Transparency News 11/7/17

Tuesday, November 7, 2017



State and Local Stories

Thank you to our most recent conference sponsors:

• Christian & Barton, LLP
• Andria McClellan
• Carol Noggle
• Pat O’Bannon
• The Richard T. Robertson School of Media & Culture at Virginia Commonwealth University
• WWBT-TV12

It was the latest in a long run of raucous City Council meetings on Monday night, with public comment overtaking the agenda. On the eve of Tuesday’s election, a majority of the speakers during the meeting addressed a recent Daily Progress article on independent City Council candidate Nikuyah Walker’s emails to council members and Mayor Mike Signer’s disclosure early in the evening that he had raised concerns about Walker, who had been sharply critical of some council members and city officials in her emails. Some speakers also addressed the city’s tentative plans to create a new citizen review board that could grant community members greater oversight of police conduct complaints.
Daily Progress


Editorials/Columns

On Election Day, I make sure to vote, thereby celebrating my father's most important gift to me: Freedom. When I was 6, he decided to flee Fidel Castro's fledgling Communist government and took us to America. Since he could not transfer money out of Cuba without raising suspicions, he bought round-trip, first-class airline tickets from Havana to the United States for my family. When we arrived in Miami on the first stop of our journey, he cashed in those tickets and bought economy class fares to Washington, D.C. The refund on the more expensive tickets gave us something to live on until he could land a job. As soon as I received my American citizenship in 1976 — I was a young reporter at the Peninsula's now defunct Times-Herald at the time — I vowed to honor my father's gift to me by never taking my precious right to vote for granted. I make it a point to vote in every election, no matter how inconsequential. I can recall having missed only one, when I was a foreign correspondent living in Puerto Rico and failed to get an absentee ballot. So it amazes and dismays me to observe the cavalier attitude too many Americans have toward voting. They take for granted a centuries-old right they inherited by birth; one which many men and women in less fortunate countries struggle to obtain even now, one which black Americans had to fight to obtain not so long ago.
Daily Press

THE OPPORTUNITY for citizens to vote for their favorite candidates is often taken for granted in the United States, but not in many other parts of the world. The result is that a majority of eligible voters in Virginia and elsewhere routinely skip elections, leaving those important decisions to others. Today will be no exception. Analysts predict that only 40 to 45 percent of the commonwealth’s registered voters will take part in today’s elections of local and statewide candidates, a disappointing forecast but one that is consistent with other years when there’s no presidential race on the ballot. Bad weather can cause those numbers to drop even lower, and the predictions of steady rain and highs in the 50s for Hampton Roads likely will keep additional voters away, though perhaps it will affect only a small percentage of people. The races this year are too important to neglect, or to let a little rain dampen the turnout.
Virginian-Pilot

Today is Election Day in the commonwealth, and Virginians by the millions will be heading to the polls to elect a new governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. In our democratic republic, it is our duty — and our privilege — to participate in the process of electing our leaders, and we urge every registered voter to do so. And if you don’t think your vote matters, just consider these numbers from past Virginia races:
News & Advance