Transparency News 10/6/14
Monday, October 6, 2014
State and Local Stories
Roll Call
A federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to release videos of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner being force-fed. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued an order Friday that requires the federal government to release the 28 videos to the public and more than a dozen news outlets that sued to obtain them. Tribune Publishing, which owns the Los Angeles Times, was among the news organizations seeking the release of the videos.
Los Angeles Times
Many people continue to be surprised that the voters of San Jose, Calif., a city with twice as many Democrats as Republicans, approved a public-pension-reform ballot measure in June 2012 with a nearly 70 percent yes vote. How is this possible in liberal California, despite stringent objections from public-employee unions? Two words: open government. Before the vote, San Jose experienced 10 years of cutting services to balance the budget. Thousands of city jobs were eliminated. Layoffs included police officers and firefighters. In 2011, the city council adopted a fiscal reform plan that saved San Jose from service-delivery insolvency. The pension-reform ballot measure is just one element of this plan. The resultant savings have allowed San Jose to avoid insolvency and improve services for three straight years. We've learned an important lesson as a result: Whatever difficult things you need to do -- reforming pensions, outsourcing city work, raising taxes, implementing workplace efficiencies or, more likely, all of the above -- your biggest allies will be your residents and taxpayers if you make it easier for them to engage in the policy process. Here's how we did it:
Governing
The U.S. Supreme Court's 14-year-old website is undergoing a makeover that will launch on Monday, when the justices return to the bench from their summer recess.
National Law Journal
Jason Grumet, Washington Post
Hang around the nation's capital long enough and inevitably even the most grizzled newsroom veteran reads something so utterly wrong that he is left speechless. Such a moment arrived for this ink-stained wretch Thursday while reading a Washington Post op-ed by Bipartisan Policy Center President Jason Grumet. Either Grumet would have Americans believe that their knowing more about their government broke it or something else is responsible but they really don't need to know what it is. If that's the argument for putting most government deliberations back behind closed doors, then I'd say the FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 cannot be enacted too soon.
Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner
Openness doesn’t prevent government from getting things done, but needlessly calcified notions of openness can be a problem. Virginia’s statutes regarding electronic meetings are a case in point.
Open Virginia Law
If you’re one of the few individuals left who hasn’t caught up to digital culture, the term above is an acronym (ROFLOL). It stands for “rolling on the floor, laughing out loud” — which is what Virginia Republicans, and anyone else with the slightest sense of humor, have been doing ever since Thursday night when a voice-mail message from Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s chief of staff surfaced.
Times-Dispatch
“We would basically do anything.” That sleazy suggestion from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s chief of staff sums up elegantly the Virginia political elite’s attitude about ethics in politics. Note the wide-open language that Paul Reagan used in the voice mail he left in June in hope of dissuading a state senator from resigning. Reagan didn’t say the McAuliffe (D) administration would do “anything that’s ethical” to get its way. He didn’t say it would do “anything that’s legal.” He said it would do “basically . . . anything.” Reagan’s voice mail was “simply another example of how the Virginia Way has been practiced, and how on the edge it is — how it might be something unethical or illegal,” said Quentin Kidd, chairman of the government department at Christopher Newport University. When it comes to ethics in Virginia, the fight isn’t between Democrats and Republicans. It’s the political class of both parties vs. the public as a whole.
Robert McCartney, Washington Post
McAuliffe's propensity for bombast is no secret; his description of himself, years ago, as a hustler is a lingering reminder of his years as a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and political surrogate. But before calling Puckett's actions "despicable," as he did on the radio last week, McAuliffe might've done well to check first with his industrious chief of staff, Paul Reagan, and others about whether his administration is operating out of a glass house.
Virginian-Pilot
As Virginians with 57 years of public service between us, we have seen the opportunities for growth that arise when a state enjoys a reputation for excellent management. Without public trust, Virginia is at grave risk of losing out on the next round of investment and that next aspiring entrepreneur. That’s why we gladly accepted Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s request to chair the Commission on Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government. Our commission will conduct a comprehensive review of Virginia’s approach to ethics, campaign finance, gifts, conflicts of interest, lobbying and a host of other issues that ultimately determine the scope of the public’s trust in state government. We are joined by eight public figures who have served Virginia with distinction.
