Transparency News 8/28/17

Monday, August 28, 2017

State and Local Stories

Charlottesville City Council spent more than two hours behind closed doors Thursday hashing over what happened last weekend, and who should be held accountable for what went wrong. Councilors began their closed session at City Hall around 10 a.m. Thursday, August 24. They discussed the events that occurred on Saturday, August 12,including white activist Jason Kessler's Unite the Right rally at Emancipation Park and the fatal car attack along 4th Street. "We talked about what was going on this summer, both July 8th and August 12th and that is where we're leaving it," said councilor Kathy Galvin, referencing the earlier rally held by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan at Justice Park on July 8. Mayor Mike Signer said City Council is trying to answer some hard questions that were brought to them during the overrun their public meeting on Monday, August 21.
WVIR

Security planning for the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville this month was impeded by waffling over the rally location, poor communication and the city manager going on vacation before the rally, according to a confidential memo obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The nine-page document, prepared by Mayor Mike Signer with input from other City Council members, outlines specific areas of concern the City Council wanted to discuss with City Manager Maurice Jones at a closed-door meeting Thursday. A city official verified the document’s authenticity.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Addressing point-by-point the allegations lobbed at him in a leaked confidential memo, City Manager Maurice Jones detailed his version of the events leading up to the Aug. 12 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in an email on Saturday. Jones said Mayor Mike Signer threatened his job and that of Police Chief Al Thomas on two separate occasions. In a text message, Signer responded to the city manager’s assertion: “Mr. Jones does work for City Council-and for the citizens of Charlottesville. It saddens me that he would release confidential closed session material in a blame game."
Roanoke Times

The city of Charlottesville recently unveiled an online portal for datasets from the city government, with the hope that “civic hackers” will use the data to improve the community. Many American cities have adopted policies governing the online distribution of open data. By definition, open data is free, has no legal restrictions on its use and does not require registration to download.
Charlottesville Tomorrow

Recently released from prison, former Abingdon employee William Garrett Jackson will begin making monthly restitution payments to the town beginning in September. Jackson, former assistant town manager, left prison July 5. He pleaded guilty in June 2015 to using a town credit card for personal expenses. Jackson made $76,404 worth of personal purchases between 2007 and 2014. At the October 2015 sentencing, U.S. District Judge James P. Jones ordered Jackson to pay restitution in the same amount. Jackson paid $125 while in prison, according to information obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Herald Courier. According to court documents, Jackson begins making monthly payments of $100, 60 days after being released from prison.
Herald Courier

Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport burned through much of its reserves of cash and easy-to-cash-in investments last year, as it struggled with the aftermath of its bailout of People Express Airlines. The airport’s cash holdings declined by $2.2 million during the year ended June 30, according to financial records it provided in response to a request from the Daily Press.
Daily Press

While announcing a $16 million settlement this month, federal officials alleged a Virginia Beach defense contractor concealed its control of two other Beach companies so they could win federal contracts set aside for small or disadvantaged businesses. And at the intersection of the three companies is state Del. Ron Villanueva. The former Beach councilman previously headed SEK Solutions and served as a director with Karda Systems. Over the past nine years, ADS Inc. – the contractor accused of controlling their management – was his second-biggest corporate campaign donor, and its founder, Luke Hillier, was his top private contributor. Villanueva is not mentioned by name in the settlement agreement, and no one has alleged he was involved in any misconduct. In an interview last week, he denied wrongdoing and generally downplayed his decadelong tenure at the company. He claimed he was SEK’s president for only about six months until he stepped down in early 2014 and never had an ownership stake, meaning he wasn’t involved in its efforts to qualify with the federal government as a woman-owned or socially disadvantaged business. He said he hasn’t had any contact with the company since leaving. But as recently as December 2015, Villanueva told the state in his economic-interest disclosures that he owned a stake in SEK of at least $5,000 and worked there as a “director.” He also was referred to as a “partner” on his campaign website through at least July 2015 and as “president” on the company’s site through at least May of that year.
Virginian-Pilot

Loudoun County Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) has appealed a federal court ruling that she violated Lansdowne resident Brian Davison’s First Amendment right to free speech by blocking him from her Facebook page. The chairwoman filed a notice of appeal Thursday to U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris’ ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond.  Meanwhile, Davison also filed a notice of appeal on Thursday. The Lansdowne resident told the Times-Mirror he is appealing part of Cachreris’ July 25 ruling that found that Randall did not violate his right to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. 
Loudoun Times-Mirror



