Transparency News 11/17/16
Thursday, November 17, 2016
TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY FOR EARLY-BIRD PRICING TO VCOG'S ANNUAL CONFERENCE. CLICK THE BLUE BUTTON ABOVE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE LOWER PRICE TODAY!
TOMORROW IS THE LAST DAY FOR EARLY-BIRD PRICING TO VCOG'S ANNUAL CONFERENCE. CLICK THE BLUE BUTTON ABOVE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE LOWER PRICE TODAY!
State and Local Stories
With federal agents investigating his dealings with numerous developers, Treasurer Anthony Burfoot met with two employees. He wanted to talk about a grand jury subpoena that one of them had received, a government witness said Wednesday in U.S. District Court. The location of the meeting: The city’s vault. “He thought that the office was bugged,”Janelle Morris said. Testifying under an immunity agreement, Morris told a jury about the extended relationship she had with her boss, how they took at least one weekend trip together to a developer’s beach house in the Outer Banks and how he arranged for her to be appointed to the Norfolk Public Library’s Board of Trustees without any experience.
Virginian-Pilot
The Prince William County School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt a code of ethics. Acting member Shawn Brann suggested a draft version of the document, though the board has yet to finalize it. While the resolution passed largely uneventfully, board member Willie Deutsch of the Coles District accused Chairman Ryan Sawyers of not fully engaging with the process of developing the new ethics code. Specifically, he noted that Sawyers missed a board retreat where members discussed the new policy. “Just because I wasn’t there, it doesn’t mean I’m not involved,” Sawyers said. “I’m sorry you took offense to me missing one Saturday meeting.”
Inside NOVA
Kevin Wingard, a 51-year-old real estate agent, is the newest member of the Bristol Virginia City Council. The council chose Wingard Wednesday following a nearly three-hour closed session where they met for over an hour with each of two finalists. When they emerged, Councilman Doug Fleenor submitted Wingard’s name, Archie Hubbard offered the second and his confirmation vote was unanimous. A total of 11 people initially expressed interest in the position and the council spent about five hours recently interviewing eight of them in a session open to the public. On Wednesday, the council went into closed session immediately after convening and spent about an hour asking additional questions of finalist Jim Arnold, then about an hour and 20 minutes with Wingard. They remained in closed session to debate their selection and emerged about 20 minutes later to vote.
Herald Courier
National Stories
Faced with a public records request from Mississippi Today for the state’s contract with EdBuild, a legislative committee voted Tuesday to adopt a new policy mandating that all contracts it approves be confidential. The House Management Committee, which approves contracts entered into by the House of Representatives, used a voice vote to pass the policy, which states “All contracts entered into by the House Management Committee shall be confidential and shall not be released to any person or entity, except as specifically directed by the House Management Committee only when the committee deems necessary for the execution of the contract.” Speaker Pro Tempore Greg Snowden, R-Meridian, the chair of the committee, said the new policy would increase transparency by giving members of the House a way to review contracts.
Mississippi Today
There are no definitive national studies of the scope of state and local secrecy, but the studies, surveys and anecdotal evidence that do exist strongly suggest state and local government secrecy has increased in the past 10 years. While there are many reasons for this, it has coincided with a decline in local news coverage, technological advances that governments haven’t been able to afford and an increase in outsourcing of government functions to private entities. Whatever the causes, lack of transparency by state and local governments can discourage civic discourse and grass-roots engagement with government, as a frustrated public often simply gives up after struggling but failing to find out what is going on close to home. Robert J. Freeman, executive director of New York’s publicly funded Committee on Open Government, one of few such agencies in the country, says U.S. jurisdictions have fallen behind countries such as Estonia, Mexico and Peru in sharing records and keeping public meetings public.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A group of Lyon County residents is asking the Nevada Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling allowing government officials not to disclose their emails regarding a controversial decision to allow mining activity to resume at Silver City. The issue is whether the Nevada Public Records Act encompasses government information contained on personal electronic devices and within personal email accounts.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Many public contracts are shrouded in secrecy. Government contracting, which involves billions of dollars in public funds each year, has become one of the least transparent systems that state and local governments maintain, according to an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Under the guise of protecting “trade secrets,” state and local governments are withholding critical information about public spending. That allows private entities to claim that some information is proprietary and its disclosure would harm their business. And it is far from the only way governments and companies keep the public in the dark about government spending.
