FOIA Friday: Hampton Roads Region Records Over 300 Red Flag Orders

By Nathaniel Cline, Virginia Mercury

September 5, 2025

One of the less noticed features of the Virginia Way is the long-running tendency of the commonwealth’s leaders to conduct their decision-making behind closed doors. While the Virginia Freedom of Information Act presumes all government business is by default public and requires officials to justify why exceptions should be made, too many Virginia leaders in practice take the opposite stance, acting as if records are by default private and the public must prove they should be handled otherwise.

In this feature, we aim to highlight the frequency with which officials around Virginia are resisting public access to records on issues large and small — and note instances when the release of information under FOIA gave the public insight into how government bodies are operating.

Hundreds of red flag orders used in Hampton Roads

A Virginia law that allows law enforcement to temporarily take someone’s guns if there is evidence that they could hurt themselves or others was used at least 379 times in the Hampton Roads region over the past five years, a local television station’s FOIA requests revealed in late August.

In 2020, Virginia passed the law, known as the red flag law or the Substantial Risk Order law, in an effort to address gun violence. At the time, Democrats controlled the General Assembly and held the governor’s mansion.

According to the records request made by 13News Now, the city of Hampton had the highest number of orders per person, at 169.

Virginia Beach followed with 58 orders, and Chesapeake and Newport News each had 35. 13News also learned that in York County, 25 red flag orders have been issued since 2020.

Further investigation by the station found that the measure’s intervention “may not guarantee a peaceful resolution in the end.”

In 2024, Dana Plummer kidnapped his three children from their Virginia Beach home after stabbing their mother, before leading police on a cross-state chase. Records revealed that Plummer surrendered several weapons, including a shotgun, to Virginia Beach police under a red flag order before the abduction.

Officers assessed that Plummer “seemed to be going through a crisis” and a judge later found that he was not “mentally fit” to stand trial.

The Mercury’s efforts to track FOIA and other transparency cases in Virginia are indebted to the work of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit alliance dedicated to expanding access to government records, meetings and other state and local proceedings.

Court denies attorney fees in Augusta County closed meeting case

The Virginia Court of Appeals denied $20,000 in attorney fees to Breaking Through Media LLC, which attempted to obtain a secret recording from a county Board of Supervisors’ closed session.

Closed meetings are generally not recorded because they are exempt from the state’s open meeting requirements. The recording was allegedly made by one of the supervisors.

According to a report by the News Leader, Breaking Through Media LLC and Samuel Orlando sued Augusta County to obtain the March 20, 2023 recording, arguing that the locality violated the state’s open meeting law.

Ultimately, the board successfully appealed to keep the records sealed because the court found that releasing them could violate the privacy of a county employee.

However, in an appeal to collect $21,632.45 in attorney fees, the appeals court upheld the August County Circuit Court’s decision in denying the attorney fees. Records show the circuit court denied the request because Breaking Through failed to prove the fees were fair and they didn’t win enough in their case.

“This court finds that the main object of appellants’ petition was to obtain documents requested under VFOIA that they believed the county wrongfully withheld,” reads the opinion written by Judge Vernida R. Chaney on Aug. 26. “Because appellants failed to obtain this recording, they did not obtain the object of their suit. The circuit court did not abuse its discretion in finding that appellants were not entitled to an award of attorney fees and costs.”

News Leader reported that Breaking Through has not posted anything on Facebook since June 1, and links on its posts no longer link to an active website. Breaking Through’s last video report was uploaded to the site’s YouTube page three months ago.

Governor hopeful cites ‘working papers’ to rebuff schedule request

The office of Virginia’s Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, has withheld several records as “working papers,” according to a recent investigation by VPM News.

The finding comes after the media outlet asked Sears about her role in Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, and made a records request for her schedule — a record that is required by law to be maintained and permanently held. Public scrutiny of Earle-Sears has mounted since she became the nominee to succeed Youngkin against her opponent, former Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger.

“I’m not going to divulge what we talk about. But remember that I’m a former legislator as well, and I understand the legislative process,” Sears said to VPM, as reported August 20. “We’ve talked about some things, and I’m just going to leave it at that. I’ve given him advice on certain things … we just have things that we’ve discussed on how to move certain things and how certain things will move.”

In response to the schedule request, the office produced a “largely-blank, 297-page PDF” that excluded records, citing the exemption covering “confidential correspondence and working papers of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor.” The released documents also did not include events that Earle-Sears’ office had previously released to the public.

VPM filed another request, clarifying and broadening the original request, but reported that the office did not respond within the required time period under Virginia law — an initial five business days, with the option to invoke a seven-day extension, which Earle-Sears’ office did, according to VPM.

The office reiterated its earlier response to VPM, and noted that it does not maintain records for Earle-Sears’ roles as president of the state Senate or on boards and commissions.

“We remain committed to transparency and accountability in government, but must also adhere to statutory provisions in place to safeguard information of a sensitive nature,” the office wrote in the response.

Richmond tells WTVR free report would cost $700

The city of Richmond told WTVR a redacted copy of the consultant report on the aftermath of the city’s May boil advisory would cost $700. Instead, WTVR acquired the same report at no cost from the Virginia Department of Health.

State law allows government agencies to make reasonable charges for searching and supplying public records, or to waive those charges. WTVR faced a charge $87 to $93 per hour for senior public utility leaders to review the records and “cross-reference best practice regulations and homeland security requirements to determine appropriate redactions,” the TV station reported.

WTVR made the request after widespread attention and concerns about the city’s water treatment plant, which serves the city and its neighboring counties. The May water advisory follows the water crisis in January, which left residents without drinking water for days and delayed the return of the General Assembly, and a fluoride exceedance in April.

When asked whether $700 was a reasonable charge to provide an 18-page report, spokesperson Rhonda Johnson from the city’s Department of Public Utilities (DPU) told the station “the $700 value provided was estimated based on the time required to complete this request by the city at the time of the request.”

The report found that while data supported DPU’s coagulation process as effective, there were several ways in which it could be improved, according to WTVR. The coagulation process removes suspended impurities from water.

WTVR said the report noted that “current procedures for operating the filters during normal flow and backwash are not optimized provide for increased filter efficiency or operational flexibility in response to adverse water quality conditions” and that “coagulation control at the [plant] has the ability to be improved upon through” enhanced water treatment and monitoring.

The report stated the city should implement more testing and sampling to determine the optimal coagulant dosing. It also recommended providing “additional operational oversight leading up to and during events that have the potential to lead to adverse raw water quality conditions.”

WTVR said it requested an interview with a DPU leader, but no one was available.

This story was originally published by the Virginia Mercury. For more stories from the Virginia Mercury, visit Virginia Mercury.com.