Transparency News, 11/14/2022
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November 14, 2022
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state & local news stories
WHO IS YOUR FOI HERO?
VCOG is seeking nominations for its open government awards for citizens, press and government.
Click here for details.
In the annual Digital Cities Survey from the Center for Digital Government, the following Virginia cities garnered mention. In the Up to 75,000 population category: Williamsburg (3rd), Danville (5th). In the 75,000 to 124,999 population category: Lynchburg (4th), Roanoke (7th). In the 125,000 to 499,999 population category: Virginia Beach (2nd). Congratulations!
Governing
The charitable foundation whose mission is to assist New College Institute spends twice as much on its own director’s salary as it does on scholarships for students in the Martinsville area, where the state-funded higher education center exists to help the region through education and job training. The officials who run New College Institute say they’re not getting the help they need from their nonprofit arm, the New College Foundation, which has a mission to provide financial and other support to NCI. They released documents showing that they’ve been asking the foundation since 2017 for information on how it decides what to spend money on and what the process is for students in the region — who earn degrees through four-year colleges by taking classes at NCI’s building — to apply for scholarships. Even this month, NCI officials said they can’t get specific questions answered from the New College Foundation. The foundation has nearly $12.2 million in assets, according to its most recent Form 990, the public document that nonprofit organizations are required to file with the Internal Revenue Service.
Martinsville Bulletin
There’s no guarantee it will win ultimate passage, but a proposed resolution to be considered by the Arlington County Civic Federation makes it clear: Some people are really, really upset with the way the county’s leaders appear to be marginalizing voices that either don’t support their policies, or simply want to add input. “It appears to many residents that the current community-engagement methods are unevenly applied or have fundamentally changed and no longer consistently include critical engagement principles and features,” the draft resolution noted.
Sun Gazette
For the past six months, an alliance of four has largely controlled the seven-member Portsmouth City Council. It abruptly fired then-City Manager Angel Jones in May and quickly replaced her with the former police chief, to the frustration of other council members and confusion of many in the community. But that alliance has been fractured. Two of those members — Paul Battle and Christopher Woodard — lost their seats in Tuesday’s election, in no small part because a powerful Black political group in Portsmouth turned its back on them and, in a rare move, put its weight behind a white candidate. Rev. Milton Blount, who leads the MLK committee, said it was meant to send a message of unity. He said members weren’t happy about the council majority ousting Jones and choosing her replacement without input from other council members, and that the public’s dissatisfaction with that process united the Black and white communities against those four council members.
The Virginian-Pilot
A new data tool from VCU reveals the companies evicting the most residents over the past five years across Virginia, using publicly available court records. The database, published by the RVA Eviction Lab at VCU’s Wilder School, compiled eviction numbers by plaintiff and includes breakdowns by year and zip code. One difficulty in parsing the data is that landlords in Virginia are not required to file under their own or their company’s name. Instead, they can have lawyers or holding companies file on their behalf, obscuring who, exactly, is actually behind the eviction.
WRIC
stories of national interest
During a closed-door session with lawmakers in December 2021, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, was asked whether the bureau had ever purchased and used Pegasus, the hacking tool that penetrates mobile phones and extracts their contents. Wray acknowledged that the FBI had bought a license for Pegasus, but only for research and development. “To be able to figure out how bad guys could use it, for example,” he told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., according to a transcript of the hearing that was recently declassified. But dozens of internal FBI documents and court records tell a different story. The documents, produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times against the bureau, show that FBI officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy the hacking tools — made by the Israeli spyware firm NSO — in its own criminal investigations. The officials developed advanced plans to brief the bureau’s leadership, and drew up guidelines for federal prosecutors about how the FBI’s use of hacking tools would need to be disclosed during criminal proceedings.
Yahoo! news
editorials & columns
Known by its acronym, VPAP — pronounced Vee-pap — is an online watchdog of money and politics — and more: lobbying, election returns, conflict-of-interest disclosures by candidates and officials, redistricting, legislation, demographics, and news. VPAP even occasionally breaks news. That includes uncovering just ahead of the 2022 congressional elections a delay, attributed by the Youngkin administration to a computer glitch, in the state’s processing of hundreds of thousands voter of registration applications. The cock-up had the potential to keep people from voting. Led by David Poole since its inception 25 years ago, VPAP — now an eight-person operation, the annual budget of which has swelled from the low-five figures to more than $1 million — will soon have to make do without him. Poole is retiring in June 2023 at the ripe old age of 62½. He doesn’t know what he’ll be doing for his next act.
Jeff Schapiro, Richmond Times-Dispatch
