Transparency News 10/3/19

Thursday
October 3, 2019

There was no newsletter yesterday, Oct. 2.

state & local news stories

“The work of the new body will not be subject to open meetings laws. That means people will not be able to verify the minutes, see agendas in advance, or participate in any meaningful way.”

The Richmond City Council and Mayor Levar Stoney agree that the City Charter should be tweaked. But what changes should appear in the city’s legislative package for the upcoming Virginia General Assembly Session may divide the two.  The council and mayor agree on proposed revisions clarifying the residency requirement for council members and allowing for the removal of a member who violates that requirement, but six other changes remain the subject of debate. One change would give the council authority to exclude unwanted attendees from its closed sessions. A provision in the charter currently allows the mayor to send a representative to sit in on those meetings. Two members of the council – Kristen Larson and Kim Gray – argued in favor of changing that. Gray said she did not think a mayoral designee should be permitted to listen in on private discussions of personnel matters concerning council-appointees or legal advice the council may seek as it sifts through the $1.5 billion plan to redevelop downtown.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A regional planning group organized 33 years ago to encourage collaboration between Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the University of Virginia could take the first step to dissolve itself on Thursday. The Planning and Coordination Council will meet to discuss dissolving and establishing a new, staff-led initiative. Sean Tubbs of the Piedmont Environmental Council discussed the issue at Wednesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. No formal announcement of the plan has been circulated from the city, county or UVa. “PEC feels this is a recipe for distrust if plans are to be developed and presented to the public after the fact without their input,” Tubbs told the board. “The work of the new body will not be subject to open meetings laws. That means people will not be able to verify the minutes, see agendas in advance, or participate in any meaningful way.” Supervisor Diantha McKeel, who is also on the council, said, if the change happens, she thinks it would reduce the redundancy of some presentations. She said she saw a presentation on Birdwood Mansion four times. “…And to actually have a process that helps us address bigger issues in our community in a public, but more efficient, way,” she said.
The Daily Progress

The Warren County Board of Supervisors during its Tuesday meeting postponed voting on whether the county will fund legal expenses in the misdemeanor cases brought last week against the entire board and two officials. Those indicted last week on two misdemeanor counts of misfeasance and one misdemeanor count of nonfeasance include Warren County Supervisors Dan Murray, Tom Sayre, Archie Fox, Linda Glavis and Tony Carter, County Administrator Doug Stanley and former County Attorney Dan Whitten. Regarding the county’s right to fund supervisors’ legal fees, Stanley previously cited Virginia Code section 15.2-1520, which states a locality may fund legal expenses of officials if it relates to “duties in serving the locality.” He also cited 15.2-1521, which states a locality can reimburse officials’ legal expenses upon being found innocent.   The decision to postpone the vote until December passed by a 3-2 vote with Glavis, Fox and Carter in favor while Sayre and Murray dissented. Sayre said he will not approve using county money to fund the legal expenses of any officials, including himself. No other supervisors stated how they would vote regarding the matter. Over 15 citizens appeared during the meeting’s public comment portion to urge the supervisors to reject using taxpayer money to fund their legal defenses.
The Northern Virginia Daily

Armed with a cumbersome military-grade camera that came from the belly of a United States Army Air Forces bomber, James Histand Sr. took to the Peninsula skies over the course of about 20 years to capture photographs of the ground below. From after the end of World War II to about the mid-1960s, he documented farms and fields in the last years of Warwick County before they were replaced with suburbs in what is now central and upper Newport News. His images show the earliest days of the U.S.S. Enterprise at the Newport News shipyard and the construction of Patrick Henry Airport, now the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport. The entire collection of developed photographs, negatives, slides and film now sits in the 1810 Warwick County Courthouse in the care of the Warwick County Historical Society. Members have taken on the task of sorting through the items, making digital copies and figuring out how to share them with those curious about local history and those who feel pangs of nostalgia remembering mid-century life.
Daily Press

