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Wednesday
February 28, 2018
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state & local news stories
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The longtime assistant town manager of Abingdon — one of the three people to file Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints last year — no longer held that position as of last week. Cecile Rosenbaum’s last day with the town was Feb. 19, town Attorney Deborah Icenhour confirmed to the Bristol Herald Courier through a Freedom of Information Act request. Rosenbaum served as both assistant town manager and town clerk.
Bristol Herald Courier
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national stories of interest
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IT WAS WHISPERED like some secret oracle: Sidecat, sidecat is coming. Negotiations over the tax incentive deal began in Ohio in early spring of last year, and only a cabal of quasi-state officials were in the know. Even after the $37.1 million in incentives were approved by state officials on July 31, 2017, the company was only referred to in a press release as Sidecat, a provider of “information technology services, such as remotely accessed computing power and data storage.” It wasn’t until nearly two weeks after the deal went through that The Columbus Dispatch uncovered that “Sidecat” was actually a code name for Facebook. After getting a tip from another reporter in the newsroom, Mark Williams, a business reporter, confirmed the information with anonymous sources, then went to officials at JobsOhio, the state’s privatized development entity, who wouldn’t confirm, either. Four days later, Ohio Governor John Kasich, at a symbolic groundbreaking in front of a banner bearing the Facebook logo, at last confirmed Sidecat’s true identity. By the time of the groundbreaking, Facebook had successfully shielded itself from any public debate [i]t was too late for Ohio residents, or officials in more economically strapped regions desperate for jobs, to question whether Ohio should give a company worth nearly $500 billion massive tax breaks to locate in one of its most affluent communities.
Columbia Journalism Review
Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office in late 2017 — just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor, according to federal procurement records. When asked to “find money” to purchase better furniture for the office, Helen G. Foster, a former top HUD official, refused to comply, and said she then sent HUD officials the text of the law requiring congressional approval for the purchases. After she was removed from her position as the department’s chief administrative officer, she was made head of the agency’s unit overseeing Freedom of Information Act requests, which she viewed as an act of retribution.
New York Times
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned down a legal claim over the secrecy surrounding Texas' lethal injection practices and the possibility that aging death drugs could cause suffering. The move comes weeks after attorneys in a separate case came forward with claims of botched executions in which the prisoners seemed to suffer.
Governing
On Tuesday, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that an order barring the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Associated Press from disseminating or reporting on an anonymized autopsy record for a victim from the Oct. 1 Las Vegas mass shooting is an unconstitutional prior restraint.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
A Warren County, New Jersey, town wants to restrict how residents record its meetings. But an open-government group is concerned the proposed rules -- which could include a hefty fine or jail time for violators -- will chill all forms of public participation. If enacted, the ordinance being considered by the Mansfield Township Committee (which you can read here) would require residents to provide at least an hour notice of their intent to record video, set up in specific locations and refrain from moving or packing up during a committee meeting, among other restrictions. Also included: A fine up to $2,000 or the possibility of 90 days jail time or community service for violations, according to maximum possible penalty under the town code.
Lehigh Valley Live
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 March 16, 2018
Virginia Credit Union House
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editorials & columns
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 "Part of the reason the department has not released the video to Callahan is that she has 'an anti-law enforcement agenda.'”
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The video of this Feb. 4 traffic stop has been a source of contention between the police department and the driver’s mother, Yesha Callahan, deputy managing editor of The Root, who has written about the incident for the Washington-based online publication. Callahan’s inability to obtain a copy of the video, despite a FOIA request, has grated on her. Chesterfield police have offered several reasons for not releasing the video, as documented in a story in Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch. After the Times-Dispatch began asking questions about the department’s shifting rationales for keeping the video private, the department invited Callahan to view the footage at its Iron Bridge Road headquarters. On Monday, Chesterfield police invited me to view the video after I contacted them, and they said Tuesday that anyone else could arrange to see it as well. Katz says part of the reason the department has not released the video to Callahan is that she has “an anti-law enforcement agenda.” But if it’s available for viewing, why not just release it? “I believe we have a responsibility to maintain custody of the video and not put it in the public domain,” Chief of Police Col. Jeffrey S. Katz said, “because we want to ensure that it is not spliced, that voice overs are not placed over it and that we can maintain and control the authenticity of the video. But we are more than willing to share the video with anybody who wants to come in and view it.”
Michael Paul Williams, Richmond Times-Dispatch
The public has two different accounts of what happened on Feb. 4, when a Chesterfield police officer drew his weapon on Yesha Callahan’s son. The police say that at one point during the stop, the young man ignored two commands and reached for his waistband. Callahan says her son ignored no commands and did not reach for his waistband. (The son declined to be interviewed for a Sunday news article.) There’s an easy way to clear up the discrepancy: release the body cam footage. But Chesterfield refuses to do so — raising questions about what it might be trying to hide. If the county’s officers did everything by the book, then releasing the footage will reassure the public on that point. If they did not, then the public needs to know that, too.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Imagine, God forbid, that someone you loved was shot by a police officer. Imagine further that the details of that shooting, once the investigation had concluded, were withheld from you. Now, say there were some questions surrounding the shooting, or that no prosecutions resulted. Could you imagine your frustration then? What Bristol Herald Courier reporter Alyssa Oursler learned as she investigated officer-involved shootings in Tennessee and Virginia was that when it comes to finding out the details of those investigations, the states have widely different rules for releasing information. Virginia’s lack of transparency is the worst of all. In fact, Virginia doesn’t have to release any information. When Oursler asked Virginia State Police for investigative information on two officer-involved shootings in January, they refused. And the refusals were not just for recent cases.
Bristol Herald Courier
Thomas Jefferson, one of the architects of our American democracy, was very proud of his role in establishing the University of Virginia — so proud, in fact, that he listed that accomplishment on his headstone but not that little detail about being the third president of the United States. One supposes that eternal pride was muted last Thursday night when a group of protesters, including U.Va. students, disrupted what promised to be a thought-provoking panel discussion on campus involving representatives of Israel’s military. The protesters, apparently terrified of actual debate, shouted and chanted anti-Israel slogans and declined invitations to pose their questions or comments as part of an open and productive conversation. We would hope that the disciplinary action would be somehow designed to make them realize that they had violated more than just school policy — they violated the spirit of free speech that is part of the underlying foundation of our society.
Daily Press
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