Transparency News 1/19/2017
Thursday, January 19, 2017
State and Local Stories
State and Local Stories
What a difference a year makes. Last year, the Senate FOIA subcommittee advanced one bill after another that restricted the public’s access to government information. It recommended a bill to exempt police names, one to limit which state salaries could be released and in what format, and one that created a month-long procedural requirement where the government would ask private businesses if it was OK to release records. This year?
VCOG Blog
The House criminal law subcommittee unanimously voted to advance a bill to create a statewide searchable database of court case information. The subcommittee added a delayed enactment date of Jan. 1, 2018 (as opposed to the usual July 1). The Supreme Court has said changing the database from a one-by-one search to a comprehensive one, as well as adding adult offenders from juvenile and domestic relations courts will cost $1.28 million. The bill goes to the full committee, who will likely refer it to the House money committee.
Three members of the Bath County Board of Supervisors cannot be legally removed from office based on a revolt by angry voters, a judge ruled Wednesday. In dismissing petitions that sought to remove the supervisors, Circuit Judge John Wetsel ruled that a violation of the state’s open meeting law, one of the complaints raised by critics, was not enough to merit the drastic step of having the judicial system override the results of an election.
Roanoke Times
A new year rings in with a renewed effort by U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly to bring cameras to the U.S. Supreme Court. Connolly (D-11th) and U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) have reintroduced legislation that would permit televising the proceedings that occur before the body. “Our nation’s highest court is not some ‘mystical priesthood’ that can operate outside of public view,” Connolly said in a statement. “It is a coequal branch of government and must be accountable to the American public.”
Inside NOVA
The Associated Press has obtained documents that show that the U.S. Department of Justice advised the office of Virginia's top prosecutors on how to work around strict federal rules for spending money seized in investigations. Law enforcement agencies participating in investigations with federal counterparts can share proceeds of seized assets under "Equitable Sharing" programs run by the Justice Department and The U.S. Department of the Treasury. Both agencies have clear rules that generally prohibit the use of such money for salaries and pay raises. The Justice Department's suggested workaround is found in its PowerPoint obtained from the office of Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring after the AP raised questions about significant pay raises granted some of his employees while state workers' pay was stagnant elsewhere.
CBS 19
National Stories
The U.S. Department of Defense must release a cache of photos showing how Army personnel treated detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and other sites in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
Reuters
We hear a lot about "big data" and its potential value to government. But is it really fulfilling the high expectations that advocates have assigned to it? Is it really producing better public-sector decisions? It may be years before we have definitive answers to those questions, but new research suggests that it's worth paying a lot of attention to.
Governing
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III served up a timely reminder last week for the state’s public officials when he issued an opinion that they cannot skirt open-government laws by outsourcing essential governmental functions. In an advisory opinion issued Friday, Slatery wrote that any records obtained by a third party hired to conduct searches for new schools’ superintendents must be made available for public inspection and its meetings might be subject to the Open Meetings Act.
Commercial Appeal
Editorials/Columns
The death of an inmate at a local jail typically doesn’t make the front page of this newspaper. It doesn’t lead the evening newscast or trend on Twitter. It’s not the talk of the coffee club at the corner café or something coworkers are likely to discuss at the water cooler. But it should matter, for a great many reasons — not the least of which is that a person’s liberty cannot be seized without due process under the law, which includes checks to prevent abuse. A simple jail sentence should not also be a death sentence. Citizens have a vested interest in knowing the circumstances when an inmate dies in the custody of the state. It’s important that such investigations are conducted by officials capable and concerned with ascertaining facts, that they are given the legal authority to provide a clear accounting of what happened, and that the results are made public. By those measures, Virginia has fallen horribly short in the case of Jamycheal Mitchell.
Virginian-Pilot
VCOG Blog
The House criminal law subcommittee unanimously voted to advance a bill to create a statewide searchable database of court case information. The subcommittee added a delayed enactment date of Jan. 1, 2018 (as opposed to the usual July 1). The Supreme Court has said changing the database from a one-by-one search to a comprehensive one, as well as adding adult offenders from juvenile and domestic relations courts will cost $1.28 million. The bill goes to the full committee, who will likely refer it to the House money committee.
Three members of the Bath County Board of Supervisors cannot be legally removed from office based on a revolt by angry voters, a judge ruled Wednesday. In dismissing petitions that sought to remove the supervisors, Circuit Judge John Wetsel ruled that a violation of the state’s open meeting law, one of the complaints raised by critics, was not enough to merit the drastic step of having the judicial system override the results of an election.
Roanoke Times
A new year rings in with a renewed effort by U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly to bring cameras to the U.S. Supreme Court. Connolly (D-11th) and U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) have reintroduced legislation that would permit televising the proceedings that occur before the body. “Our nation’s highest court is not some ‘mystical priesthood’ that can operate outside of public view,” Connolly said in a statement. “It is a coequal branch of government and must be accountable to the American public.”
Inside NOVA
The Associated Press has obtained documents that show that the U.S. Department of Justice advised the office of Virginia's top prosecutors on how to work around strict federal rules for spending money seized in investigations. Law enforcement agencies participating in investigations with federal counterparts can share proceeds of seized assets under "Equitable Sharing" programs run by the Justice Department and The U.S. Department of the Treasury. Both agencies have clear rules that generally prohibit the use of such money for salaries and pay raises. The Justice Department's suggested workaround is found in its PowerPoint obtained from the office of Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring after the AP raised questions about significant pay raises granted some of his employees while state workers' pay was stagnant elsewhere.
CBS 19
National Stories
The U.S. Department of Defense must release a cache of photos showing how Army personnel treated detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and other sites in Iraq and Afghanistan, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
Reuters
We hear a lot about "big data" and its potential value to government. But is it really fulfilling the high expectations that advocates have assigned to it? Is it really producing better public-sector decisions? It may be years before we have definitive answers to those questions, but new research suggests that it's worth paying a lot of attention to.
Governing
Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III served up a timely reminder last week for the state’s public officials when he issued an opinion that they cannot skirt open-government laws by outsourcing essential governmental functions. In an advisory opinion issued Friday, Slatery wrote that any records obtained by a third party hired to conduct searches for new schools’ superintendents must be made available for public inspection and its meetings might be subject to the Open Meetings Act.
Commercial Appeal
Editorials/Columns
The death of an inmate at a local jail typically doesn’t make the front page of this newspaper. It doesn’t lead the evening newscast or trend on Twitter. It’s not the talk of the coffee club at the corner café or something coworkers are likely to discuss at the water cooler. But it should matter, for a great many reasons — not the least of which is that a person’s liberty cannot be seized without due process under the law, which includes checks to prevent abuse. A simple jail sentence should not also be a death sentence. Citizens have a vested interest in knowing the circumstances when an inmate dies in the custody of the state. It’s important that such investigations are conducted by officials capable and concerned with ascertaining facts, that they are given the legal authority to provide a clear accounting of what happened, and that the results are made public. By those measures, Virginia has fallen horribly short in the case of Jamycheal Mitchell.
Virginian-Pilot
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