Transparency News 9/9/14
State and Local Stories
In a comprehensive review of the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, analysts found that the full scope of the agency’s authority is not clear and requires better and more transparent cooperation with other IT-related state agencies. The report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, known as JLARC, concluded that overlapping responsibilities between the VITA’s chief information officer and the secretary of technology create uncertainty about who is accountable for central IT decisions.
Times-Dispatch
Despite a meeting break to evacuate the building because rain was leaking into the library computer server room and staff smelled smoke, the Poquoson City Council passed an ordinance to allow the city treasurer to invest in the Virginia Investment Pool and amended an ordinance to relieve taxpayers. About two-thirds of the way through the City Council's Monday night meeting a librarian came into the meeting room and told the city manager about a roof leak over the computer server room. The city manager quickly evacuated the building and two fire trucks arrived at the scene. Water had dripped through the roof and onto the light fixtures, which caused popping sounds and the smell of smoke. The water continued to drip onto computer equipment.
Daily Press
Terry Kilgore, a Republican delegate from Scott County who chairs the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, appears to have used his influence to delay one organization’s grant award so that the economic development group run by his brother could reap a portion of the benefits. The commission’s education committee recommended awarding a $2 million grant to an Abingdon-based manufacturing alliance on Thursday, as part of an initiative to jump-start three advanced manufacturing training centers in the tobacco region. But that recommendation came more than three months after the two other centers, in South Boston and Martinsville, saw their grants approved, their projects legitimized. At the time of those approvals, in May, Kilgore spoke up to ask that any action on the center for Southwest Virginia be pushed back. As the other centers charged forward, the leaders of the Abingdon group, the Southwest Virginia Alliance for Manufacturing, were advised by commission staff to discuss how their proposal could better serve the far Southwest corner of the state, and hold talks with the John Kilgore Jr.-led Scott County Economic Development Authority, which had submitted a competing proposal to win the grant that was deemed far weaker by a panel of industry evaluators.
Roanoke Times
People spend more time on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, and as a result more and more people are getting information from those sites. As of January, The Pew Research Center cited that 74 percent of online adults use social networking sites. Of those social networking users, 19 percent use Twitter and 71 percent use Facebook. Overall, the data shows that 47 percent of users — about 30 percent of the population — get their news from Facebook. As good as social media can be for instantly connecting people to people, getting information and dispensing information, Lt. Mike Wallace of the Danville Police Department warns people of the potential to pick up and spread misinformation as well.
Register & Bee
In a much-anticipated announcement, Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Monday laid out a 10-point plan to expand things like services for the severely mentally ill and dental coverage for low-income pregnant women. Watchdog.org was first denied access to the press conference, open to members of the press, state employees and some members of the public. Guards pulled this Watchdog.org reporter aside and said the governor’s staff had informed guards to block access. After requesting to speak with a member of the governor’s staff and waiting about 10 minutes, however, guards finally gave the OK for entrance to the public announcement in the Patrick Henry Building’s West Reading Room, packed with about 200 people.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
A northern Virginia congressional candidate is working to correct an apparent breach of congressional ethics rules. The Washington Post reports Barbara Comstock failed to disclose that a public-relations company she owns took in $85,000 in 2012 trying to help Republican Mitt Romney become president. A Comstock aide told the paper Friday that the oversight was unintentional and that the campaign is working to correct the problem.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
National Stories
Governing
The emotional debate over free speech versus free political spending, which erupts onto the Senate floor this week, exposes a deep rift on Capitol Hill and at the nation’s leading civil rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union. “There is a very, very significant divide within the ALCU on this,” said New York University law professor Burt Neuborn, one of six prominent former ACLU officials who on Sept. 4 wrote members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to publicly denounce the national ACLU’s campaign finance position. The letter was released as the Senate prepared to take up a resolution authored by New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall to amend the Constitution to permit political spending limits, something the Supreme Court has ruled violates the First Amendment. “While, as present and former leaders at the ACLU, we take no position in this letter on whether a constitutional amendment is the most appropriate way to pursue campaign finance reform, we believe that the current leadership of the national ACLU has endorsed a deeply contested and incorrect reading of the First Amendment as a rigid deregulatory straitjacket that threatens the integrity of American democracy,” read the letter, which was signed by Neuborn, the ACLU’s former national legal director, and by its former executive director, Aryeh Neier, and its onetime general counsel, Norman Dorsen, among others.
Roll Call
On Tuesday, Sept. 9, news media lawyers are slated to argue for disclosure of court documents concerning a secret investigation into alleged illegal coordination between conservative political organizations and the campaign of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. “The parties asking this court to keep hundreds of pages of judicial records under seal have failed to rebut the strong presumption of openness and public access that this court has repeatedly held attaches to judicial records,” their reply brief argued. “Rather than demonstrating the kind of ‘compelling’ and ‘overriding’ interests required to defeat the First Amendment presumption of access… they rely on the wrong legal standards and offer only the vaguest of unsubstantiated and speculative reasons for shielding key swaths of the record from public view. “This court should reject these baseless arguments.”
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Editorials/Columns
With last Thursday’s verdict, the need to restore the public’s confidence has increased exponentially. Although the reforms enacted earlier this year were meaningful and substantive, and were approved without a single dissenting vote in both chambers and in both parties, they are no longer sufficient in meeting the expectations of the people of Virginia. A higher standard having been set, we must meet it. With that in mind, and as leaders of the majority party in the House and Senate, we pledge today to the people of Virginia to take the additional steps necessary to rebuild the trust and confidence we ask of you. Over the next four months, as we prepare for the 2015 General Assembly session, we will re-examine every aspect of our ethics, transparency and disclosure laws. We will build on the steps taken during this year’s session and seek to enact reforms that are stronger and more stringent.Speaker William Howell and Sen. Tommy Norment, Times-Dispatch
