Transparency News 12/23/13

The Danville School Board voted unanimously to increase its annual member salary from $600 to $5,000. The chairman of the board will now receive $6,000. The decision reflected a 50 percent decrease in the original proposal’s figures, in which the school board suggested raising salaries to $10,000 for board members and $12,000 for the chairman to mirror salary rates given to city council members. The original proposal was met with heavy resistance from members of the public at an open meeting Thursday. After the vote Friday morning, Chairman Ed Polhamus thanked the public for their comments, saying they had an effect on the board’s decision.
Register & Bee

Governor Bob McDonnell today set Jan. 21 as the date for the special election to fill the seat of Senator Mark R. Herring, who was elected attorney general. The race to replace him will feature Republican John Whitbeck and Democrat Jennifer Wexton, as well as Del. Joe T. May (R-32), who first joined the race as a Republican but opted to run as an Independent after local GOP leaders announced they would select their candidate through a mass meeting instead of a firehouse primary.
Leesburg Today

Not only did they donate 37 acres in a beautiful part of Loudoun County, but Ken Falke and his wife also gave $1 million to help start the Boulder Crest Retreat for Military and Veteran Wellness, a rural haven where wounded service members can relax and recover with their families. Falke assumed that the retreat would be exempt from property tax, as is common with nonprofit groups across the country. Instead came the first half of a roughly $20,000 tax bill. And a question many local governments nationwide are wrestling with as they try to make up money lost during the Great Recession: Should nonprofit organizations have to pay taxes or other fees?
Washington Post

National Stories

Amid this year’s revelations about the federal government’s vast apparatus for tracking the movements and communications of people worldwide, Americans are uneasy with the extent of surveillance yet often use snooping tools in their own lives, a Washington Post poll has found. The sweet spot between liberty and security has been hard to pinpoint ever since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Remarkable advances in information technology have enabled counterterrorism tactics far more sweeping and intrusive — and powerful — than the United States had ever deployed. At the same time, the relationship between consumers and businesses was elementally altered as mobile phones, GPS, Google and Facebook gave corporations a new capacity to track their customers’ behavior.
Washington Post

Oklahoma has put a halt to new monuments at its Capitol after groups petitioned to have markers for Satan, a monkey god and a spaghetti monster erected near a large stone tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments. The Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission voted on Thursday to ban new monuments on statehouse grounds until a court battle is settled with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is seeking the removal of the Ten Commandments, local media reported.
Reuters

An Occupy D.C. protester who claims he was unconstitutionally arrested for using profanity can proceed with his claims, a Washington federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson yesterday denied the government’s bid to dismiss claims against three U.S. Park Police officers. Based on facts alleged in the complaint, the judge said no officer would have reasonably found probable cause to arrest the protester, Anthony Michael Patterson, for disorderly conduct. Jackson highlighted the First Amendment's protection of profanity. She said there was no evidence in Patterson's complaint that his speech risked provoking violence—one of the standards spelled out in the D.C. Code for disorderly conduct arrests.
Blog of LegalTimes

'Twas a handful of days before Christmas and all through Washington, not a House member was stirring, not even a Republican.  The members were nestled all snug in their districts, with visions of the House Ethics Committee and the gifts it restricts. And what to their wondering eyes should appear, but a poem from the panel intended to ease any ethics fear.
Corporate Counsel

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on some controversial provisions of Act 13, the 2012 overhaul of the state’s natural gas drilling laws.  The justices also weighed in on the so-called “doctor gag rule,” sending a part of the law that deals with physicians’ legal access to information about the chemicals used in natural gas drilling. Act 13 allows physicians to see a full list of these chemicals, including those that are deemed a trade secret. But some doctors say language in the law prohibits them from sharing that information with their patients and with other doctors.
StateImpact
 

Editorials/Columns

Daily Progress: Settlement agreements in the private world often are private matters, meaning the details are sealed from public view. The same can be true in the case of settlements involving government entities in Virginia, and that’s wrong. In regard to the former, it is as it should be. Private parties as well as privately held businesses are not obliged to disclose their books or anything else under their purview. So long as the law is obeyed, it is their right – and often a competitive necessity – to keep the details of their operations private. That includes settlements reached with offended parties. But government does not operate as a private business. Government operates with the public’s money and the public’s trust. This could be at issue in the case of state Alcoholic Beverage Control, an agency that rightly came under intense scrutiny earlier this year, when news broke in The Daily Progress about the wrongful arrest of a University of Virginia student by agents who mistook sparkling water for beer purchased underage.

Roanoke Times: Respect for the commonwealth runs through the roots of Mark Obenshain's family tree. The Republican did right by that heritage this week when he conceded, bringing an end to this year's race for attorney general. The initial tally gave Democrat Mark Herring a slender 165-vote lead, but that edge widened to 907 votes during a recount. Obenshain made the logical decision to set legal challenges aside.

News Leader: We are almost ready to thank Star Scientific CEO Jonnie R. Williams Sr. Without Jonnie Williams, some Virginians would still harbor the illusion that the “Virginia Way” means our officials are automatically ethical and don’t need pesky rules about what gifts are and aren’t acceptable. We would have no chance at real, long-overdue ethics reform.

Paul Fletcher, Virginia Lawyers Weekly: The Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission report detailed the records of nine of the circuit judges seeking re-election. It took the sentence ranges recommended in Virginia’s voluntary sentencing guidelines and analyzed how often each of the nine was within the guidelines, how often he was below them and how often above them. Circuit Judge James Updike (up only 6.1 percent and down 21 percent) had to defend himself by arguing that Bedford wasn’t a hotbed of leniency. When Updike  said that he approved plea deals struck by the commonwealth’s attorney, Randy Krantz, and his assistants, legislators in turn blasted Krantz, who was present in support of Updike. Del. Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, thundered that if the people of Bedford had this information, “They would be infuriated that their circuit court judge is the softest of the judges throughout the commonwealth.” The emphasis on numbers opened up a clear division on the Courts panel, but not the predictable red-blue schism. Younger members of the panel saw the numbers as catnip. It was older, more experienced legislators who urged caution.

Gene Policinski, Star-Exponent: Seven tapes of 911 calls from Sandy Hook teachers and staff at were released at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, Dec. 4, under a court order following a request by The Associated Press, which had sought the tapes’ disclosure since the day of the shooting. There is a difference between having public access to such calls and the public broadcast or online posting of the calls themselves. There are strong First Amendment reasons for disclosure of 911 calls – from the plain fact that in many cases such recordings are public records in the first place, to holding police and other emergency responders accountable for their response, to in some cases debunking conspiracy theories or defusing wild rumors. Editors have been faced with ethical calls on tragic imagery or audio since the invention of those mediums.

Gene Policinski, First Amendment Center: OK, America: Here’s a quick, basic course in the First Amendment: Lesson #1.”Duck Dynasty”’s Phil Robertson has a First Amendment right to state his views on homosexuality, minorities and pretty much anything else on this unlikely reality-TV star’s mind, whenever he wants. Lesson #2. The A&E television network, which airs “Duck Dynasty,” has a First Amendment right to declare publicly what it stands for, and to suspend Robertson if it doesn’t like how he handled his free speech as outlined in lesson #1. Lesson #3. The First Amendment and free speech are not “endangered species” as the result of the flap, as some say. In fact, it’s a good teaching moment on how free speech – as long as government stays out of the fray – works: