Transparency News 1/15/15
State and Local Stories
Tons of bills were posted yesterday to the Legislative Information System, but if you’re looking for bills related to access to records and meetings, you can just look through our bill chart.
VCOG
Things are not as they should be these days at The Virginian-Pilot, the largest newspaper in Virginia. In the fall, the paper produced an important investigation of municipal government, one that has sparked an official inquiry, led to policy changes at a local bank, and prompted the mayor of Virginia Beach to resign his lucrative private-sector job. By any expectation, the paper would have kept dogging the story, probing whether there was more to discover about the overlap between government and business elites in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Instead, the newsroom has been consumed with warding off pressure from an unexpected source: upper management at its own paper. In the view of several Pilot journalists, that pressure has stifled further enterprise reporting. It has also led to concerns that the paper might even publicly backtrack from its published coverage. As one veteran journalist at the paper put it: “We’re walking around with duct tape over our keyboards.”
Columbia Journalism Review
Federal officials are investigating the theft of more than $600,000 from the campaign account of Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, the Fairfax Democrat disclosed Wednesday. Saslaw said the FBI alerted him in September that more than 70 unauthorized checks had been written from his campaign account between June 2013 and September 2014. No one has been arrested in the case,, but the FBI has a suspect and is close to bringing charges, Saslaw said.
Washington Post
Several members of the Loudoun Water Board of Directors, who last month had their salaries doubled by the Loudoun Board of Supervisors, have donated thousands of dollars to the political campaigns of supervisors in recent years. The water provider board is composed of appointees by the Board of Supervisors. Especially benefiting from the political contributions is Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York (R-At Large), who has received $4,800 from Loudoun Water's board chairman, Johnny Rocca, and $3,300 from Loudoun Water board member Mark Koblos, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. Additionally, York has accepted $250 in campaign funds from water board member Shaun Kelley and $100 from Loudoun Water General Manager Fred Jennings.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
Transparency Virginia aims to improve citizen participation and understanding of the General Assembly. Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said the group’s goals include the fair consideration of all legislation and advance notice of committee and subcommittee meetings. “Citizens who want to testify on bills need lead time so they can plan child care or days off from work to travel to Richmond to do so,” Rhyne said. When committees and subcommittees call or cancel meetings quickly and with little notice, citizens are disadvantaged. Rhyne also noted the importance of recorded votes. “It is impossible for citizens back home to monitor their representatives, when a bill’s history, as entered onto the Legislative Information System, simply states that it was tabled or passed by without any indication of who supported that decision and who did not,” Rhyne said. Delegate Dickie Bell is supportive of the group’s goals. “We’ve got some work to do, but it needs to be done. Too much business is conducted out of the sunlight,” he said, adding that “a bipartisan effort has much better chance of success.”
Star-Tribune
National Stories
The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government is supporting a suit filed in Greene County Chancery Court which claims the Greene County Industrial Development Board violated citizens’ rights to listen to discussions in a public meeting. The group wants the court to determine whether the state’s open meeting laws were violated in July when sheriff’s deputies arrested and forcibly escorted Eddie Overholt from a board meeting at which he, and many other attendees, complained they could not hear the board’s discussion regarding the coming US Nitrogen plant.Johnson City Press
The District of Columbia is part of a small group of cities and open data advocates who are trying to make it easier to access and search legal codes and legislation using software tools that are freely available in the public domain. The movement, dubbed America Decoded, is run by the OpenGov Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for open government by making its data free and easily accessible using common standards. According to Bill Hunt, a lead developer for America Decoded, much of the data released by government isn’t really open at all but is locked in file formats that make them hard to access or in standards that can be compared to using a foreign language. If you force users to learn a new language and to find a software to translate that language, “then you’ve added a considerable barrier to entry that undercuts openness and accessibility,” said Hunt. Besides D.C., other cities that have opened up their legal codes include Baltimore, Chicago and San Francisco. Several states have also launched open data versions of their codes, including Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Oregon and Virginia.
Governing
A Montana judge Monday heard arguments in a reverse freedom of information case, in which Billings sued the Billings Gazette, claiming that release of documents about alleged corruption would violate employees' privacy. Yellowstone County Judge Michael Moses said at the hearing that he struggles "with a government entity suing a private entity, saying you can't have the documents you request." The Gazette sought information on alleged mishandling, misappropriation or misuse of public funds by employees at the city-owned landfill. The city refused, citing its employees' right to privacy. Gazette attorney Martha Sheehy said the city's lawsuit would have a chilling effect on journalism, that "the city has that obligation" - to release, at a minimum, redacted documents, so the public can know how public money was spent.
