In FOIA lawsuit, lawyers say city had dispute with Byron Marshall

Lawyers for the city of Richmond argued in court Thursday that documents about the departure of former top city official Byron C. Marshall are exempt from public disclosure because the city was looking to settle an employment dispute.

The city attorneys didn’t reveal any new information about the nature of that dispute. But the public acknowledgement of a conflict, brought out as part of the city’s legal defense against a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, raises more questions about the circumstances of the sudden exit last fall of the official who had overseen the city’s daily operations for five years.

“It’s the trickle-down theory of releasing information here,” said Carol A.O. Wolf, a former Richmond School Board member who filed the FOIA lawsuit last September. Continue>>>
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