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The state’s Office of Emergency Medical Services owes $33 million to Virginia’s EMS providers, state health leaders said Friday, revealing the total cost of the office’s financial crisis for the first time. The office misused money for years, and it is unclear where it went. The Office of the State Inspector General and law enforcement agencies are reviewing “suspected fraudulent activity,” state health commissioner Dr. Karen Shelton told legislators on Friday. The Office of EMS pays for ambulances, equipment and the nonprofits that train and coordinate first responders. After investigating for more than six months, the Virginia Department of Health believes it has reached the bottom of the problem, said R. Christopher Lindsay, chief operating officer of the VDH. In the spring, during a routine audit, the health department discovered money was missing at the Office of EMS. The department conducted an audit and discovered financial irregularities for years. Money was moved from one account to another to cover shortfalls, services were provided without funding, contracts were overspent, and there was little to no oversight from the VDH, according to a health department document made public Friday.

Warrenton Town Council members traded sharp words Friday over whether it was proper for two of its members to hold a side meeting with Fauquier County officials and a developer that hopes to adjust the town’s boundary lines to add up to 270 new homes. While most of the town council’s all-day strategic planning meeting, held Friday, Jan. 26, focused on team-building exercises and goal setting, it devolved into shouting and accusations of impropriety regarding an informal meeting about the Arrington residential development held last September. That meeting included only two of the seven town council members as well as two former Fauquier County supervisors and both town and county staff. It resulted in significant changes in the project, which led to its renewed approval by the county board of supervisors last November.

Portsmouth City Council members voted Monday to rescind the appointment of the next permanent city assessor only days after making the hire. Council members took the vote in a special called meeting following a closed session. The unanimous vote on Monday rescinds the appointment made at last week’s regular council meeting, where members voted 4-3 to hire Anthony George to the position, along with a salary of $130,000 and start date of April 1. Council members didn’t explain the vote or provide additional details following the meeting.

It's that time of year when we seek nominations for our annual FOIA Hero awards. Nominate your citizen, press or government FOI hero by clicking the link. Award winners will be recognized at our conference in April 2024.
DEADLINE IS JANUARY 31.

Substitute teachers have been entitled to paid COVID leave since the state mandated the benefit in 2020, the New York state Department of Labor confirmed. But many subs assumed they didn’t qualify and never requested the benefit. And in New York City, many were denied even if they did ask. The city Department of Education instructed schools to exclude nearly all substitute teachers and substitute paraprofessionals from the benefit, according to internal emails New York Focus obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request.

A fired employee’s personnel file? Three months. One email between a president and an athletic director? Six months. Emails between professors? A year and still unfulfilled. These examples outline wait times between providing a check to the University of Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act Office and seeing the request fulfilled, according to documents obtained by MLive/The Ann Arbor News through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Are the West Virginia State Tax Department’s audit manuals subject to disclosure from the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act? That’s a question the West Virginia Supreme Court is scheduled to take up during the current term of court. “Tax Analysts has never contested the ability of the [Tax] Department, upon a proper evidentiary showing, to redact and withhold those portions of the requested records that meet the criteria in the Standards Exemption cited by the Department. There is no dispute on that point,” they contend.

I am an American politics scholar who studies the connection between representation and public policy. In American democracy, the people expect to have a voice, whether that comes through electing representatives or directly voting on issues. Yet it is becoming increasingly common for lawmakers across the country to not only ignore the will of the people but also actively work against it. From 2010 to 2015, about 21 percent of citizen initiatives were altered by lawmakers after they passed. From 2016 to 2018, lawmakers altered nearly 36 percent of passed citizen initiatives. Here’s what some of those cases look like, from successful to unsuccessful efforts to alter the will of the people: