Transparency News 12/2/13
State and Local Stories
Agenda for the 1:30 p.m., Dec. 5 meeting of the FOIA Councilincludes preview of some FOIA bills that likely will be filed for 2014.
An Onancock man who represented himself in two Freedom of Information cases filed against the town has been awarded a statewide honor for his work. Charles Landis, 79, was named the Virginia Coalition for Open Government’s 2013 citizen award winner. He is one of four open government award winners who will be honored at the organization’s annual conference Dec. 6 in Williamsburg. “I was completely shocked ... There’s some very good company right there,” said Landis of his fellow honorees, who include Washington Post reporters Laura Vozzella and Rosalind Helderman, who used public records to unearth Gov. Bob McDonnell’s gift scandal, and Fairfax County Clerk of Court John Frey, who has made county court opinions available to the public without charge.
Delmarva Now
Virginia has garnered a lot of unwanted attention in the past several months as the butt of jokes about the seemingly wide-open relationship between politicians and anyone who wants to give them gifts or money. Are Virginia’s laws too lenient? Is the Virginia Way still a viable way to do the public’s business, or has it lost its luster? What measures of reform are out there, and will they change anything? You can hear these and other questions discussed at the annual conference of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government on Friday at the Williamsburg Community Building, 401 N. Boundary St.
Times-Dispatch
Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career regularly inserting phony numbers in Department of Defense accounts. Every month until she retired in 2011, she said, the day came when the Navy would start dumping numbers on the Cleveland, Ohio, office of the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Pentagon’s main accounting agency. Using the data they received, Woodford and fellow DFAS accountants set about preparing monthly reports to square the Navy’s books with the U.S. Treasury’s – a balancing-the-checkbook maneuver required of all the military services and other Pentagon agencies. And every month, they encountered the same problem. Numbers were missing. Numbers were clearly wrong. Numbers came with no explanation of how the money had been spent or which congressional appropriation it came from. The data flooded in just two days before deadline. As the clock ticked down, Woodford said, staff members were able to resolve a lot of the false entries through hurried calls and emails to Navy personnel, but mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take “unsubstantiated change actions” – in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called plugs, to make the Navy’s totals match the Treasury’s.
Virginian-Pilot
A surprise encounter with a government agent at an academic conference helped Charles W. Sydnor Jr. find the focus that would become the foundation in his already rich life. Three decades later, the Virginia Holocaust Museum is benefiting from his labors. The well-traveled Sydnor is donating to the museum a trove of historical documents he began collecting after that meeting, and he has plans to use that collection as a building block that could turn the Richmond institution into a global destination for Nazi research.
News Virginian
Google has selected Chantilly as the 2013 “eCity” of Virginia. The Google eCity Award recognizes the strongest online business community, or digital capital, in each state. The businesses within this community are using the Web to find new customers, maintain contact with existing customers and help fuel the local economies, county officials said in announcing the selection.
Sun Gazette
National Stories
Bluff City, Tenn., resident Beverly Shaffer is upset that she cannot access historical records in Sullivan County. “I don’t see why there isn’t a way to access these records,” she recently told the County Commission. Sullivan County’s records are housed in the former Sullivan House building, which is about five miles from downtown Blountville. The records, which include wills, birth certificates and marriage licenses, are in a section of the building that has no heat or air conditioning. The county has estimated that it would cost between $30,000 and $40,000 to repair the system.The building is not open to the public and records requests must be handled by Shelia Steele Hunt, Sullivan County director of archives and tourism. Shaffer said she has been waiting weeks for her records request.Herald Courier
More activists are suing to obtain a massive, secret study of CIA interrogation practices in a fight that could last longer than the study itself. Overseen by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate intelligence panel, the 6,000-plus page study was three years in the making, as investigators probed how the Central Intelligence Agency imprisoned and harshly questioned suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. So far, the Obama administration has resisted making public the study or its executive summary. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union filed the second Freedom of Information Act lawsuit intended to pry loose the Senate Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence study, as well as the CIA’s response. Judging from history, the dispute will take a long time to resolve. So far, moreover, courts often have assented when the president’s emissaries demand secrecy in the name of national security.“It’s true that litigation takes longer than if the government voluntarily releases information,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in an interview Wednesday, “but sometimes FOIA litigation is necessary . . . for informing the public.”
