Transparency News 12/31/14
State and Local Stories
On Friday the James City County Board of Supervisors will eye a proposal that would make a number of changes to its meeting format. Under a plan submitted by County Administrator Bryan Hill, the board would now gather at 4 p.m. for a "caucus" meeting to discuss any items on the agenda with staff and have time for closed session if necessary. The "caucus" meeting would be open to the public. Then, board meetings would jump from starting at 7 p.m. to 5 p.m. Hill said the move would save money, requiring less county staff to extend their day into the evening for board meetings. In addition, Hill's proposal would limit all speakers to 3 minutes each. Under the current rules, presentation applicants can speak for 15 minutes, as well as representatives for a group such as a homeowners association. Individual speakers offering comment on public hearings are limited to 5 minutes, and for the general comment period speakers are allowed 3 minutes.
Virginia Gazette
People hoping to watch meetings of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors from somewhere other than Lane Auditorium in 2015 are out of luck. Supervisors split 3-3 in a Dec. 10 vote to move forward with a plan to video stream their proceedings as well as School Board meetings. Proponents said the service would increase access to meetings where important decisions are made. The county currently provides an audio-only stream, which has reached as many as 200 people at a time. Opponents were concerned that the added expense would not create citizen engagement. “It costs money and it creates another layer of technology which can fail and cause some frustration,” said Supervisor Kenneth C. Boyd.
Charlottesville Tomorrrow
There’s always lots of talk about doing redistricting more fairly, and now state Sen. Louis Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is proposing that the state Constitution tell us how. She wants to kick off the lengthy process of amending the Constitution to create a seven-member Redistricting Commission. Four would be members of political parties, three are to be independent officials whose jobs require nonpartisan judgment – to be exact, the Auditor of Public Accounts, the state Inspector General and the executive director of the Virginia State Bar. The four politicos would be the President pro tempore of the state Senate, that is the most senior member of the majority party, the Senate Minority Leader, the Speaker of the House and the House Minority Leader.
Daily Press
State Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, keeps a sign on his desk that says he won’t accept gifts. Now, he’s proposing to make it easier for other legislators to follow his lead – while leaving space on their desks for all those piles of paper that accumulate during the session, and afterward. Newman isproposing a bill that allows legislators to identify themselves as “a gift-free legislator,” on their required, semi-annual financial disclosure firms. Doing so would be to declare that the legislator won’t accept gifts of any value during the next six months. The Virginia Conflict of Interest and Ethics Advisory Council would create a list to be distributed to lobbyists.
Daily Press
Former U.S. senator Jim Webb, the first Democrat to announce he's exploring a 2016 presidential run, is defending payments of tens of thousands of dollars to his family members by his political action committee. The Born Fighting PAC has paid more than $90,000 over several years to Webb's daughter and wife for work on the management and design of his websites, according to a report published by Business Insider.
Virginian-Pilot
Low-number license plates for the politically connected: At the Department of Motor Vehicles, no one’s exactly sure how the tradition started. But by the time Gov. John Dalton’s administration began in 1978, the agency had run out of available plates with just three digits. It was a peculiar use of state time and resources, but it was deemed important enough that the governor’s office and the DMV should devise a solution, allowing Dalton and future governors to hand out special license plates to their supporters. The DMV added a letter — A, in Dalton’s case — before the three digits, and the plates kept flowing. If you see a B in front of a number less than 500, then it means the plate was issued under Gov. Gerald Baliles, with a G designating Gov. George Allen, a J for Jim Gilmore, a K for Tim Kaine and a W for Mark Warner. Bob McDonnell went with a small M stacked over a small C. He didn’t begin issuing his plates until after scandal had broken out around his administration. And it’s unclear if that affected the popularity of his special-issue plates. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Style, the DMV said it would charge more than $800 for a search of its system to find out how many plates McDonnell’s administration issued. Style declined to pay the fee.
Style Weekly
Members of the Henry County Board of Supervisors will elect a chairman and vice chairman for 2015 next week, but as of Tuesday, there had been no discussions among board members about who should fill the posts. “I have not received any calls or had any communication from anyone” of the members, Blackberry District Supervisor Jim Adams said Tuesday. “I think we have a number of people on the board that are qualified. I would guess at this point I would wait and see who desires to be chairman before I make up my mind” about who to support. Iriswood District Supervisor Milton Kendall also said he also has not “heard a word from anybody” who may be interested in serving.
Martinsville Bulletin
National Stories
Governing
In trying to take its message to the streets, the Ku Klux Klan has been ordered to keep white supremacy on the sidewalk. A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hasrejected a Klan chapter's lawsuit against a small Missouri town, which enacted a law barring Klan members and others from going into the street to hand leaflets to drivers. The decision is the latest chapter in a two-year-long municipal battle that was touched off when Klan members attempted to distribute racially charged pamphlets in a suburb not far from the restive protests in St. Louis over the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man.
Governing
A "Zombie Nativity" scene remains undead past the deadline to remove it in a southwest Ohio township. Sycamore Township sent resident Jasen Dixon two zoning violation notices. Officials said they received complaints about debris at the home and concluded that the nativity violates rules on size and placement of yard structures. Facing a fine and legal action, Dixon kept the display up past the township's Dec. 26 deadline. He has begun crowdfunding online and a Facebook page urges support for "freedom of expression." The scene has eerie figures including a demonic-looking creature sitting up in the manger where the baby Jesus would be in traditional Christmas nativities. He posted on his crowdfunding page that he wants to “make a better zombie nativity scene for everyone to see next year and [raise] funds to pay the township citations for having the structure.” Township officials have said it's not an anti-zombie issue, but pro-zoning rules.
Fox News
The long tanker trains full of crude oil roll south from Pennsylvania about twice a day, along the banks of the Susquehanna River and through the heart of historic Port Deposit, gliding within feet of the VFW hall, the community basketball court, the library and a riverfront playground. They continue to nearby Perryville, where they often stop along tracks between a residential neighborhood and a community garden, near an old white trestle with the town's name spelled out in brown lettering. There they wait, 100 tankers long, for clearance onto Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which carries them onward toward refineries in Delaware. Officials at Norfolk Southern, the railroad handling the shipment though Cecil County, also point to dropping gas prices and the benefits of the domestic oil boom when asked about their involvement. But they'll say little about when, where and how the crude is moved. Earlier this year, both Norfolk Southern and CSX sued the Maryland Department of the Environment to prevent the agency from disclosing information about their crude shipments. The Federal Railroad Administration started requiring railroads to disclose the information to state officials in May. The records detail the volume, routes used and frequency of all trains carrying more than 1 million gallons of Bakken crude. The railroads say the information is proprietary and would be a security risk if made public.
McClatchy
In most contests the winner isn’t simultaneously the loser. But that wasn’t the case this past year in the unofficial contest to determine computer security and privacy winners and losers. The biggest winner in 2014 was you, the user. That’s because a host of new products and services emerged to help protect the privacy and security of your data and communications. The rulings in two court cases also provided better protection against the warrantless seizure of your data. But you were also the biggest loser this year in terms of privacy and security. Ongoing revelations about the NSA’s widespread surveillance have made it clear that the intelligence agency, and its spy partners in the UK and elsewhere, will not rest until they’ve seized or deciphered every bit of your data. There were other winners and losers this year as well—defined as those who contributed to the privacy and security of your data, those who defeated it, and those who simply failed to respond in a security-conscious way. Looking back at 2014 then, here’s a breakdown of the year’s biggest winners and losers.
Wired