A Virginia Beach patrol officer was charged Wednesday with two felony counts of forging public records. Officer Norman Teague, who has been with the department since 2015, has been placed on administrative duties while the case is investigated by police and prosecutors, according to a news release. Police said the incidents occurred in early September and involve procedures pertaining to the service of non-arrestable misdemeanor warrants. No other details were released and a spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Virginian-Pilot

Fredericksburg’s School Board has received 40 inquiries and 34 completed applications for the superintendent position left vacant when David Melton retired in June. Fifteen current or former superintendents applied, as well as nine assistant, associate or deputy superintendents. Among them was interim Superintendent Marci Catlett, who lives in the city and has served in the city school system her entire career. Also included in the applications were eight central office administrators and two building-level administrators. Board members met during a closed session Tuesday to review the applications, which were submitted by 26 men and 8 women. There were 18 Virginia residents and 16 out-of-state applicants.
Free Lance-Star

stories of national interest

The Justice Department will produce 500 pages of memos documenting what witnesses told special counsel Robert Mueller’s office and the FBI during their investigation next month. The documents, known as 302s, memorialize interviews conducted by the office and form the backbone of much of the Mueller report. CNN and BuzzFeed News had sued for the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, and on Tuesday, a federal judge in Washington, DC, ordered the Justice Department to produce their first tranche of documents by November 1.
CNN

Demeaning comments, harassment and—less commonly—threats of violence all come with the job of being a mayor. A new national survey assesses how frequently mayors experience various forms of abuse.The survey, the basis of a study published in the journal State and Local Government Review, finds that most mayors contend with verbal hostility or physical intimidation at rates above those of the general workforce. While it’s not at all surprising that mayors encounter negativity, some face much more frequent offenses than others. The only factor that predicted both psychological abuse and physical violence was gender, with women more than twice as likely to experience such incidents as men, after controlling for time in office and other factors. The types of abuse women face are also different: more personal, says Annise Parker, who served as Houston’s mayor until 2016. “They want to demean us as women,” she says. “They get mad at us, and the first thing they talk about is the way we look.”
Governing

A recent audit of Baltimore’s IT department found that the agency lost important data during this year’s ransomware attack due to poor storage practices. Staff for the Baltimore City Information and Technology department (BCIT) routinely saved data on their local servers instead of backing it up on an external cloud system, according to a newly released audit. When the attack hit, some of that data was compromised by the malware. As a result, data that was supposed to aid in the analysis of four performance measures — metrics meant to determine if the agency was meeting its goals in an efficient and cost-effective manner — could not be accounted for throughout the 2017-18 fiscal years, according to the report.
Governing

“The only factor that predicted both psychological abuse and physical violence [against mayors] was gender.”

editorials & columns

“It is a tool employed almost exclusively by journalists, self-appointed watchdogs, activists and attorneys to demand information that is not otherwise accessible to them. (Often the information is accessible; they just don’t want to expend the energy to find it, or they like the drama of being able to say they petitioned to ‘uncover’ it.)”

Lately, a debate over how to ensure accountability for our city’s charter schools has caught my ear. What spurs me to speak up is legislation the DC Council is considering that seeks to treat charter schools not as what they are — nonprofit organizations entrusted with tax dollars to provide the public service of educating DC students — but instead as governmental entities, which charter schools were explicitly established 24 years ago not to be. In particular, a bill introduced by Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen would require charter schools of any size and means to respond to every request filed with them under DC’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). FOIA is an important mechanism for allowing the public underneath the hood of government. It is a tool employed almost exclusively by journalists, self-appointed watchdogs, activists and attorneys to demand information that is not otherwise accessible to them. (Often the information is accessible; they just don’t want to expend the energy to find it, or they like the drama of being able to say they petitioned to “uncover” it.) What FOIA is definitely not is an effective tool for a parent to participate in decision-making at their child’s school or support their child’s education, or for a teacher to have a more impactful voice where they work. There is a misperception that FOIA and other transparency regulations cleanse a government system of corruption. No law is going to prevent some people from sometimes doing some things that they shouldn’t. But poor policy can very easily divert school personnel from doing the things they should.
Josephine Baker, The DC Line