Transparency News 3/31/17

Note: VCOG’s email has been down for the past 24 hours. Overnight, the system became available as browser-based webmail, but we still can’t get email through desktop/device email clients. I apologize if anyone has had trouble reaching the office.

Investigators with the Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Treasury Department will present evidence in the coming months to a special grand jury regarding Portsmouth Councilman Mark Whitaker’s church, its development company and its now-defunct credit union, according to court documents obtained by The Virginian-Pilot. It is unclear what investigators have uncovered, but Chief Circuit Judge William Moore Jr. has assigned a special prosecutor to oversee “the investigation and prosecution of Mark Whitaker.” The judge also ordered that grand jurors investigate, among other things, the financial relationships between the church entities as well as transactions between those entities and their members.
Virginian-Pilot

Gov. Terry McAuliffe gave more insight Thursday into his proposed amendments to legislation that would have opened suicide and natural death investigation records to family members. The governor, who wants to require police to release a summary of the case, but not actual case files, said during his monthly radio interview with WRVA in Richmond that he's worried about a "chilling effect." People won't tell police the full story if they know the file will eventually go to family, he said. This was one of several arguments law enforcement agencies made to the governor in asking him to veto or amend a bill that passed the General Assembly unanimously. The bill grew out of a couple of cases where police refused to release records - Virginia law gives investigators wide discretion not to open their files - to family members, including a case in Virginia Beach where the family wanted a private investigator to review things. State Sen. Scott Surovell, who sponsored legislation to require release once its clear no charges will be filed, said these records are disseminated in other states and it doesn't seem to cause problems.
Daily Press

In a few months, the Norfolk City Council will do what some members call its most important job: picking a city manager, the person who runs Norfolk’s government day to day and oversees its 5,000 employees. If the man leading the search has his way, the public won’t know who applies for the job or whom the council interviews. Robert Burg, the consultant the council hired for almost $40,000, said the names of applicants and finalists will be kept confidential, and interviews will be behind closed doors. Burg said that will help Norfolk attract better contenders. “Quality people,” he said, don’t want their current employers to know they’re looking for new jobs. How could the city conduct such a search in secret? Burg gave a blunt answer: “Virginia’s not an open-records state.” While the state does have a public-records law, it’s been ranked one of the weakest in the nation by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit that investigates government wrongdoing.  The law gives the city wide discretion. It’s allowed to release most “personnel information” and to interview prospective employees in public. But it’s not required to, so cities often choose to withhold records and hold closed meetings. That’s what Virginia Beach did last year before picking its city manager. Norfolk Mayor Kenny Alexander said the council hasn’t discussed whether to make applications and interviews public. But he said he understands Burg’s argument.
Virginian-Pilot

Henry Armistead dipped his pen in ink and recorded the incorporation of Fredericksburg as a town in 1782. That sheet of cotton rag paper is the opening page of the town council’s original Council Minutes Book. But over the years, Armistead’s graceful Copperplate script and the handwriting of his successors darkened and the binding of the council’s first two decades of minutes became tattered. Thanks to a $2,151 donation from the Virginia Daughters of the American Revolution and the local Washington-Lewis Chapter, the Council Minutes Book from 1781 to 1801 has been cleaned, repaired and rebound using archival materials. Jeff Small, the Fredericksburg Circuit Court clerk, presented the thick, burgundy volume to City Council at its meeting Tuesday.
Free Lance-Star



National Stories
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The Fort Smith, Arkansas, School Board did not violate the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act when members voted at a June 2015 meeting to do away with Southside High School's Rebel mascot and "Dixie" fight song, the Arkansas Court of Appeals said Wednesday. According to the court's opinion, on June 23, 2015, five members of the school board were waiting for a member who was running late when they decided to meet as a committee of the whole and discuss whether to keep the mascot and fight song. Bradshaw claimed the board provided insufficient notice of the June 23, 2015, committee meeting. Although the board gave notice of a board meeting, it improperly failed to give notice of the committee meeting, she alleged. A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals disagreed, saying in its decision Wednesday the board met the FOIA's notice requirements and Bradshaw did not show she was harmed.
Times Record

A New York appeals court ruled on Thursday that misconduct records involving the New York City police officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold in 2014 should remain sealed, saying threats to the officer mandated secrecy under the law. The decision, by a mid-level appeals court in Manhattan, reversed a lower court ruling that ordered the city to release a summary of misconduct findings for officer Daniel Pantaleo. The lower court granted a freedom of information request made by the Legal Aid Society, which sought complaints against Pantaleo that had been substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent watchdog agency. The appeals court, however, found that serious threats targeting Pantaleo had led the officer and his family to be placed under round-the-clock police protection, and that the threats "demonstrate that disclosure carries a 'substantial and realistic potential' for harm."
Reuters