Transparency News, 3/30/2022

Wednesday
March 30, 2022

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state & local news stories

"We ask that you trust the board, just as we trust you, and our unanimous decision to end Dr. Miear’s contract."

A Montgomery County School Board member on Monday night publicly spoke on the firing of former Superintendent Mark Miear for the first time since the decision was made nearly two weeks ago. However, one of the questions that some in the county, including members of the board of supervisors, have repeatedly asked since the unanimous termination vote remained unanswered. School board Chairwoman Sue Kass, who addressed supervisors at their meeting during the public comment period, said the details of the agreement related to Miear’s firing can’t openly be shared because it is a personnel matter. She said the school board has a fiscal responsibility to its constituents, as well, and that its members would not have made a decision they didn’t think their budget could manage. “We ask that you trust the board, just as we trust you, and our unanimous decision to end Dr. Miear’s contract,” Kass told the supervisors.
The Roanoke Times

Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Oversight Board met last week to discuss procedures for how the board can investigate complaints against the police—and how board members can investigate complaints against each other, an all-too-relevant process given the fractious history between recent members. At the meeting, board members voted to send a final draft of their operating procedures to City Council for approval. The board can create a committee (which could also include members of the local Human Rights Commission or city staff) to examine complaints against board members, but only City Council has the authority to remove board members.  Per the proposed procedures, a member may be removed from the board for violating confidentiality obligations, secretly communicating with a person with a pending case, neglecting their duties, breaking the board’s Code of Ethics, or failing to comply with laws applicable to PCOB business, like the Freedom of Information Act. 
C-ville

The content of books in public schools continues to be the controversial topic on parents’ minds across the country and in Rockingham County. At the last few School Board meetings, parents have used the public comment section of the meeting to discuss books they perceive to be inappropriate for various age groups. Although the School Board and the audience have received a presentation on the policy for parents to challenge public school books, parents continue to attend meetings and ask for action against certain reading materials.
Daily News Record

Pound Town Council maintained progress in round three of its March meeting on Tuesday. Council moved on old bills and fallout from the 2021 surrender of its water system while preparing for a new budget year. In a unanimous vote, council voted to pay a $3,498 bill from June 2021 from Quality Garbage. Interim Clerk Treasurer Linda Meade said the bill was found as council members and staff were reviewing records and bills payable. Kennedy said staff had found that the town’s email service had stopped after the town’s credit card for the $20-per-year account had been discontinued. Council approved a restart of that service and to find a website administrator to rebuild the town’s website so it can function as an official municipal website.
Times News

Circuit Court Judge Carl Eason has dismissed a petition to recall Isle of Wight County School Board member Michael Vines. The petition, which was filed earlier this month, had sought Vines’ “immediate suspension” from his seat, accusing him of having made “wildly inappropriate, defamatory, and discriminatory” remarks at recent meetings. Though it was signed by more than 200 county residents, not one had attested to having done so under penalty of perjury as required under state law, Vines’ attorney, Steven M. Oser, argued. Rather, the form its signers filled out had warned falsifying statements could constitute election fraud. The petition took issue with Vines’ having quoted the Bible at the School Board’s Jan. 26 meeting when speaking to a crowd that had interrupted the meeting to heckle board members over the local mask mandate still in place at the time. In the crowd was Smithfield-area resident Laura Fletcher, whom board Chairwoman Denise Tynes ultimately directed sheriff’s deputies to remove from the room when she began shouting at the board.
The Smithfield Times

stories of national interest

"He believes the half-century-old statute allowing journalists, advocacy groups and members of the public to request federal agency records appears to be failing to live up to its original ambitions. "

Elouise McDaniel prefers to deal with matters over the phone or via fax machine, but she made an exception last fall when her email pinged with a notification from Irvington Township. McDaniel, 82, was informed she was being sued for, among other reasons, filing over 75 requests for township information within a three-year span via New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act. Preparing to respond to the “voluminous OPRA requests has been unduly burdensome, time consuming and expensive,” the township said in the Sept. 17 civil suit, which was first reported by NBC 4 New York. The township also accused McDaniel of filing “frivolous” complaints about Irvington Mayor Tony Vauss’ administration with the Office of the Attorney General and other state agencies. The complaints were submitted “with the sole purpose and intent to harass, abuse and harm Plaintiffs and employees of the Township, including its Mayor,” according to the suit.
NJ.com

