Transparency News 11/12/14

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

State and Local Stories

Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms said he would never intentionally do anything to hurt his city or his bosses at TowneBank, but he offered no direct response Tuesday to a Virginian-Pilot report that he cast dozens of votes that benefited clients who borrowed more than $140 million from his bank. Sessoms, president of TowneBank Financial Services, issued a brief statement to several news organizations but did not give interviews Tuesday. He has not spoken publicly since the story appeared Friday evening, and several City Council members said he hasn't reached out to them.
Virginian-Pilot

National Stories

At least a half-dozen major campaign-finance cases winding their way through the courtshave the potential to shake up the political landscape in the vein of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling — or the more recent McCutcheon decision — forcing major changes in the way campaigns are financed and run. They could get a sympathetic hearing from the high court as its conservative majority has been sensitive to the free-speech concerns raised by a band of activist conservative lawyers and groups that have emerged as a major legal force in the fight to deregulate campaign finance.
Politico

"Most powerful. Least accountable." That's the catchphrase for a media campaign being unveiled Wednesday that targets the Supreme Court — not for what the justices do but for what they don't do. As in: They don't publicize their schedules. They don't state their conflicts when recusing themselves from cases. They don't put their financial disclosures online. They don't bind themselves to a code of conduct. And they don't let cameras in the courtroom. "The Supreme Court has taken on a larger role in American life in recent years. With that increased power comes the need for increased accountability," says Gabe Roth, former manager of the Coalition for Court Transparency, which has focused largely on the need for greater video and audio coverage of the court. The new effort, to be called "Fix the Court," is intended to bring more media and advertising firepower to what has been a diffused effort on the part of liberal, conservative and government watchdog groups concerned about the high court's renowned seclusion.
USA Today

Editorials/Columns

The Richmond EDA has settled on Hourigan to build the project, but it has declined to release details about the various bids — despite Freedom of Information requests from this newspaper. The refusals have been polite, but that does not make them any less firm. The second point worth dwelling on is the danger of creating government bodies far removed from public accountability, such as the EDA. We do not mean to single out Richmond. Compared with some states, Virginia actually has fewer quasi-governmental and intergovernmental bodies insulated from public accountability than many. But being the tallest of the Seven Dwarfs does not make you the Jolly Green Giant. As the secrecy surrounding the Stone Brewing deal shows, governmental entities engaged in the public’s business often see little need to involve the public — unless they have no choice. When those entities do have a choice, the public often does not. Virginia lawmakers might wish to reflect on whether that is wise.
Times-Dispatch

We suffer from a naive conviction that judges are supposed to be completely objective. We somehow believe that they come to the bench – to the antiseptic venue of a courtroom – stripped of any biases, any prejudgments and any idiosyncratic views of how society should work. One supposes that in Thomas More's "Utopia," judicial robots could apply the law without fear or favor, and justice could be meted out as the blindfolded lady who holds the scales in her hand does, impervious to that which swirls about her. Judges, frankly, are not blind to the world. Indeed, our great jurist Benjamin N. Cardozo acknowledged the unthinkable nearly 100 years ago: "The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men, do not turn aside in their course, and pass judges by." Nor should we want them to. We actually want judges who live lives, who read newspapers, who participate in legal and ethical extrajudicial activities. In other words, we want judges who have come to know about life and who are willing to acknowledge that their experiences and influences may inform the way in which they look at the litigations before them.
Joel Cohen, McClatchy