Transparency News 10/6/15

To a smattering of applause Monday, the city of Richmond’s finance staff informed City Council that the city’s long-overdue 2014 annual financial report is complete. Officials said they plan to submit the document, which was due in November 2014, to the state auditor of public accounts today. “Hopefully this will signal the fact that we’re getting our finances back on track,” said Councilwoman Kathy Graziano, who chairs the council’s finance committee. “I’m very pleased that it’s done.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The colorful leaders of the Virginia Senate made their cases Monday night for why their party deserves to win control of the powerful chamber next month. In a debate at Christopher Newport University, Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City County) and Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) — who have a combined nearly 60 years of service in the Senate — spent more than an hour sparring over issues such as Medicaid expansion, gun control and climate change that have sharply divided the two parties during the first 20 months of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration. The senators both support capital punishment and said lawsuits seeking to release to the public information used to guide executions go too far. The Supreme Court ruled last week that manuals used to outline execution procedures are exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests and do not have to be redacted and partially released. “I hate be flippant . . . but I don’t understand why the public needs to know what the execution room looks like. At that point, the guy’s going to die anyway,” Saslaw said.
Washington Post

The superintendent of the Northwestern Regional Adult Detention Center in Winchester said Monday he is open to allowing inmates to receive a publication that is the subject of a censorship lawsuit filed in federal court in Harrisonburg. James F. Whitley said he hadn’t seen the suit in its entirety until Monday when he was served with a summons from Prison Legal News, a Florida-based publication. Whitley didn’t contest assertions by Jeffrey E. Fogel of Charlottesville, the plaintiff’s attorney, that Prison Legal News had been banned from the detention center, along with all other publications received by mail. The lawsuit accuses the jail, the jail authority, Whitley, Capt. Clay Corbin and 10 unnamed jail employees of unconstitutional censorship of Prison Legal News and several associated publications focused on inmates’ legal rights. Whitley said he had never heard of Prison Legal News until recently, nor had he been aware that anyone in the jail was attempting to receive it through the mail. “There was no intent on our part to keep this from anybody,” Whitley said of Prison Legal News. “They just tried to send it to us, and it wouldn’t stay. I am sure we’ll find a reasonable solution.”
Northern Virginia Daily

At their regular monthly meeting tonight, Halifax County supervisors are expected to go behind closed doors to discuss a personnel matter that led two members last month to call for a special session — one that never materialized. The personnel matter is said to involve County Administrator Jim Halasz, who has been accused by a county resident of leaking information that came up during a confidential meeting of supervisors regarding a personnel matter. William Bryant Claiborne and Barry Bank, both vocal critics of Halasz, sought to bring the matter before the full board’s attention by calling the Sept. 17 special meeting. However, the session never got off the ground, with four of the board’s eight members indicating they would be unable to attend. According to sources, the controversy centers around allegations made by Ross Davis, mother of former county emergency services coodinator Kirby Saunders. Davis contends that Halasz publicly divulged information brought up during a closed board session regarding the choice of a permanent emergency services coordinator. While personnel matters are frequently discussed in closed session, no law requires public officials to do so.
SoVaNow.com


National Stories
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For the second time in three months, the Center for Public Integrity has filed a federal lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission for refusing to release documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. In July, Center for Public Integrity senior political reporter Dave Levinthal filed a FOIA request seeking a study the agency commissioned to detail the decay in the security and management of its computer systems and networks. The taxpayer-funded study, which cost $199,500 to produce, followed Center for Public Integrity reporting that revealed how Chinese hackers successfully infiltrated the FEC’s computer systems in October 2013. The 44-page document — known within the FEC as the “NIST study” — also provides recommendations on how to fix the FEC’s problems and bring its computer systems in line with specific National Institute of Standards and Technology computer security protocols.
Poynter

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would disclose after-the-fact changes to its opinions, a common practice that had garnered little attention until a law professor at Harvard wrote about it last year. The court also took steps to address “link rot” in its decisions. A study last year found that nearly half of hyperlinks in Supreme Court opinions no longer work. And the court said it would bar “line standers” who hold places for lawyers eager to see high profile arguments.
New York Times

Murray Energy Corp. announced Monday, Oct. 5, that it has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement for failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the agency’s Stream Protection Rule. The FOIA request, filed on Sept. 4, requested information to assist Murray in drafting its written comments regarding the rule. Murray said repeated requests for information were ignored, violating federal law. Founder, Chairman and CEO Robert E. Murray said the rule aims to shut down the underground coal mining industry.
DPost.com

Editorials/Columns

“You can’t run a business the way they’re running the city,” says Nick Valdrighi. “You’d go out of business and you should.” Valdrighi chairs the city’s financial audit committee. He was speaking in response to the latest act in the Richmond Fiscal Follies, a farce that rivals the Joe Morrissey Show for longest-running and most embarrassing tragicomedy. The city’s finance department, such as it is, failed to finish a financial report that, until today, was 10 months overdue. City officials say they’ll send it to the state today. The state says that appears to be a record for tardiness.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

If you awoke this morning with a lightened spirit, thankful for the return of sunshine, don’t belittle those feelings as over-sentimentalism. You are participating in a version of universal ritual that spans cultures and epochs. Celebrating the sun, especially after prolonged darkness and danger, is natural … instinctual.
Daily Progress (yes, they mean the real sun, but I like to think of figurative sunshine)