and bring it to the Board members in case they wanted to make any changes. Under the current policy, if the request does not require over 30 minutes of staff time, there’s no charge. Lackey recommended retaining that part of the policy and proposed adding that there would not be a bill if the cost is under $10. Putting perspective on the rationale for charging for some FOIA requests, Lackey noted that FOIA requests take significant staff time and can be abused. In the legal profession, for example, it’s very costly to go to litigation. Instead some people will use FOIA to get information you would otherwise get in the discovery process, she explained.

newsontheneck.com

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Local

Search for Charlottesville city manager narrows after Rogers drops out

The field of candidates under consideration for Charlottesville's next city manager narrowed on Wednesday after one dropped out of the running. Sitting interim City Manager Michael Rogers has withdrawn his name from the pool, according to a Wednesday statement from the city. The news may come as a surprise to some. While Mayor Lloyd Snook had previously said the city would be considering keeping Rogers on full-time, Rogers had never formally announced he had applied for the position. Council Member Brian Pinkston told The Daily Progress on Wednesday that Rogers had been among three candidates in consideration for the position. “We’re down to other candidates,” Pinkston said, declining to provide their names. However, there is some reason to believe the council has already made its decision. Both the Wednesday statement and Pinkston said that the final announcement will be issued in mid-July. Asked if any of the council members know who the new city manager will be, Pinkston paused before answering, “Yes.”

dailyprogress.com

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Local

Citing a slew of complaints, Lynchburg Republicans formally censure city's vice mayor

The executive committee of the Lynchburg Republican City Committee formally handed down a censure of Vice Mayor Chris Faraldi on Monday, rebuking him for a slew of actions they believe failed to meet the expectations of conduct put forth by the party, according to a news release from the party. The basis of the censure, according to the resolution, dates back to actions of the vice mayor as early as the body’s heated Feb. 14 meeting, all the way through to the body’s most recent meeting on June 27, where Faraldi led a push to adjourn Lynchburg City Council’s meeting before a scheduled discussion on a controversial workplace resolution put forth by another Republican member of council. The censure resolution starts by accusing Faraldi of committing a “perceived abuse of his power” by asking a law enforcement officer to spy on Ward III Councilor Jeff Helgeson the night of the Feb. 14 meeting, which is when Helgeson was caught on the microphone calling Mayor Stephanie Reed the “stupidest person I’ve ever seen,” she claims.

newsadvance.com

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Local

Proposed LCPS board agenda item policy criticized, defended

Two Loudoun County Public Schools board members say a change in the way discussion items get on the board agendawill have the effect of silencing them, with one saying it was designed to “stifle the discourse of the minority.” Denise Kofoid Corbo, At-Large, and Tiffany L. Polifko, Broad Run, say a proposed change to Policy 2430 will effectively muzzle them. Currently, any board member can have an item placed on the agenda for discussion. However, if the change is adopted, a board member would need two fellow members to endorse the item to get it on the agenda. At the board’s June 27 meeting, Polifko said she’s served with “one hand tied behind my back” since taking office in November. Polifko, who has often been on the losing end of votes and has often had her conservative amendments to board policies voted down, said the change would stifle discussion of minority viewpoints. Atoosa Reaser, Algonkian, countered that Polifko misunderstood the proposed change. If approved, Reaser said board members could still discuss items during the new business and board member comments periods of meetings and those topics could then be made action items. Those are the only items board members vote on at meetings. Kofoid Corbo — who is suing the board and Serotkin for $2 million for the right to participate in board meetings remotely — said in a June 26 Facebook post that the change is designed to restrict board members from accessing school division data.

loudountimes.com

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In other states

Memo shows Missouri AG helped craft governor’s plan to weaken open records laws

For two years, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has pushed unsuccessfully to allow government agencies to withhold more information from the public and charge more for any records that are turned over. And according to a 2021 memo obtained by The Independent, one of the architects of Parson’s plan to weaken government transparency laws was Andrew Bailey. At the time, Bailey was serving as the governor’s general counsel. In January, he was sworn in as Missouri’s attorney general, the office in charge of enforcing the Sunshine Law and making sure government agencies are complying with its provisions on open records and public meetings.

missouriindependent.com

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Nationwide

Ransomware criminals are dumping kids’ private files online after school hacks

The confidential documents stolen from schools and dumped online by ransomware gangs are raw, intimate and graphic. They describe student sexual assaults, psychiatric hospitalizations, abusive parents, truancy — even suicide attempts. “Please do something,” begged a student in one leaked file, recalling the trauma of continually bumping into an ex-abuser at a school in Minneapolis. Other victims talked about wetting the bed or crying themselves to sleep. Complete sexual assault case folios containing these details were among more than 300,000 files dumped online in March after the 36,000-student Minneapolis Public Schools refused to pay a $1 million ransom. Other exposed data included medical records, discrimination complaints, Social Security numbers and contact information of district employees. Often strapped for cash, districts are grossly ill-equipped not just to defend themselves but to respond diligently and transparently when attacked, especially as they struggle to help kids catch up from the pandemic and grapple with shrinking budgets. Months after the Minneapolis attack, administrators have not delivered on their promise to inform individual victims. Unlike for hospitals, no federal law exists to require this notification from schools.

pilotonline.com

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Opinion

Independence Day behind us, let us renew efforts to demand Freedom of Information

Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President Upon Signing the “Freedom of Information Act,” July 4, 1966. Thanks to the candor of his press secretary, Bill Moyers, we now know that President Lyndon Johnson resisted — even on the day he reluctantly affixed his signature to it — the federal Freedom of Information Act. We know that the hero of the story, Utah’s Representative John Moss, fought for twelve years “against his elders in Congress” — to secure enactment of the legislation intended to shine a light into “the dark corridors of power” and that he might never have succeeded but for the intervention of a group of newspapers editors. We know that, over time, laws emanating from the Freedom of Information Act — and drawing inspiration from the Freedom of Information Act — were enacted in every state. Some were strong and some weak. Each state’s was uniquely its own.

nkytribune.com

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