Rick Boucher and Bill Bolling, Washington Post
Seasoned lobbyists in Richmond are taking no chances these days. Some of them have hired a lawyer steeped in the arcana of Virginia’s election and ethics laws to decipher the do’s and don’t’s in dealing with politicos following the Bob and Maureen McDonnell corruption convictions last month. They say that, among the activities they’re now being warned to avoid, lest they be misunderstood by the wrong people: Making campaign contributions in person — a custom in these parts for years. Also, they shouldn’t discuss specific issues before or after making a contribution to a legislator. In a state Capitol where politics has become transactional, these folks may not have much to talk about.
Jeff Schapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Internet and cable providers have identified a business strategy to boost their revenue, and they're pushing hard. It apparently doesn't matter that their plans will destroy a basic principle of the Internet and harm their customers. The strategy involves charging fees to businesses that want their products and services to arrive quickly at people's computers and other devices. If a company doesn't pay, the result is slower load times and a degraded customer experience. The argument over so-called net neutrality rules, designed to preserve the online marketplace that allowed Netflix, Amazon and and Google to thrive, carries significant consequences for the way American consumers use the Internet and how business is done online. That is, perhaps, the best way to reconcile how an effort to preserve a competitive Web has been increasingly framed as a conspiracy and battle over government control, goaded by Internet service providers that have so much to gain.
Virginian-Pilot
AMERICANS ARE fighting over history again. In August, the College Board released a “curriculum framework” to guide the teaching of Advanced Placement high school history classes. Conservatives immediately derided the standards, and the Republican National Committee said the document “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history.” Defenders said the new standards do celebrate American history at times, but that history is now taught in a more “unsettling, provocative and compelling” fashion than it was a generation ago. Whose history is correct? How should it be taught to high-schoolers? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate.
Free Lance-Star
The Assembly’s tinkering with the state’s gifts and disclosure requirements after the McDonnell scandal, however, barely touched the larger issue of ethics in state government. The ethical problems in Richmond run much, much deeper than an engraved Rolex watch or a New York City shopping trip. That’s where the McAuliffe commission is different; the governor’s told its co-leaders he wants a wide-ranging examination of state government with a first set of recommendations on his desk by December, with the goal of presenting a legislative package to the Assembly in 2015. In addition to tackling the gifts question head-on, McAuliffe wants the panel to focus on eliminating partisan redistricting of state legislative and congressional districts. He also signaled he’d like a discussion on how to curb the politics of “soft influence” on state agencies and commissions, such as the scandal-plagued Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, as well as the selection process for judges.
News & Advance
State and Local Stories
Retired state Sen. Elliot Schewel, D-Lynchburg, has donated his legislative papers to the Virginia Historical Society, where they’ll be archived and made available for research. “We’ve been encouraging him to think about the historical society as a place for his papers for some time,” said Vice President for Collections Lee Shepard, adding it will be “one of the high-priority collections for us.” Schewel, who served in the Virginia Senate from 1976 to 1995, donated a total of about 24 linear feet of records, letters, photos and other materials to the society, which is working to expand its 20th century political archives, officials said.
Roanoke Times
Shenandoah County leaders made a rare move Thursday tokeep supervisors from bringing up a topic at future meetings. The Board of Supervisors voted 4-2 at a work session to prohibit members from reviving a motion to advertise the county attorney position. Prior to the vote, Supervisors Cindy Bailey and Marsha Shruntz, for the third time in a few months, asked the board to consider looking elsewhere for legal services. The county receives legal services from J. Jay Litten and the Harrisonburg firm of Litten & Sipe. Chairman David Ferguson, Vice Chairman Conrad Helsley and Supervisors Steve Baker and John R. "Dick" Neese voted against Bailey's and Shruntz' motion after a heated debate in which some members defended the county attorney's performance. Moments after the vote, Helsley made a motion to prevent reintroduction of the topic for six months as allowed in the board's rules and procedures adopted Jan. 2. Specifically, the board can vote to impose the prohibition following the defeat of the main motion that pertains the topic in question.
Northern Virginia Daily
Detailed aerial maps of the proposed route for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have been released by Dominion, according to the firm’s spokesperson Jim Norvelle. The maps, which depict the 400-foot wide study corridor as two thin red lines, show every parcel of property the proposed route would run through, along with their parcel numbers and the roads it would impact. Norvelle says Dominion has also posted the informational posters from the 13 open houses that occurred along the proposed route during the past two weeks at www.dom.com/acpipeline, and can be accessed by scrolling down the page to “additional details.”
