Transparency News, 10/19/2022
Wednesday
October 19, 2022
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state & local news stories
The clock is ticking for Virginia’s gold mining workgroup. A meeting scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 18 was canceled, leaving just one more before the group needs to finalize its report and send it to the General Assembly. The concern for some Buckingham County residents, and members of the group itself, is this won’t leave enough time for everything they still have to go through. The Oct. 18 meeting was canceled due to some issues with Virginia Department of Energy staff, workgroup officials said. Scheduling conflicts prevented adding another one to the calendar. “We (had) to cancel Tuesday’s meeting because of some staff dealing with sickness,” said workgroup member and Buckingham County board of supervisors chairman Jordan Miles. He added the sickness was bad enough the staff members couldn’t work remotely. He acknowledged that trying to fit everything into one meeting would be challenging. As a result, the Nov. 3 meeting could be extended past the noon deadline.
The Farmville Herald
The City of Martinsville says Council candidate LC Jones will have to quit his job if he’s elected in November. Jones, who is a Martinsville Police officer currently assigned to Martinsville Middle School as a resource officer, says it’s a case of the City changing the rules after he decided to run. “I asked in April if there would be a problem with me running for Council, and I asked again in May and was told nobody had a problem with it,” said Jones. “Then in June they changed the rules.” City Attorney Eric Monday admitted that was indeed the case. “It was changed by the city manager and H.R. (Human Resources) when the ‘rumor mill’ had it a city employee may be running and it was discovered there was no policy,” Monday wrote by email. “Other Virginia localities were consulted, particularly Lynchburg, and the policy was written based on those consultations.” Said Monday: “The city manager is the employer of all city employees other than the city attorney and an employee serving as his boss is clearly an irreconcilable conflict of interest.”
Martinsville Bulletin
Members of five sheriffs offices across the country were offered cruises from “Tampa Bay to the Caribbean” as part of jail telecommunications contracts with the vendor Smart Communications, according to documents obtained by The Appeal. Smart Communications is a for-profit company that sells communications services including phone, video call, and email-like messages to people incarcerated in publicly funded prisons and jails. It contracts with the public agencies that operate those facilities, often sheriffs offices, to secure the exclusive right to operate within them. In the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, Smart Communications charges people $3.00 for a 30-minute video call, $.50 per electronic message, and $1.00 per electronic image. The Fairfax County Sheriff’s contract, for example, reads: “Customer shall have the capability to send up to 8 individuals… to attend the Annual Training Summit.” A proposal from Smart Communications stated that the complimentary tickets were at least an $84,000 value. Shawn Weneta of the Virginia ACLU took care to point out that culpability for the system as it exists lies not just with unscrupulous companies, but also with the public officials who continue to contract with them.
The Appeal
