Transparency News, 7/23/21

Video of the last FOIA Council meeting, Monday, July 19. You’ll see my (um…emotional) comments at around the 33:55 mark.

I posted a remembrance of Frosty Landon on our Substack newsletter. Read it here.

The Leesburg Town Council appears no closer now to adopting revisions to its ethics policy than it did two years ago when it started the process. In addition to several rounds of changes and debates, the ethics policy has now been through three different town attorneys and two different Town Councils. Language in the conduct and decorum portion of the policy includes guidelines regarding the council’s conduct with each other, with town staff, and with the public during public meetings. The proposed disciplinary process states that a council member may be disciplined when his or her conduct does not comply with the ethics, conduct or decorum policies outlined in the document. A motion at a public meeting and majority vote of the council is needed to move that process along. Disciplinary action can include public reprimand or censure, removal from a committee, or suspension for a number of meetings, the policy stated. Council members can also be disciplined during a meeting, and even removed from the meeting, for repeated and continuous disruption. That action would follow two warnings regarding their conduct by the chair, most likely the mayor, and again would need to be approved with a motion and majority vote of the council.
LoudounNow

Two months after the Arlington County Board resumed in-person meetings, it appears members of the public are more comfortable showing up to voice their opinions. Of the 18 people signed up for the County Board’s July 17 “citizen comment” portion kicking off the meeting, 13 were in-person speakers, the remainder checking in via Internet. Prior to the COVID crisis, testimony at County Board meetings was required to be in person. For the period between April 2020 and May 2021, all County Board meetings, and thus all testimony, were conducted “virtually.” It is likely the current hybrid model could be the standard going forward.
Sun Gazette

 

A federal appeals court has ruled the Madison Schools (Ohio) violated a grandfather’s free speech rights during the debates over its gun policy and an attorney says the penalty could be “in the six figures.” Madison schools grandfather Billy Ison, his family and a friend sued the schools in February 2019 in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati. They claimed the school board violated their right to free expression and made it virtually impossible for them to speak their views about the controversial concealed carry gun policy during school board meetings. They asked District Court Judge Michael R. Barrett to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop the district from requiring in-person registration and enforcing a policy section that says the presiding officer may “interrupt, warn or terminate a participant’s statement when the statement is too lengthy, personally directed, abusive, off-topic, antagonistic, obscene or irrelevant.”
Journal-News