Category: Government Transparency
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Beach School Board’s Clown Show
by Kerry Dougherty It’s tempting to call the latest shenanigans by the Virginia Beach School Board a clown show. I probably shouldn’t, though, since that insults the proud tradition of clowning and implies that there is something humorous about the board’s ham-handed attempts to circumvent open meeting laws and its quiet determination to infect the…
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Shhh! Don’t Ask! COVID-19 Equity Analysis Is for Governor’s Eyes Only
by Carol J. Bova The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) blog posted March 16 that the department and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management (VDEM) would open community vaccination centers in Danville, Portsmouth, Petersburg and Prince William. “The sites were selected after the Virginia Department of Emergency Management conducted an equity analysis to determine the…
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Odd Behavior by a Loudoun County Teachers / Parents Group
by DJ Rippert Author’s note. There is a story circulating about a private Facebook group focused on Loudoun County schools that is keeping an “enemies list” of people opposed to Critical Race Theory (CRT) as it is being used in the Loudoun County Public Schools. The members of the group reportedly include teachers, parents, school…
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Holding Richmond Public Schools Accountable — Part I
by James C. Sherlock We have discussed here the failures of the City of Richmond Public Schools (RPS) in educating its economically disadvantaged children, as well as the abysmal performance of Black children in its schools. I intend to help readers understand how it manages to fail repeatedly even with major federal funding as…
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Federal COVID Funding to Virginia K-12 Schools
by James C. Sherlock The federal government allocated a great deal of money in each of two different pieces of legislation in 2020 to provide COVID-related relief to K-12 schools. I will endeavor here to explain briefly what that means to Virginia. The two pieces of 2020 federal legislation that provide funding to K-12 schools…
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Fix the Structurally Broken Virginia Government
by James C. Sherlock When offered a choice of reasons for failures of large scale government actions, your first choice should always be incompetence, not bad intentions. Big government requires competent legislatures, competent management and control of executive departments, apolitical oversight by attorneys general and objective studies of its failures if it has any hope…
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Democrats Propose Expanded Virginia Government Personal Information Collection, Integration and Dissemination
by James C. Sherlock There are few things the Left desires more than government access to personal data on every citizen and everything he or she does. Virginia continues down that path. Government Data Collection & Dissemination Practices Act Chapter 38 of Title 2.2 of the Code of Virginia (§ 2.2-3800 et seq.) reads in…
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Most Virginia Public Universities Score Low in Board Accountability
by James A. Bacon Five Virginia universities score an “F” in a rating of governing board accountability and transparency released today by the Partners for College Affordability and Public Trust. They include Virginia Tech, James Madison University, Virginia Military Institute, Virginia State University and Longwood University. George Mason University set the pace for board accountability…
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What Must Jim Ryan Do to Earn a $100,000 Bonus?
by James A. Bacon When the University of Virginia hired Jim Ryan as president in 2018, the terms of his employment were spelled out in a contract. Anyone can obtain a copy of the document under the Freedom of Information Act, as Bacon’s Rebellion has done. You can view it here. Among other things, the…
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Joe Biden, the SALT Cap and Virginia’s Hidden Taxes
by DJ Rippert SALT of the Earth. The Trump Administration pushed through a change to the US tax code which capped the deduction for State And Local Taxes (SALT) at $10,000 per year. Previously there had been no cap. The imposition of the cap effectively increased the federal taxes paid by high-income earners, especially in…
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Lost Absentees, Found Roll Call, Missing Statues
By Steve Haner Faulty Absentee Ballot Tracker Still Losing Track Complaints continue about an absentee ballot tracking system on the Virginia Department of Elections website. Someone with a problem similar to what I encountered in September reached out to Richmond’s WTVR-TV 6 News, which reported that the problem lies with the United States Postal Service.…
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Amanda Chase and Mark Herring: the Odd Couple in Constitutional Deception?
by Paul Goldman The Virginia Bill of Rights – Article I of the Virginia Constitution – grants you and me the right to cast an informed vote free from government manipulation. When considering this right, I cannot decide who is the bigger phony: Republican gubernatorial hopeful Senator Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, or Democratic Attorney General Mark…
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Maybe We Can Sue
by James C. Sherlock Updated August 30, 3:30 pm I wrote yesterday about a House of Delegates bill that ultimately was passed by the House Committee for Courts of Justice as House Bill No. 5074 Amendment In the Nature of A Substitute (the bill). I wrote of its effects on public officials and owners…
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Woke War on America’s No. 1 High School
by Asra Q. Nomani Last month, Suparna Dutta spent countless hours researching how her son could safely return to school this fall as a rising sophomore at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a sprawling campus of classrooms, laboratories and open spaces with names like “Gandhi Commons” and “Einstein Commons,” outside the nation’s…
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Who is Behind NAH, LLC?
by James A. Bacon Most of the Confederate statues and memorials in the City of Richmond are gone. Only the statue of Robert E. Lee, the subject of ongoing litigation, remains. The statues and cannons are not coming back. The broken egg cannot be reassembled. But there are legitimate issues relating to Mayor Levar Stoney’s…