Transparency News, 10/5/20

 

State Republican legislative leaders have asked the State Inspector General to release “complete and unredacted copies” of all investigative reports it may have provided to the governor’s office or other administration officials involving investigations the agency conducted of Virginia Parole Board decisions. In a letter dated Sept. 26 and sent to State Inspector General Michael Westfall, House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, and Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment Jr., R-James City, said they have learned that Westfall’s office “has made additional findings and produced one or more additional reports related to” an earlier administrative investigation of the Virginia Parole Board.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

For those who can’t get enough of virus-related statistics, the Virginia Open Data Portal has more than a dozen COVID-19 datasets under one website. All the information has been presented previously by the Virginia Department of Health, but in different places. The portal provides information on caseloads by ZIP code; outbreaks in long-term care facilities; hospitalizations; and breakdowns by age, gender and ethnicity.
Free Lance-Star

Prince William Superintendent Steven Walts’ Twitter direct messages will remain sealed from public view as a result of a judge’s ruling Friday in Prince William County Circuit Court. Judge Kimberly A. Irving ruled Oct. 2 that the messages, which numbered more than 20,000, were “clearly exempted” from mandatory disclosure under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act because they were communications between the chief executive officer of the Prince William County School Board, the school board said in a Friday press release. Irving’s ruling effectively dismissed a lawsuit filed by Ryan Sawyers, former chairman of the Prince William County School Board.
Prince William Times

Although they have largely returned to in-person meetings in a revamped county boardroom, Loudoun County supervisors unanimously re-adopted an emergency governing ordinance Sept. 15. Supervisors first adopted the emergency ordinance on March 25, relaxing many deadlines and rules on the county government such as how quickly it must respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, or that a quorum of members must be physically present to conduct board business. Loudoun Now has not so far seen any actual slowing of responses to FOIA requests, although early in the pandemic supervisors skirted the rules for emergency meetings, using those emergency meeting to conduct routine business such as passing ceremonial resolutions.
LoudounNow.com

Mount Rogers Health District’s director updated county Supervisors on the status of coronavirus during last week’s board meeting, saying the overall Wythe has fared well compared to surrounding counties. On Friday, the state had seen 149,687 cumulative cases with 11,140 hospitalizations and 3,250 deaths. Dr. Karen Shelton told the Board of Supervisors that statewide 7.5% of those diagnosed with COVID-19 will wind up in the hospital and 2.1% will die. Board Chairman Brian Vaught asked why the health department doesn’t release the number of active cases in a community, rather than a cumulative number. Shelton said she has relayed the need to release active numbers, but the VDH has opted not to include the numbers on its website.
Wytheville Enterprise
 

“I just backed into Cootie Brown’s and heard this awful crash and looked over and a big section of the new hotel that they’re building just collapsed. I don’t know if there’s anybody in there or not.” Those were the words of the second person who called 911 the night of Sept. 25 to report the partial collapse of the Tenneva Holiday Inn, which was under construction near the intersection of State Street and the Volunteer Parkway in downtown Bristol. Through a public records request, the Bristol Herald Courier obtained audio files of four calls made to Bristol Tennessee’s 911 line by concerned citizens after a large portion of the center of the building site collapsed just before 8 p.m. A week later, no information about what happened or what caused the partial collapse has been released. Bristol, Tennessee City Manager Bill Sorah said that the city is not involved.
Bristol Herald Courier

 

 

No other piece of legislation holds as much sway as state budget bills, which not only form the 24-month financial framework for the commonwealth but also supersedes other state law. That such critical legislating is done at the last minute in sometimes chaotic, often contentious late-night sessions well out of public view by sleep-starved people amid the intermingled odors of cold pizza and burned coffee did not — and should not — inspire confidence. Over the decades, conferees have gone to bizarre, almost zany lengths to shield the byzantine proceedings from public view. In his years as a cub Finance Committee staffer, Bill Leighty, an immensely accomplished senior state government veteran who cut his teeth in the 1980s with a seven-year stint on the Senate Finance Committee staff, was assigned by the committee chairman, the late Sen. Ed Willey, to walk conspicuously past the cramped press filing room in the musty bowels of the Capitol with a boxload of budget documents and calculators, luring reporters in the opposite direction of where the conferees would actually meet. In one such cat-and-mouse adventure in the 1980s, the conferees had covertly gathered in an empty room in the then-mothballed Old Finance Building (since renovated to its former splendor and renamed the Oliver Hill Building) that sits just down the hill from the Capitol and nextdoor to the Executive Mansion. The tactic worked, Leighty recalled, until Joe Gatins, a sharp-eyed reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, spotted a single room with lights blazing in a darkened, derelict building.
Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury