Transparency News 4/9/14

The nonprofit Project on Government Oversight on Friday reported that it was denied the full access to agency credit card records it sought under the Freedom of Information Act. The Office of Management and Budget refused the investigative group’s February request for full access to charge-card management plans from all agencies that OMB oversees, POGO said. The group wanted to see Joint Purchase Reports, Integrated Card Violation Reports, and supporting documents for both reports, including summaries of charge card misuse and any personnel actions taken as a result. POGO cited the stepped up agency reporting requirements under the 2012 Government Credit Card Abuse Prevention Act. OMB, however, said the information was “related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency” and hence qualified as an exception to FOIA rules. The information might be “exploited for criminal purposes,” OMB told POGO.
Government Executive

A conservation group is suing the U.S. Geological Survey for information on threatened grizzly bears in northwestern Montana. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies says the USGS failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for reports and findings on the Cabinet-Yaak Grizzly Bear DNA Project.
San Francisco Chronicle

While campaigning for the office of New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio pledged to "increase transparency with a series of reforms of the Freedom of Information Law," including adding FOIL stats to the annual Mayor's Management report, and "levy fines and penalties against city agencies that regularly duck and delay FOIL requests." Yet it appears that the de Blasioadministration has ducked a litany of FOIL requests related to his handling of the arrest of a friend and political ally.
Gothamist

Voters across the country waited less time in line to cast their ballots in 2012 than in 2008, a sign that states were doing a better job at running elections, says a report released Tuesday by the Pew Charitable Trust's Election Initiatives.
Governing

A federal judge ruled in favor of MoveOn.org, allowing the liberal organization to keep up a billboard in Louisiana that slams Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal for refusing to accept a Medicaid expansion available under Obamacare. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, whose office is the chief of the state’s tourism industry, filed a suit last month against the group, saying the satirical billboard mocked the state’s trade and tourism branding, according to local reports. However, U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick, citing the group’s freedom of speech, denied the motion for preliminary injunction of the billboard on Monday.
Politico

University of Texas Regent Wallace Hall likely committed impeachable offenses, including abusing his office and possibly breaking state and federal law – in his campaign to oust University of Texas at Austin president Bill Powers, according to a draft report prepared for the Texas House committee investigating Hall. The 176-page draft report, which was made available to committee members Friday and obtained by the San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle, alleges that Hall leaked confidential student information in apparent violation of state and federal law in an attempt to silence his critics in the Texas Legislature. The report also accuses him of manipulating the investigation and coercing witnesses.
Houston Chronicle

A former American International Group executive who has spent nearly seven years attempting to obtain Eliot Spitzer's private emails has issued something of a dare to the onetime New York attorney general and governor: If you insist there are no such emails, say so under oath. Howard Smith, AIG's ex-CFO, is challenging Spitzer to swear under oath to what he has repeatedly said publicly—that he never used a personal email account to discuss an ongoing civil fraud case against Smith and AIG's ex-CEO Maurice "Hank" Greenberg.
But so far, Spitzer is not biting.
New York Law Journal

After decades of litigation and over the strenuous objections of the American Medical Association, the leading U.S. doctors group, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Wednesday made public for the first time how much Medicare pays individual doctors. The massive data release, totaling nearly 10 million lines, also includes which medical services each of more than 880,000 physicians and other healthcare providers nationwide billed Medicare for in 2012. "While the data are not perfect, this is a major milestone in healthcare transparency," said cancer surgeon Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, whose 2012 book, "Unaccountable," argues for making public more information on doctors and hospitals.
Reuters

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden has challenged the National Security Agency to explicitly deny that he tried — before leaking secret documents to journalists — to use legal, internal means to raise a red flag about the possibly unconstitutional nature of the outfit's surveillance programs. "The NSA at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the NSA's lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail. I directly challenge the NSA to deny that I contacted NSA oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer [from the NSA] to this question," Snowden told Vanity Fair in a feature that's scheduled for publication later this week.
CNET News

The most effective legislators not only understand the legalese of bills they read but recognize what's absent. All 140 lawmakers know exactly what's missing from the ethics bill they passed this winter, however. Teeth. That's by design. A bipartisan group huddled before the General Assembly session began and pieced together a measure that tightens conflict of interest rules on themselves just enough to say they did something to clean up Virginia's soiled reputation. The measure breezed through both chambers with virtually no opposition. Gov. Terry McAuliffe could have forced legislators to vote on real reforms had he amended the bill to conform with ethics rules that already apply to executive branch workers. Lawmakers would have been forced to accept the amendments out of embarrassment or to reject them in defiance and hear about it from their constituents. We'll never know what would have happened. The governor allowed legislators to keep their political cover, a snuggly blanket of feel-good fuzzies, instead of handing them a hair shirt.
Roanoke Times