Miami Herald
For months, Jodi Arias was a television staple and practically every minute of her murder trial was broadcast live. But Arias has vanished from view since her trial ended in May, and the judge has done a complete about-face. She has shut the media and public out of nearly every hearing in the case and drawn complaints from First Amendment lawyers that she has gone too far. Attorney David Bodney represents several media outlets fighting for transparency in the case. He says there have been repeated violations of the public's constitutional right to attend proceedings in the case.
Fox News
Editorials/Columns
Daily Press: Nearly four weeks since Election Day, the race for attorney general remains unresolved, with Sen. Mark Obenshain on Wednesday filing a petition for a statewide recount. Thus began a tedious and daunting process that aspires to accurately confirm the campaign's victor. Ensuring the integrity of a vote count is challenging under any circumstances, more so when the stakes are this high. It thus falls to Sen. Obenshain and Sen. Mark Herring, and to election officials, to conduct this process in a manner that lends confidence to the outcome.Times-Dispatch: Either Obenshain or Herring — both state senators — will vacate his seat in the General Assembly at some point. If that does not happen until the legislature convenes, then the Senate’s president pro tempore, Republican Walter Stosch, would set the date for the special election to fill the vacancy. If he wanted to, Stosch could set the date after the legislature adjourned, theoretically ensuring a numerical advantage for the GOP in the closely divided chamber. All of this is pure speculation. Obenshain has given zero indication that he is inclined to contest the election. The most likely scenario involves a recount affirming Herring’s victory, Obenshain’s concession and a quick special election to fill the vacancy. Stranger things could happen — though they probably won’t. But with little other political drama unfolding, talking about palace intrigue is better than nothing. Of course, should federal officials indict Gov. Bob McDonnell over Giftgate, then the electoral intrigue will suddenly become almost an afterthought.
Roanoke Times: The chairman of the state election board is the last person who should be fizzing about the commonwealth impugning the “integrity” of the vote he’s charged with overseeing or the local officials laboring to ensure the process is handled fairly. That rule holds true on any day, but particularly now as preparations are under way for a recount in the closest statewide race in modern Virginia history. Nevertheless, Charles Judd created a commotion last week by raising concerns about the “integrity of the data” and procedures followed by various local election boards. He added to the confusion by voting to certify the election results “with question.” His cryptic vote was followed by an awkward retreat in which he admitted that he did not think the issues he raised would change the outcome of the election. His perplexing performance did little to soothe tensions over the nail-biter race for attorney general.
Shawn Day, Virginian-Pilot: The public-Private Transportation Act came up for its third and final reading in the House of Delegates on Feb. 20, 1995. On that day, it fell to Democratic Del. George Grayson, of James City County, to outline the proposal and prod his colleagues to follow the Senate, which already had unanimously approved it. Seven minutes later, the bill sailed out of the chamber on a 98 to 1 vote.Any discussion of the law in the upcoming session is likely to consume a bit more time. And people in Hampton Roads and across Virginia should find some satisfaction in that. Several local lawmakers expect to amend the PPTA beyond the changes made in the past session, now that it's become clear how the law can be misused. Gov. Bob McDonnell's administration has used it to push projects and negotiate deals that wouldn't stand up to extended public or legislative scrutiny.
Open Virginia Law: A case recently argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuitpresents a perfect storm of government surveillance, outdated computing statutes, and the intersection between the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and governmental lawyers. Although it is a federal case not directly applicable to Virginia, the case raises questions about similar issues in Virginia, and the decision of the influential D.C. Circuit could have a significant impact.
Hartford Courant: Word that the task force on public disclosure and victim privacy just might be close to a "compromise" recommendation ought to send a chill down the spine of any Connecticut resident who values open and accountable government. The task force was created earlier this year by the General Assembly after it had negotiated in secret and passed without a public hearing a bill to exempt certain categories of crime scene evidence from the mandatory disclosure provisions of the state's landmark Freedom of Information Act. The 17-member task force — also a response to the Dec. 14 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — is supposed to determine what it thinks would be a proper balance between the privacy rights of crime victims and the public's right to know. It is to report its recommendations to the legislature by the first of the year. But the panel is stacked with officials indifferent if not hostile to the freedom of information ethic. Any compromise they might negotiate with the minority FOI advocates on the task force could not help but give too much away to those most comfortable with letting government operate behind closed doors.
