Transparency News 8/12/15

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

State and Local Stories


The man at the center of a controversial arrest by agents with Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) is leading the charge to have an administrative review made public. University of Virginia student Martese Johnson was arrested outside Trinity Irish Pub in March by three ABC agents. "In order for law enforcement to have positive relationships as they can with the community, they have to be transparent and they have to prove that they are not hiding anything," Johnson said.
NBC 29

ABC's press release was off base in explaining why. The release says: "Because Virginia law prohibits disclosure of personnel files, the administrative review will not be released." When I read that I was nearly certain it wasn't an accurate description of the law, and I checked with Megan Rhyne with the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, one of the leading advocates in Virginia of making state government open to the public. Megan confirmed that release of personnel information is discretionary, meaning an agency could release the information if it wanted to. But the agency doesn't have to. I emailed Becky Gettings, a spokeswoman for ABC, and told her I didn't think the press release was accurate. She confirmed that: "Virginia ABC is opting not to release the Virginia State Police administrative review under the provision of 2.2-3705.1(1)." That's a key point for the public to be aware of in these situations. The governement agency could release the report, but is choosing not to. 
Virginian-Pilot

A Circuit Court judge dismissed Loudoun resident Brian Davison’s case Aug. 8 against the School Board regarding alleged Virginia Freedom of Information Act violations. Davison's case was based on the claim that the School Board failed to provide notices and minutes of pairwise committee meetings.  He argued that the quorum of a three-person committee is two members, and without public notices and minutes of communication between these individuals there's a clear FOIA violation. However, Davison didn’t have any concrete evidence of meetings between two School Board members on the same committee occurring and couldn't prove the subject of those meetings. There’s no legislation for citizens to find out if there’s a FOIA violation; one has to be specifically stated. 
Loudoun Times-Mirror

A statewide advocacy group is calling for transparency as legislators prepare for their return to Richmond next week for a special session called to redraw congressional voting districts. OneVirginia2021 released a statement Tuesday urging a fair process through nonpartisan criteria and open mapmaking when the General Assembly convenes Monday. “It’s a sorely lacking component in redistricting. What often happens is these maps are drawn and then dropped in the General Assembly at the last minute and no one’s had a real chance to review them,” said Brian Cannon, One Virginia 2021’s executive director. Cannon said failure to announce a process less than a week before the session exemplifies a lack of transparency in redistricting. He said Virginia residents need to know how the process will progress so they can contribute.
News & Advance

National Stories
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When the Justice Department surveyed police departments nationwide in 2013, officials included for the first time a series of questions about how often officers used force. In the year since protesters in Ferguson, Mo., set off a national discussion about policing, President Obama and his top law enforcement officials have bemoaned the lack of clear answers to such questions. Without them, the racially and politically charged debate quickly descends into the unknowable. The Justice Department survey had the potential to reveal whether officers were more likely to use force in diverse or homogeneous cities; in depressed areas or wealthy suburbs; and in cities or rural towns. Did the racial makeup of the police department matter? Did crime rates? But when the data was issued last month, without a public announcement, the figures turned out to be almost useless. Nearly all departments said they kept track of their shootings, but in accounting for all uses of force, the figures varied widely. Some cities included episodes in which officers punched suspects or threw them to the ground. Others did not. Some counted the use of less lethal weapons, such as beanbag guns. Others did not. And many departments, including large ones such as those in New York, Houston, Baltimore and Detroit, either said they did not know how many times their officers had used force or simply refused to say. That made any meaningful analysis of the data impossible.
New York Times

Hillary Clinton has agreed to turn over her email server used during her tenure as secretary of State to the Justice Department, after months of demands from Republicans that she surrender the device. The decision comes as the FBI conducts an investigation into the security of classified materials sent via her private email account. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill told CNN Tuesday that the Democratic presidential favorite has, "directed her team to give her email server that she used during her tenure as secretary to the Department of Justice, as well as a thumb drive containing copies of her emails already provided to the State Department."
USA TODAY

