Transparency News 2/11/15 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

State and Local Stories

Virginia could keep the suppliers of the drugs used in executions secret, as well as all the components they mix to make the drug cocktail used in lethal injections under a bill the state Senate approved Tuesday. But the measure the Senate passed dropped a section of the original proposal, which would have exempted all information about how executions are conducted from the Freedom of Information Act or from discovery in court cases. The purpose of the measure is to authorize the Department of Corrections to contract with compounding pharmacies to obtain drugs for lethal injections, Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, said. Current state law says firms that compound drugs must do so for therapeutic purposes. And to ensure the state can get those drugs, it needs to take the additional step of keeping confidential the names of those firms and details about what they use to make the compounds, Saslaw argued.
Daily Press

A reluctant Virginia Senate passed its version of ethics reform Tuesday — but not before a series of speeches that derided its own bill as impractical, burdensome, self-hating, replete with “trip wires” and motivated by pressure from news media. Earlier Tuesday, the House of Delegates voted 93-6 to approve its ethics overhaul, House Bill 2070, sponsored by Del. C. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah. The vote on Senate Bill 1424 was 35-1, with Sen. Kenneth C. Alexander, D-Norfolk, voting against it and Sen. Thomas A. Garrett Jr., R-Louisa, not voting, making him the only member who made a floor speech criticizing the measure to not vote for it. “I’m not going to vote against it, but I’m not going to vote for it,” said Garrett, who added that the bill reflects “a profound misunderstanding of how things work down here.”
Times-Dispatch

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring issued an opinion, concluding that the State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act allows voting members of the Hampton Roads Transportation Accountability Commission to “constitute a quorum with the authority to act by a majority vote.” The drafted ruling comes months after State Sen. Frank Wagner, a Virginia Beach Republican and commission member, requested clarification on how to proceed with potential conflicts of interest between committee members that may have a stake with financial institutions, and other bidders, looking to do business with HRTAC. There are 19 voting members on the commission: 14 serve as mayors or county commissioner chairs. The remaining five are state lawmakers. Despite their public roles, a number of the committee members have financial ties to, or work, for high-profile financial and contracting firms that could be awarded contracts, or big-dollar deposits, by the commission – prompting Wagner to seek an opinion on the matter on behalf of the commission.
Daily Press

National Stories

Jeb Bush, a rumored 2016 Republican presidential candidate, just decided to publish hundreds of thousands of emails sent to him during his time as governor of Florida. On its face it seems like a great idea in the name of transparency, but there's one huge problem: neither Bush nor those who facilitated the publication of the records, including the state government, decided to redact potentially sensitive personal information from them. We reviewed many of the emails released by Bush, and found a wide variety of communications — everything from religious parables, to praise of the governor's support of creationism, to routine bureaucratic correspondence. But some of the emails appear to be highly sensitive or personal. Many, like the one excerpted below, share tales of personal struggle or sorrow.
The Verge

The Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to shine light on the U.S. Marshals Service's use of small aircraft mounted with controversial cell-phone tracking systems. The Wall Street Journal revealed last year that the Marshals have been flying small, fixed-wing Cessna planes mounted with IMSI catchers—devices that emulate cell phone towers and are able to capture the locational data of tens of thousands of cell phones during a single flight. The planes—in the air since 2007—reportedly were based out of five metropolitan airports and shared by multiple agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice, even as sources within the agency questioned the legality of the program. In the press, IMSI catchers are also known as "stingrays," a name taken from the "Stingray II" device manufactured by Harris Corporation, or "dirtboxes," a nickname for Boeing subsidiary Digital Receiver Technology's "DRT" devices. Across the country, the Justice Department has intervened in local public records battles to prevent the release of information about these technologies, employing tactics such as signing nondisclosure agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, seizing records held by those agencies, and withholding key pieces of information about the technology from judges and criminal defendants.
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Details of a plot to kill Occupy Houston leaders won't be released after a federal court upheld the FBI's claim that the documents are legally exempted from the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI argued information was withheld, including 12 of 17 relevant pages, to protect the identity of confidential sources who were "members of organized violent groups," according to Courthouse News Service. A heavily-redacted FBI document first revealed a Houston plot "to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles." However the plotter's identity is redacted.
Houston Chronicle

Editorials/Columns

The Hampton School Board held three community forums in January, and conducted surveys, both written and online, for residents to resident their thoughts. But we expect a greater level of engagement for this process and are worried by some of the signs we are seeing. Last week, the Daily Press reported that School Board members used email rather than public discussion during their regular meetings to hash out the specifics of reviewing applications and formulating interview questions. We would remind them that other school districts have found that a policy of openness can still result in a strong candidate pool and, ultimately, a superintendent who enjoys community support when he or she begins work.
Daily Press

If you were listening to the state Senate debate Tuesday on ethics reform, you might have come away thinking that the public hasn't even asked for change. It's just the media demanding it, and the press won't be happy until lawmakers stop accepting gifts. For a minute, I pondered whether good government in the commonwealth could come to an end if legislators weren't allowed to go to a casino or the Masters golf tournament anymore on lobbyist-funded trips. Click here for a recap of Tuesday's discussion on PilotOnline. In the House of Delegates, the discussion is different. Ethics legislation sponsor Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, takes the issue seriously and has made that clear.
Patrick Wilson, Virginian-Pilot

Thanks, Senators. We needed that. Whether they like it or not, state Sens. Tom Garrett, Bryce Reeves, Tommy Norment, the majority leader, and the rest of their recalcitrant colleagues in Richmond just became the poster children for Virginia's newspaper industry. If publishers around the commonwealth don't use these politicians' snarky remarks in promotional ads, they will have missed a great opportunity. In case you haven't heard, whiners in the General Assembly have been griping about ethics reform, even as they worked on legislation to address ethical problems. You see, they blame the press for forcing them into stringent measures they don't like. These unhappy lawmakers apparently pine for the good old days when pols were free to slurp up as many freebies as they wanted as long as those freebies were reported. They called it The Virginia Way. And it didn't work. "You know why we are doing this," Norment blustered at a hearing on the senate bill last week, according to The Pilot. "Because the media is on our back." Good. That's exactly where the press belongs. Members of the media need to be shining a spotlight on questionable political behavior, legal and illegal. The public has a right to know how government business is conducted. If newspapers don't tell them, no one will.
Kerry Dougherty, Virginian-Pilot