Transparency News 8/30/17

Wednesday, August 30, 2017

State and Local Stories

Overcoming recalcitrant bureaucrats isn’t the only challenge for people who seek public documents or data under the Freedom of Information Act. Another challenge is managing your paperwork: crafting and filing your FOIA requests and tracking responses. Fortunately, a bevy of online tools is available to help you with those tasks. Here is a tour of such resources, building on a presentation I gave at VCOG’s Pop-Up Sunshine event in March.
Jeff South, Truth in the Field blog

The Department of Homeland Security issued a confidential warning to law enforcement authorities three days before the deadly Aug. 12 Charlottesville protest rally, saying that an escalating series of clashes had created a powder keg that would likely make the event “among the most violent to date” between white supremacists and anarchists. The “law enforcement sensitive” assessment, obtained by POLITICO and reported for the first time, raises questions about whether Charlottesville city and Virginia state authorities dropped the ball before, and during, a public event that was widely expected to draw huge crowds of armed, emotional and antagonistic participants from around the country.
Politico

Bristol, Virginia is one of four financially distressed localities cited last week by the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts. Bristol Virginia is “City A” as mentioned last week when Auditor of Public Accounts Martha S. Mavredes spoke during a meeting with the state’s new Joint Subcommittee on Local Government Fiscal Stress, City Manager Randy Eads confirmed Monday. The four localities, two cities and two counties, came on the state’s radar through a new warning system devised after Petersburg experienced its financial crisis in 2016.
Herald Courier

The pending investigation into the city of Charlottesville’s preparation and operational plans for a white nationalist rally on Aug. 12 is becoming increasingly political. Amid controversy over a councilor’s recent “performance and discipline,” which will be the subject of a closed-door meeting Wednesday, the Republican Party of Virginia is taking aim at the city for appointing someone who has donated several thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and action committees in the last decade.
Daily Progress

City of Hopewell Vice Mayor Jasmine Gore left a meeting of top-ranking city and state officials she called for the same way she entered it on Tuesday: frustrated, and without answers. The city’s fractured governing board was split on whether to even hold Tuesday’s reckoning at the James Monroe building, voting 4-2 in favor with one abstention. “I don’t know why we’re here,” Mayor Jackie Shornak said in an interview. “Several of the members of council and city officials did not know what the purpose of the meeting was for.” Outgoing Hopewell City Manager Mark Haley, who is slated to retire this week, had an answer: “(Some council members) wanted a public flogging of staff today and they didn’t get it.” “I called this meeting in the first place because of concerns about not being provided timely and accurate information about the audit and city finances,” Gore said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch


National Stories
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A lawsuit against the New York Times by former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who claimed the newspaper had defamed her in an editorial linking her to a 2011 mass shooting, was dismissed by a federal judge on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said that while the June editorial may have contained errors, it was not plausible those errors were made maliciously, which a public figure like Palin must prove to win a defamation lawsuit. “Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not,” Rakoff wrote in his 26-page decision.
Reuters

The FBI is declining to turn over files related to its investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails by arguing a lack of public interest in the matter. Ty Clevenger, an attorney in New York City, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in March of 2016 asking for a variety of documents from the FBI and the Justice Department, including correspondence exchanged with Congress about the Clinton email investigation. But in a letter sent this week and obtained by Fox News, the head of the FBI’s Records Management Division told Clevenger that the bureau has “determined you have not sufficiently demonstrated that the public’s interest in disclosure outweighs personal privacy interests of the subject.”
Fox News