Transparency News 2/3/15
Click here for VCOG's annual chart of access-related legislation
No, it's not a belated Groundhog Day. I put the wrong date on yesterday's newsletter. I must have stayed up too late watching the Super Bowl the night before.
State and Local Stories
Dominion Virginia Power's bid to shield itself from routine state rate reviews kept chugging toward passage Monday, with a litany of business groups and charities lined up for support. Senate Bill 1349 would exempt Dominion from biennial rate reviews for five years. Western Virginia power company Appalachian Power, a late addition to the bill, would skip reviews for four years. The Senate's Commerce and Labor Committee moved the bill forward on a 14-1 vote after nearly two hours of testimony and debate.
Daily Press
A House subcommittee on Monday began carving out new measures to strengthen Virginia’s ethics rules following the convictions in September of former Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, on public corruption charges. While the panel of the House Courts of Justice Committee heard more than a dozen proposals on ethics Monday evening, the measures won’t be voted on until the panel reconvenes Wednesday. It also is likely that the measures will be rolled into one omnibus bill, just as last year.
Times-Dispatch
After an hourlong closed session, the Richmond City Council cast a series of split votes Monday night as members wrestled with the question of how to add more financial oversight to the city’s Stone Brewing deal.
Times-Dispatch
A debate over whether to pan Charlottesville’s annual observance of a holiday honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson plunged the Charlottesville City Council Chambers into chaos at times Monday. Councilors admonished the crowd to remain civil before opening the floor up for debate during the first of two public hearings, but had to call for calm or quiet from the crowd several times as speakers were “booed” and told to sit down. One woman was removed from chambers as a divided community in turn lauded and lambasted the late-January rite.
Daily Progress
A new history website launched Monday by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center features interviews with scholars, policymakers and journalists on wide range of contemporary national and world issues, center officials say. The Great Issues website, at www.millercenter.org/academic/great-issues, contains short videotaped interviews in which experts provide historical insight into some of the nation’s most pressing challenges. Topics currently posted include the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, political polarization and the legacy of the Civil Rights Act.
Daily Progress
With just a click, taxpayers may soon have a little more clarity on how their school division plans to spend their hard-earned money. Mark Hile, a Henrico County resident and local member of the tea party, wanted to see each school division list its budgets by line item online, instead of in broad, sweeping categories. So, SB 1286, sponsored by Sen. Ryan McDougle, was born. “It’s just a way to have more openness and transparency in the process, Hile told Watchdog.org. “… This is just holding fiscally accountable all levels of government.” McDougle’s bill, which passed unanimously out of the Senate Subcommittee on Public Education on Monday, would bring budget transparency in schools up to the same level as the state’s budget. When a representative from the 80,000-student Prince William Public Schools objected that a line-item budget would be 3,000 pages for his county, McDougle pointed out the state’s budget is far longer than that.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
Fairfax County officials say they are troubled by a lengthy delay in releasing information to the public about the fatal shooting of an unarmed Springfield man by a county police officer, and they are taking steps that they hope will help restore their constituents’ trust. Board of Supervisors Chairman Sharon Bulova (D) said she plans to meet with Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) on Thursday to discuss how the county could better handle information related to police shootings. The county also wants to hire a consultant to recommend policy changes, officials said.
Washington Post
National Stories
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is widely expected to propose regulating Internet service like a public utility, a move certain to unleash another round of intense debate and lobbying about how to ensure so-called net neutrality, or an open Internet. Tom Wheeler, the FCC chairman, will advocate a light-touch approach to Title II, is expected to shun the more intrusive aspects of utility-style regulation, like meddling in pricing decisions.New York Times
Less than two months after a bill to reform the Freedom of Information Act died in the House, four lawmakers announced Monday that they're taking another shot at improving the often frustrating process through which journalists, activists and other citizens can request federal government records. The bills, introduced in the House by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and in the Senate by Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), are similar to measures that passed the House last February and the Senate in December but failed to win final approval before the House recessed for the year. The legislation would place a presumption of openness in the FOIA statute and require agencies to justify withholding of information by showing a specific harm that is foreseeable from disclosure. The bills would also put a 25-year sunset on agencies' ability to withhold records reflecting internal deliberations or other privileged communications. Openness advocates complain that the "deliberative process privilege" is often interpreted so broadly that it obscures virtually all of the inner workings of government that FOIA.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
Washington Post
