Transparency News 11/20/17

Monday, November 20, 2017


State and Local Stories

The FOIA Council will meet today at 1:30 in House Room 1 at the Capitol. Click here for the agenda and supporting materials.

When a 15-year-old boy was found shot to death in a church parking lot in southeast Newport News on Nov. 3, police said a new state law precluded them from releasing the teenager’s name. “Due to changes in State Code, law enforcement is no longer able to release the identity of juveniles who die as the result of a violent crime,” Newport News police spokesman Lou Thurston told the media in announcing the slaying. That marked a major shift and was a surprise to many people. For decades, police and sheriff’s offices in Virginia have routinely provided the names of virtually all homicide victims — from 2-month-old babies shaken to death to 15-year-old boys and 23-year-old men found shot on the street, to 50-year-old women killed by their husbands. But a new statute took effect in July saying that law enforcement can’t release the names of minors who die in crimes unless the police get written permission from their next of kin.
Daily Press

Purcellville Town Council has called an emergency Town Council meeting for 9 a.m. Saturday. The meeting notice went out at 7:43 p.m. Friday. A closed executive session is on Saturday's agenda. The stated purpose is “to consult with legal counsel employed or retained by the public body regarding an administrative investigation requiring the provision of legal advice by such counsel.” Purcellville has been awash with alleged mismanagement and high-level departures in 2017. According to Saturday's agenda, it does not appear that interim Town Manager Alex Vanegas will attend the closed-door session.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
Georgia Nuckolls, the human resources investigator hired by the Town of Purcellville to investigate claims against now former Chief of Police Cynthia McAlister, has been convicted of multiple crimes in the past -- something that calls into question the integrity of the investigation. Town officials would not say what Nuckolls has been convicted of, but numerous people familiar with the situation say she has been convicted of felonies outside the state of Virginia. The hiring of Nuckolls was an administrative action and not signed off on by Town Council, according to Councilwoman Karen Jimmerson. Purcellville Town Council held an emergency meeting Saturday. The session, which included Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman (R), was called with less than 14 hours public notice.  Beverly Chaisson, a former Town Council member on hand for Saturday's meeting, was surprised by the way the session was called and the ensuing confusion.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

The U.S. military on Friday disclosed for the first time base-by-base data on sexual assault reports, showing a higher number of reports at big military installations like Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia as well as overseas hubs like South Korea. According to the newly released data, a collection of U.S. bases in South Korea had a combined 211 reports of sexual assault while Norfolk had 270 reports of sexual assault in the 2016 fiscal year, which began in October 2015 and ended in September 2016. That is down slightly from 291 cases at Norfolk in 2015.
Reuters


National Stories
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An unsuccessful legal battle to prevent the release of a federal subpoena will cost the College of DuPage and its foundation more than $500,000 after a court ruling Friday. Nearly half of that amount — about $225,000 — is a reimbursement of legal fees to the Chicago Tribune after the college and its foundation failed to turn over the subpoena, a refusal that prompted the news organization to sue for the document’s disclosure two years ago. The Tribune sued the school and foundation, which serves as the college’s fundraising arm, in April 2015 to obtain various documents that reporters were denied after they filed an open records request. The college later provided most of the documents, but the foundation refused to turn over a subpoena it received as part of a sweeping federal investigation into the state’s largest community college.
Chicago Tribune

A watchdog group is suing the NYPD and the feds for decades-old records in the ambush and killing of a police officer at a Harlem mosque — including audio of a phony 911 call they hope may finally lead to an arrest. Hearing the April 1972 recording — in which someone claiming to be a cop reported an “officer in distress” at the former Nation of Islam Mosque No. 7 on West 116th Street, may jog someone’s memory — Judicial Watch contends. The group’s Manhattan Supreme Court suit seeks the audio recording’s release. A transcript, in which a man referencing the police code for an officer in trouble tells the dispatcher, “I have a 10-13 West 116th Street,” has long been public.
New York Post

Boulder, Colorado, based Hazel's Beverage World will be able to keep public records it obtained about Applejack Wine & Spirits in Wheat Ridge after a lawsuit seeking to keep the records confidential was dismissed late Monday.  The dismissal came after a settlement agreement was accepted by Jefferson County District Court Judge Lily Oeffler. The terms of the agreement are confidential. "I am delighted," said Bruce Dierking, an attorney and one of the owners of Hazel's. "I feel vindicated." Dierking, who obtained the disputed records through a Colorado Open Records request last spring, was temporarily barred from using them in a May ruling by Oeffler.
Daily Camera

The Iowa Public Information Board voted Thursday to refuse to provide minutes and recordings from two closed-session meetings to the state ombudsman, despite an ombudsman subpoena. Ombudsman Kristie Hirschman issued a subpoena to the board Nov. 2, saying her office needed the minutes and audio recordings from meetings July 20 and Aug. 25 to determine whether the board violated Iowa’s open meetings law by holding those meetings behind closed doors. The board voted 5-1 Thursday to forward a three-page letter to Hirshman disagreeing with her interpretation of the law and refusing to provide the requested records.
The Gazette

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin explained Sunday why he and his wife, Louise Linton, struck a villainous pose with a sheet of dollar bills: He didn’t think the pictures would be public. “I didn’t realize that the pictures were public and going on the internet and viral,” Mnuchin told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “But people have the right to do that. People can express what they want. That’s the great thing about social media today. People can say and communicate what they want.” The photographer, Jacquelyn Martin, recounted her experience for AP. “I’m not really sure how they didn’t think that” the photos would be public, the wire-service photographer told Brian Stelter on CNN later Sunday. “I think it was pretty obvious it was a media photo op.”
Politico



Editorials/Columns


Lobbyists and politicians are important sources of information — for each other. Lobbyists explain the details and arcana of an issue; specifically, how they might affect a region or a competing industry. The best lobbyists are always truthful, volunteer all sides of an issue and appreciate, usually in advance, the perils that a politician may face in taking a position. Politicians are accommodating of lobbyists, offering guidance on navigating an issue through the legislative or regulatory warren and hazards presented by other lobbyists or politicians. The best politicians are truthful, making it easier to vote against lobbyists even after drinking their booze, playing golf on their dime and taking their donations. But there are threats to this quasi-civics book notion. Among them: that the line blurs between the political and the personal, reducing the people’s business to an arrangement between pals.
Jeff Schapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch