Transparency News 11/24/14

Monday, November 24, 2014
 
State and Local Stories

Virginia lawmakers are subject to little oversight beyond their own consciences when balancing their own interests against the public's, the Daily Press found during a monthslong review of thousands of pages of campaign finance reports, financial disclosure forms and property records. Virginia sets few ethics rules for legislators and, unlike most states, sets no limits on the money they accept for their campaign funds and political action committees. Virginia's approach is to rely on the disclosure forms legislators must file with the State Board of Elections and clerks of the House of Delegates or state Senate. The argument is that telling the public about the money they earn, and the money they accept, is the best way to ensure that legislators act in the public interest, and not in their own. But Virginia doesn't ask legislators to tell the public very much.
Daily Press (part 8 of 8)

Sometimes, spending time in the lush green of Capitol Square — or even leaving it — isn't such a bad deal for Virginia's part-time legislators. Especially since it can be such a good place for making connections. Glenn Oder, who represented much of midtown Newport News in the House of Delegates for a decade, for instance, landed a new job after his first year in office, earning more than $10,000 working for Kaufman and Canoles Consulting, a job he held for seven years, until 2009. How much more than $10,000 didn't need to be disclosed under state ethics law as it was written then. Politics in Virginia has become a career boost for many in the General Assembly — and plenty of Virginia's legislators make a nice living in the game and afterward, a Daily Press review of the business affairs of state legislators past and present shows.
Daily Press (part 7 of 8)

To report The Virginia Way, an 8-part series, the Daily Press looked at roughly 200 current and former elected officials' financial disclosure forms and campaign finance reports from the past two decades, as well as data from Freedom of Information Act requests with the clerks of the state Senate and House of Delegates and the state Department of Accounts. The paper also examined public records of real estate and business holdings, lobbyist disclosures with both the Virginia Secretary of the Commonwealth and the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, and surveyed all 140 current members of the General Assembly for details about allowances and benefits received from the state, though only a few dozen replied.
Daily Press

A civil liberties group contends Virginia's attorney general's office is not following steps outlined in state law to provide insight into the gathering of telephone records by policedepartments and sheriff's offices statewide. For at least 10 years, the attorney general's office has been submitting required annual reports to the General Assembly only about wiretaps, a rare kind of intercept that records actual phone conversations. But the reports are silent on the much more prevalent court orders that police agencies use to obtain past call log records and live access to data about a phone's activity — such as the phone numbers being dialed out and calling in.
Daily Press

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe had run out of options to pull off his marquee campaign promise to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Even a risky plan to circumvent the legislature had fallen apart. That’s when the governor, his top priority defeated, picked up the phone and called the man he blamed for the catastrophe. “Hey, Phil? Terry McAuliffe,” the governor said in a seething voice message to Phillip P. Puckett, a Southwest Virginia Democrat who had quit the state Senate days earlier, throwing control of it to the GOP. “I want you to know we just lost the vote, 20 to 19, in the Senate. Medicaid is done. I hope you sleep easy tonight, buddy.”
Washington Post

A dispute over attendance at a state conference has erupted between two outgoing Front Royal Town Council members. Councilman Thomas Sayre came under fire for seeking reimbursement after he attended the Virginia Municipal League’s annual conference at The Doubletree Hotel in Roanoke in early October. A fellow councilman complained that Sayre attended part of the conference without registering and then asked that the town reimburse him for the expenses. Town Council plans to discuss the conference matter at a work session after its regular meeting Monday. Sayre did not register for the conference, according to information provided by the town, but did receive reimbursement for $245.75 to cover travel and other expenses. Mary Jo Fields, VML  director of research, confirmed Friday that she gave Sayre permission to visit the exhibit hall and go on the mayors walk at the conference.
Northern Virginia Daily

National Stories

A bill aimed at strengthening the Freedom of Information Act cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday on a unanimous vote after being watered down in order to try to speed passage of the legislation in the lame-duck congressional session. Despite the change, open government groups are still backing the measure because of other reforms in the legislation. The bill originally included a provision that would allow federal judges to override a FOIA exemption federal agencies often use to shield their internal communications from disclosure. However, that provision was stripped out of the bill in a manager's amendment prepared by Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and the measure's Republican co-sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. A Leahy aide said the change was made because of bipartisan objections to the aspect of the bill allowing judges to weigh the need to protect an agency's deliberative process or other legally privileged records against the public's interest in the information.
Politico

