Transparency News 6/2/16
State and Local Stories
A while back, two of my colleagues were arguing about which is a bigger problem in the criminal justice system: bias against defendants of color or bias against poor defendants. My first inclination was to suggest we could settle the dispute if we had the right dataset. (I’m an attorney turned data scientist, so yes, that really was my first thought.) That being said, the right dataset magically appeared in a Tweet from Ben Schoenfeld. What follows is the story of how I used those cases to discover what best predicts defendant outcomes: race or income. This post is not a summary of my findings, though you will find them in this article. It is a look behind the curtain of data science, a how to cast as case study. Yes, there will be a few equations. But you can safely skim over them without missing much. Just pay particular attention to the graphs.
Lawyerist.com
(Note: Schoenfeld received VCOG’s 2015 citizens award for open government)
Winchester City Council President John Willingham said the city will likely re-evaluate how it conducts meetings closed to the public, known as executive sessions, after some of the recent sessions have exceeded two hours. “We are all very sensitive to [how much time council has been spending in executive session],” Willingham said Friday. “I try to be as efficient with our time as possible.”
Winchester Star
National Stories
The State Department is seeking to reject demands from the Republican Party that the diplomatic agency turn over hundreds of thousands of emails sent or received by several former aides to Hillary Clinton. Justice Department lawyers representing State said in a court filing Wednesday night that complying with the Republican National Committee's Freedom of Information Act request "would impose an unreasonable burden on the agency." "FOIA requests are not supposed to be labored over for generations," Justice Department lawyers wrote.
Politico
Is it time to give the government website a makeover? For years, city and state sites have been designed as portals through which the public could find as much information as possible. The motto was clearly, “the more, the better.” But the result has been an overwhelming hodgepodge of columns and boxes filled with tiny text, drop-down menus that run on and on, and buttons everywhere. With so much information crammed on to a home page, visitors are lucky if they manage to find what they’re looking for, says John McKown, president of Evo Studios Inc., a Web design firm that works with municipalities. “The problem with so many government websites has been information overload.” Information overload is just one problem. Another is the way information is organized, typically around the name of an agency or department, rather than how it can help someone. Perhaps the biggest problem is that these sites were built for PCs, but users are going mobile.
Governing
A Cook County Illinois, judge ruled in favor of the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday by declaring that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's emails, texts and other communications are not exempt from disclosure simply because they are transmitted over private devices. The judge denied Emanuel's motion to dismiss the Tribune's lawsuit, which alleges the mayor violated the state's open records laws by refusing to release private emails and text messages about city business. The Tribune asked a judge to order the mayor's office to comply with a state Freedom of Information request and produce the documents. The lawsuit, filed in September, also seeks to have Emanuel declared in violation of the Illinois Local Records Act if he failed to preserve emails and texts he sent or received relating to city business.
Chicago Tribune
The Chronicle of Higher Education wants to shed light on the federal-enforcement process of campus sexual assaults. We introduced a Title IX tracker in January, including all investigations in this wave of enforcement — since the civil-rights office issued a "Dear Colleague" letter in April 2011 putting colleges on notice — and this week we added several new ways to use it. Our goal is to let people keep up with the process and other developments on campuses under review. The tool now allows users to: Search federal investigations by institution or keyword. Filter investigations by status, state, and other factors, like how they were resolved and whether they were based on a complaint against a college (typically filed by a student or advocate) or a proactive "compliance review" by the Education Department. See a growing number of documents revealing the details of investigations that we are receiving through Freedom of Information Act requests. Sign up for weekly email alerts to keep up with investigations newly opened and resolved, along with other important updates (also available on Twitter at @tracktitleix).
Chronicle of Higher Education
On Friday, May 27, a judge resoundingly rejected Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's elaborate efforts to hide from the public his role in deleting "the search for truth" and the Wisconsin Idea from the UW's mission statement. And his effort to throw a cloak of secrecy over a wide range of decision making under the guise of protecting government "deliberations" from public view was also repudiated.
PRWatch
In a major defeat for Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a California judge on Thursday ordered Google to turn over the computer IP addresses for all correspondence to and from the governor’s private Google email account since Jan. 15, 2011, and the accounts of two of his staff members. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Mary E. Arand ruled that the governor’s attempt to quash a request by Tallahassee lawyer Steven R. Andrews to Google to withhold the information was not valid.
Miami Herald
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn't the only big-name government official using a private server. An exclusive NewsChannel 5 investigation discovered that Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam also has his own email system -- for him and his top aides. That email is linked to the governor's personal website, billhaslam.com. In principle, experts agree that having a private email to make sure that state email is not used for political purposes is a good thing. The question is: what happens when that private email is used for public business?
News Channel 5
Part of a U.S. State Department briefing video about secret U.S.-Iran nuclear talks was deliberately deleted at the request of an unknown official before it was posted to an online archive, the department said on Wednesday. The excised portion of the Dec. 2, 2013, briefing included a question about whether an earlier spokeswoman for the department had misled reporters about whether the United States was holding secret direct nuclear talks with Iran. The State Department initially said it believed a "glitch" caused the gap but on Wednesday said an internal inquiry found it was a deliberate omission. However, it said no rules were broken because none existed governing the integrity of the briefing transcript and video. Rules are now being put in place.
Reuters
Editorials/Columns
Portsmouth residents should be concerned about two aspects of an effort by members of the City Council to relocate the Confederate Monument in Olde Town. The first involves process. The second, purpose. Taking advantage of the fact that two members – Vice Mayor Elizabeth Psimas and Councilman Danny Meeks – were absent, and over the objection of Councilman Bill Moody, the City Council last week entered into closed session to discuss “actual or probable litigation” relating to the relocation of the monument at the intersection of Court and High streets. It was a decision that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. Yes, that statute enumerates reasons a public body may close the doors on the public. And, yes, meeting with the city attorney to discuss litigation is among those excuses. But any discussion about a public decision that might lead to the need for such a consultation would be better done in full view of citizens.
Virginian-Pilot
So . . . 10 minutes in public session, 180 behind closed doors: To employ current parlance, the "optics," frankly, are abysmal in an open-government sort of way. To which Winchester City Council President John Willingham counters, saying the recent spate of lengthy executive sessions is an "anomaly" that speaks to "a perfect storm" of issues that demand attention behind closed doors. We’ll concur, but up to a point. We acknowledge, for instance, that discussion of "real estate" issues — the ultimate fate of Winchester Towers still hangs fire — in this venue is allowed under state code. But three hours, even to beat around myriad issues? When you consider that, over the last dozen years, no executive session in Frederick County has, so notes Deputy Administrator Jay Tibbs, lasted more than 90 minutes, it makes one wonder whether City Council is excessively windy, extremely indecisive . . . or something else.
Winchester Star
