Transparency News 12/15/16
Thursday, December 15, 2016
State and Local Stories
The Virginia Beach city attorney and an outside law firm stand by the opinion that nine City Council votes were needed to move forward with building an arena near the Oceanfront. Last week, United States Management questioned whether more than a majority of council members had to support an October proposal for the company to obtain $240 million in financing. In an 8-3 vote, the developer’s request to tweak its financial model failed, stalling the project. The city has maintained that the law requires a supermajority of council members for approval because the sports and entertainment center would be built on 5.8 acres of city-owned property near the Virginia Beach Convention Center. The land would be transferred to the Virginia Beach Development Authority and leased to the developer for 60 years. The council met Tuesday in closed session to discuss the arena. The opinion was released shortly before the formal meeting.
Virginian-Pilot
The Spotsylvania School Board approved a change to the format of future meetings. Following a November work session, the board proposed moving closed sessions to before the main content of the meeting, as well as some other changes. “During the Nov. 28 workshop meeting, the School Board discussed streamlining the regular meeting agenda,” board chairman and Battlefield district member Baron Braswell said. Public meeting agenda items will still begin at 7 p.m. after a recess from closed session, board members said. Most other area boards already hold closed meetings before regular agenda items, returning to closed session at the end of the meeting if necessary. Even when regular agenda items are scheduled to start at 7 p.m., governing boards still have to advertise their meeting start times before the closed session starts. That’s because according to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, governing bodies can only go into a closed session by taking a vote in an open meeting, where the board “reasonably identifies” the purpose of the closed session.
Free Lance-Star
Altavista Town Council member Charles Edwards resigned from the council Tuesday night, saying Tuesday would be his last council meeting. “It’s gotten to the point where I felt like I was ineffective,” he said by phone Wednesday. “It was my intention all along to do what I could to further the issues of the town.” He added there have been a lot of 4-3 votes on council action items. Those three members [which includes him] “are not doing a lot for the town,” Edwards said. “I don’t see it’s worth the time and effort … it’s not worthwhile,” he said.
News & Advance
The Potomac Nationals and Prince William County appear close to a deal to build a new stadium for the minor league baseball team, according to documents obtained by InsideNoVa through a public records request. Team owner Art Silber has pushed to build a replacement for the aging Pfitzner Stadium for four years and has targeted a site at Stonebridge at Potomac Town Center between Opitz Boulevard and the Wegmans grocery store for a 6,000-seat facility. County records show that the team now has a framework in place for a complex deal to get the project off the ground and meet demands from Major League Baseball officials that the Washington Nationals’ Single-A affiliate leave Pfitzner. Although no deal is finalized, correspondence released in response to InsideNoVa’s Freedom of Information Act request shows that the county, the team and the town center’s owner, JBG Cos., have been working since summer to reach an agreement.
InsideNoVa
National Stories
A Cook County, Illinois, judge on Friday ordered the city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel to produce an index of certain emails and text messages that the mayor sent and received on personal devices, as the Chicago Tribune and the city continue to battle over the mayor's electronic communications. Judge Kathleen Pantle made the ruling in the Tribune's September 2015 lawsuit, which alleged that Emanuel had violated state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business that he had conducted through emails and texts on personal devices.
Chicago Tribune
Anyone interested in obtaining up-to-date information on the Massachusetts prison population or grant funds going into the state's various sheriffs' departments might be in for some frustration. An audit conducted between 2013 and 2015 by the office of State Auditor Suzanne Bump found Massachusetts Sheriff's Association "did not provide the public with sufficient transparency about inmate populations in various counties, and the Legislature and other state agencies had to expend time and resources to obtain information." According to the audit, released Wednesday, the association "did not post required inmate population information on its website and did not promptly submit required reports regarding inmate and financial information, or in some cases did not submit them at all, to the state House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means and to various state agencies."
MassLive
Editorials/Columns
Say this for lawyer Andrew Sacks: He defends his clients zealously, even when they lose. So there he was following the guilty verdicts against Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot, the city’s former vice mayor, on four public corruption and two perjury counts. The attorney questioned how jurors in the federal trial came back after just 5½ hours of deliberation for a case that had 17 days of testimony, 91 witnesses and 90 minutes of instructions from the judge. “It doesn’t appear it was considered as thoroughly as perhaps it should have been,” Sacks said Friday. He later said something similar to me, in an interview this week. “That they need to go slowly and deliberate,” Sacks said, “is a fundamental (tenet) of due process.” He knew jurors didn’t have to acquit his client, but Sacks said he was upset with the relatively speedy verdicts. Methinks the Norfolk-based lawyer doth protest too much. The evidence was piled high against Burfoot, a now-convicted bribe-taker.
