Transparency News 10/28/14

Gov. Terry McAuliffe's ethics reform commission is poised to recommend a tightening of gift and travel rules for state leaders, but consensus proved more difficult on other points Monday, during the commission's first meeting. Time is short: The group plans to have recommendations ready by Dec. 1. It will be up to the Virginia General Assembly to write the actual rules. As for ethics reform, commission members agreed Monday that the $250 cap legislators placed on "tangible" gifts from lobbyists earlier this year should also extend to meals, trips and other "intangible" gifts, which had been exempt. They also said the caps should extend to an official's spouse and dependent children, a change legislators declined to make as they rewrote their own ethics rules earlier this year.
Daily Press

The panel also found agreement on the need for an independent ethics commission that has, as one member stated, the “teeth” to oversee, investigate, and advise and sanction official conduct. Members discussed the possibility of having two commissions — one that would oversee legislative affairs and another to monitor the executive branch. There was also support for eliminating the conflict of having members of government boards or commissions making decisions that could directly impact their own financial interests or those of family members.
Times-Dispatch

The Virginia Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning in a online defamation case that some warn could have a chilling effect on anonymous speech on the Internet. Yelp Inc., a California company that posts customer reviews of businesses on its social-networking website, is appealing a court order to reveal the identities of the authors of seven reviews critical of Hadeed Carpet Cleaning Inc. of Alexandria. A brief filed in the Virginia Supreme Court by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other media organizations argues the justices’ decision, while concerning reviews about a company’s services, will affect all online forums, including news websites with anonymous comments.
Times-Dispatch

Arguments in a local public prayer case three years in the making will be presented to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday. Attorneys for both the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors and the American Civil Liberties Union — representing county resident Barbara Hudson — will have 20 minutes to argue their cases before appeals court. The appeal will argue whether a decision by supervisors to lead a public Christian prayer before meetings is constitutional. The county’s appeal centers on the fact that Supreme Court ruled in May in favor of another public prayer case involving the town of Greece, New York.
Register & Bee

When Terry McAuliffe’s Commission to Ensure Integrity and Public Confidence compiles its legislative agenda, the panel could start by revoking one of his vetoes and resurrecting an ethics bill concerning the governor’s office. The Governor’s Opportunity Fund has given $199.4 million to new or expanding companies since 1994. McAuliffe this year vetoed legislation that would curb personal or political contributions from GOF recipients. The GOF disbursed more than $7.4 million to firms in fiscal 2014. That does not include $5 million McAuliffe pledged this month to help Richmond build a brewery on the James River for California-based Stone Brewing Co., or the $5 million he granted to China’s Shandong Tranlin Paper Co. for a mill downriver in Chesterfield County. Only one other $5 million grant was recorded in the 20-year history of the Opportunity Fund.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau

National Stories

An archive of tweets from the 2014 National Freedom of Information Coalition FOI Summitin St. Petersburg, Florida.
Storify

In a rare public accounting of its mass surveillance program, the United States Postal Service reported that it approved nearly 50,000 requests last year from law enforcement agencies and its own internal inspection unit to secretly monitor the mail of Americans for use in criminal and national security investigations. The number of requests, contained in a little-noticed 2014 audit of the surveillance program by the Postal Service’s inspector general, shows that the surveillance program is more extensive than previously disclosed and that oversight protecting Americans from potential abuses is lax. The audit, along with interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, offers one of the first detailed looks at the scope of the program, which has played an important role in the nation’s vast surveillance effort since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
New York Times

A woman’s claim that her unlicensed street vending of homemade rings that carry environmental messages was protected political speech has been rejected by an appellate panel in Manhattan. In 2011, Kristen Howard was convicted of unlicensed general vending, a misdemeanor, for selling jewelry in the Soho section of Manhattan. Howard sold $20 dollar rings of various shapes and colors that used “real pressed” flowers. Some of the rings had the message “Go Green” on the inside band.
Law.com

A school board in Tennessee is being accused of violating the constitutional rights of students over a policy that allows school officials to search any electronic devices students bring to campus and to monitor and control what students post on social media sites. The broadly written policy also allows schools to monitor any communications sent through or stored on school networks, which would essentially allow the school to read the content of stored and transmitted email.
Wired

An Internal Revenue Service employee caught up in the controversy over tax-exempt groups wants a federal judge to block a subpoena for her videotaped testimony. The official, Holly Paz, cites privacy and safety fears.
LegalTimes
 

Editorials/Columns