Transparency News 4/25/17

Tuesday, April 25, 2017



State and Local Stories

VCOG is offering an in-person FOIA and records management training seminar, May 17, at the Library of Virginia. Click here for tickets and details.



A judge permanently removed imprisoned Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot from office Monday. Circuit Judge Everett Martin did not say who will take over the post for the rest of 2017. That decision could require a vote among all of Norfolk’s eight Circuit Court judges. Amy Ortega has been serving as acting treasurer with Burfoot suspended for the past two months. But by state law, she cannot be the legal officeholder after his removal because she’s not a Norfolk resident. Burfoot’s lawyer, Andrew Sacks, said he plans to appeal the removal order. Before making his ruling, Martin responded to a Pilot article that revealed he, the city attorney and others had crafted a secret plan to ensure one of Burfoot’s top aides would become treasurer after Burfoot was gone. “There is less to it than meets the eye,” Martin said, adding that he had conversations about the succession after being told none of the chief deputy treasurers lived in Norfolk. The judge said he wanted to ensure the next treasurer was “someone who had not been involved in Mr. Burfoot’s misdeeds” and “a safe pair of hands.”
Virginian-Pilot

Dawn Page, the Richmond School Board chairwoman, has not offered an explanation for the board’s decision to negotiate Superintendent Dana Bedden’s exit by June 30, two years before his contract was set to expire. In an interview Monday, Page referred to “philosophical differences” with Bedden but did not elaborate. “As you know, this is a personnel matter and we can’t discuss it,” Page said. “We have done everything legally.” She declined to comment on potential replacements, including Dance.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Following two recent Purcellville Town Council closed-session meetings as part of an employee review process with Town Manager Robert Lohr, Jr., an announcement from Lohr is expected during Tuesday night's meeting. The first closed session was a three-hour meeting held April 11. During the second, on April 18, a motion was made by Councilman Doug McCollum to enter into a closed session to discuss the “annual performance, demotion, disciplining, separation agreement from the Town’s payroll by retirement or resignation or other appropriate action based on this evaluation.” It was indicated at the time that the motion was related to Lohr. According to town sources, it has been several years since Lohr’s last full review. As is standard with government employees and public bodies in Loudoun County, the review has been conducted behind closed doors. There has been speculation that this is more than a “normal” review process because of the manner in which the special meetings were called.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

Transparent GMU filed a lawsuit against Mason and the George Mason University Foundation Feb. 9, according to a press release from the organization, a lawsuit that is still ongoing. Transparent GMU is a student organization that aims to shed light on the potential undue influence of Mason donors, according to their Facebook page. In accordance with their mission, they filed the lawsuit so that Mason would comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to disclose a series of public records about donor agreements related to the Koch brothers. The lawsuit transpired after Transparent GMU filed separate FOIA requests with the university and the foundation asking for donation records, which both institutions denied.
GMU Fourth Estate



National Stories
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Have an opinion on the federal Freedom of Information Act request process? The Justice Department wants to hear it — and include that feedback into the National FOIA Portal. DoJ’s Office of Information Policy recently announced a partnership with government innovation lab 18F, to create an online resource that will make the FOIA process easier on both requesters and the offices managing those requests. “We’ve been saying all along absolutely the portal has to work for both sides of the FOIA process,” said OIP Director Melanie Pustay, during an April 20 National Archives and Records Administration Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Advisory Committee meeting. “We don’t want to just open a fire hose and so it’s really easy to make requests willy-nilly and requesters are like ‘good, I fell asleep and made a request.’ That doesn’t help FOIA. The whole idea here is to have the portal help requesters go to the right agency.
Federal News Radio

Saying the deadline to respond lapsed last month, a nonprofit fighting the “one-in, two-out” executive order on agency rule-making has asked a federal judge to intervene. The Natural Resource Defense Council filed its April 20 complaint in Manhattan against the Office of Management and Budget. Though the 5-page filing makes no mention of it, the group is also fighting President Donald Trump in Washington over  his Jan. 30 executive order, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs.” A few weeks after bringing its case in Washington — which accuses Trump of violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the separation of powers and the take-care clause of the U.S. Constitution — the NRDC asked the budget office for records related to the executive order under the Freedom of Information Act. The NRDC says the Office of Management and Budget acknowledged receipt of its FOIA request on March 2, but has otherwise missed a March 30 deadline to respond.
Courthouse News Service

There are a lot of factors when it comes to determining your federal FOIA request cost, but one of the key ones is which requester category you fall under. Under FOIA fee regulations, there are three broad categories of requesters, and making sure you are classified correctly can mean getting the documents for free or a reasonable fee and being asked to pay thousands - or even hundreds of thousands - of dollars.
Muck Rock

Bristol Superior Court Judge Thomas F. McGuire Jr. ordered on Monday that the district attorney must release any suicide or other notes written by Aaron Hernandez to his fiancee’s counsel, “in time for the Hernandez family to have them at the time of his burial, which is scheduled for this afternoon." In the order, the judge gave the district attorney the ability to “exercise discretion” in taking out any information in the notes that would impede the investigation into Hernandez’s death.
USA Today