Transparency News 10/5/16

 

Advocates for government transparency applauded a D.C. Council decision to include open records provisions in legislation to create a multijurisdiction Metro safety oversight commission. “Residents are entitled to know what the Metro Safety Commission is doing,” Kevin Goldberg, president of D.C. Open Government Coalition, said Tuesday at a public hearing on the legislation. “We absolutely support those changes.” The “Metrorail Safety Commission Interstate Compact” would authorize a tri-state panel to create and enforce safety regulations, inspect systems, mete out citations and order Metro officials to prioritize funding on “safety-critical” projects. The proposed commission must be approved by elected officials in the District, Maryland and Virginia. The original bill, worked on by the three jurisdictions this summer, included a provision that would have exempted the safety panel from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and open meeting laws. The body would be tasked with adopting its own policies, independent of those in Maryland, Virginia and the District.
Washington Times
In a dramatic turnaround just hours before a hearing on legislation to create a new Metrorail Safety Commission, revisions to the legislation will beef up legal protections for transparency and public access, as advocates had been calling for.
DC Open Government Coalition

The legal skirmishing has escalated into an artillery barrage between the Virginia Information Technologies Agency and Northrop Grumman over the state’s efforts to disentangle from a $1.3 billion, 13-year contract for serving the state’s vast bureaucracy. In an exchange of sharply worded letters in the past two weeks, the state agency and the company traded accusations that the other had violated the terms of the Comprehensive Infrastructure Agreement that has guided the public-private partnership since it began in mid-2006. Northrop Grumman has informed VITA, as the technology agency is known, that the state had breached the contract by refusing to pay an estimated $4.2 million in Microsoft licensing fees that the agency disputes and the company contends the state previously had committed to pay. The company also denied that it had breached the contract by not providing “virtual servers” for the transition of messaging services to Tempus Nova. Rather, Northrop Grumman blamed VITA for failing to provide a plan for transitioning the service and misreading the contract’s provisions for what the company called “a custom work request.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch



National Stories
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents scanned license plates of customers at a California gun show despite no clear evidence of criminal activity at the event. The Wall Street Journal received documents detailing the plan, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, that revealed an operation recording vehicles plates at a gun show in Del Mar, California in 2010. The city is not far from the Mexican border, and emails said the information collected there was then compared to cars crossing the border in attempt to catch gun smugglers.
McClatchy DC

Did the New York Times violate federal law when it published a story about Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax return? Stories in the Washington Post, Slate and LawNewz.com raise the issue, but all of them report that the First Amendment would likely protect the newspaper. The Times received three pages from what appeared to be Trump’s 1995 tax returns in the mail from an anonymous sender. The pages were from a New York state resident return, and New Jersey and Connecticut nonresident returns. The returns reported a $916 million loss in 1995 that would have allowed Trump to avoid paying federal income taxes for up to 18 years. Federal law makes it illegal to publish tax return information in a manner not authorized by law, according to the Post, Slate and LawNewz.com. The articles differ, however, on whether the federal law applies to the Times and to disclosure of the state tax information, and whether state laws also penalize disclosure of tax information.
ABA Journal


Editorials/Columns

They never learn. When those in power try to silence the little guys, it often backfires. And when heavy-handed actions to stomp out tiny voices of dissent are exposed, the resulting tsunami of publicity often helps the group that was targeted. Case in point: Last weekend’s sand sculpture caper. A coalition of grassroots groups, opposed to light rail but unable to afford expensive radio and TV spots, entered the freelance division of the Neptune Festival sand sculpture competition. For a $15 entry fee, they created a modest little mound of sand with a simple message: “Please vote no light rail.” Once darkness fell on Saturday and the crowds thinned, festival officials reportedly visited the offending entry and raked away the words. “I felt like it was putting the Neptune Festival in a bad light,” said Whit Collins, the vice president of the festival who admitted his involvement in the sandy censorship to The Virginian-Pilot. “This is not a political event.” You just made it one, Mr. Collins. Congratulations.
Kerry Dougherty, Virginian-Pilot