Transparency News 10/24/17

Tuesday, October 24, 2017



State and Local Stories

The collective salaries of Abingdon’s male employees total approximately $1.8 million more than female employees — but the gap has nothing to do with gender, according to Town Manager Greg Kelly. There are 62 more male than female town employees. However, more women hold leadership roles than men. The Bristol Herald Courier obtained the 2017-18 salaries of town employees through the Freedom of Information Act.
Bristol Herald Courier

The Petersburg City Council tabled a conversation during their meeting last week about praying at the beginning of each council meeting. Several council members, including Mayor Samuel Parham, have put forth the idea of having local religious leaders lead a prayer at the beginning of each council meeting. Before this month, the council normally opened meetings with a moment of silence. During the discussion, City Attorney Joseph Preston said that as long as no religion or creed is being excluded, and no one is forced to take part, then a religious leader can lead a prayer at a government meeting.
Progress-Index



National Stories
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The Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state's public records law can extend to state employees' private email accounts if messages in them otherwise meet the state's definition of public records. The ruling suggests methods the state can use to ask employees if they have messages that would be subjected to Public Records Act. "This approach strikes a balance between protecting the privacy of state workers and ensuring the disclosure of those public records necessary to hold agencies accountable," said the decision, written by Justice Beth Robinson.
US News & World Report

The Maine member of President Trump's voter fraud commission has written a pointed letter to its executive director, demanding he be given documents and kept informed about the group's activities and charging that there is "a vacuum of information." Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, one of four Democrats on the 12-person commission, sent the letter Tuesday after learning from a reporter that a commission staffer had been arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. Dunlap said he had not only not known ahead of time about the arrest last week of researcher Ronald Williams II but he was not even aware he had been hired -- or that the commission had any staff members apart from its executive director, Andrew Kossack. Williams, whose employment has been terminated, faces 11 counts of possession and distribution of child pornography, officials told The Washington Post.
Governing

The FBI thinks encryption is getting out of hand. In the last 11 months, FBI agents have tried, unsuccessfully, to break into 6,900 mobile devices, reported the Associated Press. That's more than half of the devices the agency targeted, according to FBI director Christopher Wray.
CNET News



Editorials/Columns


Both the federal government and state governments have tried to reform the asset-forfeiture system over the past couple of decades, with limited success. President Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, ended a practice that let police departments make an end-run around state restrictions on asset forfeiture by, essentially, federalizing local cases. Regrettably, current Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reinstated that practice — drawing fire from both liberals and conservatives. Perhaps because of that blowback, he has decided to appoint a watchdog over the federal asset-forfeiture program. That’s an encouraging move, and we hope the watchdog is given free run rather than being kept on a short leash.
Daily Progress