Transparency News 7/3/14

Yesterday VCOG had the pleasure of hosting Sen. Mark Warner (D) for a discussion about open government. Warner, speaking to VCOG’s board and guests at the Library of Virginia, reviewed the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA), which he co-sponsored with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Rep. Elijjah Cummings (D-Maryland) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-California). DATA seeks to standardize federal financial reporting and will put all federal spending and government contracts online in a searchable and downloadable format.

As it stands, there are hundreds of different reporting standards across the federal government. Not everyone calls the same thing an expenditure, for instance. Or, as Warner said Issa described it: it’s as though everyone in Major League Baseball had a different definition of what constituted a hit, an error or a strike. Warner and Issa wanted to figure out language that would allow citizens to follow the money from the moment it comes in to federal coffers. 

The administration, including the Office of Management and Budget, was opposed to the measure, saying it part that it would place a burden on agencies. Yesterday, Warner countered that such legislation is supposed to help employees, who are being asked to do more with less.

He acknowledged that a front-end investment in technology will be required to get DATA working and was open to the possibility of private sector support. He cautioned, however, that private involvement isn’t a magic bullet.

“I’ve been in the private sector. We waste just as much money as the federal government,” he said. “The people who say the private sector is the answer are the ones who’ve been in the public sector for 30 years.”
He urged those in the room to stay vigilant about DATA’s implementation to ensure that deadlines and marks are met.

Warner also fielded questions on the federal shield law, which would give some measure of protection to journalists who are ordered to testify about their confidential sources. The bill has made it out of its Senate committee but has not progressed further, a fact Warner pointed to in responding that he had not had a chance to learn about how the bill has developed and how it has dealt with the thorny issue of defining who would be allowed to use the privilege. He did say, however, that should the bill come to the Senate floor, he would vote in favor of a full debate.
 

Prosecutors have found no evidence that Richmond Chief Administrative Officer Byron C. Marshall committed a criminal act by boosting compensation for one of his deputies, Sharon Judkins, just as her employment with the city was coming to an end this year. In a report that will be released today, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring and his chief deputy, John C. Bullard, conclude that there was “absolutely no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.”
Times-Dispatch

Prosecutors say they might offer evidence in McDonnell’s upcoming corruption trial that he “deliberately omitted” from his Statement of Economic Interests the 10-day vacation at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort, which William H. Goodwin and his family own. The U.S. intends to offer “the draft SOEI on which Mr. McDonnell scratched through the Kiawah Island trip and wrote ‘personal’ in the margin,” as well as a gifts chart a staffer prepared for use in completing the disclosure form “on which Mr. McDonnell crossed out the Kiawah Island trip and wrote ‘Bill Goodwin pers friend’ and ‘check to see if personal or reportable.’” McDonnell’s concealment of the trip shows a pattern of behavior because he used the same “friend” exemption in Virginia law to hide gifts from Jonnie Williams Sr., then-CEO of Star Scientific, prosecutors say.
Times-Dispatch

Court documents filed June 24 related to the now-dismissed recall petition against Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio suggest Delgaudio may have broken county hiring policy by asking a Sterling woman seeking a public position her views on homosexuality, politics and religion. In an interview with the Times-Mirror, Delgaudio (R-Sterling) did not dispute that he asked questions about social issues, gay marriage and religion while interviewing the woman for a county-funded position, and a formal investigation into Delgaudio's office by Arlington Commonwealth's Attorney Theo Stamos found the “supervisor did ask potential staffers their views on a number of politically sensitive subjects." The county's General Principles and Governing Policies document states the Board of Supervisors has “declared that the county does not discriminate against employees or applicants for employment based on political affiliation, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
Loudoun Times-Mirror

In an effort to keep citizens better informed, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors will publish its first “Citizen News” newsletter as a special pull-out section in July 23 edition of the Star-Tribune. The Star-Tribune will have a mass mailing that week and each home in the county — approximately 35,000 — will receive a free newspaper with the county’s newsletter inside. “The Board of Supervisors recognizes that information is a key ingredient for success in engaging the citizenry,” said Chairman Jessie Barksdale. “Serving the residents of Pittsylvania County is very important to us, and the key part of this service is keeping the flow of information as far reaching as possible,” Barksdale said.
Star Tribune

National Stories

The Fort Smith city clerk and four members of the city board of directors are accused of violating the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Sebastian County Circuit Court. City Clerk Sherri Gard is accused of individually polling Directors Keith Lau, George Catsavis and Kevin Settle after Ward 3 Director Mike Lorenz contacted her to remove items from the June 17 and July 1 directors’ meeting agendas, in the complaint. Under the Arkansas FOIA, “except as otherwise specifically provided by law, all meetings, formal or informal, special or regular, of the governing bodies of all municipalities … supported wholly or in part by public funds or expending public funds, shall be public meetings.”
Southwest Times Record

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a prominent digital privacy rights group, has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. National Security Agency to get it to specify the extent to which it might exploit software security flaws. The EFF said Tuesday it had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to gain access to documents showing how intelligence agencies choose whether to disclose software security flaws known as “zero days.” These early stage flaws are typically discovered by researchers but are not yet patched by developers or the company. A market has even sprung up around the flaws, in which governments will purchase the vulnerabilities to gain access to people’s computers, EFF said.
PC World

Voice of America journalists who are fighting to maintain what they say is their editorial independence are now at odds not only with Congress, but also with their own union. The union, the American Federation of Government Employees Local 1812, recently endorsed a bill that would change language in the charter for the 72-year-old news agency and require it to actively support American policy. That came as a surprise to some Voice of America employees, who said the legislation would make them mouthpieces for government policy. They want the union to withdraw its letter of support.
New York Times

A federal watchdog group said Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s data collection and surveillance program has been “an effective tool” for the country. Seven months earlier, the same bipartisan group found fundamental flaws with another program, arguing in a January report that the NSA’s collection of domestic calling records “lacked a viable legal foundation” and recommended that it be shut down. But the latest report, voted on by the five-member board, found that the NSA's collection of Internet data within the United States passes constitutional muster and employs "reasonable" safeguards designed to protect the rights of Americans.
Fox News

It's going to be a little more difficult to ferret out which members of Congress are lavished with all-expenses-paid trips around the world after the House has quietly stripped away the requirement that such privately sponsored travel be included on lawmakers' annual financial-disclosure forms. The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.
National Journal

Goldman Sachs Group Inc said a contractor emailed confidential client data to a stranger’s Gmail account by mistake, and the bank has asked a U.S. judge to order Google Inc to delete the email to avert a “needless and massive” breach of privacy. The breach occurred on June 23 and included “highly confidential brokerage account information,” Goldman said in a complaint filed in a New York state court in Manhattan.
Reuters

Editorials/Columns

If there's a conclusion to be drawn from Virginia's experience on the U.S. 460 project it's that we should rethink how we use public-private partnerships for building roads. If neither auditors nor taxpayers can account for every penny spent, then ventures like this run counter to the public's best interest. Ultimately, a more reliable alternative to I-64 would serve Hampton Roads, and we expect the McAuliffe administration to prudently consider its options. However, Virginia needs more aggressive oversight and better disclosure rules for projects like this to prevent repeating a debacle of this magnitude.
Daily Press