Transparency News 10/31/14

The city of Richmond has filed a motion to dismiss a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a former School Board member over the secrecy surrounding the departure of former Chief Administrative Officer Byron C. Marshall. The motion, filed Wednesday in Richmond Circuit Court, asks the court to dismiss the lawsuit filed last month by Carol A.O. Wolf, who argued that the city had no legal basis for denying access to the confidentiality agreement some City Council members signed in order to be briefed about Marshall’s exit. The motion to dismiss doesn’t go into great detail about the city’s reasoning, saying only that the city “properly responded” to Wolf’s FOIA request by “producing some records under FOIA but withholding others.”
Times-Dispatch

The Justice Department this month ordered Norfolk city officials to turn over documents relating to Tivest Development and Construction, the company that won approval for the controversial Midtown Office Tower in 2011. The project fell apart just days after a 5-3 City Council approval. Company President Dwight Etheridge in 2013 was sentenced to more than four years in prison for his role in conspiring with Bank of the Commonwealth to commit fraud. The subpoena demands copies of "requests for proposals" related to those development projects and copies of all respondents' bids, with notes on which bids won contracts. Norfolk officials were ordered to present the records to an FBI special agent by Oct. 22. In June, the city also received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney's Office – that one requested video recordings of council meetings in July 2008 and from December 2010 to March 2011.
Virginian-Pilot

Defense attorneys representing former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell at his public corruption trial suspected that the juror who was mysteriously excused midway through the proceedings was on their side, and they urged the judge to declare a mistrial because of the circumstances of his removal, according to documents unsealed Thursday. The removal of Louis DeNitto Jr. from the jury on the trial’s 12th day had been one of the great mysteries of the proceedings, in no small part because he said afterward that he would have pushed against convictions. Spencer offered no public explanation when he replaced DeNitto with an alternate juror, and until this month, the reasons behind the removal had been discussed mostly in sealed or redacted filings. The Washington Post filed a motion asking for those filings to be unsealed, and on Thursday, Spencer issued an order saying that many of them should be.
Washington Post

National Stories

The growth of the ideological press corps has forced established journalists, political leaders and the public to confront the questions about who, exactly, ought to be treated and trusted as members of the media. What’s the proper way to treat new media reporters who have a clear political ideology? What if they are also employees of lobbying organizations funded by some of the biggest political donors in the country? The questions take on an even greater urgency as the traditional outlets that once supplied statehouse news offer less and less of it. After decades of erosion in newspaper coverage of state capitols, the bottom fell out between 2003 and 2009. Print publications were already reeling from huge, Internet-triggered losses in subscribers and advertising dollars when the Great Recession delivered another crushing blow to their business models. Reporters assigned to distant posts, whether in foreign countries or in state capitols, were among the first to be dumped. By 2009, nearly one in four full-time newspaper reporter positions in the country’s statehouses had been eliminated. Since then, the numbers have declined another 12 percent.
Governing

In Pennsylvania, state agency employees’ email is purged five days after it is deleted. In New York, email is automatically discarded after 90 days unless an employee specifically tags it. And in North Carolina, executive branch email of any kind must be kept for at least five years. Every state has policies governing how long records are saved and when they can be purged—if ever. But those retention policies vary greatly across states. Often employees have to determine on their own whether to keep or delete an email.
Governing

The Navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden dead in a 2011 raid is planning to reveal his identity to the world—starting with Fox News. The man known as "The Shooter" will be interviewed by the network for a two-part special airing on Nov. 11 and 12 called The Man Who Killed Usama Bin Laden. He will describe his training and the events that led up to the raid where he fired the deadly shots, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Fox says the interview will include details never shared before and that the SEAL will describe things like the al-Qaeda leader's last breath, Deadline reports. In an Esquire article last year called "The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden … Is Screwed," the shooter spoke of a lack of support and benefits after he left the military in September 2012, before he qualified for a pension. The Navy, however, countered that he knew what he was giving up by leaving the service after 16 years instead of 20.
USA Today
 

Editorials/Columns