Transparency News 10/7/15

State and Local Stories

Transparency was a dominant theme for the stacked panel of public office candidates at Tuesday night's NAACP forum in Smithfield. Candidates for the Board of Supervisors, School Board, Sheriff's Office and Commonwealth's Attorney's Office attended the forum. The sheriff's candidates, Sheriff Mark Marshall and his challenger Russell Stephenson, were asked how they would make their office transparent if elected. Marshall said his office is currently so transparent, citizens often don't need to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get the records they want. Stephenson didn't have a specific plan but said the sheriff's office could do a better job of listening to a county of 36,000 people.
Daily Press

A day after the city of Richmond completed its long-delayed 2014 comprehensive annual financial report, top finance officials declined to say whether they expect to finish this year’s edition of the report by the state’s Nov. 30 deadline. “Our goal is to work as hard as we can to get it done sooner rather than later,” said Chief Administrative Officer Selena Cuffee-Glenn, but she told a reporter she didn’t want to give a specific date because “then you’ll use it against us.” If the city is late again this year, it will mark the third consecutive year the city has missed the state’s deadline.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Some Republican elections officials expressed concern Tuesday over a practice both major parties are using to streamline the process of signing up absentee voters, saying it encourages voter fraud. Earlier this year, members of the state Board of Elections said that voters may sign absentee-ballot request forms electronically instead of printing out the forms, signing them with an ink pen and e-mailing back a scan or mailing the forms through the post office. The change lets voters skip the step of printing out the forms. That guidance was offered during a contentious primary this summer, when House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) set up a secure Web site to make it easier for voters to request absentee ballots electronically. But the practice has raised a red flag now that Del. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) is using a similar site to sign up voters as he goes door to door seeking support for his state Senate bid in a district that includes Fairfax, Prince William and Stafford counties.
Washington Post

Bristol Herald Courier reporter David McGee was recognized Monday as a member of the Virginia School Boards Association 2015 Media Honor Roll program. Each year the association recognizes members of the news media for fair, balanced reporting on school divisions and education-related topics. McGee’s name was submitted for consideration by the Bristol Virginia School Board who presented a certificate during Monday’s regular monthly meeting. “We want to thank you personally for your approach to sharing with your community both the challenges facing our schools and successes achieved by the teachers and schools,” association Executive Director Gina Patterson wrote in a letter. “Your work has aided in focusing on our goal of providing the best public schools we can for the children who attend them.”
Herald Courier

A motion to terminate Halifax County Administrator Jim Halasz failed in a 4-4 vote Monday night following a two-hour long closed-door session of the Halifax County Board of Supervisors. The vote split along the same lines as the first half of the year when the board deadlocked 4-4 for months on electing a chairman. During the open portion of the meeting Monday evening, ED-5 Supervisor Barry Bank added a vote of no confidence to the agenda saying action would be taken following the closed-door session. However, when supervisors emerged from behind closed doors some two hours later, the eight-member board disagreed 4-4 on whether to certify actions taken behind closed doors. The board failed to certify that the closed-door session was conducted in conformity with Virginia law with Bank, ED-3 Supervisor Hubert Pannell, ED-7 Supervisor Lottie Nunn and ED-8 Supervisor W. Bryant Claiborne. voting against the certification. When questioned why he voted no, ED-5 Supervisor Bank said, “Because we talked about things we weren’t supposed to.” When asked to divulge what part of state law was violated during the closed-door session, Bank said, “It’s not morally right for me to talk about what we discussed in closed session.”
Gazette-Virginian


National Stories
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Michigan State University has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to put a hold on an order to release the names of student-athletes who were suspects in criminal cases. MSU is supposed to comply with the lower court order by the end of the month. But the university asked for a delay while the case is appealed to the state Supreme Court. MSU is opposing a freedom of information request filed last year by ESPN. The network was investigating whether colleges, police, and prosecutors give preferential treatment to student-athletes who run afoul of the law. MSU says it should not have to give up the names unless someone is actually charged with a crime.
Michigan Radio

Records related to a 911 call from the Jim Bob Duggar residence and related letters from a juvenile judge to Springdale city officials are subject to release under a Freedom of Information Act, Circuit Judge Beth Storey Bryan ruled Tuesday afternoon. The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sued Sept. 3 in Washington County Circuit Court after Springdale officials refused repeated requests for the documents. They include the recording of the 911 call and supporting documents from May 27 and June 11 correspondence between Circuit Judge Stacey Zimmerman, who presides over juvenile court, and Ernest Cate, Springdale city attorney. The 911 recording has already been released to the public. The newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it after the fact on June 10. A copy of the call was obtained by In Touch magazine of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., through an earlier Freedom of Information Act request. The letters addressed the release of a certain police report and inquired as to the city’s policy on the release of police reports in the future, according to one of the city’s responses to FOIA requests.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday that he had reopened an investigation into whether the Secret Service played a role in disclosing embarrassing information about a House committee chairman who had been critical of the agency. The inquiry will examine statements that the Secret Service’s director, Joseph P. Clancy, had made about when he knew that Representative Jason Chaffetz, Republican of Utah and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, had once applied to be a Secret Service agent but had been rejected, according to the inspector general, John Roth.
New York Times

Freedom of speech covers more than just speech. First Amendment rights protect bumper stickers, campaign signs and other nonverbal forms of expression. And now "ballot selfies," pictures taken by voters of their own marked ballots, might be the newest addition under the umbrella of the First Amendment in several states.
Governing

A federal court is weighing whether Hillary Clinton's private server network should be treated as a State Department records system and therefore searched in its entirety by the agency. Lawyers for Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, pressed Judge Emmet Sullivan Tuesday to allow the court to question Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's top records official. They suggested Kennedy could certify whether the agency authorized Clinton's use of a private server. Judicial Watch's legal team argued against "relying on former employees' apparently personal attorneys to decide" which emails should be considered official records in a Freedom of Information Act hearing Tuesday in district court. State Department attorneys said the argument that Clinton's email domain should be treated as an official records system was "an incredibly novel legal theory" and discouraged the court from immediately allowing a review of the argument.
Washington Examiner