Transparency News 11/21/14
State and Local Stories
Officials with the Richmond Economic Development Authority said Thursday that they are “charging ahead” with the Stone Brewing project and pushed back against what they characterized as negative media coverage. EDA board Chairman Julious P. Smith Jr. and member Richard Johnson refused to speak with reporters after the meeting. Each man referred questions to the other. Approached after the meeting with questions about the early permit applications from Hourigan and Timmons, Smith referred questions to Johnson. When Johnson was approached by reporters, he deferred to Smith, citing an EDA policy of routing media inquiries through the chairman.
Times-Dispatch
Gifts have taken Virginia legislators far afield in recent years — to the Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club, to Paris and even to Rabbit Lake, Saskatchewan. The last two were courtesy of Virginia Uranium, which has been working for seven years to end the state's moratorium on mining the radioactive metal ore, hoping for permission to tap a 119-million-pound deposit in Pittsylvania County. Electric utilities, which have millions at stake when legislators look at energy regulation, regularly host legislators at golf tournaments. Theme park operators, who lobby hard against ending Virginia's no-school-before-Labor-Day rules, are generous hosts, too. Virginia sets no limits on who can give how much to politicians but requires elected officials disclose all gifts of more than $50. This year, in the wake of the scandal over gifts and loans to former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his family, the General Assembly revised the law to say legislators could not accept any single gift of more than $250 from anyone the legislator knows is a lobbyist, or wants or has a state contract.The cap does not apply to "intangible" gifts, such as trips or meals. The legislature added a clause saying legislators did not have to report gifts from personal friends.
Daily Press
Suffolk Mayor Linda Johnson has asked the city attorney to develop a policy to help council members assess their involvement on various boards for potential conflicts. The scope should extend beyond financial boards to any others that City Council members may sit on - including nonprofits - that "we have in our budget that receive funds from us in any way," Johnson said at Wednesday night's council meeting. The request comes less than a week after Johnson resigned as a director of TowneBank and in the wake of a Virginian-Pilot investigation into the voting record of Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms, who is a president of TowneBank. Sessoms recently resigned his seats on three of the bank's boards. He has been suspended with pay from his bank position. "If there's any perception of impropriety, whatever it may be," Johnson said, "I think we need to start looking into that and come up with some sort of policy or some sort of way that we can get the trust of the citizens."
Virginian-Pilot
U.S. Rep. Jim Moran departs Congress unrepentant on the need for those much-maligned targeted budget items known as earmarks. Moran – who once famously, if jokingly, promised to “earmark the shit out of” the federal budget if Democrats regained control in Congress – told the annual meeting of the Inter-Service Club Council of Arlington that the spending measures that used to be inserted at the behest of individual members of Congress should be brought back. Horse-trading among members of Congress, or between the executive and legislative branches, is hardly new. Moran noted that Abraham Lincoln had to trade things in order to win congressional support for emancipation of slaves. “It may be messy, it may not pass muster with the good-government groups,” Moran said of the earmarks process, but “it’s a system that has worked for 200 years.”
Inside NOVA
Splashed with modern lighting, new-age office furniture, high-tech classrooms and a sprawling auditorium, the new Chesterfield Career and Technical Center opened to much fanfare in late August. With a fraction of the cost it would have taken to build new, the $31.3 million renovation of the former Clover High School on Hull Street Road, school officials said, was money well spent. During last week’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Midlothian resident Rodney Martin asked why the school system was allowed to build a multimillion-dollar tech center without having it formally approved and listed in its five-year capital improvement plan. In his response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by county resident Brenda Stewart, school system spokesman Tim Bullisacknowledged that the “total renovation” of old Clover Hill was never included in the schools’ CIP.
Chesterfield Observer
Loudoun resident Mark Levin used his nationally syndicated radio talk show to blast county Supervisor Kenneth D. Reid (R-Leesburg) last week on the air. Levin objected to Reid’s questioning whether his Lansdowne-based Landmark Legal Foundation should be included among a list of 21 community nonprofits proposed for real estate and personal property tax exemptions. The board held a public hearing on the exemption list Nov. 12 and agreed to continue discussion of the issue to its next meeting Dec. 3. During the hearing, Reid asked whether organization and other nonprofits that have sought tax exemption actually benefited Loudoun residents or were just based in the county. That set off Levin, who said on his radio show later that evening that Reid “pretends to befriend me” and then had the audacity to question the foundation’s benefit to Loudoun. “Well, I’m going to announce here on the air,” Levin said, “they can stick their eight-thousand dollar property tax bill because I’m not going to answer Mr. Reid or anybody else beyond what we have told them.” The Landmark Legal Foundation has since withdrawn its application for exemption, Reid confirmed Wednesday night.
Leesburg Today
A committee of the Rappahannock, Shenandoah and Warren County Regional Jail Authority passed rules Thursday for jail employees to follow in using social media. One provision passed by the jail authority’s finance and personnel committee bans employees from using the jail’s technology network, Internet connection and computers “unless the employee has the proper authority to access an official social media site for work related purposes.” The regulations list Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn among the social media sites covered by the regulations. The stated purpose of the regulations is to “accurately reflect (the) RSW jail image” when employees publish and participate in online conversations.
Northern Virginia Daily
A quick fix to a dilemma regarding prayers at Amherst Town Council meetings could be as simple as a citizen giving a prayer during the public comment section. That was one suggestion offered during a prolonged discussion on prayer last week between town officials, who weighed in on opposite sides of the issue. “It has nothing to do with who’s a Christian and who’s not,” explained councilman Kenneth Watts during a town council meeting last Wednesday. “Everybody in this room, as far as I know, is a Christian... It’s a Constitutional issue.” Prior to January of this year, the Amherst Town Council opened each of its meetings with a prayer invocation given by a member of clergy from a church in or around the town of Amherst. This year, the council opted instead to open its meetings with a moment of silence.
New Era Progress
National Stories
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has appealed a denial by the Washington, D.C., police department for video footage from the first two days its officers began wearing “body cams” as part of a six-month pilot program, which had been touted as a means to greater transparency. The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) at first extended the 10-day reply deadline specified under D.C.’s Freedom of Information Act. It later denied access to all 128 body-worn camera (BWC) videos from Oct. 1-2 in their entirety, claiming that it is unable to redact “the faces, names, and other identifying information regarding arrestees, suspects, victims, and witnesses are exempt from disclosure as unwarranted invasions of personal privacy” under D.C. law.Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
The Seattle Police Department might cancel plans to outfit officers with body cameras because the ensuing public record requests for the videos might become too costly for the city, according to a report published Thursday. The Seattle Police Department was to begin a body camera pilot program in the coming weeks, with 1,000 officers to be outfitted with the technology by 2016 as part of an effort to document crime and protect officers' and suspects' rights. But when an anonymous computer programmer bombarded the department with requests for daily updates on the police videos, officials said there was not enough money or staff to fulfill this and other such possible requests, jeopardizing the plan.
Reuters
The boosters behind Boston's competition to host the 2024 summer Olympic games are promising a transparent process, but there's little sign of it yet.
Governing
