Transparency News 8/1/14

The government's star witness against Bob and Maureen McDonnell connected the dots for prosecutors Thursday, saying he showered the couple with gifts solely because he wanted their help pitching his company. Former Star Scientific CEO Jonnie R. Williams St. said he regretted some of the purchases, knew they were wrong and tried to hide them from company shareholders and attorneys. But Williams said he never would have gotten an important launch party at the governor’s mansion for the tobacco derivative that his company had developed without saying yes when the McDonnells asked for loans and other favors. He also said that he initially lied to the FBI about his relationship with the McDonnells, and that it wasn’t just Maureen McDonnell who asked for help, but the governor himself.
Daily Press

Judge Kevin R. Huennekens approved a settlement Thursday on a number of disputes that he said “is in the best interest to expedite the conclusion” of The Free Lance–Star bankruptcy case. The settlement between Sandton Capital Partners, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. and the unsecured creditors committee resolves how to distribute proceeds from the recent sale of the newspaper. It resolves all the claims, including the two largest: one for more than $37 million owed to Sandton and a $21 million claim with the PBGC.
Free Lance-Star

John Marks Jr., the county’s District 5 representative to the Amherst County Board of Supervisors, has served on the board for only seven months. But in that time, he has given the invocation during each of the board’s regular meetings. Other county boards opt for moments of silence, including the Town of Amherst, which until recently delivered prayers before its meetings. Now, that board is reexamining how it handles prayer after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
News & Advance

Last summer, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., embarked on what his office trumpeted as a four-day, 1,000-mile trip across his state, with press releases noting he "woke up early to hit the road," making stops at a minor league ballpark, a craft brewery and a Roanoke rail yard, among others. But for several hundred of those miles, Warner was not hitting the road — he was flying a chartered plane at a cost to taxpayers of $8,500. Warner was one of two dozen U.S. senators who flew taxpayer-funded charter airplanes to, from or around their home state last year at a total cost of just under $1 million, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Senate spending records compiled by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation.
News Leader

National Stories

The Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday admitted that it improperly gained access to computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to prepare a report on a CIA detention and interrogation program. The agency's inspector general — an internal watchdog — concluded that some CIA employees "acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding" between the CIA and the Senate when it penetrated the computer network, said CIA spokesperson Dean Boyd in a statement shared with CNET News. CIA Director John Brennan apologized to Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss about the actions of some of the agency's officials. Brennan is forming an accountability committee, led by former Indiana Sen. Even Bayh, that will examine the inspector general's report and recommend potential disciplinary action and ways to address broader issues.
CNET News

Twitter released its bi-annual transparency report, detailing the number of requests for information the company receives from government agencies around the world. Twitter received 2,058 requests for user account information from a total of 54 different countries over the last six months, the company said, a 46 percent increase in requests from its previous report.
New York Times

Throughout the past decade, public companies have overhauled their financial governance practices. Much of that change was brought about by the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed in the wake of the Enron scandal. Enron was a colossal mess in part because its auditors rarely questioned management’s aggressive accounting and financial reporting tactics. In the post-Sarbanes-Oxley world, public companies must establish, among other things, an independent audit committee that oversees the financial audit process, reviews financial policies and procedures, and generally monitors a company’s financial inner-workings. If the audit committee spots a problem, it can circumvent management and report directly to the company’s board of directors. Experts disagree — sometimes pointedly — about whether these reforms have worked, but there’s no question that these reforms changed financial governance forever.
Governing
 

Editorials/Columns

Which is easier: Flip to the classified ads section of your local newspaper to find government announcements, or search a government website — perhaps numerous websites — to try to find the same information? And by “easier,” we mean easier for the public — not easier for government, not easier for government contractors. As part of a legislative re-evaluation of the state’s Public Procurement Act, a work group is recommending that governments cease publishing requests for proposals in local newspapers and simply put them online somewhere. That’s just a way to make it more difficult for the public to obtain public information.
Daily Progress

Testimony in this week’s federal trial of former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife Maureen reads like a tawdry paperback novel. Sadly it is an all-too-real family’s private pain revealed in the public record. In a state with stronger ethics laws, the McDonnells could have relied on more than common sense to know not to ask for or accept lavish gifts in exchange for helping a rich man expand his business in Virginia. Unfortunately, what led to federal corruption charges against the couple is all perfectly legal in Virginia.
News Leader