“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office said in their proposal for Monumental Sports, owners of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals, to move from Washington, D.C. to Alexandra, Virginia.

The project promised 30,000 new jobs and $12 billion in economic impact for Alexandria and the Commonwealth of Virginia, plus “no new taxes” or taxpayer subsidy, according to documents from the Governor’s office.

Despite the Governor’s praise, the move to Virginia never came to fruition, as officials in Alexandria ended negotiations on the $2 billion project in March of this year. The change came after mounting criticism from Virginia lawmakers, local D.C. officials and Northern Virginia residents.

Following a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request to Gov. Youngkin’s office, MuckRock obtained documents with over 300 pages on the planning and promotion of the failed $2 billion project. The records are now available for the public on DocumentCloud.

Included are rebuttals from the Office of the Governor, which claims D.C. officials are making “numerous assumptions” on the project, and how it leads to a “extremely misleading narrative.”

With growing concern about how sports venues can cost taxpayers money, and some cities never seeing the economic gains promised, these documents give a sneak peek into how local and state governments attempt to attract major sports teams and justify the cost of these projects.

Find anything of interest in these documents? Have you made a similar request in your city? Let us know at news@muckrock.com.

The Update

• Uvalde records must be released, judge says: A Texas judge ruled that both the Uvalde school district and Uvalde County sheriff’s office must release “all responsive documents” to newsrooms after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. Hogan Gore at the Austin American-Statesman reports the judge gave the agencies 20 days to respond to the newsroom’s requests for body camera footage, emails, 911 calls and additional communications.

• Upcoming training on billionaire power: Lil Sis, a nonprofit public interest research organization, is hosting a training session on July 18 at 7 PM eastern on billionaire power. It includes tools for researching the wealth, influence, and networks of billionaires and other powerful individuals like corporate executives.

• Virginia circuit court opens court case information to the public: The Fairfax County Circuit Court released a new online tool that allows the public to access court records for free through its system, reports James Jarvis for FFXnow. Previously, access to information on circuit court cases required a subscription of $150 per quarter or $600 per year.

FOIA Finds

• What happens if the nuclear football is compromised: Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold requested documents from the Department of Defense’s Inspector General, through the Freedom of Information Act, on the handling of the Presidential Emergency Satchel, also known as the “nuclear football.” Leopold found that if the nuclear football is lost, stolen or compromised, the Department “has procedures to ensure only the U.S. president can authorize the use of nuclear weapons,” according to the Inspector General’s October 2022 report.

• Read judge’s ruling in favor of Trump’s classified documents case: U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon dismissed a federal indictment against former President Donald J. Trump on the mishandling of court documents, reports Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein in the Washington Post. Cannon’s 93-page ruling, now available on DocumentCloud, focused on how “special counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed.”

• Digitizing Native American boarding school records: The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition launched a digital archive chronicling Native American boarding schools from the 19th century to the 20th century, where many describe the “forced assimilation” of Native American children, reports Marc Ramirez for USA Today. The coalition spent four years digitizing records to create this new archive, which includes board school records, court records, student files and more.