Transparency News, 10/26/21

In early April, Sentara — one of the largest health systems in Virginia with 11 hospitals scattered across five regions — sent a letter to Anthem, the state’s largest insurer.  Lance Torcom, Sentara’s chief managed care officer, informed Anthem that the system would be terminating its contract with the insurer’s Medicaid and Medicare lines of business. Effective Oct. 12, in other words, any patient who received government-provided health coverage through Anthem would no longer be able to use their insurance at Sentara’s facilities. The move, which could have affected more than 525,000 of Anthem’s Medicaid patients across Virginia, according to state enrollment figures, never happened. After weeks of negotiation, Sentara rescinded its termination notice on Aug. 16. Anthem’s Medicaid and Medicare patients were never notified about the dispute or told their insurance would no longer be accepted at Sentara facilities. In May, Anthem sent a letter to Attorney General Mark Herring, asking his office to look into the “anti-competitive harm” posed by Sentara. Even after the hospital system withdrew its termination, Anthem prodded for an inquiry. “We continue to encourage the Office of the Attorney General to investigate the anticompetitive behavior of Sentara to leverage their monopoly status in their efforts to limit payor competition,” Lindsay Berry Winter, the insurer’s senior director of government relations, wrote in a later email to state officials (the Mercury obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request). 
Virginia Mercury

Before employees of Chesterfield County Public Schools enroll in a training course, they must sign a form promising the session doesn’t include critical race theory. The school district settled on the form this summer instead of making the trainers promise that CRT — the legal, scholarly theory pioneered decades ago to analyze race and systems that has become a lightning rod among conservatives across the country — “is not part of their agenda,” Chief Academic Officer Sharon Pope wrote in an email obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. This summer, board Chairman Ryan Harter, speaking for the entire five-member, all-white, predominately Republican board, denounced critical race theory.  Harter, who in June declined to explain his understanding of critical race theory, again declined to answer questions this week and referred to his June 1 statement.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Today, we report on what Petersburg’s top leaders are being paid. Not the political ones who shape the policy, but the ones who are expected to carry that policy out. Why are we peeking into their pay envelopes? Simple. It’s our right to ask, and your right to know because you are paying the taxes and fees that go into the coffers that pay these people. It boils down to the fact that they work for you, so like any good employer, you should be aware of the payroll. We sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the city asking for the salaries of all of Petersburg’s leaders and department heads as they were in October 2020, and how they compared to the same salaries for the same positions in October 2021. Those results are included in our article.
The Progress-Index

Arlington County Board candidate Audrey Clement, who previously told news outlets that she is in her early 50s, appears to be two decades older, according to government records. When asked about the discrepancy, Clement, a perennial candidate who largely has self-funded her independent campaigns for local office, said that asking for her age amounted to discrimination and violated her right to privacy. “I believe that The Washington Post doesn’t have any right to require that information of me or any other political candidate,” she said in a phone interview Monday. “I believe that it is a violation against my civil right and a manifestation of ageism.” Asked to confirm whether she was in fact 72, Clement said, “I take my Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.” Upon further questioning, Clement said she had “achieved the age of 52.”
The Washington Post
 

The office of Delaware’s embattled state auditor violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act over a period of several years by failing to properly maintain logs of public records requests, the attorney general’s office has determined. In an opinion issued Monday in response to a petition from The Associated Press, the Department of Justice found that the Office of the Auditor of Accounts, or OAOA, failed to maintain its FOIA logs as required by law over a period of more than three years.
Associated Press

A federal judge has ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection to produce a wide range of records, including PowerPoint slides, emails and memos, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Reporters Committee concerning the agency’s attempt to unmask the user behind an anonymous Twitter account critical of former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. The ruling, issued Oct. 18 by Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, cited heavily from a case successfully litigated earlier this year by Reporters Committee attorneys in the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Would-be jurors in the murder trial of the three men charged with killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery expressed concerns this week about remaining anonymous should they be selected to serve – particularly given the size of the community and intense public interest in the high-profile trial. A thousand of the 62,000 registered voters in Glynn County received jury summons. The judge hopes to narrow the jury pool to a smaller group of 64 and eventually to 16 people: 12 jurors and four alternates. Complicating that process is the fact thatmultiple prospective jurors have told the court they know Arbery, the defendants, potential witnesses, other prospective jurors and some of the local figures involved in the case. Some worried they would be identified as a juror in the press and feared they would face personal repercussions after rendering a verdict.
USA Today