Transparency News 11/15/17

Wednesday, November 15, 2017


State and Local Stories

At VCOG’s conference tomorrow…
10:00 - Welcome
10:05-11:05 - When the Watchdogs Become the Watched (Bob Lewis [moderator], Jim Nolan, Robin McCormick, Cherise Newsome, Michael Stowe)
11:15 to 11:45 — Craig Merritt on when to call the lawyers in on a FOIA dispute
11:56 to 12:15 — Shelley Kimball on pressures front-line access professionals face from higher-ups
12:15 to 12:50 — lunch & annual meeting
12:50 to 1:15 — Beau Cribbs
1:15 to 1:30 — VCOG awards
1:35 to 2:35 — Comparing Virginia, NC and Tennessee (Megan Rhyne, Deborah Fisher, Jonathan Jones)
2:45 to 3:45 — The Rolling Stone case (Hawes Spencer, Wat Hopkins)
#Access17

The arena developer’s attorney has made it clear the company doesn’t plan to walk away without a fight. After the City Council voted 9-1 to terminate the arena deal last week, Samuel Meekins Jr., who represents Mid-Atlantic Arena, said in an email that the city breached the development agreement. Virginia Beach released Meekins’ email Tuesday. Meekins asked the city to keep documents, emails and text messages related to the agreement. Julie Hill, a city spokeswoman, said those materials must be retained under state law. In a reply email to Meekins, City Attorney Mark Stiles requested that the developer preserve related documents in light of the “potential for litigation.”
Virginian-Pilot

Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney’s Monument Avenue Commission will hold a series of small group meetings at the request of community organizations beginning in January to gather input on what course of action the city should take on the Confederate monuments lining Monument Avenue.
Richmond Times-Dispatch



National Stories
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Vice President Mike Pence’s attendance at an NFL game that he quickly left after a national anthem protest cost Indianapolis about $14,000 in police overtime and other costs. The figures were released Tuesday by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The left-leaning policy group sought details about expenses surrounding Pence’s Oct. 8 trip. It found that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s costs included nearly $11,500 in overtime for tactical and traffic officers.
Culpeper Star-Exponent

A judge has refused a request by South Carolina House Republicans to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a coalition of news outlets — including The Post and Courier — challenging the party's caucus contention it has a constitutional right to block public access to its meetings and records. The filing doesn't immediately settle the news media's case, but it does give support to the argument that caucus activities should be open under current state law.
Charleston Post and Courier

The City of West Point vio­lated the Kentucky Open Rec­ords Act by failing to respond to a request for records, including questions about water and sewer contractors and agreements between the city and two public water utilities. The attorney general’s office, which reviews appeals of open records requests, found the city in error by failing to respond in writing to a request and withholding records without statutory justification. Last August, Jerry Noel asked for four sets of records, including a copy of a July 13 document he presented the city asking for licenses and cer­tifications of city personnel. Governmental entities in Ken­tucky are required to respond within three working days to open records requests. In the attorney general’s report, it said Noel reached out by telephone to West Point Mayor William Ash on Aug. 28, 10 calendar days after his initial request, to determine why he had not received a response.
The News-Enterprise



Editorials/Columns


Once the most recent recycling contract expired, Portsmouth elected not to tell residents to simply throw everything in the trash until a recycling program was back in place. Instead, Portsmouth continued to send out recycling trucks for curbside pickup. Then the green trucks headed to the city’s burn center, where the contents went into incinerators along with all the coffee grounds, dirty diapers and chicken skins. Worse, when asked about the deception, the city manager insisted that technically speaking, incineration is just another form of recycling because the heat from the fires creates steam, which is used for electricity. Seriously? City officials may have been hoping they wouldn’t be discovered, and the game of let’s-pretend-recycling could have continued. But disgruntled residents complained. At least one person with a drone followed the recycling trucks right up to the Wheelabrator Technologies plant on Elm Avenue and the secret was out. When confronted with the truth about where the city’s “recycling” was headed, Portsmouth Mayor John Rowe shrugged off the scheme. He told The Pilot that there was no need to inform the unwitting public because sorting trash is “no extra work at all.”
Kerry Dougherty, The Virginian-Pilot