Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Transparency News 1/20/15

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

 

Mea culpa: My apologies to former Congressman Rick Boucher for misspelling his name in yesterday's Transparency News.

State and Local Stories

There's a new coalition in town, and it aims to police the General Assembly and its policies so that citizens are always in the know. “Transparency Virginia” introduced itself to the public this week, and says it has a non-confrontational yet aggressive agenda to promote best practices in public accountability.  Virginia Coalition for Open Government's Megan Rhyne says the legislative process isn't as open to the public as it should be. It's why Transparency Virginia was formed and will focus on three areas this year.
WVTF

The number of gifts that Virginia lawmakers reported fell by 26 percent in 2014, the year of the McDonnells’ corruption trial. But Virginia legislators still accepted trips — to Poland, to France, to a casino — as well as meals, and tickets to amusement parks, baseball and football games, car races and the Masters golf tournament, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a nonpartisan tracker of money in state politics. A total of 120 legislators have served continuously in the General Assembly from 2013 to present. Those legislators reported 690 gifts worth at least $50 in 2014, down from 938 the previous year.
Times-Dispatch

Isle of Wight County Sheriff Mark Marshall said rules the county School Board wants to put in place for deputies wearing body-mounted cameras on school grounds are too restrictive and would go against his office's policy on body-mounted cameras for deputies assigned to schools. School officials say the privacy of students is the biggest question mark for them, and they want rules in place to protect that privacy. At its Jan. 8 meeting, the School Board passed an addendum to the agreement that governs school resource officers with specific rules for how those deputies can use their body-mounted cameras. The addendum says that deputies must announce they are filming when they turn on the cameras, that anyone who isn't directly involved in an incident deputies film have their faces blurred, and that any video shot by the deputies be made available to school principals or the superintendent upon request. He said because of the sensitivity of sharing law enforcement records, particularly those involving juveniles, the requirement that schools officials have access to video shot by the deputies could be an issue.
Daily Press

Del. Rick Morris, whose district includes Carrollton and Smithfield, has introduced several bills into the state legislature seeking to rein in state and local government. One would make willfully and knowingly violating the Virginia Freedom of Information Act a criminal offense. HB 2223 seeks to make such violations a class 1 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 — either or both. Government transparency is “something that’s been valued throughout the existence of our country,” Morris said, and the act is an important tool in safeguarding it. But, the Republican added, civil court action is currently the only recourse for citizens or organizations stymied by non-compliant agencies. The act presupposes that all records should be public, outlining certain exemptions from the requirement to disclose. While judges can impose a civil penalty for violations of up to $2,000 — as well as forcing release of records — “the average citizen does not have the money to sue the government,” Morris said. “Even a locality can hire a lawyer and block a citizen’s right to get that information,” he said.
Suffolk News Herald

As another storm flung snow at Chicago, Alexandra Clark wondered how she'd get to work. Like an increasing number of snowbound city dwellers, she had a ready tool at hand: an app that tracks hundreds of city snowplows in close to real time. But something seemed out of whack. "Plow tracker said my street was plowed an hour ago – Pull the other leg," the 31-year-old video producer tweeted at the mayor's office, including a photo of her snowed-in street. Across the country, local leaders have made plow-tracking data public in free mobile apps, turning citizens into snow watchdogs and giving them a place to look for answers instead of clogging phone lines at city call centers to fume. Chicago and New York introduced apps in early 2012, and Seattle has gotten into the game, as have some places in Maryland and Virginia.
Governing

National Stories

A little-known side to the government's health insurance website is prompting renewed concerns about privacy, just as the White House is calling for stronger cybersecurity protections for consumers. It works like this: When you apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, dozens of data companies may be able to tell that you are on the site. Some can even glean details such as your age, income, ZIP code, whether you smoke or if you are pregnant. The data firms have embedded connections on the government site. Ever-evolving technology allows for individual Internet users to be tracked, building profiles that are a vital tool for advertisers.
Virginian-Pilot

