Transparency News, 5/15/20
Friday
May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020
state & local news stories
“I am not calling anybody a liar, but when we see auditors’ reports and then we listen to the administrator’s reports, numbers don’t add up and you just keep cutting and cutting and cutting. We don’t need to be cutting. We are sitting on a surplus. I am just done."
The Supreme Court of Virginia is live-streaming the audio feed from its writ panel today at 9 a.m. Check this document for links to the feeds and dockets.
Suffolk School Board members would be polled before they could have an item put on the meeting agenda under a policy change to be voted on at Thursday’s virtual meeting. The shift has piqued the opposition of at least two board members — Sherri Story and David Mitnick. In an op-ed in Wednesday’s Suffolk News-Herald, Story and Mitnick wrote the proposed policy “takes away our rights and responsibilities, as duly elected school board members, to place items on a school board agenda for discussion, for information or for updates in order to govern responsibly as pursuant to our sworn oath.” Current policy requires members to submit in writing requests for items to be placed on a meeting agenda at least 14 days in advance. The new policy, as outlined by board attorney Wendell Waller during a May 7 Policy Review Committee meeting, would add the requirement that the board chairperson poll members before another member could get approval to have an item put on the agenda for an upcoming meeting.
Suffolk News Herald
Read the proposed policy
Virginia courts can begin hearing non-emergency matters in-person starting Monday — provided it is deemed safe to do so — as case backlogs grow rapidly. The Virginia Supreme Court gave the go-ahead in an order earlier this month, but noted that hearings conducted by video conferencing or telephone are still the preferred means and courts are encouraged to increase the use of such technology. Jury trials are still barred.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Rappahannock Board of Supervisors on Wednesday night approved a modification to the county’s COVID-19 emergency continuity of government ordinance to allow the county’s Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals to begin working again. Albeit not as quickly as some officials in the county would prefer. The amended text would allow in-person meetings of the bodies whenever Gov. Ralph Northam moves the state’s emergency pandemic response to Phase 2, allowing gatherings of up to 50 people.
Rappahannock News
Maybe it’s that the county’s Board of Supervisors, under the COVID-19 emergency ordinance, can only handle essential business in meetings. Maybe it’s the nature of the Zoom teleconferencing app the board uses to conduct business and maintain social distances and orderly conversations. Maybe it’s the new make-up of the board and its leadership. Or maybe it’s an extremely knowledgeable and no-nonsense county administrator, or the arrival of a new board chair Christine Smith. Perhaps it’s all of the above. Whatever it is, the civility of recent meetings, one might agree, is a welcome change from the rancor and disagreement that marked board meetings of the recent past.
Rappahannock News
The resignation of Joe Webb as chairman and board member highlighted a stunning meeting of the Carroll County Board of Supervisors on Monday night. “As of tonight I will step down as chair of this board and I will also resign from the board of supervisors. I cannot put up with this anymore,” Webb said. “This is a farce up here. Nobody is working together, nobody knows nothing until we get here and I am tired of it. I am fed up with it. So as of tonight I step down as chair of the board of supervisors and I will resign June 30, 2020 from the board of supervisors.” In an interview with The Carroll News on Monday night, Webb went further into his decision to resign. “I am fed up with not getting the real numbers and learning from the outside what the truth is, and then going in there and listening to what we have got to do and not what we need to do, and enough is enough. I apologize to the voters of Laurel Fork district for dropping out on you, but enough is enough,” Webb said. “I am not calling anybody a liar, but when we see auditors’ reports and then we listen to the administrator’s reports, numbers don’t add up and you just keep cutting and cutting and cutting. We don’t need to be cutting. We are sitting on a surplus. I am just done. I can’t do this no more. I don’t want to be a part of this. We cannot keep telling people how bad of shape we are in and we are not.”
The Carroll News
Suffolk School Board members would be polled before they could have an item put on the meeting agenda under a policy change to be voted on at Thursday’s virtual meeting. The shift has piqued the opposition of at least two board members — Sherri Story and David Mitnick. In an op-ed in Wednesday’s Suffolk News-Herald, Story and Mitnick wrote the proposed policy “takes away our rights and responsibilities, as duly elected school board members, to place items on a school board agenda for discussion, for information or for updates in order to govern responsibly as pursuant to our sworn oath.” Current policy requires members to submit in writing requests for items to be placed on a meeting agenda at least 14 days in advance. The new policy, as outlined by board attorney Wendell Waller during a May 7 Policy Review Committee meeting, would add the requirement that the board chairperson poll members before another member could get approval to have an item put on the agenda for an upcoming meeting.
Suffolk News Herald
Read the proposed policy
Virginia courts can begin hearing non-emergency matters in-person starting Monday — provided it is deemed safe to do so — as case backlogs grow rapidly. The Virginia Supreme Court gave the go-ahead in an order earlier this month, but noted that hearings conducted by video conferencing or telephone are still the preferred means and courts are encouraged to increase the use of such technology. Jury trials are still barred.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The Rappahannock Board of Supervisors on Wednesday night approved a modification to the county’s COVID-19 emergency continuity of government ordinance to allow the county’s Planning Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals to begin working again. Albeit not as quickly as some officials in the county would prefer. The amended text would allow in-person meetings of the bodies whenever Gov. Ralph Northam moves the state’s emergency pandemic response to Phase 2, allowing gatherings of up to 50 people.
