To make the case for why Virginia’s public-records law needs to work better for reporters and citizens alike, Del. Danica Roem told the story of a constituent, Stephanie Minor, who Roem said spent seven months fighting Prince William County Public Schools for access to video footage showing her autistic daughter being dragged off a school bus.

For Minor to see what had happened, the school system wanted her to pay $2,500, down from an initial estimate of $8,800 for the video and staff emails, to cover its costs of producing the video and redacting it to blur out other students.

“I could get an intern at George Mason University to do it for 10 bucks,” Roem, a former journalist and Democrat from Manassas who has made FOIA reform a priority issue, told the Virginia FOIA Advisory Council’s records subcommittee Tuesday.

After giving so-called skill games another year to operate in Virginia late in the 2020 General Assembly session, legislators seemed to decide the time has come to pull the plug on thousands of slots-like gambling machines that have proliferated in convenience stores, restaurants and truck stops all over the state.

But some statehouse watchers think lawmakers may have actually voted to do the opposite.

Confusion recently spread among gambling lobbyists over a little-noticed provision attached to a bill that, on its face, makes it easier for officials to crack down on unregulated gambling.

That language, included at the end of a conference report lawmakers approved overwhelmingly last month in the closing days of the session, appears to create an exception for operators of charitable games like bingo, raffles and poker tournaments, specifying that some activity potentially impacted by the bill can continue until June 30, 2022.

The clause also covers other “regulated gaming” in existence as of February, a category that, if interpreted to mean skill games, could give the industry another year of life.

Virginia House lawmakers advanced Senate legislation to legalize recreational marijuana, but amended the legislation to conform to the House version—the Senate is expected to do the same and eventually send the bill to a conference committee comprised of lawmakers from both chambers.

Substitute Senate Bill 1406, the House version, advanced through the Democrat-controlled House General Laws Committee on a 16-5 vote. Both bills legalize the recreational cultivation, sale and use of marijuana with sales beginning in 2024. They would allow the sale to any person 21 years or older and require ID checks, similar to alcohol sale requirements.

A key area in which the two bills differ surrounds local government authority. In the Senate’s version, localities could prohibit the retail sale of marijuana within their jurisdiction, while in the Senate bill, there is no opt-out clause, but retail sales would still be subject to local zoning regulations.

“We are helping localities,” Lopez said during a hearing on the bill conducted by a subcommittee of the House Committee on General Laws.

The measure, if enacted into law, will have ramifications statewide. But its genesis was in the lengthy battle between the Arlington County government and ABC on one side and a (since-closed) Columbia Pike nightclub on the other.

The bill is “the culmination of years of enforcement actions . . . at one site,” said Lopez, who cited “repeated ABC violations, fights, disorderly conduct, drug deals, destruction of property” and, perhaps the tipping point, a shooting last June that left one person dead and two others injured.

In remarks to the subcommittee, Lopez said the problems in corraling behavior at  the establishment were not the result of ABC officials being lax. The state agency “has been very responsive,” he said.

• HB 1931 (Del. Mark Levine) would expand the number of times and opportunities an individual member of a public body can call into a meeting instead of meeting face-to-face with the public or his/her colleagues. While acknowledging there’s room for some flexibility, VCOG has consistently stated its opposition to broad expansion.

• HB 2025 (Del. Wendy Gooditis) would expand an exemption for mailing lists of people who sign up for email blasts from their government to also include blasts from members of a public body.

• HB 2004 is Del. Chris Hurst’s bill to provide some access to criminal investigative files that are not ongoing.

All three have advanced from the House General Laws subcommittee on Open Government and Procurement. The first two were unanimous votes, the third bill passed on a party-line vote, 6-3.

A similar bill, sponsored by Del. Schuyler VanValkenburg, D-Henrico, came close to passing in 2020 but failed late. That version would have mainly enacted a state-level preclearance requirement routed through the attorney general’s office.

The bill that passed this year gives localities a choice of either asking the attorney general’s office to sign off within 60 days or publicizing the proposed change in their own community and allowing a public comment period of at least 30 days followed by another 30-day waiting period.

During the waiting period, any person potentially affected by the proposal would have the right to challenge it in court.