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot
Virginian-Pilot
The Spotsylvania School Board approved a change to the format of future meetings. Following a November work session, the board proposed moving closed sessions to before the main content of the meeting, as well as some other changes. “During the Nov. 28 workshop meeting, the School Board discussed streamlining the regular meeting agenda,” board chairman and Battlefield district member Baron Braswell said. Public meeting agenda items will still begin at 7 p.m. after a recess from closed session, board members said. Most other area boards already hold closed meetings before regular agenda items, returning to closed session at the end of the meeting if necessary. Even when regular agenda items are scheduled to start at 7 p.m., governing boards still have to advertise their meeting start times before the closed session starts. That’s because according to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, governing bodies can only go into a closed session by taking a vote in an open meeting, where the board “reasonably identifies” the purpose of the closed session.
Free Lance-Star
Altavista Town Council member Charles Edwards resigned from the council Tuesday night, saying Tuesday would be his last council meeting. “It’s gotten to the point where I felt like I was ineffective,” he said by phone Wednesday. “It was my intention all along to do what I could to further the issues of the town.” He added there have been a lot of 4-3 votes on council action items. Those three members [which includes him] “are not doing a lot for the town,” Edwards said. “I don’t see it’s worth the time and effort … it’s not worthwhile,” he said.
News & Advance
The Potomac Nationals and Prince William County appear close to a deal to build a new stadium for the minor league baseball team, according to documents obtained by InsideNoVa through a public records request. Team owner Art Silber has pushed to build a replacement for the aging Pfitzner Stadium for four years and has targeted a site at Stonebridge at Potomac Town Center between Opitz Boulevard and the Wegmans grocery store for a 6,000-seat facility. County records show that the team now has a framework in place for a complex deal to get the project off the ground and meet demands from Major League Baseball officials that the Washington Nationals’ Single-A affiliate leave Pfitzner. Although no deal is finalized, correspondence released in response to InsideNoVa’s Freedom of Information Act request shows that the county, the team and the town center’s owner, JBG Cos., have been working since summer to reach an agreement.
InsideNoVa
National Stories
A Cook County, Illinois, judge on Friday ordered the city and Mayor Rahm Emanuel to produce an index of certain emails and text messages that the mayor sent and received on personal devices, as the Chicago Tribune and the city continue to battle over the mayor's electronic communications. Judge Kathleen Pantle made the ruling in the Tribune's September 2015 lawsuit, which alleged that Emanuel had violated state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business that he had conducted through emails and texts on personal devices.
Chicago Tribune
Anyone interested in obtaining up-to-date information on the Massachusetts prison population or grant funds going into the state's various sheriffs' departments might be in for some frustration. An audit conducted between 2013 and 2015 by the office of State Auditor Suzanne Bump found Massachusetts Sheriff's Association "did not provide the public with sufficient transparency about inmate populations in various counties, and the Legislature and other state agencies had to expend time and resources to obtain information." According to the audit, released Wednesday, the association "did not post required inmate population information on its website and did not promptly submit required reports regarding inmate and financial information, or in some cases did not submit them at all, to the state House and Senate Committees on Ways and Means and to various state agencies."
MassLive
Editorials/Columns
Say this for lawyer Andrew Sacks: He defends his clients zealously, even when they lose. So there he was following the guilty verdicts against Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot, the city’s former vice mayor, on four public corruption and two perjury counts. The attorney questioned how jurors in the federal trial came back after just 5½ hours of deliberation for a case that had 17 days of testimony, 91 witnesses and 90 minutes of instructions from the judge. “It doesn’t appear it was considered as thoroughly as perhaps it should have been,” Sacks said Friday. He later said something similar to me, in an interview this week. “That they need to go slowly and deliberate,” Sacks said, “is a fundamental (tenet) of due process.” He knew jurors didn’t have to acquit his client, but Sacks said he was upset with the relatively speedy verdicts. Methinks the Norfolk-based lawyer doth protest too much. The evidence was piled high against Burfoot, a now-convicted bribe-taker.
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot
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