Transparency News 7/22/15

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

State and Local Stories


The Freedom of Information Advisory Council meets today at 1:30 at the General Assembly Building. The public is encouraged to attend. The council’s subcommittee reviewing records exemptions will meet at 10 a.m. today, too.

VCOG’s Megan Rhyne visits Del. Ken Plum’s Virginia Report cable TV program to talk about VCOG, Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act and the FOIA Council.
Vimeo

If you are a developer seeking a rezoning or Conditional Use Permit in Hanover County, that process will most likely begin with a community meeting with all affected neighbors invited. It’s at these informal gatherings that developers get first-hand information regarding the concerns of residents and, sometimes, county planning staff, regarding their proposals. Assistant county attorney Dennis Walter explained that those community meetings where more than two commissioners are in attendance could raise FOIA concerns. Ashland District commissioner Claiborne Winborne said the meetings provide valuable information, and members who attend are seeking input on which to base their upcoming decisions.
Mechanicsville Local

The Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday night to allow Shannon Hair to decline a supervisor-approved appointment to the board of directors of the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research. Hair’s letter came following controversy regarding his selection to the board over an African-American, Joyce Wright. “It has come to my attention there have been several concerns raised over my appointment,” Hair wrote. “While I am humbled at the opportunity and believe I would represent Pittsylvania County with the highest standards due to my economic development and higher education background, I must regretfully decline this appointment.”
Register & Bee

Responses have been submitted after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was sent to five city officials regarding an alleged use of public time and facilities to engage in the Nov. 3 special election for city commonwealth’s attorney.
Winchester Star

Former CEO Wes Rosenbalm, 45, could spend five years in prison for his role in soliciting and receiving lavish gifts for himself and others at the utilities provider, after he pleaded guilty to a single count of corruption before U.S. District Judge James P. Jones. Rosenbalm, who now lives in Johnson City, Tennessee, also faces a fine of up to $250,000. His sentencing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 8. Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Lee said the case against Rosenbalm is not directly linked to the complex kickback scheme involving former BVU vice presidents Robert James Kelley Jr. and David Copeland and contractors James Todd Edwards and Michael Clark. The guilty plea Tuesday by the former CEO of BVU Authority is separate from the corruption case involving former BVU executives and contractors and appears to open a new chapter in the federal investigation. 
Herald Courier

Front Royal leaders might have jumped the gun when they backed rules for an enterprise zone last week. Now Town Council plans to kill the proposed incentives for development in the former Avtex Fibers site. Council members on Monday agreed to bring up the ordinance next week to vote down the proposal. The decision came after council discussed the ordinance that members adopted on a first reading July 13 following a public hearing. Councilman Eugene Tewalt argued that council couldn’t adopt the ordinance on second reading with Napier’s changes. Rather, council would need to nullify the ordinance and start from scratch as well as hold another public hearing on the new version. Tewalt said the proposal before council Monday was the opposite of what members passed last week.
Northern Virginia Daily

The Obama administration disclosed Tuesday it first learned about Rolling Stone’s ill-fated story on campus rape in Sept. 2014, about two months before it was published, when reporter Sabrina Rubin Erdely called seeking information on the government’s investigation of the University of Virginia’s handling of sexual assaults. The revelation from the Department of Education came the same day that a media watchdog group asked congressional oversight committees to start an investigation into what the administration may have known about the story before and after it was published and what it did to address the concerns raised in the article.
Washington Times

National Stories
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Newly released surveillance camera footage from the Baltimore riots shows chaos erupting at North and Pennsylvania avenues, where a crowd breaches and loots stores, destroys police vehicles and sets fires while police stay on the fringe of the action. With the exception of a brief incursion by a SWAT team, the video shows that officers don't move in for nearly 90 minutes, after the crowd has largely moved on. The city surveillance camera footage along with police radio transimssions and emails obtained by The Baltimore Sun under a Public Information Act request show how the looting developed April 27 at the intersection that would become a center of demonstrations in the ensuing days. The surveillance camera footage is one part of a large body of video, audio and documents from the unrest collected by the city. Much of the material — including recordings of the initial confrontation at Mondawmin — remains unreleased. Police officials said they were unable to respond Monday to a request for comment on the materials described in this report or the events they capture.
Baltimore Sun

Data is the lifeblood of state government. It's the crucial commodity that's necessary to manage projects, avoid fraud, assess program performance, keep the books in balance and deliver services efficiently. But even as the trend toward greater reliance on data has accelerated over the past decades, the information itself has fallen dangerously short of the mark. Sometimes it doesn't exist at all. But worse than that, all too often it's just wrong. There are examples everywhere. Last year, the California auditor's office issued a report that looked at accounting records at the State Controller's Office to see whether it was accurately recording sick leave and vacation credits. "We found circumstances where instead of eight hours, it was 80 and in one case, 800," says Elaine Howle, the California state auditor. "And the system didn't have controls to say that's impossible." The audit found 200,000 questionable hours of leave due to data entry errors, with a value of $6 million. Mistakes like that are embarrassing, and can lead to unequal treatment of valued employees. Sometimes, however, decisions made with bad data can have deeper consequences.
Governing

Earlier this year, the city of Philadelphia – one of the communities in the City Accelerator’s first cohort – unveiled its plans for a new 311 platform. The system takes calls for citizen requests for help with non-emergency services with issues such as graffiti and trash pickup – the same as 311 systems across the country. But the Philly 311 platform comes with an innovative twist: It connects citizens directly with local organizations, community members and city officials. The platform includes a suite of citizen-facing 311 services and social media, as well as a Neighborhood Community portal, which allows citizens to communicate with neighbors about concerns and issues. In short, Philadelphia is using 311 not only to better serve citizens, but to better engage them. Philadelphia’s approach is interesting because it elegantly interweaves people’s desire to have government rapidly respond to their problems with government’s desire to have people be interested in the work it does. The result is a citizen who is pleased that government handled his or her issue, but also a citizen who is more connected with the community in which he or she lives.
Governing

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Tuesday that he stopped using his desktop computer at work to check personal email because it posed a security risk. Johnson, whose department is responsible for protecting federal government computers from attack, said he had used his work desktop to access personal email through the Web but stopped after a news report revealed the practice as a cybersecurity risk. "There are some security risks that have been raised concerning that so I'm suspending that," Johnson said at a Politico breakfast forum. "Probably should have done it sooner." Johnson said he did not conduct department business on the personal email account. The risk is "probably not an appreciable one but one that probably should be eliminated, so I'm eliminating it," Johnson said.
Reuters

The Arkansas State Police has appealed a judge's ruling that the agency was improperly withholding information on traffic crash reports. The appeal was filed Friday afternoon in Pulaski County Circuit Court by the Arkansas attorney general's office, which is representing state police in the case. In May, Little Rock attorney Daniel Wren sued state police and state police spokesman Bill Sadler in his official capacity for access to crash reports after Wren's Freedom of Information Act request for the records was denied.
Democrat-Gazette