Reveal
Editorials/Columns
Did you see the eye-popping story in Tuesday’s paper by my colleague Jeff Sturgeon? It concerned a recent audit of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the taxpayer-funded outfit that administers grants and incentives to companies for creating jobs in Virginia. The draft audit report is a doozy, chock-full of fascinating tidbits. Let’s review a few. Beginning in 2016, the agency established a formal process to advance-vet companies seeking that money. Among other reasons, this was to assure they’re not fictitious entities. Did you wrench your neck or eyeballs doing a double-take on the last item? You might have thought: “Whoa! Seriously? They’ve been around for two decades and they’ve just begun ensuring they’re not handing out money to con artists and charlatans?” The report found some other things. VEDP employees didn’t submit time cards. Nobody minded staff comings and goings. There were three organizational restructurings in a four-year period. The agency doesn’t adequately train its staff. It has a marketing department, but no marketing plan.
Dan Casey, Roanoke Times
This is a joke, right? We thought we were reading the satirical website The Onion but, no, this is a true and actual story: Some professors at the University of Virginia now object to the university president quoting Thomas Jefferson. We’ll wait while some of you go get your blood pressure medicine. Here’s a fact: Yes, Jefferson practiced that shameful crime against humanity known as slavery. It is a great stain on his legacy, just as it is on the legacy of many of our other founders, including four of our first five presidents, and 12 of our first 18. It is a great stain on America itself, one that we are still struggling to wipe away. Here’s another fact: Jefferson also was one of the great authors of American independence, both literally and figuratively. He is a towering figure, not just in our history but the history of the world. So how do we reconcile those two parts of Jefferson — the Jefferson who championed freedom and the Jefferson who held fellow humans in bondage? We can’t. No one can. That’s just how history was. Jefferson’s odious record as a slave owner, however, does not eliminate the good that he did — just as the good that he did does not eliminate his status as a slave owner. History is complicated.
Roanoke Times
The reality at issue here, however, is that there would be no University of Virginia without Jefferson, who envisioned and created it, or without the slave labor that built it. U.S. history is filled with people who owned slaves or held racist views and went on to be central figures in shaping the documents and history that have made the nation the democratic republic that it is today. These people and their deeds cannot be expunged from American history without disregarding our own identity as Americans as well. What we can do is adjust our perspective through a lens that recognizes the injustices of our past, starting with the virtual elimination of the Americans Indians, who were here first, and faces up to the fact that we were what we were then, which in many ways is not what we aspire to be now.
Free Lance-Star
PC Times At U.Va. — Jefferson Now Unmentionable
Daily News Record
Has it come to this, that even at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson there are those who would banish his words from the public realm because they take offense? Has it really come to this? That this great historical figure and this slaveholding man of his times are one and the same is a difficult concept for some to accept. Their response — to banish him from the public stage in 2016 as a way to heal a divided body politick — is a misguided and facile answer to a complicated question. The nation is conflicted today. Conflicted over the election, of course, but also conflicted over who we are and what our future is. That’s understandable, but the solution is not censorship: It is debate on top of debate and civil discussion with those with whom we disagree. That is how we craft the vision of America we all want to see.
News & Advance
Virginian-Pilot
The Prince William County School Board voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt a code of ethics. Acting member Shawn Brann suggested a draft version of the document, though the board has yet to finalize it. While the resolution passed largely uneventfully, board member Willie Deutsch of the Coles District accused Chairman Ryan Sawyers of not fully engaging with the process of developing the new ethics code. Specifically, he noted that Sawyers missed a board retreat where members discussed the new policy. “Just because I wasn’t there, it doesn’t mean I’m not involved,” Sawyers said. “I’m sorry you took offense to me missing one Saturday meeting.”
Inside NOVA
Kevin Wingard, a 51-year-old real estate agent, is the newest member of the Bristol Virginia City Council. The council chose Wingard Wednesday following a nearly three-hour closed session where they met for over an hour with each of two finalists. When they emerged, Councilman Doug Fleenor submitted Wingard’s name, Archie Hubbard offered the second and his confirmation vote was unanimous. A total of 11 people initially expressed interest in the position and the council spent about five hours recently interviewing eight of them in a session open to the public. On Wednesday, the council went into closed session immediately after convening and spent about an hour asking additional questions of finalist Jim Arnold, then about an hour and 20 minutes with Wingard. They remained in closed session to debate their selection and emerged about 20 minutes later to vote.
Herald Courier
National Stories
Faced with a public records request from Mississippi Today for the state’s contract with EdBuild, a legislative committee voted Tuesday to adopt a new policy mandating that all contracts it approves be confidential. The House Management Committee, which approves contracts entered into by the House of Representatives, used a voice vote to pass the policy, which states “All contracts entered into by the House Management Committee shall be confidential and shall not be released to any person or entity, except as specifically directed by the House Management Committee only when the committee deems necessary for the execution of the contract.” Speaker Pro Tempore Greg Snowden, R-Meridian, the chair of the committee, said the new policy would increase transparency by giving members of the House a way to review contracts.
