Transparency News 10/20/15

State and Local Stories

The state ethics panel Gov. Terry McAuliffe convened last year has recommended a salary increase of up to $15,000 for state lawmakers as part of its last package of clean-government proposals. During its final meeting Monday morning, the Governor’s Commission to Ensure Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government voted unanimously to adopt a set of eight new recommendations for the 2016 legislative session. Among the recommendations is a proposal to boost legislators’ pay by formally combining the $15,000 members receive each year for office and staff expenses with the salaries lawmakers receive. Members of the House of Delegates receive salaries of $17,640 per year. Pay for state senators is slightly higher at $18,000 per year. The office funds are already available for legislators’ personal use. For members who already treat the entire $15,000 as personal income, pay would essentially be unchanged.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The committee appointed by Richmond City Council to study whether council members should receive a salary increase is holding a public hearing Wednesday. The eight-member committee has been charged with compiling a report on the subject by Nov. 2 — in time for the city to bring the issue before the General Assembly, which would ultimately have to approve any salary increase. The committee plans to hold the hearing in Council Chambers at City Hall at 6 p.m.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A judge last week dismissed most of a $3.35 million lawsuit that Patriot High School Principal Michael Bishop filed against Ryan Sawyers, one of three candidates running for chairman of the Prince William County School Board in the upcoming Nov. 3 election, but allowed part of the case to continue to trial. Filed in February, Bishop’s lawsuit names Sawyers and Gainesville entrepreneur Guy Morgan as co-defendants. The lawsuit stems from an ongoing rift between two western Prince William youth baseball leagues, the Gainesville Haymarket Baseball League, which Bishop leads, and the Bull Run Little League, which is led by Sawyers. The lawsuit alleges that Sawyers and Morgan sought to sully Bishop’s reputation and get him fired from his principal’s job through “a campaign of emails” sent to school board members about youth baseball issues. Sawyers said the lawsuit raises questions about whether parents can freely question school administrators. “To me the bigger questions still stands: Can private citizens ask questions of school administrators and not be sued for millions and millions of dollars?” Ryan asked. “I certainly think it’s the right of citizens to ask questions of school administrators.”
InsideNOVA

National Stories
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Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is defending a practice among his outsourcing advisers to avoid email correspondence to prevent information getting out to the public. The Republican governor told reporters after an economic development conference this week that it's a standard practice of "sharing some wisdom" with new employees who have come to government from the private sector that all of their correspondence is subject to Tennessee's open records laws. "Any government that comes into office, the very first day they say, careful what you put in that email, because unless you want to see it in the newspaper, don't put it in that email," Haslam said Wednesday. "It's just part of the world we live in."
Daily News

City of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, employees and elected officials won’t be able to text on city-owned cell phones under a new proposed policy. City officials want to crack down on texting because they say it’s difficult to retain the records, required under the Wisconsin Open Records Laws. The city currently has approximately 70 city-issued cell phones used by employees and public officials and another set of reserved cell phones for police, public works and election workers, Sun Prairie Human Resource Director Brenda Sukenik said. Employees who can prove to their department manager that texting is essential would be exempt, and would have to send texts to the city e-mail system to archive.
The Star

Editorials/Columns

Apparently the way to cure corruption is by giving politicians more money. That doesn’t quite make sense to me, but hey, I’m just one of the guys paying their salary. On Monday, Virginia’s state ethics commission adopted a set of recommendations for the next session of the General Assembly. Some of them made sense, which I’ll talk about tomorrow. Others made it clear that some people in Richmond don’t understand that being a politician was never meant to be a full-time job. Sadly enough, there are people throughout the commonwealth who can tell you it’s possible to live off of $17,640 a year. But that’s not the whole argument here. Serving in office, especially when you add in the $15,000 allowance given out by the state, doesn’t seem like a bad deal for a few months of work. The problem is getting into office, which is massively more expensive.
Brian Carlton, News Virginian