Transparency News, 12/16/20

A proposal to amend the Richmond City Charter was rejected on a 6-3 City Council vote Monday after several council members argued that it could lead to conflict with the mayor. The charter contains a provision that obligates the council to permit the mayor or their designee in the council’s closed session meetings. Council members Kim Gray, Chris Hilbert and Kristen Larson say it gives the administration undue authority to listen on private deliberations about council appointees or legal matters when the council and mayor’s office are at odds. Council President Cynthia Newbille said legislative consultants advised that their representatives in the legislature are reluctant to seek the change if there’s no consensus between the mayor’s office and the council.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

With the latest set of state-mandated limits on gatherings, Hampton has postponed nonessential public hearings and canceled its upcoming Hampton Planning Commission meetings to at least February, city officials said Tuesday. City leadership informed its staff via email that city planners would not meet Thursday and its January session would be canceled, considering the recent spike in coronavirus cases locally. Though City Council meetings are not considered social gatherings, Hampton may return to semi-virtual meetings, like it did during the early part of the pandemic, Mayor Donnie Tuck said. It would have enough members present in council chambers for a quorum and the rest of its members would participate online, he said.
Daily Press

An attempt to have Culpeper County Public Schools release a weekly coronavirus rundown to the public failed during a Dec. 14 school board meeting. As the meeting began, board member Barbara Brown suggested an agenda amendment to include a vote whether the school system will “provide information regarding COVID quarantines, isolations and positive cases weekly to staff and public for the remainder of the school year.” “I think we need to provide that to our employees and to the community so that we can show them that we care and that, for some of them that believe we’re hiding something, they will understand that we’re not hiding anything,” she said. School board member Anne Luckinbill expressed umbrage with Brown’s sentiments, saying “I take a little bit of issue that if we don’t release the information we don’t care.”
Culpeper Times
 

A Greenville County (South Carolina) councilman routinely forwards emails from constituents to people outside government, causing an outcry that he is endangering their welfare and spreading private information. Councilman Joe Dill has forwarded emails on a variety of subjects including rescinding Greenville County’s anti-LGBT resolution from the 1990s and contentious zoning issues. Several people have decried his actions at public meetings recently, including one woman who said she fears retaliation and another concerned her private medical information has been passed around. The controversy began when Greenville resident Jeremy Krober sent a Freedom of Information Act request for five councilor’s emails, including Dill’s, on the subject of the county’s 1996 resolution against the LGBT community. The state Freedom of Information Act does have a provision that exempts governments from releasing private information that could harm an individual. But Kent Lesesne, director of governmental affairs for the South Carolina Association of Counties, said that would not necessarily apply in this case. Further, that clause is an exemption, not a requirement. A governmental agency could decide such information should be released because it is in the public good to release it.
The Gazette

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot sidestepped questions Tuesday about why city lawyers tried, in a rare and unprecedented attempt, to block a CBS 2 story from airing disturbing video that shows how police treated an innocent woman during a bad raid.  Anjanette Young, a social worker, was naked and handcuffed when Chicago Police officers broke down her door and burst into her home on Feb. 21, 2019. CBS 2 first interviewed Young last November. Young said she wanted the body camera video to show the public what happened to her that day. But when she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the video last year, the police department denied it. The department also denied a similar FOIA request by CBS 2.
CBS Chicago

Gaston County (North Carolina) commissioners are expected to vote Tuesday on whether to move ahead with a lawsuit filed last month against The Gaston Gazette. The story at the center of the suit had to do with how Gaston County commissioners handled worker’s compensation claims filed by former county employees. County staff claimed the story was inaccurate, and on Nov. 12, the day the story was published online at GastonGazette.com, demanded a retraction and apology. The story appeared in The Gazette’s print edition the following day. Commissioners claim in the lawsuit that the story maliciously defamed commissioners causing them personal and professional damage.
Gaaston Gazette