Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Transparency News 10/15/14

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

 

State and Local Stories

During former Richmond official Byron C. Marshall’s final days at City Hall, his assistant sent several emails saying Marshall was scheduled to accompany Mayor Dwight C. Jones to a bike race in Spain, an event that took place more than a week after Marshall’s final day as chief administrative officer. The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are a strong indication that Marshall’s exit was sudden and unplanned, at least according to the communication coming from his office. The mayor also emailed Marshall directly two days before Marshall’s Sept. 12 departure, urging him to “Please respond” to questions raised by The Times-Dispatch about the hiring of Evandra D. Thompson, a former candidate for the House of Delegates who was working in a temporary analyst job in Marshall’s office. Marshall doesn’t appear to have sent an email in response.
Times-Dispatch

A fuming Gov. Terry McAuliffe left a voice message for former state Sen. Phillip Puckett, D-Russell County, following a June vote in the Virginia Senate that — due to Puckett’s resignation several days earlier — effectively scuttled the governor’s bid for Medicaid expansion. The call, one of at least two McAuliffe made to Puckett, and confirmed by Puckett’s attorney, reflected the governor’s personal rancor toward the former senator over the impact of his resignation. It allowed Republicans to block an attempt to draw down federal health care dollars that McAuliffe wanted to use to expand Medicaid coverage to thousands of uninsured Virginians. “It was an angry call,” said Puckett’s attorney, Tom Bondurant, of the Roanoke law firm Gentry, Locke, Rakes & Moore. He declined to comment further on the voice message and its contents. Several people familiar with the message said the governor closed his remarks with words to the effect that he hoped Puckett could live with his decision.
Times-Dispatch

The specter of the proposed U.S. 460 expressway hangs over draft guidelines released by state transportation officials to change the way Virginia handles public-private partnerships to build highways and other major transportation facilities. The draft guidelines, given to the Commonwealth Transportation Board on Tuesday, would give the state board and transportation officials clear responsibility for assessing the risks of proposed public-private partnership and communicating them to state legislators and the public. Faced with the potential loss of up to $500 million in state funds for a highway that may never be built, transportation officials promise increased transparency and accountability in how they assess, approve and carry out major public-private projects. “We are not dealing in a political vacuum,” said William H. Fralin Jr., a Roanoke businessman who represents Salem District on the board. “We are not dealing in public perception vacuum. We are dealing in a 460 vacuum.”
Times-Dispatch

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday fired back at former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell’s claim that he deserves a new trial, saying that a federal judge properly instructed jurors and that many of the arguments that defense attorneys have raised are ones the judge had already rejected.
Washington Post

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Editorials/Columns

Codes of ethics for public administrators recognize, first and foremost, that administrators are not just neutral implementers of policy. In fact, "filling in the details" of often vague legislation is often left to professional–but unelected–civil servants. As a result, the view held a century ago that bureaucrats simply carry out the details of policy in some kind of a value-free manner has been almost completely discredited. Almost everyone now recognizes that the cop on the beat, the teacher in the classroom and the doctor in a VA hospital have real power to make policy and therefore affect lives. Moreover, there is a recognition that high-profile cases of corruption and mismanagement can color public perceptions of the legitimacy and quality of government action. To that end, improving the ethical behavior of government employees is fundamental to the legitimacy of democratic governance. So it is better to be ethical than unethical. Fine. But what is the role of a code of ethics, and what should such a code include?
Philip Joyce, Governing

Virginia Democrats were at full boil following the resignation of Sen. Phillip Puckett in June. His departure threw control of the chamber to Republicans, who were opposed to any deal on Medicaid expansion. And some Democrats claimed the resignation was prompted by job offers to Sen. Puckett and his daughter made by GOP leaders. "It's astounding to me," Del. Scott A. Surovell, D-Fairfax, said at the time. "The House Republican caucus will do anything and everything to prevent low-income Virginians from getting health care … They figure the only way they could win was to give a job to a state senator." We cannot help but notice the voices of indignation are now silent following revelations in the Washington Post that several top Democrats discussed job possibilities with Sen. Puckett and members of his family.
Daily Press

Was it a brainstorming session? Or was it a trading session? The brainlessness of the various conversations is also astounding. Remember, all this was going on just as former Gov. Bob McDonnell and wife Maureen were undergoing trial on quid pro quo allegations involving Virginia businessman Jonnie Williams Jr., who gave the couple extravagant gifts in return for special help with his business product, Anatabloc, a jury decided. Mr. Williams was given immunity in return for testifying. You’d think politicians would be especially careful even about conversations that simply might be misconstrued but were otherwise harmless. Apparently not. Else we would not now have an ever widening circle of politicos snagged in controversy about whether they overstepped the bounds of propriety. 
Daily Progress