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All Access
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State
In a state where many still live by the adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” the idea of replacing ancient terms of legal procedures in state law feels more than a little daunting, the Virginia Code Commission says. But the commission is going to try, accepting Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell‘s request to make sure the language that tells non-lawyers how to navigate courts is clear to people who haven’t gone through three years of law school. It could get hairy. “When I worked with the Title 55 recodification, we wanted to change the term ‘livery of seisin’ and the bar went crazy,” said Amigo Wade, director of the General Assembly’s Division of Legislative Services, told the commission.
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Local
Virginia’s attorney general will not intervene in the question of whether a Hopewell city councilor’s vote to fire the city manager earlier this month represented a conflict-of-interest because he is a city employee. Hopewell Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Newman confirmed last week that Attorney General Jason Miyares would not offer an opinion on the vote by Ward 4 Councilor Ronnie Ellis. Newman had asked council to delay any action on the future of Dr. Concetta Manker until Miyares could opine on Ellis’ ability to vote. A spokesperson for Miyares neither confirmed nor denied there was any action on Newman’s request.
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Local
Wednesday night’s Frederick County Board of Supervisors meeting ended in fiery fashion, with Chairman Josh Ludwig raising ethical concerns about a supervisor and criticizing letters to the editor in the newspaper. It was so contentious that Opequon Supervisor Bob Wells got up and left early and the vote to adjourn barely passed on a 3-2 vote. Ludwig’s comments lasted nearly eight minutes and were in response to various opinion pieces and online posts that were critical of him and others with whom he’s associated. “I would urge The Winchester Star to be careful about what they’re publishing, because they could be liable as well for anything published that violates the law,” Ludwig said on Wednesday.
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Local
A special May 15 Loudoun Board of Elections meeting triggered a dispute between board members about whether it was necessary. After Republican board Chair Kaysi Sanden and Democratic board member and secretary Ellen Heald decided not to hold a regular monthly meeting because they said there wasn’t any board business to address, Republican Vice Chair Shelly Oberlander called a special meeting. Board meetings can be called by individual members. Sanden said at the special meeting that a regular meeting wasn’t held because she and Judith A. Brown, director of elections and special registrar, determined there weren’t any “time sensitive or urgent matters” requiring a meeting. In partially redacted emails obtained by the Loudoun Times-Mirror through a Freedom of Information Act request, Oberlander disagreed with canceling the meeting, saying it deprived the public of access to the board and to speak during the public comment period of the meeting. “I believe in transparency and accountability for our elections and these meetings are a good way to provide accurate and quality information to the public,” she wrote in a May 1 email to board members and office staff.
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For two years, New Orleans police secretly relied on facial recognition technology to scan city streets in search of suspects, a surveillance method without a known precedent in any major American city that may violate municipal guardrails around use of the technology, an investigation by The Washington Post has found. Police increasingly use facial recognition software to identify unknown culprits from still images, usually taken by surveillance cameras at or near the scene of a crime. New Orleans police took this technology a step further, utilizing a private network of more than 200 facial recognition cameras to watch over the streets, constantly monitoring for wanted suspects and automatically pinging officers’ mobile phones through an app to convey the names and current locations of possible matches. Anne Kirkpatrick, who heads the New Orleans Police Department, paused the program in early April, she said in an interview, after a captain identified the alerts as a potential problem during a review. In an April 8 email reviewed by The Post, Kirkpatrick told Project NOLA that the automated alerts must be turned off until she is “sure that the use of the app meets all the requirements of the law and policies.” The Post began requesting public records about the alerts in February.
The Washington Post
“Democracies die behind closed doors.” ~ U.S. District Judge Damon Keith, 2002
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