Courthouse News Service
Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday expanded protections for journalists, setting new standards that federal prosecutors must meet before seeking subpoenas or search warrants covering media professionals. Prosecutors must consult with the department’s Policy and Statutory Enforcement Unit before taking steps that include issuing a subpoena to a member of the news media, using a subpoena or court order to obtain records concerning a member of the media, or questioning, arresting or charging a member of the media for actions arising out of “newsgathering activities.” A significant change praised by media representatives was to drop the word “ordinary” from the phrase “newsgathering activities.” “These revised guidelines strike an appropriate balance between law enforcement’s need to protect the American people, and the news media’s role in ensuring the free flow of information,” Holder said.
McClatchy
Tuesday, the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice released its 2012 report on Activities Under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 for the first time. When the report was originally issued, it was classified and not disclosed to the public. The report, in redacted form, was released in response to a FOIA lawsuit filed by The New York Times, and reveals that the FBI failed to report that it illegally collected information on individuals inside the United States. Section 702 only allows the government to collect the communications of foreign persons "reasonably believed" to be located outside the United States. Under 702, the government is explicitly barred from collecting communications on "United States persons" -- citizens, aliens or even domestic organizations -- or those inside the United States. The section requires the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence to adopt "targeting procedures" designed to ensure that collection of communications only takes place outside of the United States.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard arguments Tuesday in Cause of Action v. FTC, a case that challenges whether the Federal Trade Commission properly denied fee waiver requests made by the non-profit group Cause of Action. The group asserted it was entitled to a fee waiver both because its requests were in the public interest and they are a representative of the news media. Katie Townsend, Litigation Director at the Reporters Committee, argued before the court as amicus curiae in support of the Cause of Action, focusing on the changing nature of disseminating information to the public in the digital age. The oral arguments before Chief Judge Garland, Judge Brown, and Judge Sentelle saw extensive questioning from the bench, and extended well over the allotted time to almost 80 minutes. The judges’ questioning highlighted many of the issues that are affecting the news media at large, especially regarding the online dissemination of information.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
A debate on whether to release the medical records of the female serial killer who inspired the play and film "Arsenic and Old Lace" played out on Wednesday on the stage of Connecticut's Supreme Court more than a half century after her death. Amy Archer Gilligan was sentenced to life in prison in 1919 after admitting to poisoning one of her husbands and a resident of a nursing home she ran by putting arsenic in their food, and died in 1962 at the age of 93 in a psychiatric hospital. Ron Robillard, a Connecticut journalist planning a book on Gilligan, is seeking the release of her medical records. State health officials have resisted, contending the records are connected with her mental health records and thus private.
Reuters
Editorials/Columns
The Tech Center at Oyster Point development in Newport News was promoted as a critical economic development initiative with the potential to create a good many jobs. Its construction will radically change one of the most prominent intersections in Newport News. And ushering it to completion will require a substantial public investment by city taxpayers. The newspaper continues to ask questions about the project and expects Newport News officials to be open and transparent in response. So although this editorial board has been a proponent of the effort, we have to wonder: If it's such a good idea, why does the city administration get jumpy every time a reporter asks about it? Though this may sound like we're complaining needlessly over a few hundred dollars, the issue is larger than this one request. After all, not only can the Daily Press afford the additional cost, we have a platform to articulate our frustration. Rather, it begs the question of what you, dear citizens, should expect when you exercise your right to make similar inquiries for public records. The documents we seek are covered under the Freedom of Information Act — even the city manager agrees — and yet we continue to face obstacles to obtaining them.Daily Press
The Justice Department proudly notes on its Web site, FOIA.gov, that “The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a law that gives you the right to access information from the federal government. It is often described as the law that keeps citizens in the know about their government.” But that doesn’t mean you’ll be “in the know” anytime soon. In fact, it may take years for you to be in the know. Take, for example, our colleague Anne Gearan’s FOIA request, to the Department of Defense for “visits, meetings and other correspondence” involving former secretary of defense Bob Gates and a couple other top DOD officials regarding efforts to close the Guantanamo prison and other matters. Gearan, who was with the Associated Press at the time, got her answer in the mail, double-sealed with packing tape (so you know it’s important), this week — 1,916 days since she sent the request.
Al Kamen, Washington Post
In 1971, two years after leaving the White House, Lyndon Johnson dedicated his sleek, windowless eight-story presidential library at the University of Texas. But in the pages of The Washington Post, editorial cartoonist Herblock depicted Johnson as an Egyptian pharaoh opening “the Great Pyramid of Austin.” That’s a perfect metaphor for presidential libraries, which memorialize our leaders — and their often-monumental egos — in brick, concrete and stone. Like the ancients, presidents start planning these shrines before their rule comes to an end. So early this year, President Barack Obama will decree whether his own library will be in Chicago, New York or Hawaii. But why should each president get his own library? Multiple libraries are wasteful, costing taxpayers millions of dollars every year. And they’re undemocratic, because they allow our presidents — not the people who elected them — to define their legacies.
Jonathan Zimmerman, Times-Dispatch
