Transparency News 5/9/17
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
State and Local Stories
Albermarle County Attorney Greg Kamptner says Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act is getting a lot of attention in the General Assembly. He’s heard anecdotes about un-named counties and cities where the elected officials don’t obey the rules. City councils and county boards of supervisors must certify that they limit their discussions to the topics that were identified before a closed meeting begins. Kamptner has shared his findings with the Albemarle supervisors.
WINA
National Stories
An email went out Monday to about 200,000 visitors to state parks from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection asking if they want to exempt their name, address and phone number from a public record search. “You are receiving this email because you are a Florida Resident and visited an award-winning Florida State Park within the past five years,” the email begins. At the end, it has a link to click onto for people who want to request their personal information removed from a list of visitors to the parks. Some people who received the email thought it was a phishing scam to obtain valid emails and other personal information. But DEP spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said the email is legit.
Tallahassee Democrat
A civil rights group asked a court Monday to force the U.S. government to divulge more information about a January raid in Yemen that resulted in the death of a U.S. Navy sailor and Yemeni civilians. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, saying it wants to learn the legal basis and decision-making process that preceded the Jan. 28 raid on an al-Qaida compound. It said in the lawsuit that the raid "raised deep concerns about the legal and factual basis, planning and execution of the operation." The nonprofit organization said it filed Freedom of Information Act requests in March with the Central Intelligence Agency and the departments of defense, justice and state after the government released scant information about the raid following its internal investigation. It said it has received no documents in response, although some of the agencies have agreed to handle the request in an expedited manner.
McClatchy
A conservative watchdog group is suing for access to Sally Yates' emails from her brief but eventful tenure as acting attorney general during the early days of the Trump administration. Judicial Watch filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in federal court in Washington Friday, seeking copies of Yates' Justice Department email traffic from January 20, 2017 through January 31, 2017—one day after she was fired by President Donald Trump for refusing to defend his travel ban executive order.
Politico
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the FBI, said publicly that the government paid $900,000 to break into the locked iPhone of a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, shootings, even though the FBI considers the figure to be classified information. The FBI also has protected the identity of the vendor it paid to do the work.
CNBC
More than 2.7 million criminal records will be sealed and the arrest records of hundreds of thousands of people will be concealed under a bill heading to Gov. Rick Scott’s desk. An open records advocacy group is sounding the alarm and calling for Scott to veto the bill, warning it could hide the backgrounds of dangerous people. The bill, if signed, would automatically administratively seal court records of nearly anyone who is found not guilty or is acquitted during a trial or has the charges dropped or dismissed. Charging documents could still be obtained from the courthouse where the charges were filed, but the charges won’t show up in a background check through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Miami Herald
Editorials/Columns
When Kirk Cox takes over as speaker of the House of Delegates, one of his first items of business should involve ripping down the curtain of secrecy behind which so much legislative work gets done. Only 12 percent of the 636 bills that died or were left in a House committee or subcommittee this year received a roll-call vote, reports Transparency Virginia. That’s almost the mirror image of the state Senate, where 85 percent of bills killed in committee received a recorded vote. (Senate subcommittees, unlike those in the House, cannot kill bills outright.)
Richmond Times-Dispatch
It’s important to note that, while Republicans have controlled things since Transparency Virginia began its invaluable work, openness is not a partisan issue. Republicans now have their hand on the tiller, but Democrats were no better when they were in control. There is a general consensus in Richmond that such changes would be intrusive and disruptive, that the public should just trust lawmakers to do what’s right. Well, that’s not nearly good enough. Citizens should review the Transparency Virginia reports for themselves. See what their elected representatives are doing — and demand better.
Virginian-Pilot
