Transparency News 8/4/17

Friday, August 4, 2017



State and Local Stories

Incase you missed it:
A judge in Henrico County has reversed a ruling he made in June, saying he made a mistake when he wrote that Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act applied only to public bodies and not individual officials. Henrico County Circuit Court Judge James Yoffy announced the reversal Aug. 2. Resident Brian Davison had filed paperwork in court arguing that state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant violated the FOIA by not responding to a request he made in January within the five-day window required by law, and by not turning over records he asked for from her Facebook page.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Indeed, documents and emails released to InsideNoVa through a series of public records requests show that the county and the team consistently clashed over several key points of the deal. The documents even show that the team hasn’t recorded much in the way of profits in recent years, making any deal all the more complicated. But the emails also show that the P-Nats — in concert with the owner of the land where the stadium would be built, the JBG Cos. — spent plenty of time lobbying to find five votes on the Board of County Supervisors to approve the deal, with little success. That means that even if Silber continues to pursue a new stadium in Prince William, he’ll face an uphill battle in getting a deal approved. Publicly, Potomac Nationals owner Art Silber has declared that he’s moving on from pursuing a deal for a new stadium in Prince William County — but behind closed doors, he’s still holding out hope that he can keep the minor league baseball team in Woodbridge. In the frenetic run-up to a planned July 18 vote on the $35-million project, Silber pressed the Prince William Board of County Supervisors for more time to work on the deal.
InsideNoVa

After months of a pending verdict in a case that raised consequential questions about the constitutional limitations on politicians' social media accounts, a federal court ruled last week that Loudoun County Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) violated Lansdowne resident Brian Davison’s right to free speech by temporarily banning him from her Facebook page. From a circuit court in Richmond to a federal district court in Alexandria, Davison, a software engineer and father of two, has won and lost battles in courtrooms in his pursuit of defending the First Amendment and accessing public records.  But the latest outcome of Davison’s suit is one likely to affect politicians around the country, and maybe all the way up to the White House. What started off as a pro se free speech suit by Davison against the county’s chairwoman and Board of Supervisors could now play a key role in a recent lawsuit against President Donald Trump brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University alleging the president suppressed dissent by blocking critics from his Twitter account. 
Loudoun Times-Mirror



National Stories
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A federal judge has awarded Argus Leader Media nearly $70,000 in attorney fees after finding the newspaper “substantially prevailed” in a lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture. The award comes after Argus Leader Media won a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the department last year. The newspaper sued the department in 2011 after the department refused to turn over five years of sales data for every business in the country that participates in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. 
Argus Leader

Horry County (S.C.) Schools says it won’t disclose the details of an agreement with third-party attorneys who could offer opinions on how the district should comply with multiple Freedom of Information Act requests. Several FOIA requests sent by The Sun News for emails between school board attorneys, school board members and district staff remain unfilled, pending a legal opinions from the third-party attorneys. On May 22, the school board voted to enter into a contract with legal firm Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge and Rice to render legal opinions on “construction contracts on the current building projects, procurement matters, as well as the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act,” according to meeting minutes. But the amount of tax dollars spent on the work, as well as the exact nature of the work, is being withheld.
The Sun News

Civilian complaints against police -- public documents that have long been difficult for members of the public to access -- will be posted on a city website beginning this fall, Philadelphia Mayor Kenney's office announced Wednesday. The change marks a turn toward transparency that was applauded by some criminal-justice watchers, although it remained unclear how police would react to the news. "The release of this data is a common-sense reform that I hope will serve to increase community-police trust," Kenney said in a statement. "Everyone who works for the City of Philadelphia is a public servant, and the public deserves to know we will take their complaints about any city service seriously."
Governing

Hugh Freeze is being given the opportunity to review and redact phone records of calls he deemed personal during his five years as the University of Mississippi’s football coach, the university’s general counsel, Lee Tyner, said Thursday. Freeze resigned July 20 following a series of events triggered by a lawsuit filed by former coach Huston Nutt. Thomas Mars, Nutt's lawyer, conducted a review of a portion of Freeze's phone records, uncovering a call Freeze failed to redact made from his cell phone to a female escort service. That prompted what Ole Miss called a more extensive review of the rest of Freeze's phone records, in which a "concerning pattern" was discovered, according to athletics director Ross Bjork. USA TODAY Sports made an open-records request July 24 for Freeze’s phone records associated with the phone he used during his five years at Ole Miss. When asked by USA TODAY Sports if Freeze is allowed to redact calls made to a female escort service, Tyner said: "If (any of Freeze's calls) were not business related, then he has the ability to redact them as personal. “That’s our best read on what the law is."
USA Today


Editorials/Columns


“I was in error and I reverse my ruling,” said Henrico Circuit Court Judge James Yoffy on Wednesday. With that commendable admission, he undid the damage from a decision that had legal experts and reporters alike picking their jaws up off the floor. In a case concerning state Sen. Siobhan Dunnavant, Yoffy had found that the state’s Freedom of Information Act applies to the General Assembly as a whole, but not to individual lawmakers. This contradicts the plain meaning of the law’s text, and Yoffy did the right thing when he recognized as much.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

That brings me to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who needs to work on being more like George Washington. Hogan’s staff has blocked and deleted the posts of at least 450 people who voiced their opinions on his official Facebook page. And the American Civil Liberties Union sued him for that earlier this week. The governor’s staff dismissed the lawsuit as frivolous, and the online commentary was rich with a “who cares?” backlash. “It’s only Facebook,” plenty of folks said. But it matters. And it especially matters when it’s a guy like Hogan. Hogan is not a reactionary hothead. He’s shown a steady hand in leading his state and a stern adherence to principles. He’s also been pretty deft at using Facebook as a primary means to connect with his constituents, playfully debuting his hairless head after chemo treatments on his page. So blocking people who come to the governor’s page — which is a public forum, labeled as official and administered by staff members paid public tax dollars — is unnecessary and ultimately dangerous.
Petula Dvorak, Washington Post