A coalition of 53 press and open government organizations, including the Poynter Institute, have “once again” urged President Obama “to stop practices in federal agencies that prevent important information from getting to the public.” An open letter sent Monday and disclosed Tuesday reiterates long-standing frustration with the Obama administration, whose own self-image is one of increasing the public’s access to information. The groups sharply disagree and, instead, cite a list of ongoing practices that curb such a free flow, including vetting interview questions in advance and monitoring interviews. The frustration is undisguised, as was clear in a release by the Society of Professional Journalists.
Poynter

Adoption of open data polices is linked to two powerful benefits. First, it makes government more transparent and understandable at a time when trust in the public sector has plummeted. Second, it has the potential to generate significant economic benefits. The consulting firm McKinsey has estimated open data’s economic potential at more than $3 trillion globally.  But before the profits arrive, governments have to cover sometimes unexpected costs. All projects, of course, are affected by these. Arnaud Sahuguet, the chief technology officer of New York University’s GovLab, recently wrote a blog post in which he listed some of the factors that can hide the true cost of open data: unexpected startup costs if data is kept in a legacy computer system that requires reformatting; quality-related costs to keep open data fresh and up-to-date; legal costs to comply with open data legislation; liability costs in case something goes wrong, such as publication of nonpublic information; and public relations costs that can occur when a jurisdiction generates bad press from open data about poor performance metrics or workforce diversity problems.
Governing

A federal court says outlawing "ballot selfies," photos of people displaying their marked ballots, violates free speech rights. The ruling clears the way for New Hampshire voters to post their ballot selfies during the first-in-the-nation presidential primaries early next year. New Hampshire's ban went into effect September 2014 and made it illegal for anyone to post a photo of a marked ballot and share it on social media. The violation was punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.
NPR

Delaware and other states are working to make sure the information they keep about students is kept safe and private as computers become more prominent in classrooms and educators lean more on scores and data in teaching. Schools keep a wealth of information about students, including health records, grades, family income level, test scores, housing information, phone numbers and Social Security numbers. Delaware Parent Teacher Association President Teri Hodges says parents need to feel confident their kids’ data is safe.
USA TODAY


Editorials/Columns

Under the state's open records law, agencies are permitted to keep some information secret, but they are not, in most cases, required to do so. There's no state law that prohibits the disclosure of an investigatory file, especially after the investigation has concluded. "Given the current level of public interest in law enforcement accountability in general, and this case in particular, it makes no sense to shield the entire investigative file," said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. "They could, of course, release the entire report, redact portions of it, or even release a summary of the findings. But to keep the entire file shielded is to tell the public that it doesn't much care about the public's understanding of how the officer's actions comported with ABC policy." All the public knows about the two highly publicized cases is that the state settled a lawsuit for $212,000 after ABC agents mistook a case of sparkling water for booze and swarmed a U.Va. student's vehicle two years ago, and that a video from the March arrest of a 20-year-old student showed the young man lying on the sidewalk with blood streaming from his face. Nothing to see here, the agency is saying. Time to move on. Trust us. Actually, it's time to release the report and allow the public to judge the thoroughness of the investigation, to see whether ABC officers followed protocol, to determine whether accusations of racism and brutality leveled by the student have any merit.
Virginian-Pilot

Buchanan’s treatment of other signs might, indeed, be the telling point. We support free speech, but the town probably is on sound legal footing here — if it is enforcing the ordinance uniformly in all cases.
Daily Progress

To many in local government, people like Roos and Wilson are troublemakers. By insisting they have a right to their own property, they get in the way of other people’s grand designs — and impede the collection of more tax revenue. As if that weren’t bad enough, when officials bring the full force of the government down on their heads, they have the temerity to object. Publicly. Buchanan’s Glow-a-Rama drama takes this imperious attitude to another level. Instead of a thriving business, Glow-a-Rama is now an empty shell. The Brays have run out of money and might have to file for bankruptcy, especially if Buchanan starts socking them with a $100-a-day fine for their signage. What the town’s leaders hope to achieve with all of this is a mystery. They certainly aren’t putting out a welcome mat for anyone else who might want to start a business there. But they are proving that small burgs can be just as high-handed, autocratic, and indifferent to free-speech fundamentals as their big-city cousins. Why in the world they would want to, of course, is a different story.
A. Barton Hinkle, Times-Dispatch