Transparency News, 11/15/2022
Tuesday
November 15, 2022
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state & local news stories
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Rather than spending money on an additional audit of the school division, the Frederick County Board of Supervisors says it will work with school officials to obtain a more detailed budget ahead of budget season. This follows the supervisors asking County Administrator Michael Bollhoefer last month to research the different types of audits and how much they cost amid concerns from some members that the division’s financial reports aren’t transparent enough.
The Winchester Star
stories of national interest
The New York Police Department spent nearly $3 billion on surveillance technology in a 12-year stretch but continues to flout the law requiring it reveal details of each contract, according to two advocacy groups. The dollars spent between 2007 and 2019 are with companies large and small — including a contract with a vendor based out of an East Flatbush, Brooklyn, apartment. The money spent was opaquely listed as “special expenses” in the police budget until 2020, when the City Council passed, over the NYPD’s objections, the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology, or POST, Act. The law requires the NYPD to explain each contract — from drones to facial recognition software to license plate readers and beyond — and to reveal which other law enforcement agencies have access to the data. But advocacy groups say the NYPD is not meeting the law’s disclosure requirements. Those concerns are “baseless,” an NYPD spokesperson said, noting that the police inspector general recently said the department “has complied with the POST Act’s requirements to produce and publish impact- and use-policies for each of the technologies utilized.”
Governing
Documents released Monday night show a high level of coordination between a top official in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and some of the key people responsible for facilitating flights of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. In response to a lawsuit, the DeSantis administration released a handful of texts messages between DeSantis’ safety czar, Larry Keefe, and Perla Huerta, the woman who is believed to have recruited migrants in San Antonio for the trips to Massachusetts. A Florida judge had previously ordered the administration to release documents connected to the migrant flights by Monday after he ruled that DeSantis wasn’t following the state’s public record laws. The administration had appealed the ruling yet appeared to release records that had been sought as part of that lawsuit. Yet the plaintiff in that challenge, Florida Center for Government Accountability, stated Monday night that the governor appears to have withheld some documents.
Politico
Former President Donald Trump mischaracterized White House documents he retained after leaving office as “personal,” the Justice Department argued in anewly unsealed court filing, accusing Trump of engaging in a “shell game” to shield documents from criminal investigators. In the filing, unsealed Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, prosecutors contended Trump has sought to restrict investigators’ access to materials — seized by the FBI in August from his Mar-a-Lago estate — by inappropriately claiming they’re his personal property. Federal law permits presidents to declare some records as “personal” so long as they have no decision-making value to future administrations. But DOJ says Trump’s claim is self-defeating. If the records are genuinely personal, prosecutors argue, then there’s no basis to shield them from investigators. “Indeed, personal records that are not presidential records or government property are seized every day for use in criminal investigations,” counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt wrote.
Politico
