Transparency News 10/3/17

Tuesday, October 3, 2017


Nominations are being accepted for VCOG’s Freedom of Information Awards, to be presented in the fall of 2017. Entries should be submitted by October 9, 2017, by filling out the form linked above or by mailing the same information to VCOG, P.O. Box 2576, Williamsburg VA  23187.

State and Local Stories

A Richmond City Council committee on Monday endorsed a proposal asking the Virginia General Assembly to amend the City Charter and limit the mayor’s access to the council’s closed meetings. The proposal, put forth by councilwomen Kimberly Gray and Kristen Larson, would remove from the charter a provision that permits Mayor Levar Stoney or his designee to sit in on the council’s closed meetings, held in accordance with the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. The councilwomen lobbied colleagues to back the proposal Monday, calling it a structural flaw with the charter that puts at risk the privacy of council-appointed employees’ information discussed in its closed meetings.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The state has rejected a Richmond man’s appeal to keep the letters “FTRU MPK” on the personalized plates of his Lexus SUV. Don Butler, a lawyer and former teacher, does not like President Donald Trump and chose the plate to express his feelings. He plans to keep up his fight to keep the plates. His first appeal came after he got a letter from the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles in May saying he needed to turn in the plates because they violated state guidelines. Butler has said someone at the DMV must have had a dirty mind.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Chesterfield County officials faced questions and backlash over a proposal for an industrial “megasite” in the county during a tense community meeting that drew about 350 people to Carver Middle School on Monday. Chesterfield’s Economic Development Authority wants to rezone and buy about 1,700 acres of land in southeastern Chesterfield’s Bermuda District as a site for large, industrial user. When Mike Uzel of a group opposed to the megabite attempted to keep asking questions after his three minutes were up, he pulled the microphone toward him when the county administrator tried to take it, and citizens shouted from the audience that he could take their three minutes.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Forensic auditors from PBMares, LLP publicly went over their findings from the forensic audit they conducted into the city’s financial books during a special city council meeting Monday night. Though the audit and its findings were released last week, John Hanson and Mike Garber, who were in charge of the audit for PBMares, gave a brief presentation to council and answered questions from council members. Hanson and Garber mainly focused on the “ethical tone” of the city government, saying they found much evidence of abuse of city money and city resources.
Progress-Index


National Stories
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It seemed to be the most anti-O.J. Simpson of moments. The famous _ and infamous _ football great disappeared into a waiting car outside a Nevada state prison on Sunday, newly paroled, and disappeared into the darkness of the desert where the media spotlight couldn't find him. The plan for Simpson's release stemming from his 2008 conviction of robbery and kidnapping at a Las Vegas casino had been fluid during the week. But as media requests began pouring in and her department began getting "a lot of comments and phone messages that were very aggressive in nature," she said they had to run a trick play. That meant issuing misleading statements about when Simpson would leave.
Governing

White House officials have begun examining emails associated with a third and previously unreported email account on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s private domain, according to three people familiar with the matter. Hundreds of emails have been sent since January from White House addresses to accounts on the Kushner family domain, these people said. Many of those emails went not to Kushner’s or Ivanka Trump’s personal addresses but to an account they both had access to and shared with their personal household staff for family scheduling. The emails — which include nonpublic travel documents, internal schedules and some official White House materials —were in many cases sent from Ivanka Trump, her assistant Bridges Lamar and others who work with the couple in the White House. The emails to the third account were largely sent from White House accounts but occasionally came from other private accounts, one of these people said.
Politico

The Justice Department has released a series of recently overruled legal memos concluding that presidents cannot appoint their relatives to the White House staff or presidential commissions, even to unpaid posts. The newly-disclosed opinions, issued to the Nixon, Carter and Reagan White House and obtained by POLITICO Monday through a Freedom of Information Act request, detail how Justice Department lawyers concluded for decades that such appointments of family members were illegal under an anti-nepotism law passed in 1967.
Politico



Editorials/Columns


Imagine your daughter is a college student. Should a San Francisco billionaire be able to ask her school for her address and cellphone number — and get it? Should anybody, for that matter, be able to get a list of students at Virginia’s state-supported colleges and universities, along with their addresses and cellphone numbers? Whatever you think the answer ought to be, here’s the actual answer: You can get such a list of names, addresses and phone numbers, and most students (and their parents) are completely unaware those lists are publicly available. This puts us in an awkward position. We believe strongly in open government, and the Freedom of Information Act is the legal mechanism that forces governments to maintain open records about the public’s business. Generally speaking, we want fewer exemptions to FOIA, not more. However, are lists of students, their addresses and cellphone numbers really the public’s business?
Roanoke Times