Farmville Herald
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s top lieutenant apologized Friday after admitting that he had tried to keep a Democrat from quitting the evenly divided state Senate with the prospect of a lucrative state job for the senator’s daughter.
Washington Post
National Stories
Has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., or Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, ever taken an elevator ride alongside an armed contractor with a criminal record? The answer to that and other sensitive security questions about congressional protective details is hard to find, thanks to legislation enacted in 2004. Capitol Police are exempted from having to release to another entity any information “that relates to actions taken … in response to an emergency situation, or to any other counterterrorism and security preparedness measures” unless they determine that releasing the information will not “jeopardize the security and safety” of the Capitol complex. The law shielded Capitol Police from having to provide information security plans to the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, CIA and other executive branch agencies that might submit Freedom of Information Act requests.Roll Call
A federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to release videos of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner being force-fed. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued an order Friday that requires the federal government to release the 28 videos to the public and more than a dozen news outlets that sued to obtain them. Tribune Publishing, which owns the Los Angeles Times, was among the news organizations seeking the release of the videos.
Los Angeles Times
Many people continue to be surprised that the voters of San Jose, Calif., a city with twice as many Democrats as Republicans, approved a public-pension-reform ballot measure in June 2012 with a nearly 70 percent yes vote. How is this possible in liberal California, despite stringent objections from public-employee unions? Two words: open government. Before the vote, San Jose experienced 10 years of cutting services to balance the budget. Thousands of city jobs were eliminated. Layoffs included police officers and firefighters. In 2011, the city council adopted a fiscal reform plan that saved San Jose from service-delivery insolvency. The pension-reform ballot measure is just one element of this plan. The resultant savings have allowed San Jose to avoid insolvency and improve services for three straight years. We've learned an important lesson as a result: Whatever difficult things you need to do -- reforming pensions, outsourcing city work, raising taxes, implementing workplace efficiencies or, more likely, all of the above -- your biggest allies will be your residents and taxpayers if you make it easier for them to engage in the policy process. Here's how we did it:
Governing
The U.S. Supreme Court's 14-year-old website is undergoing a makeover that will launch on Monday, when the justices return to the bench from their summer recess.
National Law Journal
Editorials/Columns
This summer, 40 years after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate, the onetime White House counsel who famously called the scandal a “cancer on the presidency” surfaced with a new book. In “The Nixon Defense,” John Dean revisited the coverup with an examination of more than 600 additional tapes from Nixon’s secret recording system. The verdict: The 37th president was even guiltier than we all believed. But it’s time to revisit something else from that era: the reforms inspired by the mistrust of government that Watergate helped engender. These reforms included the passage or strengthening of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Government in the Sunshine Act and the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as well as a series of changes in the congressional committee process. They had a noble purpose: to restore public confidence in government by providing insight into its workings and greater access to the deliberative process. But while openness is indeed key to a functioning democracy, there is a dark side to sunlight. Deliberation, collaboration and compromise rarely flourish in front of TV cameras or when monitored by special interests. Most government staff now operate under the principle of “don’t write that down” and avoid raising concerns and challenging questions altogether for fear that they will be publicly revealed to embarrassing effect. Even text messages are targeted and, given the capability to digitize phone conversations, there could soon be even less room for private thought and consideration. The opposite of transparency is privacy, not corruption.Jason Grumet, Washington Post
Hang around the nation's capital long enough and inevitably even the most grizzled newsroom veteran reads something so utterly wrong that he is left speechless. Such a moment arrived for this ink-stained wretch Thursday while reading a Washington Post op-ed by Bipartisan Policy Center President Jason Grumet. Either Grumet would have Americans believe that their knowing more about their government broke it or something else is responsible but they really don't need to know what it is. If that's the argument for putting most government deliberations back behind closed doors, then I'd say the FOIA Improvement Act of 2014 cannot be enacted too soon.
Mark Tapscott, Washington Examiner
Openness doesn’t prevent government from getting things done, but needlessly calcified notions of openness can be a problem. Virginia’s statutes regarding electronic meetings are a case in point.
Open Virginia Law
If you’re one of the few individuals left who hasn’t caught up to digital culture, the term above is an acronym (ROFLOL). It stands for “rolling on the floor, laughing out loud” — which is what Virginia Republicans, and anyone else with the slightest sense of humor, have been doing ever since Thursday night when a voice-mail message from Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s chief of staff surfaced.
