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The King George Board of Supervisors is considering asking the General Assembly to revisit its rules governing open meeting requirements for public bodies. Among the board’s legislative priorities for the upcoming General Assembly session is a request to “eliminate restrictions on the Board of Supervisors' meeting capabilities,” according to a resolution that’s on the agenda for approval at tonight’s meeting. County Administrator Matthew Smolnik summarized the board’s request, along with other legislative priorities, at the December 3 supervisors’ meeting. “Any time you have three or more board members getting together, we have to advertise [it as a public meeting],” Smolnik said.

The Stafford Board of Supervisors this evening voted to censure Aquia representative Monica Gary for actions related to the removal of Mary Becelia from the Central Rappahannock Regional Library Board of Trustees. Before the vote, Chair Meg Bohmke read a statement in which she described Gary’s motivations as being “political in nature and related to her upcoming reelection.” She said Gary reached out to the chair of the Stafford Democratic Committee and asked for a new appointee recommendation to the library board “before the Board of Supervisors took any action on the removal of Ms. Becelia in July.” However, Howard Rudat, the chair of the Stafford County Democratic Committee, provided the Advance with a call log and screenshot showing that Gary reached out to him by text message and phone call on July 11, the day after the meeting at which Becelia was removed from the library board.

For almost a decade, Kevin Rychlik says he was a trusted aide to former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins. In federal court Monday, Jenkins watched Rychlik tell a jury how he turned the FBI onto Jenkins’ alleged bribery scheme. Rychlik went on to record hours of conversations between himself and Jenkins, making up much of the prosecution’s case. Rychlik testified that in 2011 he gave Jenkins a $5,000 donation and got an auxiliary deputy badge in return, giving him the same rights as a sworn deputy. Rychlik said he ended up becoming a key campaign fundraiser for Jenkins, recruiting Rick Rahim to donate to Jenkins and calling him a “big fish” in text messages the jury saw. There were others, including Fred Gumbinner, Rychlik testified, with Rychlik telling jurors he was usually there himself when money and badges changed hands.

Lest anyone doubt the power and purpose of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, a scrappy group of grassroots activists fighting to stop Gov. Sarah Sanders from imposing a 3,000-bed prison on bucolic Franklin County have shown once again how the FOIA can be a useful weapon for a David standing up to a Goliath. Barely a month after the Franklin County and River Valley Coalition formed, the group has pried thousands of pages of emails, text messages and documents from the Sanders administration about the prison decision, which was dropped on area residents without warning on Halloween. The document search has revealed how state officials worked actively for months to disguise the selection and purchase of an 815-acre tract north of Charleston, which was chosen despite not meeting criteria set out at the beginning of the search. Their FOIA search also turned up an email sent by Jonathan Duran, deputy director of the state’s Geographic Information Systems office, in which he referenced a South Park clip that lampooned area residents as ignorant, self-interested rednecks. The subsequent outcry got him chastised and tossed off the project.