Transparency News 9/11/14
State and Local Stories
Hampton businessman David J. Dietrich was removed from the Hampton City Council meeting Wednesday evening by a security guard, nonuniformed officer and Police Chief Terry Sult. Dietrich, a regular speaker at the city council's public comment period, has repeatedly asked the council to pass a resolution saying the city will not enforce the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. He has regularly made the request for more than a year. Wednesday evening, Mayor George Wallace told Dietrich that the council will not consider his request. City staff then cut the volume to the speaker's microphone. Wednesday evening was the first meeting held by the city council under new rules where the public comment period was moved to the end of the meeting. It had been previously held prior to the council's business meetings. At least one speaker was not allowed to approach the podium because they did not sign up to speak prior to the 6:30 p.m. cutoff time.
Daily Press
Twenty years ago, Harold McClendon offered to help his son with a middle school homework assignment on his ancestors. Harold hasn’t really ever stopped. The 71-year-old federal retiree from Mount Vernon spends part of nearly every day at an archive or library, or on the computer, chasing down McClendons and Lewises (his mother’s maiden name); Morans and Apgars (his wife’s parents’ surnames).
Washington Post
The McDonnell trial is over, but gift-giving is still a gravy train for executive and legislative officials in Virginia, despite being at the core of one of the most scandalous episodes in the state’s political history. After the ex-governor and his wife were indicted earlier this year, lawmakers submitted dozens of bills aimed at reining things in. The one that survived – HB1211 – is 120 pages of definitions, fine points and exceptions. Boiled down: (old rules, new rules, gifts categorized)
Virginian-Pilot
Under the existing system, state legislators and numerous state and local officials are required to file annual disclosure forms listing details of their finances, including any gifts of $50 or more from lobbyists. Members of the General Assembly file their reports with the legislature’s Division of Legislative Services while other officials file with the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Lobbyists also must file similar disclosures. Anyone who wants to see what’s being reported must make the trip to Richmond and go to one of those offices and pull up each individual’s reports. There is no central, searchable database provided by state government. Only about half of the disclosure reports filed by officials are in an electronic format that can be loaded onto a computer, David Poole of the Virginian Public Access Project noted. The rest are on paper forms, requiring each number to be entered into the database by hand. To date, the group has been able to provide the gift figures only for the state’s top elected officials: the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and the 140 members of the state Senate and House of Delegates.
Chesterfield Observer
National Stories
Younger Americans—those ages 16-29—especially fascinate researchers and organizations because of their advanced technology habits, their racial and ethnic diversity, their looser relationships to institutions such as political parties and organized religion, and the ways in which their social attitudes differ from their elders. This report pulls together several years of research into the role of libraries in the lives of Americans and their communities with a special focus on Millennials, a key stakeholder group affecting the future of communities, libraries, book publishers and media makers of all kinds, as well as the tone of the broader culture. Following are some of the noteworthy insights from this research. Millennials’ lives are full of technology, but they are more likely than their elders to say that important information is not available on the internet. As a group, Millennials are as likely as older adults to have used a library in the past 12 months, and more likely to have used a library website.PewResearch Internet Project
Florida's Department of Corrections, facing intensifying scrutiny over a growing number of suspicious inmate deaths and reports of alleged abuse involving prison guards, introduced the online database cataloging all inmate deaths over the past 14 years. The database lists inmates by name, prison, race and manner of death, and supplies other details that the Miami Herald had been trying to obtain from the department since May, when the newspaper began a series of articles about prison deaths. Corrections Secretary Michael Crews said in a news release Tuesday the move is another in a series of reforms aimed at increasing "transparency and accountability into the functions of the department.'' Some prison advocates were critical, saying the database doesn't go far enough.
Governing
The Environmental Protection Agency could be ordered to save its internal employee text messages under a federal judge's ruling. D.C. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled Thursday that the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has been trying to obtain the internal documents for years, could pursue them. In some cases, the EPA has said that the texts are not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. In other cases, it has said they were destroyed as part of its normal record-keeping. In a lawsuit filed in October, CEI sought to "enjoin and prevent the destruction of certain EPA text message transcripts."
Washington Examiner
Editorials/Columns
So far, there is no requirement that legislators become more transparent about their gifts. They won’t have to list gifts they’ve received on their websites or be required in any other way to notify their constituents that in addition to having the honor of serving as a member of oldest legislative body in the Western Hemisphere, they also take freebies from people who want their vote. Meaningful ethics reform will not be accomplished unless it is accompanied by true transparency.Dick Hammerstrom, Free Lance-Star
Imagine you’re a high school science teacher, and you’re judging student projects. The best three will go on to the prestigious districtwide science fair, and college scholarships are on the line. You winnow the list down to the four. One physics-minded student has built a particle accelerator that turns mercury into gold. Another kid has discovered a microbe that eats plastic — it’ll profoundly extend the life of landfills. A third found a chemical in dandelions that stops the progression of retinitis pigmentosa, which causes blindness. The fourth student, a nephew of the principal named Johnny, studied how long it takes paint to dry. Obviously, you’re going to give Johnny’s project the boot. Then the principal approaches you. “How about we partner Johnny with the student who discovered the germ that eats plastic?” he says. “That way they’ll both get scholarships. It’ll be a joint project.” So you sigh, roll your eyes, then agree — the principal’s got all the power at your school. If you read Tuesday’s story by my colleague Zach Crizer, something similar recently happened with the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, also known as the Virginia Tobacco Commission.
Dan Casey, Roanoke Times
In 2012, the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity assessed transparency, accountability and checks-and-balances on government in all 50 states. Eight states received a failing grade. Virginia was one of them. The conviction last week of former governor Bob McDonnell on 11 counts of corruption shows the need for Virginia to make the grade. The case demonstrated that it is time to adopt standards for ethics and openness for government across the commonwealth. Additionally, disclosures by Leesburg and Loudoun County officials that the people’s business has been decided behind closed doors and that some may have been influenced by political goodwill indicate the need for rules that ensure open government and disclose any potential conflicts of interest.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