National Stories
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You don’t have a right to know how much money companies that do business at Spaceport America pay to use the publicly owned facility, officials there say. In fact, the spaceport wants the ability to keep all sorts of information secret, including the identities of commercial space companies doing business there. The growing commercial space industry is hypercompetitive. Publicly releasing rent payments, lease agreements and other information harms the spaceport’s efforts to recruit companies, New Mexico Spaceport Authority CEO Dan Hicks says — and that makes it more challenging to grow the spaceport and build a stronger economy in southern New Mexico. “If you were to ask them would they want their leases out in the public, they would say no,” Hicks said. “…We just don’t want to have additional burdens on them or scrutiny on them.”
Las Cruces Sun-News

Federal agencies must start producing records on President Donald Trump’s travel ban to avoid a court order that would require a speedier release of documents, a federal judge said Thursday. “Can I get a representation that all the agencies can do a rolling production,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley asked during a hearing Thursday. “If not, I will order it.” Corley is presiding over a lawsuit filed by journalist Cora Currier of The Intercept, who lodged multiple requests for records from the U.S. Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security on their “analysis and implementation” of two executive orders to bar entry into the United States by non-citizens from certain majority-Muslim countries.
Courthouse News

Hey, Texplainer: what social media information is subject to Texas’ state open records laws? Is there anything off limits when it comes to what citizens can request to see? All social media is subject to state freedom of information laws, but whether you get the information you’ve requested depends on whether the communication is considered official business of a governmental body.
Texas Tribune

Lawyers for August Busch IV want to keep the police videos and reports of his helicopter landing in a Swansea, Illinois, parking lot from being released to the public. Lawyers for Busch, who is the former CEO of Anheuser-Busch, argue that releasing the information would be a violation of his privacy. Maurice Graham, one of Busch’s attorneys, sent a letter on Aug. 14 to Swansea Police Chief Steve Johnson that was obtained by the Belleville News-Democrat under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. “The purpose of this letter is to advise you that I believe it is entirely likely that the Swansea Village Police Department may receive media requests for a copy of the report and possibly even a copy of the videos of my client, Mr. Busch, during the time he was under the supervision of the Swansea Village Police Department,” Graham wrote. “We want to point out that under current (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) laws the information contained in the report and the video itself which was used to document Mr. Busch’s medical condition at the time will contain protected health information and cannot be released to the media.” Don Craven, the attorney for the Illinois Press Association, pointed out the Illinois 5th District Appellate Court has found that courts and police aren’t covered entities under HIPAA. “Accordingly, the plain language of HIPAA demonstrates that the judiciary, which is not a health plan, a health care clearinghouse, or a qualified health care provider, is not subject to HIPAA’s privacy rule,” one opinion from the court states.
Belleville News-Democrat

The state board tasked with enforcing Iowa’s public meetings law met in secretFriday on a case involving an accidental fatal shooting by a Burlington police officer, then voted to take action based on that secret meeting. But the board won't say what action it took, or what it concerned. In response, The Des Moines Register has filed a complaint that asks its board members to fine themselves $1,000 each. “I know how frustrated you are. If I weren’t on the board and not sitting here, I’d have the same frustrations,” Iowa Public Information Board member Rick Morain said as he left the meeting Friday.
Des Moines Register



Editorials/Columns


Are the judges in your community unusually lenient? Or unusually harsh? Are there any racial disparities in sentencing in your community? What is your local commonwealth attorney’s conviction rate — and how does that compare with prosecutors in other localities? All good questions, right? But finding the answers to those questions is harder than it ought to be. Here’s the paradox: Court records in Virginia are public records. But they’re only available one record at a time, even though most — but not all — of them are organized into a single, statewide database. There’s an easy fix for this: The General Assembly could pass a law requiring that database to be statewide, searchable and public.
Roanoke Times

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was very clear about the fact that he wrote the First Amendment to protect the minority against the majority. What Madison meant by minority is “offensive speech.” Unfortunately, we don’t honor that principle as much as we should today. In fact, we seem to be witnessing a politically correct philosophy at play, one shared by both the extreme left and the extreme right, which aims to stifle all expression that doesn’t fit within their parameters of what they consider to be “acceptable” speech. As a result, we have seen the caging of free speech in recent years, through the use of so-called “free speech zones” on college campuses and at political events, the requirement of speech permits in parks and community gatherings, and the policing of online forums. Instead of encouraging people to debate issues and air their views, by muzzling free speech we are contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”
John Whitehead, Daily Progress