Yelp has grown to be a staple for word-of-mouth reviews. But now, the San Francisco-based company, popularized for its restaurant ratings, has partnered with the open data company Socrata to expand its services related to health department inspections. On Jan. 14, the two companies unveiled a strategic partnership to deliver restaurant inspection data to inform citizens not only nationwide, but also globally. The deal will give Yelp additional legitimacy for its reviews, access to new content via Socrata’s city and county client databases, and technical expertise to implement the open data initiative.
Governing Technology

A bill has been filed in the Arkansas legislature that would require all executive sessions to be recorded, with copies provided to the prosecuting attorney’s office for review. Prosecutors will oppose it as written because it would add too much work to their offices. House Bill 1054 by Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, would require any “governing body, board, bureau, commission, or organization” that conducts an executive session to record the session, retain that copy for a year, and provide a copy to the local prosecuting attorney. The prosecutor or a designee would be required to review that recording to determine if Arkansas law was violated. The designee could be an individual or a review panel of three to five persons meeting to review one or more recordings. The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) states in part, “Executive sessions will be permitted only for the purpose of considering employment, appointment, promotion, demotion, disciplining, or resignation of any public officer or employee. The specific purpose of the executive session shall be announced in public before going into executive session.”
The City Wire
 

Editorials/Columns

The proposal to let local governments hide public notices from public view turns up at the General Assembly every year like a bad fungal infection. The premise of the bills — they would save money — is mistaken. They would only allow more mischief to flourish. Del. Chris Head’s proposal would allow localities of more than 50,000 people to post public notices on their own websites, rather than in the local newspaper. Del. Dickie Bell would let localities choose two out of five means of publishing such notices, including the locality’s own website — or even sticking a flyer up on a bulletin board at the town library. Such changes could bury important public information where few would see it, which increases the likelihood of sweetheart deals and backroom maneuvers that could cost the taxpayers dearly. But even if that did not happen, the cost argument doesn’t hold water. As Megan Rhyne of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government put it, “no one would argue, say, that we should stop doing fire inspections because that would save money. . . . When it comes to public notices, the better policy is to reach the largest number of citizens possible.”
Times-Dispatch

An anonymous newsletter at Stanford University called the Fountain Hopper recently uncovered a process through which college students can gain access to the comments written on their applications. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a 1974 federal law, requires schools to show enrolled students their educational records. Under FERPA, the Fountain Hopper has encouraged Stanford students to request their admission records by sending the school a legalese-filled FERPA request. Schools have within 45 days to respond to students’ requests, or face legal consequences — including, according to the Fountain Hopper, a loss in federal funding. The anonymous students behind this movement at Stanford have pioneered a process that college students everywhere should undertake. The limit of this option is that rejected applications will not be accessible. But, by compiling, analyzing and publishing the records students send them, the Fountain Hopper will make more transparent a process that for far too long has been relatively opaque on an individual level. Uncovering admitted students’ files, including comments from admissions officers — should comments prove substantive — could potentially shed light on the selection criteria of schools, demonstrating to what degree these processes may be superficial, and to what degree factors such as legacy status or affirmative action policies impact admissions decisions.
Cavalier Daily

ANY DAY now, Fairfax County officials may drop their stonewalling response to the death of John Geer, who was shot by a county police officer in 2013 as he stood unarmed in the doorway of his home. Any day now, the county police and county attorney’s office may produce the documents they’ve been ordered by a judge to turn over in a civil suit brought by Mr. Geer’s family. After nearly 17 months of foot-dragging and unwarranted obstructions mounted by the county, it’s high time. Even the county’s Board of Supervisors appears to have lost patience with the arrogance of the police and the county attorney. Having previously ordered these officials to fully comply with the judge’s order, the board last week decided that the policies governing disclosure in police-involved shootings — until now determined by the police themselves — should be rewritten by an outside expert. Supervisors adopted a motion by Chairman Sharon Bulova (D) that said they are “sensitive” to concerns that the police chief “should not be responsible for both establishing and implementing the policies for disclosures related to police-involved shootings.” That statement, better late than never, represents progress, although the board should broaden it to include other sorts of police-involved killings. 
Washington Post