State and Local Stories
Education is a $1.1 trillion industry in America, one requiring vigilant public oversight – oversight that increasingly is frustrated when answers to simple questions are concealed behind an impenetrable wall of “student privacy.” Ask a public university or a school district anything about any issue of public importance – sexual harassment by employees, crime on campus, athlete recruiting scandals – and you can expect to hear: “We can’t tell you anything because of FERPA.” Even when they know it’s not true. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a well-intentioned federal law requiring schools and colleges to maintain the confidentiality of “education records,” has been distorted by educational institutions into a catch-all excuse to conceal wrongdoing and mismanagement.
Frank LoMonte, Truth in the Field Blog, VCOG
The Chesapeake School Board agreed to pay the parents of a special education student $125,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging the staff at Southeastern Elementary School improperly restrained their son in a chair for the sake of convenience, according to documents obtained by The Virginian-Pilot. The settlement figure came to light after a five-week dispute between the school system and newspaper regarding something that is routinely disclosed by other government entities. The division asked a federal judge to permanently seal the financial terms of the settlement, and the newspaper enlisted its attorneys to fight for the public’s right to know. The final number was revealed after The Pilot filed a Freedom of Information Act request for communications between the division and its insurer, VML Insurance Programs. The school system charged $540 for the release of 34 pages, including a copy of the 16-page lawsuit and four related pieces of paper. Several of the 14 other pages were heavily redacted, but one line of a larger Feb. 13 email regarding the division’s pending legal matters revealed the settlement figure.
Virginian-Pilot
Two council members say City Attorney Bernard Pishko should not have used official letterhead to write in support of Treasurer Anthony Burfoot ahead of his sentencing in federal court. Pishko, who reports to the council and has been city attorney for almost 20 years, wrote a letter to a federal judge praising Burfoot’s character and the work he did to make Norfolk a better place. The masthead on the letter includes the city seal, the words “Office of the City Attorney” and the names of Pishko and 18 other lawyers in the office. “As a private citizen, Bernard can do whatever he wants, and he can write letters for anyone he wants, and he can reference his title as city attorney if he wants,” Councilwoman Angelia Williams Graves said. “But … he used poor judgment in using city letterhead on it.”
Virginian-Pilot
A former tourism director has slapped Bedford County and four local officials with a $3 million lawsuit in federal court alleging they violated his constitutional rights when removing him from the post last spring. Gerald “Jerry” Ernest Craig filed the civil action in early April in U.S. District Court in Lynchburg, records show. The suit seeks compensatory and punitive damages plus interest and costs from Bedford County but also individually names County Administrator Carl Boggess and three county supervisors: Curry Martin, Bill Thomasson and Steve Wilkerson. The suit alleges a series of actions stemming from a fall 2014 vote in a local Republican party meeting to censure the three supervisors named in the lawsuit over their support for raising real estate taxes. Craig was among about 60 people identifying themselves as Republicans who voted to censure the three supervisors, according to the suit. The censured supervisors “targeted Mr. Craig” even though his GOP involvement was “protected political expression,” the suit says. The individual defendants did not wish to hire Craig for the tourism position because of his vote in the GOP meeting, despite a three-person hiring team supporting him, he said.
News & Advance
National Stories
Last week North Carolina Sen. Warren Daniel and three fellow Senate Republicans introduced a measure that would block open records requests from other states. Senate Bill 649 would limit public records requests to North Carolina residents. The bill would make North Carolina one of few states in the country to limit public records requests to its own citizens. The N.C. Press Association is teaming with the N.C. Association of Broadcasters to fight the bill, which Press Association Attorney John Bussian calls bad policy. The bill reignites the debate on what lengths governments must go in order to make public records available to the public. “The public has right to know about government actions described in records regardless of residence,” said Bussian. “Closing access breeds suspicion instead of fostering confidence the way transparency does. Those who reside outside North Carolina, but have business here, deserve to have the same confidence in state government and its handling of personal and business matters as N.C. residents.”
Charlotte Observer
A recent ruling in the Sebastian County Circuit Court could affect the methods of the Arkansas State Police in releasing dash camera videos through Freedom of Information Act requests.Circuit Judge Stephen Tabor ruled Monday that an Arkansas State Police public information officer committed five civil violations of the Freedom of Information Act last year when he relied on a “blanket policy” and failed to give valid reasons for not releasing the videos. Bill Sadler, the state police public information officer, did not provide evidence there was an ongoing investigation in five of the six cases related to the FOIA requests for dash camera videos made by local attorney William Whitfield Hyman. Sadler’s “testimony revealed the only basis for failing to produce the requested videos was the blanket policy of the State Police that every investigation remains open pending adjudication,” Tabor wrote.
Southwest Times Record
The American Civil Liberties Union announced on Wednesday that its affiliates had filed 13 coordinated Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, demanding government documents related to implementation of the president’s executive orders on travel and immigration. The organization seeks records from local offices of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security — records the ACLU says it first requested on Feb. 2. The ACLU says “the government has failed to substantively respond.”
NPR
A Missouri circuit court judge has ruled that the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department broke the law in refusing to make officer conduct complaints available to the public — and must “permanently” stop concealing those records going forward. Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker issued a ruling against the department last week, saying that the police are bound to release “all portions of internal affairs records that are not created solely for the purpose of hiring, firing or promoting an officer,” in the summary of the ACLU of the Missouri. He also awarded $5,500 in penalties and fees to the ACLU and its client, plus legal fees. The civil rights watchdog filed a suit last year on behalf of Curtis Farber, who filed an officer misconduct complaint in March 2013. Farber had been arrested two years prior, and alleged in a subsequent complaint to the department that the officers who arrested him had also assaulted him and threatened to file false drug charges against him.
Riverfront Times