Transparency News 10/3/14

Friday, October 3, 2014  
State and Local Stories

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s chief of staff, Paul Reagan, left a voice-mail message for a Democrat who was on the verge of quitting the General Assembly in June, saying that the senator’s daughter might get a top state job if he stayed to support the governor’s push to expand Medicaid, according to descriptions from three people who heard the recording. The governor’s spokesman initially denied Thursday that Reagan had made any potential job offers, but he later acknowledged that the call had been made after he was read a transcript of Reagan’s message given to The Washington Post.
Washington Post
Read a transcript of the message

Yolanda Stokes, the former commissioner on Hopewell’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority who was ousted by the City Council last year, is fighting in federal court to regain her position. Stokes, removed as a commissioner at a tense closed-door session in July 2013, filed a federal lawsuit this summer alleging the city’s housing authority and council violated her civil rights when she was kicked off. She has also filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Times-Dispatch

Virginia’s attorney general has given his legal stamp of approval to electronic signatures on voter registration forms submitted by third parties. After Norfolk’s three-member electoral board wrote Attorney General Mark Herring asking if the law requires, permits, or forbids a local registrar from accepting electronic signatures on voter registration forms, citing concerns about identity theft and verification, Herring responded that the Virginia Department of Elections operated within its authority when it directed local registrars to accept e-signatures.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau

National Stories

The Washington Times has settled a lawsuit it brought with former reporter Audrey Hudson against the Department of Homeland Security, whose Coast Guard Investigative Service improperly seized notes and papers of Hudson’s during a 2013 raid on her home. In August 2013, a Coast Guard Investigative Service agent and Maryland state police raided the home of Hudson and her husband, acting on a warrant for registered firearms and a potato launcher that Hudson’s husband allegedly owned. While executing that limited warrant, the agent and officers also seized reporting materials belonging to Hudson, who while with the Times had written articles revealing deceptive practices within DHS’s Federal Air Marshal Service. The seized materials included notes from interviews about those stories and documents Hudson had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Hudson has stated that those papers contained the identities of several whistleblowers.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

A federal judge in Washington denied a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to seal an upcoming hearing over force-feeding practices at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility. The request was “deeply troubling,” U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote.
National Law Journal

State governments are facing a daily barrage of cyberattacks from increasingly sophisticated computer hackers. The hackers’ rapidly changing tactics threaten the exposure of personal information of millions of citizens and can cost taxpayers millions of dollars to fix. “We see attacks on Texas’ system to the tune of millions a month,” said Karen Robinson, Texas’ state chief information officer. Although breaches of Texas’ state computers are rare, Robinson said, the risks are high. They can result in the theft of citizens’ Social Security numbers, dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and even personal and business financial information.
Governing

U.S. Supreme Court justices have already agreed to hear a host of cases that could affect state or local government. The disputes cover a range of issues, from a small town sign code that could be restricting free speech to a state regulatory board alleged to be violating federal antitrust laws.
Governing
 

Editorials/Columns

Lately I’ve been seeing some pretty novel reasons why records cannot be provided to requesters. These aren’t in the same category as conflicting interpretations of exemptions, where one says a document is protected by an exemption and another claims the exemption doesn’t apply. No, this is in the way records are delivered or not delivered, as the case may be.
Megan Rhyne, VCOG Blog