Transparency News 11/16/15

State and Local Stories

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear arguments over whether Virginia's Republican-led legislature unlawfully considered race when drawing congressional districts by packing black voters into one Democratic-held district, diluting their clout elsewhere. The nine justices will hear an appeal by current and former Republican members of the U.S. Congress challenging a June 2015 lower court ruling that threw out the majority-black district, which is held by Democratic Representative Bobby Scott, who is black. The court will also decide whether the members of Congress have standing to pursue the challenge.
Reuters

The public now has the ability to check how Virginia hospitals rank in patient safety. The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association, a health system advocacy group, has launched the Quality and Patient Safety Scorecard, an interactive online scorecard that includes patient safety records for 80 facilities. Each scorecard has information about a hospital’s health care-associated infections, patient safety, hospital readmission rates, mortality data and patient satisfaction. The score also includes the efficiency of Medicare spending per beneficiary.
Daily Progress

Editorials/Columns

While the commonwealth had improved in several of the problem areas from 2012 — ethics enforcement and executive and legislative accountability, for example — the 2014 grades of “D” in each are hardly anything to write home about. Lobbying disclosure and public access to information still get flunking grades. Counter-balancing the “Ds” and “Fs” are high and relatively high grades on the oversight and integrity of the electoral process (“B-” and a ranking of fourth) and the business operation of government in procurement and internal auditing (a grade of “B” in each) and judicial accountability, budgeting and civil service management (grades of “C-” in each). But why the flunking grades in the areas that count, the very areas of weakness in state law that made the McDonnell scandal possible? Because the General Assembly didn’t want to do what was necessary to make Virginia a true leader in good government. There is no reason in the world Virginia couldn’t also be a national leader in ethics and public accountability.
News & Advance