Transparency News 5/29/18

Tuesday
May 29, 2018

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state & local news stories

Today is the last day to buy tickets for our FOIA & records management in-person seminar, featuring Maria Everett, Craig Fifer and Glenn Smith. Click here.

A week after describing a disconnect between the City Council and City Manager Maurice Jones, Mayor Nikuyah Walker, alongside her council colleagues, announced that Jones’ contract, which ends Dec. 7, will not be extended or renewed. Friday’s announcement was made after a closed council meeting held just four days after the body met in another closed meeting for Jones’ semi-annual performance review. The council held a similar closed meeting last month.
The Daily Progress

stories of national interest

Documents obtained under freedom of information laws indicate that the day of revolt at South Coast Correctional Centre earlier this year was worse than disclosed.  9 News reported that Corrective Services NSW refused to release CCTV of the incidents under freedom of information laws, because it claimed this footage could put prison staff at risk and potentially reveal information that could help inmates escape.
South Coast Register

More than a dozen U.S. Air Force airmen were linked to a drug ring at a base that controls America’s nuclear missiles and have faced disciplinary actions – including courts martial, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. Military investigators cracked the ring in 2016, after one of the service members made the mistake of posting drug-related material to social media. Nearly half of the airmen were convicted of using or distributing LSD — which the Pentagon has stopped screening for in drug tests, the AP reported Thursday. Citing records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the news service reports that the drug ring operated at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, just outside of Cheyenne, Wyo.
WAMU

The number of white-collar prosecutions is on track to hit a 20-year low under President Donald Trump, after reaching a high in 2011 during the Barack Obama administration, according to a nonprofit research center that analyzes government data. A total of 3,249 cases were brought during the first seven months of the U.S. government’s 2018 fiscal year, which runs from October 2017 to April 2018, according to a case-by-case analysis of government data by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC. That’s a 4.4 percent drop from the same period in 2017, a decline of 33.5 percent from five years ago, and 40.8 percent fewer cases than in 1998, according to the report. The analysis is of data obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Virginian-Pilot

This Saturday marks the two-year anniversary of the death of eight Fort Hood soldiers and one U.S. Military Academy at West Point cadet in a military vehicle rollover accident during a flash flood at a low-water crossing on Owl Creek. Since August 2016, the Herald has been seeking copies of the unit and Army reports on the investigation. Fort Hood has not made the unit investigation report, known as an Army Regulation 15-6, available to the public, but a copy was provided in January 2017 to the Herald by the widow of Staff Sgt. Miguel Angel Colonvazquez, Ngo T. Pham. The Herald first requested the report in November 2016, when it was expected to be completed, and asked eight additional times after that. The Herald also asked why it hadn’t received the report. The Herald asked why again Thursday, before the long holiday weekend, but the Freedom of Information Act manager at Fort Hood couldn’t be reached, as was the case with previous inquiries.
Killeen Daily Herald

Last week, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan’s so-called “decorum order” that has required all documents to be filed under seal in the murder trial of former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. For more than a year, Judge Gaughan has required all parties to the case to file documents in his courtroom instead of the court clerk’s office, effectively preventing the press and public from accessing them. The state Supreme Court’s order directs that all documents and pleadings in the case now be filed in the circuit clerk’s office. Parties to the case can still seek to file documents under seal on a case-by-case basis, but they will no longer be allowed to file them under seal by default and without first filing a motion that makes specific arguments to justify such sealing.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
 

“The Freedom of Information Act manager at Fort Hood couldn’t be reached, as was the case with previous inquiries.”

editorials & columns

“We’ve got this great law, but no means to enforce it other than through the courts.”

Fifty-three deaths in the Virginia corrections system, 17 closed investigations and not a shred of information released to the public. There is something wrong with this picture, and it lies with the Board of Corrections itself, which establishes its own policies as to what information to release, if any.
The News & Advance

Residents’ lack of awareness about the larger thinking and strategic goals of their municipal officials shows two things: • What a poor job many municipal governments do of explaining themselves. When residents only learn about major local government decisions after the fact, especially on social media — where out-of-context comments and bias masquerade as moral outrage — it’s only natural that they feel hoodwinked. • How little effort residents make to understand how their local governments operate. They complain that they’re in the dark, but some of that darkness is of their own making. They don’t take the time to use the reliable resources available to them to stay informed. Instead, they rely on others to tell them what’s going on. And incivility is only increased when some residents or opinion columnists are more inclined to express negative, knee-jerk reactions than they are to do a little homework before jumping to conclusions.
Chris Bonney, The Virginian-Pilot

BREAKING NEWS: The Free Lance–Star believes University of Mary Washington’s student newspaper has served a vital purpose over the years. It also believes rain is wet. More details as they become obvious. A student newspaper is put together by students who are learning about journalism. Could some stories be better written? Of course. Are there typos, misspellings and grammar violations? No doubt. But in the process, these students are learning how to think issues through, ask tough questions and organize their information in an understandable way. Covering the news on campus helps teach them that good journalism never looks the other way. It studies the people and institutions its serves and reports the good and the bad, as fairly, accurately and tastefully as it can. The entire student body benefits when campus journalists are able to report the facts as they see them, without anyone telling them what to believe or what to accept as the truth.
The Free Lance-Star

The Holy Grail for government transparency is making it easy and simple for citizens to know what their government is doing and how it arrives at its decisions. We’ve always believed this can be achieved, in part, by providing access to public records. Of course, transparency isn’t open-ended. Every state has statutes clarifying what information must be made public and what information should be kept sealed. However, in recent years there’s been a steady chipping away at the public’s right to know. “This is a trend,” says Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, a Florida nonprofit that advocates for the public’s right to oversee its government. “It’s not just coming through legislation, but also through the agencies.” Even Florida, long known for its open public records law, has begun pulling back. The last time a systematic count was taken, the state had allowed for over 1,100 exemptions in which information could be concealed from the press and public. What’s more, although the state’s law is expansive, there is no straightforward way to make sure it is implemented. “We’re really stuck,” says Petersen. “We’ve got this great law, but no means to enforce it other than through the courts.”
Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene, Governing