Transparency News 10/31/17

Tuesday, October 31, 2017


State and Local Stories

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The Virginia Coalition for Open Government announced the winners of the organization’s annual open government awards: an advocacy group that used everyday technology to bring the inner-workings of the General Assembly committee system to light, and a newspaper whose months-long investigation into pharmacies put on probation by the Department of Health Professions (DHP) changed the way that department publicizes those violations. The awards will be given at VCOG’s annual conference, Nov. 16, at the Richmond Times-Dispatch building, 300 E. Franklin St., Richmond.
VCOG

The top attorney for Prince William County’s school division is pushing for a judge to dismiss the case brought against her by school board Chairman Ryan Sawyers. Mary McGowan and her lawyers filed a motion in Prince William County Circuit Court earlier this month for a “demurrer,” arguing that Sawyers is off base in his claims that McGowan has been unjustly denying him access to emails she has sent to other school board members and Superintendent Steve Walts. McGowan claims that she can’t provide Sawyers with access to the emails he’s looking for without violating federal and state laws, and even charges that Sawyers violated his “ethical duty” by including private emails between McGowan and school board members in his original legal filing on the matter. In all, she believes he did so “in order to further his personal agenda.”
Inside NoVa

Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones is disputing a claim in a preliminary state report that says the city did not follow safety recommendations the state provided ahead of the violent Aug. 12 white nationalist rally in Emancipation Park. Following the presentation of the preliminary report last week, a former federal prosecutor who is both representing and investigating the city of Charlottesville says his team and Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s office are negotiating an information-sharing agreement so that parallel reviews of the rally can proceed unimpeded. “In the spirit of cooperation and good faith, the city will offer state officials the opportunity to interview our personnel and review our documents as soon as possible in order for them to meet their review deadline of Nov. 15,” Jones said Monday. “We sincerely hope they will return the favor and provide us the access we are seeking to complete our report by the beginning of December.” In response to a recent Freedom of Information Act request for records of the state’s requests for information from the city, officials from the city’s attorney, communications and police departments last week said they have not seen any formal FOIA requests from the state.
Daily Progress

Less than two weeks before a vote seen as a watershed moment in Pulaski County, the debate about how to handle the local school district’s outdated middle schools is escalating. Currently, Pulaski County property owners are taxed 64 cents per $100 of taxable value on their homes. If the bond issuance is accepted by voters, the real estate tax rate would increase by between nine and 13 cents. Both Pulaski and Dublin middle schools are nearing a century old. Conditions inside got so bad earlier this fall that the regional office of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was called in August. The Roanoke Times filed a Freedom of Information request for a report detailing the findings of OSHA’s investigation into the schools.
The Roanoke Times



National Stories
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The Massachusetts Public Records Law gives people the right to access, in a reasonable manner and electronically if possible, documents and materials of the workings of state and local government. The law outlines deadlines, allowable fees and processes for appeals and exemption requests. Some local officials feel that, while the law’s intentions are noble, the burden of carrying out certain public records requests can be a lot to bear for communities with little staff and tight budgets.
Metrowest Daily News

Gerald Gamm of the University of Rochester and Thad Kousser of the University of California, San Diego, took on the monumental task of examining the fate of 1,736 pieces of legislation in 13 states over 120 years. All of the bills dealt with issues affecting one particular big city in a given state, so rural and suburban legislators had no practical reason to oppose them. Nevertheless, they did. Gamm and Kousser found that big-city bills were approved at a rate 15 to 20 percentage points lower than other pieces of legislation. “The great narrative in urban politics,” they concluded. “has been a story of unremitting hostility.”
Governing

An employee of the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts who tried to tip off a district attorney that his office was about to be raided by investigators has been placed on paid investigatory leave. Majid Hassan, an IT specialist, was placed on leave Aug. 23, one day after former Rockingham County District Attorney Craig Blitzer said Hassan had warned him that the State Bureau of Investigation was about to raid of Blitzer's office. Blitzer said Hassan told him to wipe data from his computer. Blitzer and former Person/Caswell County District Attorney Wallace Bradsher have been under investigation since July 25, 2016, when Superior Court Judge Joe Crosswhite ordered SBI agents to investigate allegations that accused the prosecutors of scheming to hire each other's wives and pay Blitzer's wife, Cindy, for 15 months of work she didn't perform.
Register & Bee



Editorials/Columns


Unbelievable. Now Richmond claims that Charlottesville is withholding information necessary to a state probe of August’s white-supremacist invasion and resulting deaths. This, after Charlottesville’s lead investigator claimed that the state was withholding information necessary to hisscrutiny of events. Is this farce? Or tragedy? If the repercussions weren’t so serious — literally involving matters of life and death, as well as important constitutional and legal questions — we could say it was farce. But although the tit-for-tat accusations sound petty, they are in fact tragic. Our view: The state holds most of the power. It’s the city’s reputation that’s at stake, not the state’s, and the higher burden of proof lies here. Richmond can simply issue a report based on the best available evidence and blame Charlottesville for any lack of detail. Charlottesville can do the same, of course, and is blaming the state for withholding information. But when Charlottesville withholds information from the state, the resulting perception might be that the city is trying to hide its culpability from outside eyes. That’s a losing proposition for Charlottesville.
Daily Progress