Transparency News 4/23/15

Thursday, April 23, 2015

State and Local Stories


Virginia’s two U.S. senators and a member of the state’s congressional delegation want federal regulators to allow more time and public hearings for opponents of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline to have their say. But a Hampton Roads natural gas company says further delay in the federal regulatory process would harm its customers, and the Virginia Chamber of Commerce called for speedy approval of the pipeline proposed from West Virginia to the southeastern Virginia and North Carolina coasts. The public comment period for an environmental review of the project at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has become an early battleground over the proposed $5 billion, 550-mile pipeline, with opponents seeking more time and hearings to make their case and supporters warning against any delay in the regulatory process.
Times-Dispatch

Culpeper County Commonwealth’s Attorney Megan Frederick, tears in her eyes, had just one verbal comment after a seven-woman jury found that she did not defame Supervisor Bill Chase by using the word “corrupt” in a September 2013 email. “The First Amendment is alive and well in Culpeper and I’m happy for my citizens,” she said. “They can still speak their minds about the government.” After a 40-minute closing argument by David Baugh, Chase’s lead attorney, it took the jury only 20 minutes to bring back its verdict for Frederick and against Chase in the $1.75-million defamation suit.
Free Lance-Star


National Stories
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Senate Republicans have launched the opening salvo in a battle over government surveillance powers, introducing a bill to preserve intact the National Security Agency's authority to store and search domestic telephone records. In an unusual procedural move, the GOP measure to extend the NSA's so-called "bulk collection" of phone records was not considered by any Senate committee. Instead, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., backed by the Intelligence Committee chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., moved about 10 p.m. Tuesday to ask the full Senate to reauthorize Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act without changes.
McClatchy


Editorials/Columns

Transparency Virginia, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog group, issued a report this week that shines an unflattering light on the hazy state legislature. The General Assembly frequently operates without advance public notice of its committee and subcommittee meetings. This year, 76 percent of bills in the House of Delegates were killed in in those meetings without recorded votes or any vote at all. (The Senate does much better, with only 7 percent of its bills meeting this fate.) Cynics might believe this is a good thing and that in the blessed name of efficiency, many bad bills never become law. We believe that bad bills deserve transparently debated death and that many good bills die on the tangled vines in Richmond. Among those in this session were four attempts to end gerrymandering and bills to help landowners fight Dominion Power’s use of eminent domain. While we are glad that our legislature is part-time, General Assembly sessions are mayhem, with members having too much to do in too little time. The fast pace frequently blocks the public, strengthening a system already geared toward insiders and lobbyists. What can be done?
News Leader

Seventy-two-year-old Jimmy Howery is — or rather, was — the bailiff for the Floyd County General District Court. Then he wrote a letter to the editor, and promptly got fired. Howery’s letter to The Floyd Press expressed his support for Doug Weddle, a candidate for sheriff. According to The Roanoke Times, Weddle is a Republican and a police officer in Christiansburg. Weddle is squaring off against Brian Craig, a sheriff’s deputy in Floyd. The morning Howery’s letter appeared, the current sheriff, Shannon Zeman, summoned Howery to his office. “He asked me to come upstairs, and he was upset that I had wrote my letter,” Howery told The Roanoke Times. The right to free speech does not entail a right to be free from the consequences of speaking. But there are appropriate consequences and inappropriate ones — and the line separating the two depends on the content of the speech and the identity of the speaker. 
Times-Dispatch

Tuesday night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a new, fast-tracked bill to reauthorize Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. Section 215, which allows the government to collect "tangible things" relevant to an authorized terrorism investigation, is set to expire on June 1, 2015. Senator McConnell's bill would extend the provision through 2020. Section 215 poses grave hazards to First Amendment freedoms, including newsgathering. Since 2006, the government has used its authority under Section 215 to gather "tangible things," including phone metadata records, in bulk and without suspicion. Massive, indiscriminate call tracking undermines reporters' abilities to promise confidentiality to their sources. And the knowledge that communications are being monitored has led both sources and journalists to engage in self-censorship, interfering with constitutionally-protected newsgathering activities. The effects of bulk surveillance under Section 215 have been widely felt. Many reporters at major news organizations have said that the bulk telephone records collection program has made sources less willing to speak to them, even about matters that are not classified and that are unrelated to national security. And in its report on the telephony metadata program, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board recognized that the scope and extent of the program's impact on journalists, reporters, and news organizations detrimentally affects the exercise of fundamental First Amendment rights.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press