Transparency News 11/10/15
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
State and Local Stories
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Newport News judge will hear arguments Tuesday morning about whether a Daily Press lawsuit against the Office of the Executive Secretary of the Supreme Court of Virginia should go forward. The lawsuit, filed in August by the Daily Press and reporter Dave Ress, argues that the Office of the Executive Secretary should be ordered to release a statewide database of court records under the Freedom of Information Act. The OES is taxpayer-funded and provides access to records for public use online. Newport News Circuit Court Judge David Pugh will hear arguments Tuesday morning over whether the case should proceed, following a filing by the OES seeking dismissal of the suit. The OES has also sought to have every circuit court clerk in Virginia made parties to the lawsuit.
Daily Press
A sports and entertainment arena appears closer to reality as the City Council is expected to make a final decision in December. On Monday night, the council and a developer reached a tentative agreement on a $200 million facility near the Oceanfront. Council members met in a closed session for nearly two hours to go over the details . The developers, United States Management, sat in the lobby of the city manager’s office waiting to see whether the council would give the project the green lightto proceed to the next steps. The city and the developer had reached a nonbinding agreement, but they have made changes to it, which will be revealed today at a council briefing. Mayor Will Sessoms said further contract changes will not be allowed. Sessoms said, as far as he knows, Virginia Beach is the first U.S. city to contract with a private company to build an arena. Sessoms said that’s one of the reasons it took so long to come to terms. He joked that he has lost a lot of hair from the stress of trying to make the arena a reality.
Virginian-Pilot
Virginia long claimed it had an ethical political culture based on a tradition of civic service, genial debate, and gentlemanly behavior – until events proved otherwise in 2014. That’s when the conviction of former Gov. Bob McDonnell on federal corruption charges rocked Old Dominion politics. The state legislature responded in March 2014 by passing the first limits on gifts for politicians and their family members. It created a new ethics council to collect and publish disclosure forms for all branches of government. In April, the gift limits were lowered to $100, a change sought by McDonnell’s successor, Gov. Terry McAuliffe; the new limits will go into effect in January. These improvements to ethics laws and oversight played a part in Virginia earning a score of 66, ranking it 16th in the State Integrity Investigation, a data-driven assessment of state government accountability and transparency by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity.
News Leader
The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia filed a $25 million lawsuit Monday against Rolling Stone magazine and writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of a now-discredited article published last fall that linked the fraternity to a brutal gang rape that the chapter says “never happened.” Police found no evidence to substantiate the alleged assault, outlined in graphic detail and attributed to a U.Va. student identified only by her first name, “Jackie.” After significant discrepancies emerged in Jackie’s account, Rolling Stone apologized and retracted the story, which is now the subject of a growing number of defamation lawsuits. In Phi Kappa Psi’s lawsuit, the fraternity says the article’s central narrative — which described Jackie being smashed through a glass table and raped by a group of young men during a party at the fraternity’s house in 2012 — is “entirely false and a complete fabrication.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
The FBI and the U.S. Secret Service are currently investigating a bomb threat that was made Monday against the Bristol Herald Courier. The Secret Service is involved in the investigation because a threat was also made against President Barack Obama. The threat was made in a letter from an inmate at Wallens Ridge State Prison in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.
Herald Courier
National Stories
The U.S. National Security Agency is ready to end later this month collecting Americans' domestic call records in bulk and move to a more targeted system,meeting a legislative deadline imposed earlier this year, according to a government memo seen by Reuters. The memo, sent on Monday from the NSA to relevant committees in the U.S. Congress, stated that the spy agency "has successfully developed a technical architecture to support the new program" in time for it to become operational as scheduled on Nov. 29.
Reuters
A video that showed University of Missouri protesters restricting a student photographer’s access to a public area of campus on Monday ignited discussions about press freedom. Tim Tai, a student photographer on freelance assignment for ESPN, was trying to take photos of a small tent city that protesters had created on a campus quad. Concerned Student 1950, an activist group that formed to push for increased awareness and action around racial issues on campus, did not want reporters near the encampment. Protesters blocked Mr. Tai’s view and argued with him, eventually pushing him away. At one point, they chanted, “Hey hey, ho ho, reporters have got to go.” “I am documenting this for a national news organization,” Mr. Tai told the protesters, adding that “the First Amendment protects your right to be here and mine.”
New York Times
Editorials/Columns
Imagine that someone publicly made damaging allegations against you that you believed to be false. Now imagine that when you tried to publicly defend yourself against those allegations, you found yourself accused of unlawful retaliation. Sound unfair? It certainly does, but that is exactly what is happening around the country in the name of preventing sex discrimination on campus. According to Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights documents, actual retaliation involves intimidation, threats or coercion. Why, then, are individuals and institutions being accused of retaliation for simply mentioning public cases or, worse yet, for attempting to defend their reputations against publicized allegations of wrongdoing?
Samantha Harris, Free Lance-Star
