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"Yes, under the Freedom of Information Act, government agencies do have the discretion to hold closed meetings — but why?"
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The Office of the State Inspector General has already been criticized for its less-than-thorough report after the 2015 death of Jamycheal Mitchell, who died in Hampton Roads Regional Jail. In 2016, former Inspector General June Jennings claimed her office had “lacked authority to interview jail employees and request certain documents.” Others with the Inspector General’s Office dispute that. Hopefully, the General Assembly wastes no time amending the budget to allow JLARC full access to the inspector general’s closed meetings. After the shameful death of Mitchell and several others in Virginia jails, discussions should be as transparent as possible. Yes, under the Freedom of Information Act, government agencies do have the discretion to hold closed meetings — but why? And why would Herring encourage any agency to do so?
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Before it had a hashtag, the #MeToo movement had already hit science. Geoff Marcy, one of the first astronomers to have spotted a planet outside our solar system, resigned from UC Berkeley in 2015 after he was accused of sexually harassing graduate students. In the years that followed, astronomers at Caltech and Arizona State; a molecular biologist at the University of Washington and another who’d worked at the University of North Carolina and the University of Chicago; a paleoanthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History; a geologist from Boston University — the list goes on — all resigned or were fired because of alleged sexual misconduct. It’s worth noting that many of the universities and other scientific organizations where high-profile cases were exposed are public, taxpayer-funded institutions. That’s not to suggest that private university scientists are less predatory, but at public institutions, researchers are held to account by freedom-of-information laws that allow journalists to compel scientists and their institutions to turn over emails and other records. Because private institutions are not subject to state or federal records laws, it can be much harder to prove cases of sexual harassment. Yet the California Assembly is considering a bill that would take that tool away. Assembly Bill 700, which faces a judiciary committee vote on Tuesday, would exempt scientists’ correspondence and certain other information from disclosure under the Public Records Act.
Charles Seife, Los Angeles Times
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