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Lawmakers this session voted to lower the Virginia Lottery disclosure amount to provide more privacy to big ticket winners. Del. Scott Wyatt, R-Mechanicsville, introduced House Bill 1799, which protects the personal information of $1 million or more lottery winners. Forty-five states have lotteries, and 21 allow winners to stay anonymous, according to World Population Review, which tracks global population data and trends. Virginia requires the highest amount needed to stay anonymous. Megan Rhyne, executive director for the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, spoke against lowering the disclosure amount during the ABC-Gaming subcommittee meeting on Jan 14. The current law was established to promote the lottery and its winners; essentially for residents to see real Virginians winning real prizes, according to Rhyne. The current disclosure amount also supports state law that prevents Virginia Lottery board members, officers and employees from participating in the lottery, Rhyne said. This includes the purchase of tickets by any person residing in the same household of such a member.
A former Richmond city employee has been charged with grand larceny and misusing public assets worth more than $1,000 last year, but officials aren’t providing any details about what happened. As you know, information about indictments, including the defendant’s name and charges, is available to the public on the website,” Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin said in a followup email. “We don’t try cases in the media, so any facts about a specific case would be presented in open court.” It is not uncommon for commonwealth’s attorneys, who act as the chief prosecutors for localities in Virginia and are elected, to provide information to the public about cases that fall under their jurisdiction. The Richmond Office of the Inspector General, which the indictment indicates was involved in investigating the matter, also declined to provide any details.
Prior to 1975, Richmond’s City Hall required nearly every single employee to maintain residency within the city limits. Today, city code’s residency requirement applies to only 12 public officials — at least three of whom, per public records, do not live in Richmond. Those three officials are City Attorney Laura Drewry, Department of Public Utilities Director Scott Morris and Department of Information Technology Director Charles Todd. Like Todd, Drewry owns a home and is registered to vote in Henrico, records show. Her contract, obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch through a public records request, shows that she received the residency waiver upon her appointment in April 2023. But the document does not indicate the reason it was granted. Two February emails to Drewry and a phone call to her office were not returned. Drewry was a deputy city attorney from 2006 until her appointment, meaning she likely received the waiver under the same exemption as Todd.
Some Warren County educators say they’re worried about school board members using social media to criticize teachers and their lesson plans. At the Warren County School Board meeting last week several teachers said they were concerned about comments made on social media by school board members. The comments follow a discussion at the Feb. 19 school board meeting on a school board member’s comments about a civics lesson at Warren County Middle School on the country’s two-party political system. The lesson included a worksheet containing information about the Democratic and Republican political parties, attributed to the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. The Facebook post garnered more than 800 comments, creating public discussion about a particular teacher’s lesson plan. During the public comment section of last week’s school board meeting, Warren County High School Principal Ken Knesh urged the board to consider implementing a policy to monitor what a school board member posts on social media. During the board members’ comment portion of the meeting, school board member Melanie Salins pushed back on the teachers’ responses saying she felt that parents need to know what is being taught in their child’s classroom. Salins said she wanted the lesson plan discussed in open session for transparency purposes and to discuss whether the lesson was appropriate or not.
Any hope that the resignation of the University of Virginia Health System's CEO, Dr. Craig Kent, last month would clear the cloud of scandal hanging over the embattled health care provider was dashed Thursday. On Thursday morning, a member of the UVa Health System Board, which oversees the operations of UVa Medical Center in Charlottesville, resigned in protest of what he calls the university’s “irrational and unfair” treatment of Dr. Craig Kent. Kent issued his resignation on Feb. 25 after lawyers contracted by the university to investigate the allegations presented their findings at a special meeting of the school's governing Board of Visitors. The university has said it will not be releasing those findings, and neither Kent nor the university has provided a reason for his resignation. The Daily Progress reached out to UVa for a response. After speaking with the Board of Visitors, UVa spokesman Brian Coy said, "They are not in a position to comment."
According to Longwood University documents obtained through the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Longwood University officials have restored $601,865.73 to academic departmental local accounts as of Feb. 28, 2025 after two large restorations on Nov. 13, 2024 and Feb. 21, 2025. The FOIA request was filed by The Rotunda on Feb. 13 and returned on Feb. 28, after a delay due to the university's closure for inclement weather and officials’ request for more time to respond. The request asked for a record of all deployments of local funds since September 2024, a record of local funds not yet restored as part of University President W. Taylor Reveley IV’s promise to restore swept local funds, and relevant communications from Vice President for Administration and Finance Matt McGregor, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Larissa Smith and Vice President for Institutional Advancement Courtney Hodges.
Two Virginia universities are pushing back against a new bill requiring research facilities to post additional USDA enforcement records online, citing significant costs. A review of USDA records suggests enforcement actions in Virginia are relatively rare, raising questions about the necessity of the projected costs. The debate underscores broader transparency challenges in higher education and the public’s right to access regulatory compliance information.
Georgia lawmakers have successfully blocked the latest attempt to restrict the posting of arrest mugshots, a decision that many are celebrating as a win for public transparency and the freedom of information. Despite gaining bipartisan support in previous years, including backing from high-profile legislators, efforts to pass this legislation have stalled again as the 2025 session progresses. While the bill was presented as an effort to curb exploitation of mugshots on profit-driven websites, critics of the bill said it ignored the bigger picture – the value that mugshots hold in keeping the public informed.