Transparency News, 10/25/21

Dominion Energy said Monday that it asked for money back from a federal political action committee that attacked GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin. On Friday, Dominion leadership declined to say if the Dominion PAC received that money back or not. The company also declined to answer questions about exactly how much it gave to the federal PAC, or say to which people Dominion had made the request for a refund. “We don’t have any further comment on the PAC contribution,” Dominion spokesman Rayhan Daudani said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Members of Prince William County’s Racial and Social Justice Commission exchanged heated words Thursday about the Oct. 6 town hall meeting hosted by commissioners Charles Haddow and Erica Tredinnick. Rock’s absence from Thursday night’s meeting didn’t stop the commission’s three Republican-appointed members from airing grievances about Rock’s statement two weeks ago that the town hall at Patriot High School was in violation of FOIA.  Three members of the public body hosted the town hall regarding critical race theory in county schools.  Rock said that proper public notice wasn’t given about the meeting and that members spoke in representation of the commission, something only she as the chair can do, unless she appoints someone else.  On Thursday, Haddow pinned the absence of the meeting from the commission’s public calendar on staff, saying there may have been a mix-up. He said his original intent was to hold the meeting just with Tredinnick, but when another commission member, London Steverson, asked to join as well, Haddow said others assured him the meeting would be in the clear despite having three members present – which typically triggers FOIA requirements. 
InsideNova

Transit provider Jaunt, a crucial service to people with disabilities, owes nearly $1 million to the state and will receive less money for operations this year after it over-reported ridership and underreported costs with contracted services, according to a review by the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation. And yet, the ride provider says services will not be affected. The DRPT review occurred after former Jaunt CEO Brad Sheffield was asked to resign late last year when the board said he “purchased numerous expenses for goods, services and travel which violated internal control policies of the corporation.” Later, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed that Sheffield spent more than $7,000 on multiple conference trips. In a letter to the Jaunt board and acting CEO Karen Davis from earlier this month, DRPT’s Chief of Public Transportation Jennifer Mitchell said the review’s findings “are troubling and indicate a pattern of misinformation and inaccurate reporting by Jaunt leadership that resulted in the over-allocation of state and federal resources to Jaunt.” A representative from DRPT said the five-page letter “serves as the department’s statement on the matter at this time.”
The Daily Progress

 

 

 

Two nephews of John F. Kennedy are calling on the Biden administration to release the final trove of secret documents on the 1963 assassination of the former president. The records were scheduled to be made public Tuesday, but the White House announced late Friday night that it would delay their publication until at least Dec. 15 — and perhaps longer if President Joe Biden determines it’s in the nation’s best interest to keep them confidential. “It’s an outrage. It’s an outrage against American democracy. We’re not supposed to have secret governments within the government,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told POLITICO. “How the hell is it 58 years later, and what in the world could justify not releasing these documents?” The documents were set to be declassified in 2017, but President Donald Trump postponed the release for four years. Biden’s decision to continue Trump’s policy of shielding the records came as a surprise to historians and experts on the assassination because he had served in the U.S. Senate when the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 passed unanimously in Congress. 
Politico

A cybersecurity professor who verified the vulnerability that left the Social Security numbers of upwards of 100,000 teachers accessible on a Missouri website is demanding Gov. Mike Parson apologize after he threatened those who exposed the weakness with prosecution. An attorney for University of Missouri-St. Louis Professor Shaji Khan sent a letter Thursday to Parson, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and other agencies telling them to preserve records related to the episode — often a first step before a lawsuit. The letter is the first indication that Parson may face a legal challenge over his response to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story last week detailing how Social Security numbers had been left exposed on a DESE website. The day after publication, Parson called a news conference where he threatened the newspaper, its journalists and those who helped them with prosecution — and said law enforcement would investigate.
Governing

The U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) has not followed through on efforts to improve transparency since Congress urged the department to do so in the days before January 6, according to letters from the USCP’s lawyers that were obtained by The Hill. Nearly a year after lawmakers pushed Capitol Police to adopt transparency measures, lawyers for the embattled agency in response to a lawsuit indicated they hadn’t taken action. “The Capitol Police has not yet created any documents regarding a ‘policy and procedure that follows the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act,’” a USCP lawyer wrote in a letter that is set to be offered in court later on Friday and was provided to The Hill by a lawyer for freelance journalist Shawn Musgrave. Musgrave filed a federal lawsuit against USCP and other legislative branch offices seeking, among other things, internal records related to Congress’ directives. The USCP faces a court deadline today to respond to Musgrave’s lawsuit or move for it to be dismissed. The letters will likely be included in the USCP’s filings.
The Hill

NPR’s Asma Khalid speaks to reporter Bruce Alpert about a Freedom of Information request he filed 12 years ago for a story. And he got his response nine days ago – after he’d already retired. “I was reporting on the corruption case involving a New Orleans congressman, William J. Jefferson, who was accused of assisting businesses get business in Africa. . . . Well, I wanted documents highlighting the investigation, what steps they took, how they conducted their searches of homes and government offices.”
NPR
 

 

Yeah, it can suck when you fail to handle FOIA requests properly and give the public more information than you intended to. It sucks for the government. It doesn’t suck for the public, which is rarely treated to anything more than the most minimal of transparency. Unfortunately, government agencies don’t always react well when they’ve screwed things up. Sometimes the blowback is limited to ineffectual shouting or paper waving. Sometimes, however, it’s a lawsuit seeking a court order to prevent people from accessing (or sharing) documents they’ve legally obtained from a government agency. Cut to Virginia, where it’s the latter option being deployed:
Tim Cushing, TechDirt

Fix the Courts made a public records request to the University of Louisville. The organization received a 120+ page document dump concerning Justice Barrett’s visit to the McConnell Center in September 2021. I went through the tranche of documents, and found a few items of interest. (FOIA dumps are generally sorted with the most recent emails at the top, so I usually start reading at the end). There was a back-and-forth about press restrictions between the Public Information Office, and Gary Gregg at the McConnell Center. This last sentence should have never been made in print. The assistant is conveying that the Justice personally asked to avoid “inappropriate” questions. And she made that request to the McConnell Center, of all places! The optics are awful. This is the kind of thing you say over the phone, and never in an email–especially with a public institution subject to FOIA.
Josh Blackman, Reason

School board meetings have been around forever, and they always have had the potential to become raucous. I often have told young reporters that if they want to see firsthand the most important political process in the U.S. system, they should turn off cable news, get off the iPhone, turn their eyes away from Washington and cover a local school board meeting. No one should accept threats or physical violence at a school board meeting or anywhere else. But such conduct is fortunately rare. The question today is: Can we trust our government to distinguish between the actual threat of violence and the passionate expression of viewpoints by parents?
Salena Zito, Culpeper Star-Exponent