Transparency News, 1/31/2023
Tuesday
January 31, 2023
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state & local news stories
VCOG's annual legislative chart of FOIA and access-related bills
Local school divisions in Virginia just learned they will receive $201 million less in state aid than they expected — including $58 million less for the current K-12 school year that is almost three-quarters done. The Virginia Department of Education has acknowledged the mistake in calculating state basic aid for K-12 school divisions after the General Assembly adopted a two-year budget and Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed it last June. The error failed to reflect a provision to hold localities harmless from the elimination of state’s portion of the sales tax on groceries as part of a tax cut package pushed by Youngkin and his predecessor, Gov. Ralph Northam. State Superintendent Jillian Balow notified school division superintendents by email on Friday. House Appropriations Chairman Barry Knight, R-Virginia Beach, said he was blindsided by the new basic aid numbers on Monday. “I didn’t know anything about it at all until this afternoon,” Knight said. “I’m not very happy. They did not bother to tell Appropriations that the numbers had changed.” “We need to have some open communication here,” he said. “Now it’s on me, what do we do?”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
After investigating more than 330,000 cases of potential fraud in payment of unemployment claims, the Virginia Employment Commission has confirmed that it has paid out $1.6 billion to people who used someone else’s identity to gain public benefits. Virginia Employment Commissioner Carrie Roth had told legislators in August that potential fraud claims could reach that level, but she said Monday that the beleaguered agency had already paid out that amount in cases of identity theft under then-Gov. Ralph Northam, while blocking $1 billion in additional benefits to people using false identities. The state has worked to separate true and false claims in a flood of requests for unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
stories of national interest
Donald Trump demanded reams of information from the Internal Revenue Service as it was preparing to turn over his personal tax returns to a congressional committee, papering the agency with a deluge of Freedom of Information Act requests in search of a behind-the scenes look at its deliberations, new documents show. Trump’s decision to use the public records request law to get information from his own government is unconventional, largely because as commander-in-chief and leader of the Executive Branch he has numerous options to get data from federal agencies that don’t require him to use a last-resort tool available to anyone. Trump also appeared to be ready to pay for the paperwork: His lawyers said in the request that they would pay up to $30,000 in processing fees, an amount significantly higher than the $25 agencies typically request to furnish the records.
Bloomberg
A Leon County (Florida) circuit judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the Florida Department of Transportation and a contractor did not fully comply with public records requests about state-funded flights of migrants to Massachusetts. Judge Angela Dempsey last week issued two similar decisions rejecting the lawsuit that the nonprofit Florida Center for Government Accountability filed in October against the Department of Transportation and Vertol Systems Company Inc. The center contended that the department and the contractor violated the state’s public records law by not fully providing requested documents about the September flights of about 50 migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard.
Tampa Bay Times
