Category: Government Transparency
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Lack of Credit, RVA Edition
by Jon Baliles City Hall has spent the last few months trying to fix the meals tax fiasco where they were charging restaurants thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in penalties and interest which accrued that the restaurants never knew about and about which the city never made any attempt to contact them, so…
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Spying in Salem
by Scott Dreyer On March 9, 2010, in the heated struggle to approve the controversial “Obamacare” legislation (aka “Affordable Care Act”), then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) made national headlines when she tried to support the bill and remarked, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in…
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Ignoring FOIA?
by Joe Fitzgerald I’ve wondered since college, if not high school, what happens when a public body decides to just ignore the Freedom of Information Act. I don’t know if that’s what the Rockingham County School Board is doing right now, but if they are, the criticism might be just the cost of doing business.…
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Fairness + Accountability = Thriving City
by Jon Baliles The city of Richmond seems to be trying to plug all of the holes in its boat, also known as the U.S.S. Meals Tax Fiasco, that has been taking on water for months. It seems that the city is finally wiping out the erroneous meals tax payments and interest they had charged…
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Eclipsing Speech in RVA
by Jon Baliles Last month, City Council applied a few new stringent guardrails to public comment at Council meetings by altering their Rules of Procedure under the guise of “streamlining” meetings. Now, I am all for free speech, but I also understand that people showing up to Council meetings to push for a ceasefire, fight…
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The Letter
by Joe Fitzgerald “Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane.” Depending on your age, you may think of this as the opening to the Box Tops biggest and most iconic hit. If you don’t follow pop music, you may think any song that begins with “gimme” might be from a news story about a county school…
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Loudoun County Schools Defy FOIA Requests
by Kerry Dougherty Luke Rosiak is the best investigative reporter in Virginia. There isn’t a close second. Several years ago, The Daily Wire reporter uncovered Loudoun County Public Schools’ attempts to hide serial bathroom sexual assaults from the public. Rosiak’s reporting ultimately resulted in the firing of former school superintendent Scott Ziegler. And the election…
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Look What UVA Is Hiding
by James A. Bacon Acting on behalf of The Jefferson Council, Walter Smith has filed a complaint in Henrico County against the University of Virginia, seeking a remedy for its refusal to supply documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Smith serves in a volunteer capacity as chair of the Council’s research committee. The suit…
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Tough Question: What’s Going On at the Virginia General Assembly?
by Gordon C. Morse Forty years ago, I wrote an essay for the Richmond Times-Dispatch — “The Long and the Short of the Assembly” — that noted “a growing sense that the Virginia General Assembly is not performing satisfactorily,” that it had “devolved into an unhappy spectacle.” Revisiting that essay recently immediately gave me a…
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Will the Public Ever Get to See the Mass-Shooting Report?
by James A. Bacon The University of Virginia will delay the release of an external investigation into the Nov. 13, 2022, mass shooting that resulted in three deaths and two woundings until after the trial of Christopher Jones, the UVa student charged with the crime. “After conferring with counselors and Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim…
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Stop All Aid to Palestinians and Other Terrorists. Every Bit of It
by Kerry Dougherty On Saturday morning Hamas terrorists unleashed Hell on innocent Israelis. As Israel’s ambassador to the US pointed out, given the population of Israel 600 dead Israelis is the equivalent of 20,000 dead Americans. This was Israel’s 9-11. Their Pearl Harbor. Some say it was the most deadly day in history for the…
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“Blessed“ Is the Second RVA Casino Referendum
by Jon Baliles Early voting has begin in Virginia and the Richmond casino advocates have gone all-in with the mayor and City Council to make sure the referendum got back on the ballot and now are betting the house with an absurd amount of money to make sure the referendum passes this time. Jimmy Cloutier…
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Skating Past FOIA in Harrisonburg
by Joe Fitzgerald Public officials will sometimes self-censor their emails, memos, and even texts for fear they’ll be embarrassed or caught telling the truth if a Freedom of Information request is filed. You’d think that caution would make them better communicators. Recent history proves that’s not the case. Sometimes it seems the Freedom of Information…
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Info-Wars in the College Admissions Debate
by James A. Bacon It will be exceedingly difficult to hold an honest conversation in Virginia about the role of race in higher-education admissions and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. College administrators are the gatekeepers of data critical to the discussion and they will not share it. I have been stymied twice this week in my…
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Roanoke County Quietly Extends Contract For $109,000 Year Registrar But Questions Persist
by Scott Dreyer For many historical and cultural reasons, America has traditionally been what sociologists call a “high-trust” society. As reported in this report from the Pew Research Center, cultures with high trust (such as Canada and Sweden) usually have low crime and corruption while the reverse (such as South Africa and Peru) is also…