Transparency News 12/4/15

State and Local Stories

Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms won’t go on trial as planned Monday, but one thing’s for sure when he does: None of the city’s General District Court judges will be hearing the case. Sessoms, 61, was charged Nov. 5 with five misdemeanor charges of violating the state’s Conflict of Interest laws stemming from votes he cast on issues that involved the bank where he served as a president before resigning. The votes took place between 2012 and 2014 on development projects involving loans from TowneBank. The criminal investigation ended a year after The Virginian-Pilot first reported that Sessoms had voted on issues that benefited the bank’s clients. Sessoms’ new trial date is Dec. 28, but that could change again. The District Court judges have recused themselves from hearing the case, according to a document filed by Chief Judge Gene Woolard. 
Virginian-Pilot

The University of Mary Washington will begin interviewing candidates for president this month. The executive committee of the Presidential Search Advisory committee announced Thursday morning that it will meet at undisclosed times and in undisclosed locations within the next 15 days to conduct interviews. The board hopes to select a candidate during the spring semester. School officials chose a hybrid model to conduct the search. This model keeps the candidates confidential to the public but open to certain groups of stakeholders, which could include community members, faculty and students.
Free Lance-Star

Strasburg residents received a primer this week on how to run for public office in town. More than a dozen people attended Monday’s public forum led by Town Councilman Scott Terndrup. Whether anyone in the audience plans to run for a seat on council or for mayor in May remains uncertain. Terndrup also used the opportunity to let people know about the need for participation on the town’s committees and boards.
Northern Virginia Daily

Todd Frazier wants to withdraw his appeal to circuit court and accept the $1,500 judgment awarded by a general district court judge in August. That judgment involved an alleged assault in 2013 on him by Culpeper Commonwealth’s Attorney Megan Revis Frederick. The incident reportedly occurred when Frazier, an IT specialist with the county, was instructed to remove computer software from computers in the commonwealth’s office. Frederick’s defense team filed an objection to that request in Culpeper County Circuit Court last month. In a published media report, Frazier is quoted as saying that his reason for withdrawing his appeal was that he won the case and didn’t have funds to pursue the appeal. As of Monday, Frazier is still represented by Michael Winget-Hernandez of Troy, Virginia. The six-page Nov. 19 filing by Frederick’s Richmond-based attorneys William Tunner and Michael Matheson with the law firm of ThompsonMcMullan offers Frazier an option to nonsuit – drop the case altogether – or proceed with the scheduled two-day jury trial scheduled on June 9, 2016.
Culpeper Times

In certain emergency situations, calling 911 might not be possible or safe, but Hanover County has become the 16th Virginia locality to offer an alternative—texting. Curt Schaffer, director of Hanover Emergency Communications, presented the “Text to 911” service at the Board of Supervisors’ Nov. 24 meeting. This new feature went into effect Dec. 1. Individuals who need to use the service begin their text by entering the numerals 911 (no dashes) into the “To” field. For the actual message, they should include their location and whether they need police, fire, or medical help, and users are advised to be as specific as possible in stating their emergency. No photos or videos are accepted. Schaffer’s refrain throughout his presentation was “Call if you can; text if you can’t.”
Herald-Progress

Determining whether a statement is a fact or opinion can make or break a defamation claim. Recently, two courts — the high court in Massachusetts and a federal district court in Virginia — dismissed defamation suits after ruling the statements were opinions based on facts disclosed by the journalist, reminding reporters to support their opinions with facts to limit liability. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held articles published by the Boston Herald regarding the suicide of Brad Delp, the lead singer of the rock band Boston, were protected as opinion, ending a five-year court battle. Boston’s founder Tom Scholz sued the Boston Herald and Micki Delp, the ex-wife of Brad Delp, for defamation after the newspaper wrote articles in 2007 discussing potential reasons Brad Delp may have taken his life. Scholz claimed comments from Micki Delp featured in the articles implied Scholz was at fault for the suicide.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press


