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Thursday
December 28, 2017
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state & local news stories
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More than 100 people registered for VCOG's next FOIA & records management webinar in just two days.
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Speakers criticized the Accomack County Board of Supervisors for its response to increasing poultry operations in the county on Dec. 20. Two speakers criticized Accomack officials' response to the increase in large poultry operations in the county, with others in the audience appearing to support the remarks on Dec. 20. Ann Boylston Violi of Harborton said she wrote each board member and other elected officials in February about her concerns over the increase in large poultry operations in the county. "As you know, it's not transparent. People have had to use FOIA (Freedom of Information Act requests) to try to find out how many, where and so on. Many people don't understand what's going on, so they're not frightened — but those of us who have some background in wetlands and farming ... are very concerned," she said.
Delmarva Daily Times
Tim Altizer’s career in politics came to a screeching halt last week. The other five members of Cedar Bluff’s town council voted to expel the man who was the leading vote getter in the 2016 council election. Altizer’s expulsion was handled under a provision of the town charter that allows council to compel members to attend meetings and to punish disorderly behavior. He had not missed a meeting since being sworn in. James Brown read a statement as follows stating reasons for Tim Altizer to be expelled from the Council and asked that they be recorded in the minutes: Mr. Altizer’s stated intent to target the town in retaliation for firing of wife 4 ½ years ago, continual harassment of town staff, baseless accusations against town staff and other council members, with one Council Member resigning as a result of the harassment, disruption of Council Meetings with numerous motions made of non-agenda items in violation of town policy and a specific request from the Mayor that non-agenda items not be voted on, a history of baseless lawsuits against the town and town officials, repeated accusations that there are problems with the Town’s financial statements, creation of a non-productive, negative, and combative atmosphere at every town council meeting, and bringing up issues of the past that were dealt with, accusing sitting council members of incompetence for past decisions made on topics and subjects with information at the time.
Richlands News-Press
To paraphrase the old Yellow Pages slogan, Winchester's city hall wants visitors to let their fingers do the walking. A touch-screen monitor has been installed in the building’s lobby to function as a state-of-the-art building directory.
The Winchester Star
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stories of national interest
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The Cabinet members carrying out President Donald Trump’s orders to shake up the federal government are doing so under an unusual layer of secrecy — often shielding their schedules from public view, keeping their travels under wraps and refusing to identify the people and groups they’re meeting. A POLITICO review of the practices of 17 Cabinet heads found that at least eight routinely decline to release information on their planned schedules or travels — information that was more widely available during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. Four other departments — Agriculture, Labor, Homeland Security and Education — provide the secretaries’ schedules only sporadically or with few details. The Treasury Department began releasing weekly schedules for Secretary Steven Mnuchin only in November. In addition, at least six Cabinet departments don’t release appointment calendars that would show, after the fact, who their leaders had met with, what they discussed and where they traveled — a potential violation of the Freedom of Information Act, which says agencies must make their records “promptly available to any person.” Two departments — Education and the Environmental Protection Agency — have released some of those details after watchdog groups sued them.
Politico
A U.S. appeals court in Washington on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to allow President Donald Trump’s commission investigating voter fraud to request data on voter rolls from U.S. states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) watchdog group, which filed the lawsuit, did not have legal standing to seek to force the presidential commission to review privacy concerns before collecting individuals’ voter data. EPIC had argued that under federal law, the commission was required to conduct a privacy-impact assessment before gathering personal data. But the three-judge appeals court panel ruled unanimously that the privacy law at issue was intended to protect individuals, not groups like EPIC. “EPIC is not a voter,” Judge Karen Henderson wrote in the ruling.
Reuters
Scandals surrounding abuse and corruption are spurring cities across the country to adopt civilian oversight boards. But some argue they have the opposite effect that advocates are looking for.
Governing
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editorials & coloumns
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VCOG's FOIA & records management webinar on Jan. 24 is the fourth we've held in partnership with Tidewater Community College.
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IT’S ONE THING even libertarians would agree that government does well: Hide information from the public. That $1 million report that told Santee Cooper and SCANA they weren’t doing their jobs in providing oversight of their over-budget, over-deadline nuclear construction project. Secret. Details of a $224,000 taxpayer-funded settlement the city of Columbia paid for mauling a resident’s yard. Secret. Payments the South Carolina House Republican Caucus made to the Richard Quinn & Associates consulting business that just pleaded guilty in the state corruption investigation. Secret. The number of sexual harassment complaints the S.C. House has received from staff, from pages and from House members. Secret. And of course videos that show police officers killing people — sometimes with justification, sometimes without. Secret.
The State
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