Transparency News 9/21/17

Thursday, September 21, 2017



State and Local Stories

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Prince William County School Board Chairman Ryan Sawyers was censured by four of his fellow school board members Wednesday for allegedly violating the school board’s Code of Ethics by making public, as part of his recent court filing, emails written by the school division attorney. The school board took the unexpected step after retreating into closed session for about 30 minutes at the end of the Sept. 20 school board meeting. School Board member Alyson Satterwhite at first declined to release the censuring resolution to a Times reporter but did so after school board Clerk Debby Urban said the document would be made public. The resolution charges that Sawyers “publicly disclosed confidential attorney/client privilege[d] documents in the Writ of Mandamus filed against School Board Counsel Mary McGowan.”
Prince William Times
http://www.fauquier.com/prince_william_times/news/charging-ethics-violations-prince-william-school-board-censures-chairman-ryan/article_8110fc4a-9e7c-11e7-be67-5fdc53809c7f.html

Portions of the Petersburg schools budget are identical or similar to that of the Chesterfield County schools budget, and the county division is asking city schools to investigate the matter while the city system denies any wrongdoing. Chesterfield Superintendent James Lane and School Board members were alarmed when they discovered that the work of the county’s budget and finance staff had “been copied,” Chesterfield School Board attorney Wendell Roberts wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to Patrick Lacy, an attorney representing the Petersburg school system. Roberts added that the allegedly copied work for this fiscal year’s budget wasn’t properly credited and may have contributed to the city’s recognition by the Association of School Business Officials International. Lacy wrote that the budget consultant who worked on Petersburg’s schools budget document had previously worked for Chesterfield schools and, prior to that, for the Virginia Department of Education. “While with the state, she developed budget language that remains in effect in state documents. She brought that budget language with her to Chesterfield and then to Petersburg. PCPS does not believe that Chesterfield schools sought permission to use the language she developed, nor would it be expected because such collaboration is common practice among education professionals,” Lacy wrote.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
http://www.richmond.com/news/local/chesterfield/chesterfield-school-system-claims-petersburg-division-copied-part-of-its/article_28ffadd0-db70-5da4-8065-3ba5f31e621c.html

National Stories
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Arkansas' intent to shield much of its execution procedure from public view took another hit Tuesday when a second judge ruled that the state's prison system must disclose labels that will identify the manufacturer of a lethal injection drug. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackie Pierce told the Arkansas Department of Correction to give lawyer Steven Shults unredacted package inserts for recently acquired midazolam by Sept. 28. He said Arkansas' legislators had an opportunity to grant pharmaceutical companies secrecy in a 2015 execution law but didn't.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/sep/19/arkansas-judge-says-state-must-disclose-execution-/

Tennessee lawmakers are asking three state agencies to ensure that their policies allow residents to take cell phone photos of public records. The Tennessean reports that Joint Government Operations Committee members questioned the Office of the Comptroller of the Treasury, the Department of Transportation and the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency about their policies Wednesday.
McClatchy
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article174535366.html#storylink=cpy

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a coalition of 18 media organizations submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit urging it to unseal court records in the case of Guiffre v. Maxwell.  The brief argues that the district court violated the public’s First Amendment right to access court records when it allowed a vast number of records in the case to routinely be filed under seal or redacted in their entirety without first undergoing review to determine if there was a compelling reason to keep the information private. 
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/reporters-committee-amicus-brief-publics-first-amendment-right-acces


Editorials/Columns


Supervisors, as the highest elected officials in the county, have the power to appoint members to more than a dozen county boards and commissions. (Until this year, that list included the School Board, but Amherst voters decided to change to an elected board effective this November.) For several years, supervisors would interview — in open session — the finalists for any open seats. No longer. Going forward, those interviews will be held behind closed doors, shutting out the public and curtailing residents’ ability to keep tabs on their elected officials. We believe that’s a grave mistake that strikes at the heart of democracy, especially at the local level. The board’s rationale — and it was a unanimous decision by all five supervisors — is that some potential applicants for open seats might be uncomfortable speaking in public. A behind-closed-doors interview, the thinking goes, might be a way to ease nerves and, potentially, increase the number of applicants for open commission and committee seats.  Come again? An applicant for a seat on a public, policymaking body might be uneasy about an out-in-the-open interview when he is applying for a seat on a panel that will be conducting the vast majority of its business in public? That simply does not compute.
News & Advance
http://www.newsadvance.com/opinion/editorials/transparency-takes-a-blow-in-amherst/article_488c8890-9e3a-11e7-8616-5303605cfeda.html