Transparency News 4/11/14 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Friday, April 11, 2014

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State and Local Stories

The U.S. Senate took a step toward shedding light on how Washington spends money Thursday, voting unanimously for Sen. Mark Warner's two-year effort to set up a simple way for people to see how federal agencies spend money. The Digital Accountability and Transparency Act that Warner and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, sponsored makes federal agencies standardize the way they report spending and disclose all of it on a common, easy-to-search website. The bill sets a deadline of three years from now for that to start. The idea is to let the public drill down to specific appropriations, programs and activities and even to who's getting grants for what.
Daily Press

Obtaining a birth certificate is simpler now that Department of Motor Vehicles locations around Virginia offer certified copies for a fee. Since March 1, the state agency known for issuing vehicle plates, driver's licenses and auto registration cards has been a dispensary for birth documents. And starting in January, it also will provide marriage, divorce and death records. All those functions historically have been handled by the state Office of Vital Records, a division of Virginia's health department that on average fields 30,000 monthly phone calls and 9,000 in-person visits to its Richmond office. The new partnership with DMV is facilitated by legislation from state Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, that directed the agencies to cooperate on issuing vital records.
Virginian-Pilot

Virginia’s failure to report how much it doles out in tax credits to each company through the Major Business Facility Job Tax Credit is dragging down the state’s overall spending transparency score. That isn’t likely to change anytime soon though. Tax credits aren’t technically spending, per se — even though that tax revenue has to be made up somewhere, either through more taxes or spending cuts. So, while a grant to a company would have to be reported, tax credits become easy political tools for state officials to favor particular industries, businesses or goals with virtually no transparency, said Matt Mitchell, a senior research fellow with George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau

National Stories

Wisconsin legislators cannot withhold the names and email addresses of constituents who contact them, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals decided Wednesday. The appeals court ruling came in the case of Sen. Jon Erpenbach who, the court ruled, improperly withheld the identities of public employees who emailed him around the time of the massive protests at the state Capitol in 2011.
Wisconsin State Journal

On May 1, 2010, a terrorist attack in New York City’s Times Square was thwarted when street vendors noticed smoke coming from a vehicle in which a homemade bomb had failed to explode. Imagine if those street vendors could have used their cellphones to send pictures or video of the vehicle and its license plate to a 911 call center. What if the 911 center could then push that data to first responders and police to get the location from GIS and buildings visual in the photos? “They could really capture the dynamics of the event,” said Brian Fontes, executive director of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA).“That is what I call an information-rich 911 call, which will be supported in a next-generation 911 system.
Governing

Hauling a truckload of logs to a Southern Oregon mill last fall, Chris Hill noticed a sheriff's deputy behind him and flashed his lights to warn a UPS driver coming the other way. The deputy pulled over Hill on U.S. Highway 140 in White City and handed him a $260 ticket for improperly using his headlights, saying another deputy had seen the flashing lights from behind the UPS truck and alerted him to stop the log truck because of the signaling. Outraged, Hill decided to fight the ticket, and on Wednesday, a Jackson County Justice Court judge dismissed the citation, finding that motorists flashing their headlights amounts to speech protected by the Oregon Constitution.
Fox News

A former contract worker for the University of Maryland said he hacked into scores of databases in the school’s computer system and posted the university president’s “private information” online to draw attention to security problems. David Helkowski, 32, has been linked to a security breach in March that involved accessing student grade-point averages and student and employee Social Security numbers and contact information, as well as exposing the Social Security and cellphone numbers of university President Wallace D. Loh. In February, there was a larger security breach of roughly 300,000 sensitive records of names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of students and staff and faculty members. Helkowski has not been accused of involvement in that breach.
Washington Post

A New Mexico Republican state lawmaker has asked Attorney General Gary King to investigate whether a state law was broken when the director of a key New Mexico legislative agency requested law enforcement records on a Democratic incumbent’s rival. Rep. Monica Youngblood of Albuquerque said Wednesday that she is concerned state government resources might have been used for political purposes, which would be a violation of the Governmental Conduct Act. “It appears to be an abuse of power,” Youngblood said. “I think there’s a real concern that needs to be looked into.”
Albuquerque Journal

Iowa's human resources agency has released a list of hundreds of former workers who are barred from ever returning to state employment, days after the department's now-fired director repeatedly told lawmakers no such list existed. A Department of Administrative Services spreadsheet identifies 975 workers who are disqualified from future employment because they were either fired or resigned before termination, dating to 1990. The majority are barred from working again for the 42 executive branch agencies, while a small number are disqualified from specific departments or jobs. The department released the data to The Associated Press following a four-month push for access through the public records law. Four days earlier, then-DAS Director Mike Carroll told lawmakers: "There is no 'blacklist'. There is no 'do-not-hire' list. There is no list." Carroll was fired Tuesday, hours after the list's release.
Des Moines Register

Editorials/Columns

It's the chairman's job to run the meetings efficiently and effectively. By hanging tough, he will be allowing members eager and able to focus on important local issues the framework in which to discuss policy in a fruitful way, and avoid being pulled into the many side shows. Roanoke County Supervisor Al Bedrosian thus far has shown more interest in making ideological points than moving the county forward. He has a strong personality, and obviously wants to be an agent of change. His pugnacity isn't likely to win him any allies, though. In the three months since the board reorganized, he and veteran supervisor Butch Church have often dominated meetings, pontificating on matters that bear little, if at all, on the issues the county needs to address to maintain its quality of life.
Roanoke Times