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As safety issues at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center have made headlines in recent months, one state lawmaker is calling for greater transparency from the state agency that oversees the facility after he claimed the agency is preventing him from disclosing information about the facility. Democratic Delegate Mike Jones, whose district includes Bon Air, showed up at the facility unannounced on February 11 to take a tour. But he wasn't allowed inside. Jones said he was told he would first need to sign a confidentiality agreement, which the Department of Juvenile Justice said is in place to protect the privacy of its residents, many of whom are under the age of 18, and to comply with state laws and regulations. While Jones said he understood that part, what he really took issue with was the section of the contract that would prevent him from disclosing "all information presented, observed, or discussed on the tour." That meant he wouldn't be able to tell members of the public what he thought about things like programming, staffing, and conditions, which he said is critical to advocating for solutions.

Escalating friction between Purcellville’s Planning Commission and its planning director has moved up to the Town Council level, with the mayor last week defending the actions of the commission chairman during a confrontation during a recent public meeting. At the beginning of the Feb. 6 meeting Planning Commission Chair Ronald B. Rise said he had four agenda amendments. Those included adding an item to extend the terms of the chair and vice chair by a month to align with procedures outlined in the commission’s bylaws, tabling a vote on previous meeting minutes, adding two items to the agenda, and removing a website overview of the Zoning Ordinance adoption process. “Our planning director Summer Wilkes politely did a point of order trying to correct something that she felt was wrong was gaveled 10 times which I thought was a little excessive, really rude and it just lacked courtesy,” Town Council member Erin Rayner said later. “Our planning director Summer Wilkes politely did a point of order trying to correct something that she felt was wrong was gaveled 10 times which I thought was a little excessive, really rude and it just lacked courtesy,” Rayner said. During the Feb. 25 meeting, Mayor Christopher Bertaut, who also serves on the Planning Commission, said he would like to publicly apologize to Rise.

The Shenandoah County School Board reassessed the timeline for the creation of its meeting agendas at its work session last week. The discussion of “School Board Norms” began after a disagreement at the Oct. 10 meeting, when school board member Gloria Carlineo wanted to add two items to the informational agenda on the day of the meeting. Carlineo, who had the most amendments in the document, proposed allowing school board members to record closed sessions and for board members to be allowed until noon of the day of a meeting to add items to the agenda for informational purposes.

Lynchburg city staff are looking at whether they will be able to provide livestream coverage and recordings of the meetings of city council’s Finance and Physical Development committees. The city’s video team already livestreams Lynchburg City Council’s regular and work session meetings, as well as special meetings of the full council. Because the council’s committee meetings are typically held in the afternoon when many people are at work and unable to attend them in person, councilmembers asked staff to look into whether they could be livestreamed and recorded. At last week’s city council meeting, At-large Councilman Martin Misjuns introduced a motion to livestream the committee meetings.

If people are looking for a smoking gun in the tranche of documents that were released relating to filling the Ward 3 seat, they will likely be disappointed. The Advance has begun working through the documents and found them to be mostly … boring. This apparently mundane process raises a question, however. Why all the secrecy? More pointedly, why didn’t the council at least tell the public who they were going to interview, and why? Perhaps it has to do with the candidates themselves. Faced with 14 individuals from a cross-section of Ward 3, how does one whittle the list down to four? Again - none of this is to say that the city made the wrong decision in picking Susanna Finn. Indeed, she is highly qualified and will surely give this job her best from now to November. It is to say that in a city as small as Fredericksburg, making the selection behind closed doors is sure to create suspicions, as it clearly has. And that serves no one well.

Better late than never. That’s the message of the Rhode Island Senate, which announced Thursday that it was moving to make public testimony on legislation available online. The proposal, part of a larger set of chamber rules included in a resolution sponsored by Sen. Mark McKenney, a Warwick Democrat, will be introduced for preliminary hearing before the Senate Committee on Rules, Government Ethics and Oversight on Monday. McKenney, along with public access advocates and members of the media, have pushed for years for the Senate to post committee documents, including written testimony on bills, on the General Assembly website, mirroring the practice adopted by the House of Representatives in 2021.