Transparency News 6/28/13

Richmond’s director of finance, on the job a little more than six weeks, has left after the city administration received unspecifiedinformation that should have been disclosed during the hiring process, a spokeswoman for Mayor Dwight C. Jones said Thursday. Dominic Ochei, hired May 13, left his job Wednesday, said Tammy Hawley, Jones’ press secretary. Ochei, 52, who was hired to fill a job that had been vacant since August 2011, said he was told that he could either resign or be dismissed after CBS 6 reporter Catie Beck started asking city officials about a 20-year-old bankruptcy Ochei and his wife filed while living in Georgia and the South African allegations. “That whole thing was the reason I lost my job,” he said in an interview Thursday evening with the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “It’s done irreparable damage.”
Times-Dispatch

Gov. Bob McDonnell is not commenting on a $6,500 Rolex watch that published reports say he received from a major campaign donor who has lavished his family with thousands of dollars' worth of gifts he has not disclosed publicly. When asked on his monthly radio show Thursday about the watch, McDonnell cited ongoing federal and state criminal investigations in declining to comment. The Washington Post reports the watch was purchased by Jonnie Williams, chief executive of nutritional supplement maker Star Scientific Inc. "What I would say to everybody is that I wish that I could say more about this, but given the reviews that are being done, that's probably all I can say at this point," McDonnell said on Richmond's WRVA radio.
Roanoke Times

The 911 dispatcher who made a controversial Facebook post about a shooting involving a police officer has been suspended during an employee investigation, city spokeswoman Lori Crouch said Thursday. Norfolk does not have a policy governing employee use of social media. However, Crouch said in an email, the city does have a business conduct policy that requires employees to "use good judgment, behave responsibly, display appropriate workforce behavior and demonstrate the values of accountability, innovation, integrity and respect."
Virginian-Pilot

When Marshall Wildberger heard Radford University had awarded diplomas that misspelled Virginia at the past two commencements, he decided to double-check the diploma he received a year ago. Virginia is spelled correctly, but his major — information science and systems — isn’t. Systems is spelled with an “a” instead of an “e” on the diploma Wildberger received last July.
Roanoke Times

Lynchburg’s schools are doing well with Advanced Placement courses, but could improve career and technical offerings, new school board appointee Michael Nilles told City Council last week. Nilles is a Babcock & Wilcox engineer with four grown children, all graduates of the school division. His reflection came in response to a question from Vice Mayor Ceasor Johnson during a recorded interview released Wednesday. Six of the seven council members interviewed Nilles on June 18; Mayor Michael Gillette was absent. They voted to appoint Nilles to the school board on Tuesday. Interviews with school board applicants are closed to the public; a recording of the interview is released after council reaches a decision.
News & Advance

An effort to create a permanent inspector general to oversee operations at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority may be closer to reality. Virginia Rep. Frank Wolf’s (R) office said the measure has been included in the fiscal  2014 transportation appropriations bill, which was approved by the appropriations committee on Thursday.
Washington Post

Discussing community involvement with city affairs, Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille recalled a recent email exchange with a West End resident bemoaning the lack of redevelopment in her neighborhood. “I replied and told her that the Landmark Mall redevelopment plan was just approved out of the planning commission, and it was up for a city council public hearing for approval that coming Saturday,” he said. Euille hopes that the city’s ongoing What’s Next Alexandria initiative will cut down on similar confusion in the future by providing residents with better information about upcoming events and hearings as well as more opportunities for community feedback.
Alexandria Times

National Stories

After years of digging political dirt on the climate movement, Chris Horner has suddenly struck gold in stoking the GOP’s transparency crusade against the Environmental Protection Agency. Horner’s near-obsessive focus on unearthing federal officials’ emails, instant messages and other digital records inspired the congressional flap over former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s secondary “Richard Windsor” email account, as well as howls from the Hill about the agency’s alleged ideological bias in charging for document searches. Another of Horner’s targets was a regional EPA administrator who stepped down after the revelation that he had used personal email accounts for agency business. Horner’s not surprised he’s found so much ammunition in bureaucrats’ hard drives.
“People put more things in writing than they used to,” the attorney and activist said.
Politico

The March 2004 confrontation in the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft — a dramatic point in the Bush administration’s internal debate over warrantless surveillance — was apparently set off by a secret National Security Agency program that was vacuuming up “metadata” logs of Internet communications, according to a draft of a 2009 N.S.A. inspector general report obtained by the British newspaper The Guardian. The report, the latest document given to the paper by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, may clear up a long-running mystery over which program White House officials wanted Mr. Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials to sign off on when they went to his Washington hospital room. Because of their refusal, according to the report, the Bush administration shut down the metadata collection for several months, then re-established it under a secret order from a national-security court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.
New York Times

