Transparency News 10/22/15

State and Local Stories

The committee considering a raise for Richmond City Council members held a public hearing Wednesday night, and if members were hoping for a clear mandate on how to proceed, they may have been disappointed. Three residents spoke, and each offered varied opinions on the subject. Viola Baskerville, a former council member and state legislator, said that knowing the amount of work that goes into the job, she would favor a salary increase as soon as possible. At a minimum, she suggested cost-of-living increases. Steve Wilborn, a 3rd District resident, said council salaries are low — $25,000 annually — but suggested raises shouldn’t be a given. He proposed that council members salaries should be increased annually based on the quality of their work as gauged by constituents.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Roanoke City Councilman Court Rosen excused himself early from a city council retreat last week less than 30 minutes before being charged with marijuana possession in a shopping center parking lot. Rosen, 36, left about 11:50 a.m. Oct. 14, as indicated by the city clerk’s audio recording of the annual retreat at the main branch of the Roanoke Library downtown. The meeting began at 9 a.m. Rosen said he had to go to work, Vice Mayor David Trinkle said. In the audio recording, Mayor David Bowers can be heard saying Rosen said he has to leave. Trinkle pauses to tell Rosen goodbye. Rosen can’t be heard on the audio stating his reason for leaving. The timing of the charge — during an official discussion in which Rosen opted not to take part — moves his actions beyond the private realm into the public arena, council members agreed. At council meetings in recent months, he regularly has been late or absent, and he occasionally has left early since starting a new job in December as vice president of strategic initiatives at Smith/Packett, a Roanoke County-based senior care facility developer.
Roanoke Times

A Pittsylvania County Circuit Court judge issued a stern warning to the Pittsylvania County Agricultural Development Board to not incur any further Freedom of Information Act violations Tuesday afternoon during the appeal of a civil suit brought against the agriculture board by citizens Deborah Dix of Blairs, Phillip Lovelace of Gretna, and Karen Maute of Danville. “The Court is not going to issue a writ of mandamus, but I am going to hold it under advisement for a period of six months. During that time if any additional FOIA violations come out, the Court will take prompt and vigorous action,” said Judge James J. Reynolds. The judge said he agreed with the plaintiff that it was the function of government, local and state, to ensure citizens were adequately and properly informed in order to promote good governments and expose bad governments. However, Reynolds said he was undecided about whether to grant attorney fees to Barbara Hudson, attorney for the citizens, and gave her 30 days to file her claim. “We have spent a considerable amount of time on politics today,” said the judge.
Star-Tribune


National Stories
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The WikiLeaks organization posted material Wednesday from what appears to be CIA Director John Brennan's personal email account, including a draft security clearance application containing personal information. The material presumably was taken in a compromise of Brennan's email account by a hacker who told The New York Post he is a high school student protesting American foreign policy. The hacker claimed he posed as a Verizon employee and tricked another employee into revealing Brennan's personal information.
Fox News

Some Colorado governments are modifying their data, making it difficult — or prohibitively expensive — for taxpayers and journalists to determine who is paid the highest salary or how public money is spent. Pinnacol Assurance, a quasi-government agency with a history of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lavish trips and alcohol-fueled events while paying employees huge salaries, recently asked Watchdog.org for more than $32,000 to provide information on how it’s spending money and what employees make. Larimer County has a policy that data it keeps in a spreadsheet or database will be turned into a PDF before it’s released to the public, making it very time consuming to do an analysis of the pay or spending. Denver releases much of its spending information on its transparency website in spreadsheet-compatible form, but requests for salary and overtime databases are released in PDFs.
ColoradoWatchdog.org

Editorials/Columns

A judge has ruled that he feels that the complaint about the Pittsylvania Agriculture Board being in violation of Virginia FOIA was politically motivated more than an actual complaint. This is simply more excuse-making behavior of the judiciary and the executive branch to make excuses for the administrators of our public boards and commissions that are required by law to follow FOIA laws.
the only other shoe