Transparency News 7/3/15

Friday, July 3, 2015

State and Local Stories


After nearly four years of fighting over supervisor-led public prayer, Pittsylvania County has mailed a $74,091.46 check to the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia. A check covering legal fees owed by county resident Barbara Hudson to the ACLU was mailed Tuesday to the organization’s office in Richmond, said Pittsylvania County Administrator Clarence Monday. The money came out of the supervisors’ budget and the county attorney’s budget in the county’s general fund, Monday said. The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors had appropriated the funds for the fees a few months ago, he said. “The board has been planning for this and expecting it for some time,” Monday said. Nearly $7,500 in additional legal fees sought by Hudson is still under contention. The county filed in an objection to the fee request last week. State Sen. Bill Stanley, who has represented the county for free in the case, said Hudson is not entitled to the final $7,466.67 in legal fees because she did not win the case.
Register & Bee

State investigators are seeking several years' worth of correspondence and other documents involving Mayor Will Sessoms, City Manager Jim Spore and several prominent developers who have done business in Virginia Beach since the mayor took office in January 2009. State police detectives used the state's Freedom of Information Act to request city records involving developers including Bruce Thompson; Brian Large and Bradley Waitzer, owners of Ocean Bay Homes LLC; several members of Home Associates of Virginia; John and Steve Bishard; and executives of Armada Hoffler Properties Inc. The FOIA request letter's reference line labels Sessoms a "suspect" in an ongoing conflict-of-interest investigation. It also seeks information from the city's Economic Development Department and its head, Warren Harris, as well as former Deputy City Manager Steve Herbert.
Virginian-Pilot


National Stories
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Wednesday evening, a spokeswoman for McKinney, Texas, apologized to Gawker for sending a $79,000 bill to fulfill a Public Information Act request concerning a police officer who pointed his gun at a group of unarmed teenagers at a pool party. “The number quoted to you as a cost estimate for your records request is not accurate,” communications manager Anna Clark wrote. “We sincerely apologize for the misinformation and the ensuing confusion, and we agree that the cost of more than $79,000 is at best implausible.” According to Clark, we’ll be receiving a new letter with an “updated cost estimate” soon. In the meantime, we’ve filed an amended request that excludes emails from before March 2014 in hopes of procuring information more quickly.
Gawker

Police disciplinary files are exempt from the Maryland Public Information Act, the Maryland Court of Appeals said in a 5-2 ruling on Thursday. The majority noted that the law exempts personnel information from disclosure and does not make a distinction based on whether a citizen’s complaint is “sustained” or “unsustained.” It said that mandatory disclosure of the findings could have a chilling effect on the disciplinary process. The public interest in police discipline files in Maryland was heightened in particular after former officer Michael Wood tweeted a number of allegations against the Baltimore Police Department regarding police misconduct. Steven Zansberg, a media law attorney with the Denver office of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, said that in some states — such as Florida, Ohio, Montana, and Arizona — the public is entitled to inspect disciplinary records upon the completion of a disciplinary investigation as a matter of statute.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press


Editorials/Columns

The effort earlier this year in the Virginia General Assembly to keep secret nearly all aspects of how the state executes people shouldn’t be repeated next session. What some in the legislature tried—and failed—to do was to close to the public information about the drugs being used in lethal injection executions, including the name of the drug, the manufacturer and supplier. The fear, some legislators said, was that it would open the state and the drug company to legal challenges about the effectiveness of the mixture. The U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated part of those worries in a ruling on its final day of the session this week. The 5–4 decision rejected allegations from death-row inmates in Oklahoma that the use of a sedative called midazolam in lethal injections caused enough suffering to be considered cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court’s approval of the drug that’s available in Virginia eliminates some of the secrecy the bill sought. But even if it hadn’t, secrecy in government is still a bad practice. It’s even worse when it’s to protect information about the most non-reversible action the state can perform.
Free Lance-Star