Transparency News 6/14/16

State and Local Stories

HB818, which goes into effect July 1, requires all state and local government bodies are required to designate a FOIA officer who serves as the public contact point for FOIA requests. VCOG is compiling a list of those officers. If you have been designated by your public body, please fill out this form, or forward it to others as needed. Thank you!
http://goo.gl/forms/z5eT9rrfXNWkeHGW2

A year after Virginia swallowed a more than $250 million loss on an ill-advised contract to build a toll expressway along U.S. 460, state lawmakers are confronted again with evidence that state agencies don’t do enough to minimize risks in contracting for billions of dollars in state services. A new study by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission found that the state’s decentralized procurement system allows agencies to agree to high-risk contracts in many cases without including penalties, incentives, and performance measures to ensure the state gets its money’s worth from the deals, or a termination clause to get out of them. The 152-page report, based on a 15-month investigation that ended in March, also found that few agencies seek legal advice from the Office of the Attorney General, even for contracts that include provisions that are not standard state practice, and when they do, they rarely go beyond the legality of the contract to its protections against risks to the state.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Augusta County's sheriff and commissioner of revenue argue in new court filings that Nexus Services Inc.'s lawsuit against them and others is improper and should be tossed out by a judge who then should then sanction the plaintiffs for an improper lawsuit. One brief filed with Augusta County Circuit Court by Sheriff Donald Smith and Deputy Donald Moran argues that key portions of the lawsuit rely on confidential records incorrectly released by Augusta County in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. In March, Shrewsbury requested business documents from Nexus, which were to include business entities charts, tax information and filing statuses — which have not been provided to her, court documents stated. Due to the previous investigation, in late-April, early-May, Augusta County made an "inadvertent and unauthorized disclosure" of electronic records to Nexus in response to a FOIA request, without Shrewsbury's knowledge, court documents said. Instead of receiving all communications that referred to Nexus or its principals, thousands of emails and documents had been "erroneously, improperly, and without authorization" turned over to Nexus via a flash drive, court records said.
News Leader

The state's often rocky relationship with Northrop Grumman, which handles IT needs through one of Virginia's largest government contracts, has gotten rockier as the contract winds into its final years. State officials accused the company of breach of contract last month, saying Northrop Grumman had failed to save emails despite subpoenas from an ongoing federal lawsuit. The breach complaint is narrow, but it was accompanied by the suggestion of possible legal action. "This breach raises grave concerns about the reliability and integrity of Northrop Grumman's backup and archival of Commonwealth data," the May 11 letter from the Virginia Information Technologies Agency, the agency that liaises with Northrop Grumman, states.
Daily Press

Loudoun County Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman (R) believes he may need to start gearing up for a fight in court with Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe's office.  The county's lead prosecutor has for weeks submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the governor's office seeking the list of eligible voters following the McAuliffe's decision in April to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 felons who completed their sentences.  Plowman said he wants to see the list to be able to check it against a list of potential jurors for criminal cases. So far, his requests have fallen on deaf ears, he said.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

Montgomery County supervisors waded into a renewed discussion Monday of whether to post the national motto “In God We Trust” on their meeting room wall, but postponed a vote until a future meeting. “This is just something I feel I should bring up,” said Supervisor Todd King, who began suggesting posting “In God We Trust” last year and brought it back to Monday’s agenda. He gave supervisors petitions backing “In God We Trust” that he said were signed by hundreds of people from across the county. Supervisor April DeMotts countered that national motto or not, posting a “message that’s decidedly Christian” on the wall in the County Government Center was discouraging to followers of other faiths or to those who follow no religion.
Roanoke Times

A series of BVU documents call into question exactly who authorized a $23.4 million financial transfer now being probed by the Virginia Auditor of Accounts and Budgets. The 2006 transfer went from the electric division to the OptiNet telecommunications division and, the following year, that amount was no longer reflected on BVU financial statements. Such cross-subsidization is only permitted under state law for data services but not telephone or cable TV, according to the auditor’s office. “At the May 22 BVU board meeting, the board approved this legal opportunity and directed such subsidies take effect July 1, 2006 or soon thereafter,” then-CEO Wes Rosenbalm wrote. “BVU OptiNet has an estimated market value of over $45 million. Applying the accepted allocation percentage of 61.11 percent for the deployment of data and broadband services to the overall BVU OptiNet market value you arrive at $27.45 million market value for the data and broadband services.” However, minutes of that board meeting include no mention of any discussion or vote to transfer millions of dollars between divisions. In the board’s approving the 2006-07 operating budget, the minutes only state “It was also noted that BVU OptiNet, beginning with fiscal year 2007, is able to fund a $1.5 million capital budget and is self-sufficient.” Following that vote, minutes show board members went into a closed session – closed to the public and news media -- to discuss “counsel contract” and “actual or probable litigation” regarding the electric system. The only action after returning to open session was to approve the contract with “legal counsel,” the minutes show.
Herald Courier

National Stories
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Congress approved legislation to expand the public’s access to federal records, and the measure now goes to President Obama for his signature.  The legislation to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the first major overhaul of the 1966 law in nearly a decade. The Senate passed the bill in March and it passed by voice vote in the House on Monday. “This is the best bill we can send to the president’s desk,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who leads the Oversight subcommittee on Government Operations. Similar bills have faced high-profile opposition from the Justice Department and other agencies in the Obama administration. 
The Hill

Five years ago, when a Bangor (Pennsylvania) area man wanted copies of videos from his daughter's school bus so he could expose bullying, the state told him the recordings were off-limits to the public. That might not be the case anymore. The state Office of Open Records recently reversed its position on whether school bus videos are public records. It now says they are. The reversal shows how the interpretation of the state's Right-to-Know Law is changing the more it is debated and researched. The law, which allows the public to request documents and records from state and local governments, took effect in 2009 to replace a previous law and still is relatively new and being analyzed.
The Morning Call

On Monday, the presumptive Republican nominee pulled credentials of another major media outlet (this time the one that uncovered Watergate) because he was unhappy with a headline. The Washington Post was one of many outlets that picked up on Donald Trump’s comments Monday morning that seemed to suggest President Obama had some sort of sympathy to terrorists or a connection to the Orlando shooting. The massacre — the largest in U.S. history — took place early Sunday morning and killed 49 people and injured 53 others. The Washington Post is not the first outlet to be banned by the Trump campaign; others include Politico, BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, The Des Moines Register, the Union Leader, Univision and Fusion.
USA Today


Editorials/Columns

Officials with the Richmond Economic Development Authority didn’t much care for impertinent questions from the press about the Stone Brewing deal while it was being negotiated a couple of years ago. They turned down Freedom of Information Act requests, refused to speak with reporters, then complained about what they perceived as negative coverage and congratulated one another for the fine work they were doing. Now Richmonders might have a better understanding of the desire for secrecy. As The Times-Dispatch’s Ned Oliver reported the other day, Richmond’s brewery deal cost three times what similar deals elsewhere did.
Richmond Times-Dispatch