Transparency News 8/25/15

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

State and Local Stories


A new audit found no evidence of favoritism in the State Corporation Commission's award of a major technology contract, but repeats a more than 2-year-old suggestion that the commission clarify its procurement rules. The Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts had already cleared former Commission CAO Danny Payne of wrongdoing in a series of inquiries into contracts the SCC has with CGI, a major IT company. The latest review was spurred by a competitor's continuing allegations that CGI got a sweetheart deal with the commission shortly before Payne left. PCC Technology Group has pushed that argument, unsuccessfully thus far, to the state Supreme Court. Their allegations rely in part on past allegations from former employees meant to tie Payne to CGI through an apparent friendship with a CGI executive. The latest state auditor's report states that no business ties were found between Payne and CGI, but that portion of the investigation relied on Payne's statement of economic interest, the annual form state employees must use to disclose business ties. The auditors office has told the Daily Press before it does not probe friendships.
Daily Press

The city of Richmond, Va., recently unveiled an open data portal that gives people access to important data that had long languished in dark corners of its website. Everything from crime data to property records are easily searchable and downloadable, with all sorts of charts and datasets ready to grab. That all sounds fantastic, and it is. More cities, especially mid-size cities like Richmond, should be getting on board with the open data movement. But as a journalist who has now seen two small cities (see Somerville, Mass.) embrace this kind of transparency while ignoring others, it’s important that we remind government officials that open data is not a replacement for following the letter and spirit of freedom of information laws. The same city that just unveiled its open data portal makes no serious attempt at accurate record keeping or fairness when it comes to FOIA requests. Its FOIA guidelines are more than a decade old and do little to actually guide anyone, and it charges fees based on whim rather than policy — when it’s not outright rejecting reasonable requests for important information.
Sunlight Foundation

National Stories
​
Twitter has shut down a network of sites dedicated to archiving deleted tweets from politicians around the world. The sites — collectively known as Politwoops — were overseen by the Open State Foundation (OSF), which reported that Twitter suspended their API access and reportedly told the OSF that its decision was the result of “thoughtful internal deliberation and close consideration of a number of factors,” and that the social media site didn’t distinguish between politicians and regular users.
The Verge

A U.S. judge on Monday rebuffed a request to release the names of the jurors who convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of the Boston Marathon bombing and sentenced him to death, saying it would be premature to do so while he is seeking a new trial. Defense lawyers last week said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Boston that blanket media coverage of the 2013 bombing and its aftermath influenced the jury and requested that a new trial be held outside of Boston. U.S. District Judge George O'Toole wrote that media attempts to interview the jurors, which likely would follow the release of their names, could interfere with attempts to determine whether the trial was fair.
Reuters

People post selfies with their strawberry daiquiris and their calico kittens, with strangers and friends, with and without clothes. So it was inevitable, perhaps, that some might take photographs inside the voting booth to show off their completed ballots. Excited first-time voters; those proud to show that they voted for or against, say, President Obama; and those so disgusted that they wrote in the name of their dead dog have all been known to post snapshots of their ballots on Twitter or Facebook. Now, a legal fracas has erupted over whether the display of marked ballots is a constitutionally protected form of speech and political expression — as a federal court in New Hampshire declared this month, overturning a ban on such photographs — or a threat to the hallowed secret ballot that could bring a new era of vote-buying and voter intimidation.
New York Times

Editorials/Columns

The information age was supposed to make it easier to access just about everything. But don’t tell that to government bureaucrats. While the rest of the world has been turned upside down by technological advances over the last couple of decades, the concept of freedom of information remains firmly in the 20th Century for many local and state government agencies. Part of the problem is one of ideologies. Many government-types would prefer not to see their emails, text messages and other sensitive communications made available for public scrutiny. Under the law, of course, it’s all considered public record. The main problem with Burns’ proposal is that it starts from a viewpoint that public information requests are burdensome, unnecessary interruptions in what should be an efficient system operated by people who know better than the rest of us. People with that mindset have no business working in government. It’s supremely important that the work of the people, no matter how potentially damaging, embarrassing or trivial, stays within the public domain. The public, after all, has the right to know.
Havasu News