National Stories
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Salem High School (in Plymouth, Mich.) student journalist Chris Robbins had a simple question: What prompts Plymouth-Canton to block access to certain websites on school computers? Robbins, who writes for The Perspective, the joint student newspaper for Plymouth High School, Salem High School, and Canton High School, wanted to do a story on the topic, and sent a FOIA request to the district office sometime around Halloween. That bill came out to $7,917.15. After consulting with several advisers, Robbins appealed the decision. The district’s response: another bill, this time for $8,806. A compromise, of sorts, was reached when The Perspective modified its FOIA request, ending its pursuit of the teacher emails. With that gone, the district gave Robbins the information requested in the modified FOIA, free of cost. It arrived on Monday, he said.
Detroit News

In an effort to begin to streamline Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request processing, the FBI recently began open beta testing of eFOIA, its new web-based system that allows users to request FBI records and receive access to view and download the released information. In the past, FOIA requests were made through regular mail, fax or email, and all responsive material was sent to the requester through regular mail, either in paper or disc format. According to David Hardy, chief of the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, the number of FOIA requests have risen substantially in the past few years and the new process should increase FBI efficiency and decrease administrative costs.
GCN

The Connecticut Supreme Court affirmed Monday that records of alleged misconduct by teachers at public schools and universities in Connecticut are public records subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act. In a unanimous decision by Justice Dennis G. Eveleigh, the state’s highest court rejected an effort by a former University of Connecticut Health Center professor to block the release of a report about allegations he was abusive to staff.
Connecticut Mirror

How transparent should a public university governing board be? Politicians in a number of states, who often say they’re responding to concerns from constituents, have been calling for appointed or elected governing boards of their public colleges, universities and systems to be more open, particularly when it comes to public meetings. “There seems to be little trust in the trustees today,” said Thomas Harnisch, director of state relations at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “There are calls for governing board members to show their work and how they came up with the conclusion, instead of just showing up with their outcome.” Suspicion of public officials is nothing new, but, in the case of board members, it’s ramping up as more and more people are concerned with hotly contested issues like college affordability and presidential compensation, says Michael Poliakoff, vice president of policy at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, an organization that is often critical of college leaders and supports board activism. “It’s a natural and somewhat tempered response to the failings of the institutions themselves,” he said.
Inside Higher Ed

Immediately after last week's attack at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic, many people wanted to know alleged shooter Robert Lewis Dear's motive. But law enforcement documents, including the arrest and search warrants, that could provide insight into that question were sealed the day of the attack by Judge Stephen Sletta at the request of prosecutors. What does it mean to seal something?
Colorado Public Radio

A judge in Palm Beach County has ordered a Florida newspaper to unpublish material from its website, sparking an outraged response from media lawyers who say the order is a clear First Amendment violation and contrary to established precedent on prior restraint. Circuit Judge Jack Schramm Cox ordered The Palm Beach Post to remove from its website transcripts of telephone recordings in which a jailhouse snitch bragged about his ability to elicit confessions from fellow inmates and how he had arranged a deal with prosecutors for a lighter sentence. The Post also removed two paragraphs from the online version of a story initially posted on October 15 that drew from the recordings to quote the prisoner, Frederick Cobia, boasting about the testimony he could provide in 60 murder cases and his plans to write a book.
Columbia Journalism Review

A video of a 2014 Chicago police shooting of a black man will be released next week, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Thursday after days of controversy over another fatal police shooting caught on tape. Emanuel said the city would release police squad car dashboard video of the shooting of 25-year-old Ronald Johnson III, who was killed by police on Oct. 12, 2014, a week before the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, 17. Details of when the video would be released were not available from the mayor's office.
Reuters

Despite a recent White House directive calling for greater public accountability and transparency about incidents at labs working with potential bioterror pathogens, federal regulators this week continued to refuse to release key information about labs that have faced sanctions. For the past year, regulators from the Federal Select Agent Program have refused USA TODAY’s requests for the names of more than 100 U.S. labs that have faced enforcement actions for serious biosafety violations while working with pathogens such as those that cause anthrax, botulism, Ebola and the plague. The lab oversight program is jointly operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and public revelations about a series of high-profile accidents at labs operated by the CDC, the U.S. Army and other federal agencies have drawn international concern and Congressional scrutiny. The CDC and USDA this week sent letters to USA TODAY continuing their refusal to answer most of the news organization’s questions about the labs that have the nation’s worst regulatory histories while working with some of the world’s most deadly viruses, bacteria and toxins.
USA TODAY