When New Jersey's Wall Township Board of Education announced earlier this month that it would no longer be livestreaming its meetings, the news came as a surprise to some of the district’s constituents. Surely, this must be some breach of the public body’s transparency obligation, critics mused in online forums. But the Wall Board of Education is well within its rights to revoke the courtesy of livestreaming under state law. In fact, policy experts and public officials told NJ Advance Media that public bodies in the Garden State, like your local board of education or town council, have more leeway in this regard than you might think. “The decision to livestream meetings is up to each governing body,” Tammori Petty-Dixon, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, which includes the Division of Local Government Services, said in an email. “There’s no requirement that the meetings be anything but in person,” he explained. “The law does not address modern technology particularly effectively. And I think that might be one of the needs for the law, is to update the law to better reflect existing technology.” Not only is there no statute that requires a public body, such as a board of education, to record its meetings, but there’s also “nothing that prohibits editing the recordings,” confirmed Janet Bamford, spokesperson for the New Jersey School Boards Association. That’s something leadership in Wall Public Schools has said it may consider.
Governing

Three separate "coordinated" phishing attempts targeted elected officials across at least nine states in October, the FBI said Tuesday. The first event came on Oct. 5 when unidentified attackers used two email addresses, one from the compromised account of a government official, in an attempt to collect the login credentials of elected officials. Less than two weeks later, two similar phishing attempts appeared from email addresses linked to US businesses. In each case, the cyberattackers sent an email posing as an invoice with an attachment disguised as a PDF or Microsoft Word document that, once opened, would redirect users to a credential-harvesting website. Clicking the bogus links could have resulted in malware attacks or given hackers access to private data.  The FBI didn't disclose which states or officials were targeted, or whether any of the cyberattacks were successful or sensitive information was compromised.
c|net

The often bitterly divided Senate Judiciary Committee had little difficulty Tuesday finding consensus that the nation’s premier transparency law, the Freedom of Information Act, isn’t working well. “My conclusion from this is: there is a big problem,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said during an oversight hearing on the federal government’s ongoing struggle to implement the records-access law in a timely way. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) said he believes the half-century-old statute allowing journalists, advocacy groups and members of the public to request federal agency records appears to be failing to live up to its original ambitions. A GAO report issued Tuesday found that agencies are not fully complying with a requirement to post certain types of records online. The panel’s ranking member, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), pressed the Justice Department’s top FOIA official on what happened to a pledge President Barack Obama’s administration made in 2016 to post most responses to FOIA requests on agency websites under a so-called “release to one, release to all” policy.
Politico

 

editorials & columns

"The problem was, this new law did not permit such releases — but legislators interviewed about the matter were ignorant of what the law actually said."

Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act will turn 54 on July 1 — and like a typical person of about that age, the act is going to arrive at that birthday experiencing some unexpected aches and pains. The sources of those pains, of course and unfortunately, are the state’s new governor and a majority of the members of the General Assembly. This year pro-secrecy advocates have made some significant and alarming advances, driven by murky motives. A prime example: the swift undoing of a 2021 law addressing disclosure of police records in crime investigations that are no longer active, such that releasing them won’t jeopardize a prosecution. The rush to undo this new law came about over concerns that it could lead to release of sensitive crime scene photos. The problem was, this new law did not permit such releases — but legislators interviewed about the matter were ignorant of what the law actually said. Nonetheless, despite the misinformation and misunderstanding — well, the misunderstanding proved to be bipartisan, and the repeal is on the governor’s desk. Given Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s own record on FOIA compliance, it will be no surprise if he signs it. Politicians should never be allowed to forget that serving the public includes serving the public’s right to know.
The Roanoke Times

The kid who grew up to be a public official.
The Virginian-Pilot (cartoon)