The former second highest ranking officer in the U.S. military is under investigation for allegedly leaking classified information about a covert cyberattack on Iran's nuclear facilities, Fox News confirms. Retired Marine Gen. James "Hoss" Cartwright is the target of a year-old investigation related in part to information about the Iran cyberattack in a book by David Sanger, a reporter for The New York Times, a senior U.S. official said late Thursday.
Fox News

The U.S. Army has apparently opted to restrict Army personnel access to The Guardian's Web site after the newspaper broke stories about the National Security Agency's confidential surveillance activities. The Army is filtering "some access to press coverage and online content about the NSA leaks," Gordon Van Vleet, a spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command, told the Monterey Herald. NETCOM is charged with operating and defending the Army's computer networks. Van Vleet told the Herald that the Department of Defense routinely takes preventative "network hygiene" measures to prevent unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
CNET News

A federal district judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed a former Liberian rebel leader's defamation claim against The Atlantic under the District's anti-SLAPP law Tuesday, rejecting the plaintiff’s claim that the statute did not apply in federal court. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled that George Boley had filed the type of claim – targeted at speech on a matter of public interest, and unlikely to succeed in any event – that the anti-SLAPP law was designed to discourage. Boley, who led the rebel group Liberia Peace Council during the country's civil war in the 1990s, sued reporter Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic Monthly Group for two articles published on The Atlantic's website in 2010 that described Boley as a "warlord." Goldberg called Boley “evil” and accused him of a range of crimes, including recruiting and arming child soldiers.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

The Kansas Corporation Commission will ask the state’s attorney general to defend it against a charge of violating the Kansas Open Meetings Act. The commission also decided Tuesday to ask Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office to assess the agency’s open meetings practices but not to issue an opinion. Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor sued the commission last week, alleging it violated the open meetings law by deciding a water rate case for a small Salina utility without holding public meetings. On June 6, the commission approved a rate hike of more than 100 percent for about 65 customers of the Salina company.
Lawrence Journal-World

Editorials/Columns

Daily Press: This month's Daily Press Open Door Award goes to Chief Newport News and Hampton Magistrate Valla Olliver and Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney Anton Bell for leading an effort to have Hampton police officers file written criminal complaint affidavits in all felony cases. Previously, officers often took the quicker route of swearing out warrants orally, which leaves little or no tangible record for public access. Mr. Olliver wanted to see probable cause recorded in a more permanent form, and Mr. Bell supported the idea because it provides his office with better information for morning arraignments.

Daily Progress: The opportunity to replace former Scottsville supervisor Christopher J. Dumler has drawn an abundance of interest. The fact that the appointed replacement will serve for only a few months — and, what’s more, could be discouraged from running for election to complete Mr. Dumler’s term — might have something to do with it. Those factors can be seen as either a benefit or a detriment. More on that later.

Bob Crawford, Roanoke Times: As long as local government bodies remain unable to resolve the question of whether they should include religious ceremonies or practices in their official proceedings,the matter will continue to divert them from their responsibility to conduct public business.

Kerry Dougherty, Virginian-Pilot: Of course, there are also undesirable ways to draw national attention to your school. Passing out diplomas peppered with misspellings is one of them.That happened at Radford University. Not once, but twice. Diplomas that spelled Virginia without that pesky third “i” and also misspelled that dopey archaic word “thereto” as “therto” went out in December 2012 and again in May 2013. No one seemed to notice the defective documents until this week.

Gene Policinski, First Amendment Center: Governnment surveillance of news media operations ranging from The Associated Press to Fox News has made national headlines for more than month now. But there’s an ongoing government-press conflict that also is important in its effect on journalists’ ability to gather news and report to the rest of us, and to the proper role of a free press under the First Amendment. Journalists – reporters and photographers – are being arrested while reporting on public demonstrations or police activity on matters of public interest. In a latest example, Charlotte Observer religion reporter Tim Funk was arrested June 10 at the General Assembly building in Raleigh, N.C., while interviewing local clergy involved in legislative protests.

Andrew Beaujon, Poynter: Last Wednesday Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal signed into law a bill that imposes a $10,000 fine and up to six months in jail for anyone who publishes “any information contained in an application for a concealed handgun permit or any information regarding the identity of any person who applied for or received a concealed handgun permit.” The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Jeff Thompson, cited The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News’ publication of a map identifying holders of gun permits late last year as impetus for the measure, and said the law represented “a great day in Louisiana and across this nation for those of us who refuse to give an inch when it comes to defending our right to protect our families and we will stand strong in the defense of the Second Amendment.”But this particular law has a serious First Amendment dimension as well. While the law makes allowances for, among other things, information released under court order or that a permit holder has released on her or his own, it doesn’t provide for information that’s leaked to news organizations.