Transparency News, 12/16/21

Somewhere in the northern part of Virginia, officials have confirmed the state’s first two cases of COVID-19 caused by the new Omicron variant of the virus. It’s unclear exactly where the variant was detected. Officials have broadly said that someone in the state’s Northwest Health Planning Region tested positive for Omicron on Thursday.  The Northwest Region spans hundreds of miles and encompasses five health districts. “Unfortunately, we’re not able to share cases by district level,” said Kathryn Goodman, a spokesperson for BRHD.
Charlottesville Tomorrow

Citing a “budgeting error,” the Northam administration is laying off 14 state employees who monitor drinking water systems across the state, including six field directors with a combined 180 years of experience. The 11 full-time and three wage employees are in the Department of Health’s Office of Drinking Water. They were recently notified that their last day will be Jan. 9. Dwayne Roadcap, the director of the Office of Drinking Water, declined to be interviewed. The Northam administration did not issue any official statement or announcement on the layoffs until contacted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Grant Neely, a spokesman for Northam, declined to be interviewed. Asked by email why the governor couldn’t have avoided layoffs at the holidays when the state has a record surplus, Neely responded that Northam had nothing to add and that he delegates authority to agency heads.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Portsmouth City Council voted Tuesday to delay the hiring of a new city attorney and re-post the job to seek more applicants as some council members raised concern about the lead candidate’s qualifications and background. The 5-2 vote for the delay came after a heavy citizen turnout — with dozens of people signed up to address the issue. But just before the public speakers came to the podium, Councilman Paul J. Battle said he wanted to put the “very intense” matter on hold for the holiday season. “This is Christmastime, and all of us should be filled with joy and laughter,” Battle said. “Because of the tension this has caused, I don’t want dirt thrown on people … Don’t do that to each other. Let’s enjoy one another and let this tension go. Please, I’m asking that we not do that.” Battle made a motion to reopen the position and continue the interview process. The lead candidate’s name did not appear on Tuesday’s agenda, and city officials declined to provide it, but a source confirmed Tuesday to The Virginian-Pilot it is Herman C. Smith III, a Norfolk-based lawyer.
The Virginian-Pilot

The Richmond Inspector General’s office is investigating the city’s finance department after an external audit found an error requiring a $12.1 million subtraction from the city’s fund balance. Administration officials said they suspect the error is due to an oversight going back several years, attributing the problem in part to high turnover in the city’s finance department and a software transition that began in 2015. They said the issue isn’t expected to have an impact on development of the next fiscal year budget as the money was part of a more than $100 million savings fund. However, some city officials say they want more information about how the error occurred and why it wasn’t caught sooner.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The City of Danville’s Information Technology Department has deployed a new, user-friendly web application that adds features and functionality for exploring parcel maps and property information in Danville. The parcel viewer is faster and more responsive, and it allows searches by owner name, parcel number, address, legal description, and zoning, as well as advanced search options such as sale date range, sale price, and land use/state use codes. Also, the new application provides the ability to switch to street-level imagery using Google Street View.
Star-Tribune

The Henry County Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday afternoon to reject an agreement it had negotiated with Martinsville regarding the City’s plans to revert from a city to a town — and Wednesday morning the City struck back. On Wednesday morning Martinsville Deputy Police Chief Rob Fincher arrived at the Henry County Administration Building with a letter signed by Mayor Kathy Lawson and delivered it to Henry County Administrator Tim Hall. The letter puts Henry County on notice that the City intends to pursue legal action to have the agreement enforced, and if that fails, the City will pursue reversion without an agreement and sue the County for “relief for damages incurred as a result of our detrimental reliance upon a settlement subsequently shown to have been negotiated in bad faith by the County.” At the Tuesday meeting, Supervisor Joe Bryant said, “We had a so-called meeting between the City and the County and no information was passed on to Council members or Board members other than those at the meeting, and no information was passed out to the public.Out of this meeting came this MOU, and we had no input. I didn’t have any input on what is in the MOU. I think we can come up with a better resolution.”
Martinsville Bulletin

 

 

The Department of Health and Human Services broke the law last year when it told staff members not to speak with the media during the coronavirus pandemic, a federal watchdog found. In January, BuzzFeed News published internal agency emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showing that Michael Caputo, who had been tapped by President Donald Trump to control messaging around the pandemic, had harshly criticized a CDC spokesperson for speaking to CNN about COVID-19 response plans. Caputo, who was HHS’s assistant secretary of public affairs for several months in 2020, warned employees that they would run afoul of written policies in the playbook for dealing with the press if they agreed to media interviews without his approval. “There are no exceptions,” Caputo said in one July 2020 email. He then demanded to know how an HHS official’s interview with NPR was approved and the identity of the press officer who had sanctioned it.
BuzzFeed News

We are now accepting submissions for The Foilies 2022, the annual project to give tongue-in-cheek awards to the officials and institutions that behave badly—or ridiculously—when served with a request for public records. Compiled by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and MuckRock, The Foilies run as a cover feature in alternative newsweeklies across the U.S. during Sunshine Week (March 13-19, 2022), through a partnership with the Association of Alternative Newsmedia.
Electronic Freedom Frontier