Judicial elections over the past several years have been growing increasingly politicized, as candidates have begun campaigning more vigorously and publicly pledging positions on various controversial issues that could come before them on the bench. But a case before the U.S. Supreme Court could push that further, making judicial races even more like contests for other elected offices. At issue iswhether judicial candidates should be allowed to directly ask for campaign contributions. That’s prohibited by ethics rules in 30 of the 39 states that elect judges. Instead, judicial candidates in those states must leave the task of asking for money to supporters and friends. The idea is to prevent lawyers or potential litigants from currying favor with judges who may handle their cases. Putting distance between judges and donors, the thinking goes, makes the connection less personal.
Governing

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler says he wants to make sure he’s on solid ground with new net neutrality rules because he knows what’s coming: a lawsuit. Major cable and telecom firms are going to sue no matter what, Wheeler said during a news conference after Friday’s FCC meeting. To prepare for that, he wants to make sure that the FCC’s record in support of whatever rules it develops is strong.
Politico

San Francisco has DataSF. Chicago has the Data Portal. New York City has NYC Open Data. Even mid-sized Asheville, N.C., has a digital hub. For more than five years now, states and localities have been leading on open data, allowing the public free and unfettered access to the reams of data they collect on everything from neighborhood crime statistics to restaurant inspections to real-time bus arrivals. What’s driven the open data movement is the idea that government needs to be more transparent. But now, a growing number of experts and policymakers are saying it’s time to shift the conversation about open data away from transparency to economic value.
Governing

 

Editorials/Columns

We live in an era when headlines are too often loaded with controversy about gifts to politicians and secretive government deals involving taxpayer money. The behavior of public officials frequently erodes trust in them and, more importantly, in the institutions they are responsible for leading. The news media work to open government and increase transparency. Thankfully, we are not alone. Numerous civic organizations, including — to name just a couple — the Virginia Public Access Project and the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, help keep the people informed about the activities of the public sector and the money that flows in and around its players. Virginia recently lost one of our pioneers in the art of government accountability. Steve Calos was an activist, in the very best sense of the word — a man actively working to protect the interests of the little guy by insisting the big boys conduct their activities in the light of day, improving the odds that their transactions with the government would not compromise the interests of everyday Virginians.
Times-Dispatch

The Times-Dispatch supports the Freedom of Information Act. We resist efforts to carve out exemptions; we promote efforts to broaden its scope. We also understand that if players voluntarily met their public obligations, journalists would not need to rely on the FOIA to secure information that belongs on the public record. These comments were inspired, of course, by Richmond’s Economic Development Authority. The FOIA does not apply to the private sector. Board members and senior executives can meet behind closed doors. Although businesses must release certain information to shareholders and regulatory agencies, the corporate world is not subject to the same scrutiny that applies to government. We understand this. We also believe that when private companies seek to do business with state entities they place themselves in the public realm and surrender at least some of their rights to proprietary privilege.
Times-Dispatch

Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s ethics reform commission signed off on its preliminary recommendations Nov. 14, and all in all, the panel has proposed a serious set of changes the General Assembly should adopt quickly to begin the process of trying to regain the public’s trust. Adopting the commission’s proposals should be a no-brainer for the Assembly; indeed, if any changes at all are considered in the 2015 session, they should be ones that would tighten the law. For too long, Virginia has operated under an “honor system” for ethics enforcement in the public square; that time, sadly, is long gone. It’s now time for a tough law with teeth.
News & Advance

Last spring, Illinois state government rammed through legislation that sought to limit the public’s access to public documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. House Bill 3796 lets governments identify certain FOIA requests as “voluminous.” Then, the government unit can delay providing information and charge between $20 and $100 for electronic data. Yes, you could pay $100 for information that already belongs to you. sVoluminous is defined in the bill as a request that includes more than five individual requests for more than five different categories of records or a combination of individual requests that total requests for more than five different categories of records in a period of 20 business days; or requires the compilation of more than 500 letter or legal-sized pages of public records unless a single requested record exceeds 500 pages. If your request is fulfilled as a PDF and exceeds 160 megabytes, then you can be charged $100. For the record, you can buy a 32-gigabyte flash drive online for anywhere between $13 and $50. A thousand megabytes make up one gigabyte. Springfield wants to let governments charge you $100 for something that is 16 percent of a gigabyte. 
Northwest Herald