Transparency News 10/27/15
State and Local Stories
Virginia has a patchwork of policies governing use of police body cameras that is "inconsistent at best, chaotic at worst," the ACLU of Virginia says in a study that calls for uniform, statewide standards for use of the law-enforcement technology. The study released today recommends model policies that local police and sheriff's departments should follow in deploying use of cameras to record law enforcement encounters with criminal suspects and their victims. The study reviews 59 body-camera policies adopted by localities in Virginia, including Henrico and Dinwiddie counties, as well as a model policy of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
A former Bristol Virginia mayor and longtime BVU board member pleaded guilty Monday to selling race tickets he received for free and then lying about it to a federal grand jury. Paul Hurley, 74, entered a guilty plea to charges of mail fraud and making a false declaration during a hearing in U.S. District Court. He becomes the sixth defendant to plead guilty to a series of criminal corruption charges as a result of an ongoing federal investigation. Three former executives, including former CEO Wes Rosenbalm, and two former contractors have pleaded guilty since April to their roles in four different criminal schemes. Hurley served on the BVU board from 2006 to 2014, including as its chairman. He also chaired the Economic Development Committee, which was formerly a division of BVU, and served 15 years on City Council, including a stint as mayor in 2004-05. He was also an educator for 35 years and a longtime school administrator in Bristol Virginia’s school system. Between 2009 and 2013, Hurley received about 50 tickets to NASCAR races at Bristol Motor Speedway – paid for by BVU – under the pretense of entertaining potential clients for economic development. But he sold those tickets to third parties, including “friends, ticket scalpers and others for his own personal benefit,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Zachary Lee said during the hearing.
Herald Courier
Jurors returned a split verdict Thursday in the federal trial of two aides to Ron Paul's 2012 presidential campaign who prosecutors alleged secretly paid an influential legislator for his endorsement, charges the former candidate argued were timed to undermine his son Rand Paul's current bid for the White House. One of the aides is Dimitri Kesari, a Republican political operative and member of Hamilton's town council. The federal jury found Kesari guilty of causing the campaign to file false records concerning the payments to former Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson. He swung his support from Michele Bachmann to the Texas congressman just days before Iowa's 2012 Republican caucuses, in which Paul finished third. Sorenson is awaiting sentencing for his role in the alleged scheme.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
National Stories
Most kids learn the grade school civics lesson about how a bill becomes a law. What those lessons usually neglect to show is how legislation today is often birthed on a lobbyist’s desk. But even for expert researchers, journalists, and government transparency groups, tracing a bill’s lineage isn’t easy—especially at the state level. Last year alone, there were 70,000 state bills introduced in 50 states. It would take one person five weeks to even read them all. Groups that do track state legislation usually focus narrowly on a single topic, such as abortion, or perhaps a single lobby groups.
Fast Company
A gag order imposed last week by the judge presiding over the Freddie Gray case is the latest of several challenges that have arisen for members of the public and the media keeping tabs on the proceedings. In addition to a restriction on attorneys speaking outside of the courtroom, pre-trial hearings for the six police officers facing criminal charges in Gray's arrest and death have been marked by extensive bench conferences, to which the public isn't privy. An overburdened clerk's office has struggled to make court filings available several days after they are filed. And hearing transcripts won't be available until the trials have concluded — the sixth one is tentatively scheduled for March.
Baltimore Sun
Over the course of the next few days, millions of tweeters will be given the option to create and respond to public polls in a few short steps. The wildly popular social network announced its plans to roll out the feature in a blog post Wednesday and said the anonymized voting system would allow users to weigh in on the topics that matter most to them. While we are sure to see a fair amount of pop culture-centric polls as a result of the new function, we are also likely to see governments putting it to work as a means of directly connecting with their citizens.
Governing
The ability of Congressional Research Service analysts to support congressional deliberations is substantially enabled by (if not entirely predicated on) the confidentiality with which requests from individual Members of Congress and the CRS responses to those requests are handled. Confidentiality permits congressional offices to consider politically sensitive or unpopular topics, and to evaluate new perspectives dispassionately without being prematurely locked into an ideologically-determined position. A new CRS policy statement embraces the "fundamental core value" of confidentiality. But then CRS ratchets it up to the point of absurdity. "[CRS] staff must maintain a confidential relationship with congressional clients at all times. Each and every inquiry CRS receives is part of a confidential relationship," the CRS policy affirms. So far, so good. "Confidentiality requires that CRS staff members never acknowledge to another congressional client, government entity or official, or to the public or media, work that has been done for a specific Member or committee." Okay. But then CRS goes over the edge. "Even in instances when a Member or committee publicly releases a confidential memorandum that CRS has prepared, staff may not provide copies of the memorandum to other congressional clients." That's overkill. "You should answer any questions that [other] congressional clients have about the issue by preparing a new memorandum or other form of response [...], but you must do so in a way that neither confirms nor denies that CRS did the work that has been made publicly available [by the Member or committee]." Instead of confidentiality serving as a valuable means to an end, the new policy here elevates confidentiality into an end in itself, and in doing so casts doubt on the good sense of CRS management.
Secrecy News
Editorials/Columns
The ethics commission established by Gov. Terry McAuliffe has recommended hiking the pay for state legislators while forbidding their personal use of office expense funds. Both proposals deserve approval. The public often holds politicians as a class in low regard, and sometimes has good reasons for doing so. But the roots of those reasons — partisan scheming, ideological disagreement, conflicting priorities — have no connection to legislative salaries and cannot be addressed by keeping lawmakers’ pay low. Refusing to raise salaries, on the other hand, could create more and different problems. Legislators shouldn’t get rich from serving the public — but they shouldn’t have to take a vow of poverty, either.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
North Carolina showed the nation last week how not to choose a leader for its acclaimed public university system, one of the oldest and most prestigious in the country. After a secret, controversial search, the UNC Board of Governors announced Friday that Margaret Spellings, a primary mover of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law and later education secretary for President George W. Bush, would lead the 17-campus system. Spellings' official selection came a week after the board's chairman called an emergency meeting to interview Spellings privately. Under a bill overwhelmingly passed by the General Assembly - but not yet signed by the governor - the Board of Governors' search committee was supposed to submit three names to the full board for a vote. Legislative leaders, who appointed the board, as well as board members who weren't part of the search committee, have been critical of the closed, chaotic process. The search undermines any hopes Spellings had of immediate support or success.
Virginian-Pilot