Times-Dispatch
“We would basically do anything.” That sleazy suggestion from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s chief of staff sums up elegantly the Virginia political elite’s attitude about ethics in politics. Note the wide-open language that Paul Reagan used in the voice mail he left in June in hope of dissuading a state senator from resigning. Reagan didn’t say the McAuliffe (D) administration would do “anything that’s ethical” to get its way. He didn’t say it would do “anything that’s legal.” He said it would do “basically . . . anything.” Reagan’s voice mail was “simply another example of how the Virginia Way has been practiced, and how on the edge it is — how it might be something unethical or illegal,” said Quentin Kidd, chairman of the government department at Christopher Newport University. When it comes to ethics in Virginia, the fight isn’t between Democrats and Republicans. It’s the political class of both parties vs. the public as a whole.
Robert McCartney, Washington Post
McAuliffe's propensity for bombast is no secret; his description of himself, years ago, as a hustler is a lingering reminder of his years as a prodigious Democratic fundraiser and political surrogate. But before calling Puckett's actions "despicable," as he did on the radio last week, McAuliffe might've done well to check first with his industrious chief of staff, Paul Reagan, and others about whether his administration is operating out of a glass house.
Virginian-Pilot
As Virginians with 57 years of public service between us, we have seen the opportunities for growth that arise when a state enjoys a reputation for excellent management. Without public trust, Virginia is at grave risk of losing out on the next round of investment and that next aspiring entrepreneur. That’s why we gladly accepted Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s request to chair the Commission on Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government. Our commission will conduct a comprehensive review of Virginia’s approach to ethics, campaign finance, gifts, conflicts of interest, lobbying and a host of other issues that ultimately determine the scope of the public’s trust in state government. We are joined by eight public figures who have served Virginia with distinction.
Rick Boucher and Bill Bolling, Washington Post
Seasoned lobbyists in Richmond are taking no chances these days. Some of them have hired a lawyer steeped in the arcana of Virginia’s election and ethics laws to decipher the do’s and don’t’s in dealing with politicos following the Bob and Maureen McDonnell corruption convictions last month. They say that, among the activities they’re now being warned to avoid, lest they be misunderstood by the wrong people: Making campaign contributions in person — a custom in these parts for years. Also, they shouldn’t discuss specific issues before or after making a contribution to a legislator. In a state Capitol where politics has become transactional, these folks may not have much to talk about.
Jeff Schapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch
Internet and cable providers have identified a business strategy to boost their revenue, and they're pushing hard. It apparently doesn't matter that their plans will destroy a basic principle of the Internet and harm their customers. The strategy involves charging fees to businesses that want their products and services to arrive quickly at people's computers and other devices. If a company doesn't pay, the result is slower load times and a degraded customer experience. The argument over so-called net neutrality rules, designed to preserve the online marketplace that allowed Netflix, Amazon and and Google to thrive, carries significant consequences for the way American consumers use the Internet and how business is done online. That is, perhaps, the best way to reconcile how an effort to preserve a competitive Web has been increasingly framed as a conspiracy and battle over government control, goaded by Internet service providers that have so much to gain.
Virginian-Pilot
AMERICANS ARE fighting over history again. In August, the College Board released a “curriculum framework” to guide the teaching of Advanced Placement high school history classes. Conservatives immediately derided the standards, and the Republican National Committee said the document “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history.” Defenders said the new standards do celebrate American history at times, but that history is now taught in a more “unsettling, provocative and compelling” fashion than it was a generation ago. Whose history is correct? How should it be taught to high-schoolers? Joel Mathis and Ben Boychuk debate.
Free Lance-Star
The Assembly’s tinkering with the state’s gifts and disclosure requirements after the McDonnell scandal, however, barely touched the larger issue of ethics in state government. The ethical problems in Richmond run much, much deeper than an engraved Rolex watch or a New York City shopping trip. That’s where the McAuliffe commission is different; the governor’s told its co-leaders he wants a wide-ranging examination of state government with a first set of recommendations on his desk by December, with the goal of presenting a legislative package to the Assembly in 2015. In addition to tackling the gifts question head-on, McAuliffe wants the panel to focus on eliminating partisan redistricting of state legislative and congressional districts. He also signaled he’d like a discussion on how to curb the politics of “soft influence” on state agencies and commissions, such as the scandal-plagued Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, as well as the selection process for judges.
News & Advance
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