Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Transparency News 12/16/14

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

 

State and Local Stories

A VCU Health System employee mistakenly donated compact discs containing patient medical information and Social Security numbers for children’s art projects, a spokeswoman said Monday. Officials described the mistake as a breach of likely more than 1,000 medical information records. But VCU spokeswoman Anne Buckley said there was no evidence that any of the information had been misused. Patients have been warned of the breach, according to VCU officials.
Times-Dispatch

Gov. Terry McAuliffe is proposing that the state spend $28 million next year to replace Virginia's voting machines. The new technology would create a paper trail for each ballot cast, something not all the voting machines used in Virginia do. About 2,100 precincts would get new machines under the plan, and another 400 that have already upgraded would be reimbursed. McAuliffe said Monday it's necessary to ensure fair, efficient and effective voting, even though next year's budget is tight.
Virginian-Pilot

University of Virginia officials have repeated Charlottesville police Chief Timothy Longo’s reference to the investigation in declining to answer questions about the timing and nature of the allegations as they were revealed to top school administrators, including Sullivan. “We have been instructed by the Charlottesville Police Department not to discuss the allegations described in the article during the active investigation of the alleged incident,” spokesman Anthony P. de Bruyn said in an email.  In a letter to the editor published in today’s opinion section of The Daily Progress, de Bruyn acknowledged the public’s interest in learning more. “There is an understandable hunger for immediate answers,” the letter says. “The university is committed to doing the right thing, which means meeting our responsibilities to everyone involved in an enormously complex situation. We will do that, and we will share what we learn with our community.” “The university will be unrelenting when it comes to enhancing student safety, support, and wellbeing,” the letter says. “If we’re criticized for doing it in a thoughtful and measured manner — complying with local, state and federal authorities — then that is criticism we will accept.”
Daily Progress

Petersburg City Council voted 4-3 on Tuesday at the very end of the meeting to move all inmates from the Petersburg City Jail to Riverside Regional Jail, where the city is one of seven member jurisdictions. Councilman Kenneth “Ken” Pritchett, Ward 3, made the motion, which wasn’t listed on the agenda for discussion. Following the decision, Sheriff Vanessa Crawford also said that she was upset that discussion wasn’t put on the agenda for a vote. “I’m very disappointed in the process and that Council would think it would not be important enough for the people that it affects to have any input, or to share any information so we would know that was coming up,” she said. “Not only does it affect the employment of 61 people, it affects 61 families.
Progress-Index

National Stories

Sony Pictures Entertainment warned media outlets against using the mountains of corporate data revealed by hackers who raided the studio’s computer systems in an attack that became public last month. In a sharply worded letter sent to news organizations, David Boies, a prominent lawyer hired by Sony, characterized the documents as “stolen information” and demanded that they be avoided, and destroyed if they had already been downloaded or otherwise acquired.
New York Times

The judge overseeing the 9/11 mass-murder trial has ordered prosecutors to go back and look at secrets sealed up in the court record to assess what the public can now see in light of this week's revelations in the Senate Intelligence Committee's so-called Torture Report. The chief prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, declined to discuss the order on Saturday because it was not yet made public. But four attorneys who read it said the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, on Friday instructed the prosecution to carry out a sweeping review of more than two years of classified trial filings.
McClatchy

The Tennessee Supreme Court will consider Thursday whether to identify the names of the execution team and pharmacists working with the deadly drugs in a challenge to a 2013 state law that keeps almost all details of the procedure a secret. A group of 11 condemned inmates and their lawyers say that law does not apply to court cases, which other rules guide. "The state has a compelling interest in protecting the identities of the members of the execution team because the confidentiality of this information is vital to the proper performance of defendants' duties and to the enforcement of the law," according to the Tennessee attorney general's filing in the case. The state says the names are not relevant to the execution protocol, which is what the inmates claim is unconstitutional.
USA Today

 

Editorials/Columns

Once upon a time, Virginia’s teachers were able to focus more often on civics —  as a separate class or as a dedicated unit within a class. The best teachers can still find ways to embed civics in an otherwise heavily structured curriculum. But that strict structure makes their job difficult. Why has civics fallen by the wayside? In part because mandated criteria — from the national No Child Left Behind to the commonwealth’s Standards of Learning — specify other priorities and rob teachers of flexibility in their schedules to focus on such topics. But if a new test is added, then something has to give elsewhere. Teachers already are overloaded with mandates.
Daily Progress

Understanding civics is a foundation block of life as an American. But Del. Dickie Bell's bill may not have the smooth path to passage that one would expect. Meg Gruber, the president of the Virginia Education Association, told the Richmond Times Dispatch she plans to oppose Bell's proposal saying civics was already a part of the curriculum and didn't want another standardized test hoop for students to have to jump through. Whether tested separately or within the Standards of Learning tests, the information is worth learning. It would be interesting to see the level of civics understanding in Virginia today. Give the test to all juniors in the state this spring and let's see what happens. Maybe give it to the General Assembly, too. If the pass rate is above 90 percent then Gruber is probably right. If not, then some additional effort to instill some basic civics facts would be a good thing, no matter how the test on the information is administered.
News Leader

For the time being, it’s Puckett who is coming up short in the whole deal. He quit his Senate seat, but didn’t get the tobacco commission job — that got dropped once the whole mess became public. We’ll see if the General Assembly goes ahead with the judicial appointment for Martha Ketron come the 2015 session. She’s already an interim judge — named as a fill-in by the other judges in the circuit — so presumably is qualified. The House of Delegates has already voted twice to give her a full term; it was the Senate that balked, because of its own remarkable rules against nepotism. Family ties excepted, the General Assembly has never seemed to worry much over appearances when it comes to naming judges, anyway. Just this fall, the legislature appointed a judge in Chesterfield County who had been deemed “not qualified” by the local bar association. That soon-to-be-jurist had one qualification, though, that mattered more than the disapproval of the bar. He was married to the campaign manager of a local state legislator. So there. If there’s any good to come out of the whole thing, it’s this:Statewide attention on the strange political creature that is the tobacco commission, or, more properly, the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission.
Roanoke Times