Mississippi Today
There are no definitive national studies of the scope of state and local secrecy, but the studies, surveys and anecdotal evidence that do exist strongly suggest state and local government secrecy has increased in the past 10 years. While there are many reasons for this, it has coincided with a decline in local news coverage, technological advances that governments haven’t been able to afford and an increase in outsourcing of government functions to private entities. Whatever the causes, lack of transparency by state and local governments can discourage civic discourse and grass-roots engagement with government, as a frustrated public often simply gives up after struggling but failing to find out what is going on close to home. Robert J. Freeman, executive director of New York’s publicly funded Committee on Open Government, one of few such agencies in the country, says U.S. jurisdictions have fallen behind countries such as Estonia, Mexico and Peru in sharing records and keeping public meetings public.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
A group of Lyon County residents is asking the Nevada Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling allowing government officials not to disclose their emails regarding a controversial decision to allow mining activity to resume at Silver City. The issue is whether the Nevada Public Records Act encompasses government information contained on personal electronic devices and within personal email accounts.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
Many public contracts are shrouded in secrecy. Government contracting, which involves billions of dollars in public funds each year, has become one of the least transparent systems that state and local governments maintain, according to an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Under the guise of protecting “trade secrets,” state and local governments are withholding critical information about public spending. That allows private entities to claim that some information is proprietary and its disclosure would harm their business. And it is far from the only way governments and companies keep the public in the dark about government spending.
Reveal
Editorials/Columns
Did you see the eye-popping story in Tuesday’s paper by my colleague Jeff Sturgeon? It concerned a recent audit of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the taxpayer-funded outfit that administers grants and incentives to companies for creating jobs in Virginia. The draft audit report is a doozy, chock-full of fascinating tidbits. Let’s review a few. Beginning in 2016, the agency established a formal process to advance-vet companies seeking that money. Among other reasons, this was to assure they’re not fictitious entities. Did you wrench your neck or eyeballs doing a double-take on the last item? You might have thought: “Whoa! Seriously? They’ve been around for two decades and they’ve just begun ensuring they’re not handing out money to con artists and charlatans?” The report found some other things. VEDP employees didn’t submit time cards. Nobody minded staff comings and goings. There were three organizational restructurings in a four-year period. The agency doesn’t adequately train its staff. It has a marketing department, but no marketing plan.
Dan Casey, Roanoke Times
This is a joke, right? We thought we were reading the satirical website The Onion but, no, this is a true and actual story: Some professors at the University of Virginia now object to the university president quoting Thomas Jefferson. We’ll wait while some of you go get your blood pressure medicine. Here’s a fact: Yes, Jefferson practiced that shameful crime against humanity known as slavery. It is a great stain on his legacy, just as it is on the legacy of many of our other founders, including four of our first five presidents, and 12 of our first 18. It is a great stain on America itself, one that we are still struggling to wipe away. Here’s another fact: Jefferson also was one of the great authors of American independence, both literally and figuratively. He is a towering figure, not just in our history but the history of the world. So how do we reconcile those two parts of Jefferson — the Jefferson who championed freedom and the Jefferson who held fellow humans in bondage? We can’t. No one can. That’s just how history was. Jefferson’s odious record as a slave owner, however, does not eliminate the good that he did — just as the good that he did does not eliminate his status as a slave owner. History is complicated.
Roanoke Times
The reality at issue here, however, is that there would be no University of Virginia without Jefferson, who envisioned and created it, or without the slave labor that built it. U.S. history is filled with people who owned slaves or held racist views and went on to be central figures in shaping the documents and history that have made the nation the democratic republic that it is today. These people and their deeds cannot be expunged from American history without disregarding our own identity as Americans as well. What we can do is adjust our perspective through a lens that recognizes the injustices of our past, starting with the virtual elimination of the Americans Indians, who were here first, and faces up to the fact that we were what we were then, which in many ways is not what we aspire to be now.
Free Lance-Star
PC Times At U.Va. — Jefferson Now Unmentionable
Daily News Record
Has it come to this, that even at the university founded by Thomas Jefferson there are those who would banish his words from the public realm because they take offense? Has it really come to this? That this great historical figure and this slaveholding man of his times are one and the same is a difficult concept for some to accept. Their response — to banish him from the public stage in 2016 as a way to heal a divided body politick — is a misguided and facile answer to a complicated question. The nation is conflicted today. Conflicted over the election, of course, but also conflicted over who we are and what our future is. That’s understandable, but the solution is not censorship: It is debate on top of debate and civil discussion with those with whom we disagree. That is how we craft the vision of America we all want to see.
News & Advance
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