Transparency News 10/16/15

State and Local Stories

Price transparency and ensuring there are enough trained health care workers are among the major issues confronting the changing health care landscape, speakers said Thursday at a Virginia Business Coalition on Health roundtable. Asked what one big thing he would change about health care and insurance, Thomas Mackay, a senior vice president and division manager at Marsh & McLennan Agency, didn’t hesitate: price transparency.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Democrat challenging incumbent Loudoun County Supervisor Geary Higgins (R-Catoctin) is underscoring Higgins' attendance record through nearly four years of board meetings. Craig Green, a Hamilton Town Council member vying for the Catoctin seat, says Higgins has missed more than 12 percent of the board's general business meetings and his committee meetings. “It seems simple enough,” Green noted. “If you want to do this task, you must sacrifice your time and attention to focus fully on it. Anything less than 100 percent is a disservice to your constituents.” Responding to a Times-Mirror inquiry, Higgins said he “consistently attends all of our board and public hearings and all of my committee assignments.” While the county does not keep a single attendance schedule, a non-exhaustive search of agendas and meeting minutes showed at least 10 board or committee meetings Higgins has missed.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

National Stories
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The circuit judge in the Dylann Roof case Wednesday lifted parts of his gag order that limited the release of information about the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church. Transcripts of the 911 calls and other documents about the shooting can now be released, according to the court order by 9th Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson. The gag order will remain in place, however, for crime scene audio, video and images of the victims to maintain the constitutional protection of “fairness, respect and dignity” for the victims, the four-page order states. “This court is particularly concerned with the harm that would be caused to the victims by releasing certain graphic crime scene photos and video as well as audio of the 911 calls,” the order said. Law enforcement officers, investigators, attorneys and other officials also are barred from discussing or releasing that information.
Post and Courier

IN AUGUST OF 2013, the Associated Press made a straightforward records request to the State Department. It wanted Hillary Clinton’s calendars from her tenure as Secretary of State—and it wanted them quickly. Noting the likelihood of a Clinton presidential run, the AP sought to make use of a Freedom of Information Act provision that allows the press to jump to the front of the line when information is urgently needed. The State Department’s response: there was nothing pressing the public needed to know. The agency agreed to process the request, but did not promise haste. More than two years later, with the presidential election underway and Clinton’s records from her time at the State Department at the center of the story, the agency still has not provided the calendars. It is under a court order to do so by November 5. The State Department’s response to the AP is increasingly common. In 2014, agencies denied 87 percent of the 9,981 so-called “expedited processing” requests made under FOIA. This is up from a rejection rate of only 53 percent in 2008. And the rejection rate at certain agencies is far higher. The Securities and Exchange Commission granted only three of the 253 expedited processing requests it received last year.
Columbia Journalism Review

Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel must make public a pair of law enforcement training videos he made before being elected and that Democrats say show him making inappropriate comments, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday. There is no compelling reason to keep secret the videos, made in 2009 and 2013 when Schimel was Waukesha County district attorney, the unanimous three-judge panel on the 2nd District Court of Appeals said. The court affirmed a ruling made last year by a Dane County circuit judge ordering that the videos be released. The videos have been withheld by the state Department of Justice, then-controlled by Schimel's predecessor J.B. Van Hollen, pending the appeal.  the next steps. The department could choose to appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, further delaying releasing of the videos.
Star Tribune

Colorado State University won’t try to restrict public record access, after all. While the CSU System General Counsel raised the idea of limiting applicability of the Colorado Open Records Act to Colorado residents only, the governing body for CSU doesn’t have any interest in lobbying to change that law, spokesman Mike Hooker said in an email. “The Board (of Governors) and CSU System are always careful in pursuing any potential legislative change, generally limiting efforts to areas that have a direct impact on our ability to fulfill the role and mission of the system institutions,” Hooker wrote. “While many potential areas are discussed in any given year, very few options are actively pursued.”
Coloradoan