Transparency News 2/20/19

Wednesday
February 20, 2019

state & local news stories

"He said when a county in his district was accused of training new employees to delete emails that could be subject to open records requests, he decided to push for more accountability in Virginia."

A bill that would penalize government employees who destroy some public records has passed the House and Senate. Senator Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) said when a county in his district was accused of training new employees to delete emails that could be subject to open records requests, he decided to push for more accountability in Virginia. This year he introduced a bill to fine government employees who destroy or alter public records in order to evade open records laws. “And I thought in order to balance the playing field and give people incentives to follow the law, there needs to be some consequence for breaking it,” Surovell said.
WCVE

Amid criticism over transparency and technical difficulties, the Richmond School Board on Tuesday delayed a vote on a budget that would cut 1 in 5 jobs from the school system’s central office. Forty-nine of the roughly 250 jobs in the Richmond Public Schools central office are set to be eliminated in the current proposal, but the specific jobs have not been disclosed. The board was set to vote Tuesday on the budget, which includes the proposed cuts, but delayed the vote after what some community members and board members said was a rushed process and after a board member misheard a question. Scott Barlow of the 2nd District proposed postponing the vote to give the board more time to weigh the $13 million in cuts that Superintendent Jason Kamras has proposed. The motion was set to fail, with the five other board members indicating that they wanted to vote Tuesday night. But Cheryl Burke, who represents the 7th District and wanted to vote Tuesday, telephoned into the meeting from Dubai, where it was early Wednesday morning. She misunderstood what she was voting for and voted in favor of deferring the vote — giving the minority enough votes to become the majority. After debating how to rescind the vote, a motion to do so failed. The board will meet Monday about the budget.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

stories of national interest

Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday called for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 ruling interpreting the First Amendment to make it hard for public officials to prevail in libel suits. He said the decision had no basis in the Constitution as it was understood by the people who drafted and ratified it. “New York Times and the court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” Justice Thomas wrote. Justice Thomas, writing only for himself, made his statement in a concurring opinion agreeing that the court had correctly turned down an appeal from Kathrine McKee, who has accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. She sued Mr. Cosby for libel after his lawyer said she had been dishonest. Justice Thomas’s statement came in the wake of complaints from President Trump that libel laws make it too hard for public officials to win libel suits.
The New York Times

The Kentucky teenager at the center of a confrontation last month with a Native American man at the Lincoln Memorial has sued The Washington Post, alleging that the newspaper made “false and defamatory accusations” against him in its coverage of the episode. Nicholas Sandmann, 16, a student at Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Ky., is seeking $250 million in damages from The Post — the same amount Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid for ownership of the paper in 2013, according to a copy of the suit Sandmann’s attorneys posted on their website.
Politico

A bill to open records on completed police internal affairs investigations cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday evening, passing the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on a 7-4 vote. Similar in many respects to unsuccessful 2018 legislation, House Bill 19-1119 is an “an opportunity to facilitate growth in trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve,” said Rep. James Coleman, the Denver Democrat who introduced the measure. “When we support growth in trust and transparency, the relationships between law enforcement and Coloradans can deepen in positive ways.” As amended by the committee, the bill would require disclosure of records that examine a law enforcement officer’s in-uniform or on-duty conduct once an internal investigation is finished. A requester would have access to records “related to a specific, identifiable incident of alleged misconduct involving a member of the public,” including witness interviews, recordings, transcripts and documentary evidence, although law enforcement agencies would be permitted to first provide a summary before giving access to an entire internal affairs file.
Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition

Regulators at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as physicians, pharmacists, and drug company representatives, all knew that existing safeguards were not stopping the illicit spread of the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl, according to research published in JAMA Network on Tuesday. The analysis was based on 4,877 pages of FDA documents that were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Fortune
 

"When we support growth in trust and transparency, the relationships between law enforcement and Coloradans can deepen in positive ways.”