Rappahannock News
Maybe it’s that the county’s Board of Supervisors, under the COVID-19 emergency ordinance, can only handle essential business in meetings. Maybe it’s the nature of the Zoom teleconferencing app the board uses to conduct business and maintain social distances and orderly conversations. Maybe it’s the new make-up of the board and its leadership. Or maybe it’s an extremely knowledgeable and no-nonsense county administrator, or the arrival of a new board chair Christine Smith. Perhaps it’s all of the above. Whatever it is, the civility of recent meetings, one might agree, is a welcome change from the rancor and disagreement that marked board meetings of the recent past.
Rappahannock News
The resignation of Joe Webb as chairman and board member highlighted a stunning meeting of the Carroll County Board of Supervisors on Monday night. “As of tonight I will step down as chair of this board and I will also resign from the board of supervisors. I cannot put up with this anymore,” Webb said. “This is a farce up here. Nobody is working together, nobody knows nothing until we get here and I am tired of it. I am fed up with it. So as of tonight I step down as chair of the board of supervisors and I will resign June 30, 2020 from the board of supervisors.” In an interview with The Carroll News on Monday night, Webb went further into his decision to resign. “I am fed up with not getting the real numbers and learning from the outside what the truth is, and then going in there and listening to what we have got to do and not what we need to do, and enough is enough. I apologize to the voters of Laurel Fork district for dropping out on you, but enough is enough,” Webb said. “I am not calling anybody a liar, but when we see auditors’ reports and then we listen to the administrator’s reports, numbers don’t add up and you just keep cutting and cutting and cutting. We don’t need to be cutting. We are sitting on a surplus. I am just done. I can’t do this no more. I don’t want to be a part of this. We cannot keep telling people how bad of shape we are in and we are not.”
The Carroll News
editorials & columns
"It’s no secret that the working papers exemption in particular and its ever broader interpretation have become the bane of the Virginia press, good government groups and anyone else seeking insight into how decisions that affect all of us are made."
The Mercury’s Kate Masters later requested a copy of the contract via Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act and any reports McKinsey had prepared for the state for its more than half a million fee. What we got back was laughably useless as a result of copious redactions (including, bizarrely and illicitly, the name of the McKinsey partner who signed the contract) and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management’s decision to withhold 120 pages of reports bought and paid for by taxpayers, citing “working papers” and trade secret exemptions. It’s no secret that the working papers exemption in particular and its ever broader interpretation have become the bane of the Virginia press, good government groups and anyone else seeking insight into how decisions that affect all of us are made. But under Virginia’s FOIA law, pretty much the only way to find out whether the denial, redaction or withholding of information was valid is to sue.
Robert Zullo, Virginia Mercury
We are alarmed with the proposed amendment to the School Board Policy Chapter 2, Article 3, Section 2-3.2(E). It takes away our rights and responsibilities, as duly elected school board members, to place items on a school board agenda for discussion, for information or for updates in order to govern responsibly as pursuant to our sworn oath. In order for either of us to fulfill our stated roles, we must be able to bring items of our concern, or from our constituents or from any member of the Citizen Advisory Committees on which we may serve, to place them on the agenda for a forthcoming school board meeting, without a majority consent by the School Board. The video of the Policy Review Committee meeting on May 7, 2020 made it clear that the members of the Policy Review Committee, along with the School Board Attorney are attempting to stifle requests from individual school board members by adding filters attempting to control the flow of information to the public. This is not acceptable, nor is it considered good board practice, as evidenced by the guidance of the VSBA. We are appalled by this attempt to stifle board members from requesting agenda items for forthcoming school board meetings. The public needs to be informed concerning vital issues that affect the schools and their children. We have recently witnessed the restricted rights of citizens; the board has denied their right to extemporaneously speak. Now the rights of elected School Board members themselves are in jeopardy of being denied by an apparent “gag-order.”
David Mitnick and Sherri Story, Suffolk News Herald
Robert Zullo, Virginia Mercury
We are alarmed with the proposed amendment to the School Board Policy Chapter 2, Article 3, Section 2-3.2(E). It takes away our rights and responsibilities, as duly elected school board members, to place items on a school board agenda for discussion, for information or for updates in order to govern responsibly as pursuant to our sworn oath. In order for either of us to fulfill our stated roles, we must be able to bring items of our concern, or from our constituents or from any member of the Citizen Advisory Committees on which we may serve, to place them on the agenda for a forthcoming school board meeting, without a majority consent by the School Board. The video of the Policy Review Committee meeting on May 7, 2020 made it clear that the members of the Policy Review Committee, along with the School Board Attorney are attempting to stifle requests from individual school board members by adding filters attempting to control the flow of information to the public. This is not acceptable, nor is it considered good board practice, as evidenced by the guidance of the VSBA. We are appalled by this attempt to stifle board members from requesting agenda items for forthcoming school board meetings. The public needs to be informed concerning vital issues that affect the schools and their children. We have recently witnessed the restricted rights of citizens; the board has denied their right to extemporaneously speak. Now the rights of elected School Board members themselves are in jeopardy of being denied by an apparent “gag-order.”
David Mitnick and Sherri Story, Suffolk News Herald
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