Transparency News 11/16/16
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
State and Local Stories
The Culpeper Police Department Tuesday released its policy – approved by Chief Chris Jenkins – for the use of body-worn cameras that will be assigned to all local officers in uniform. “The use of body worn cameras is intended to enhance law enforcement transparency and accountability,” the first sentence in the seven-page document says. “For example, the use of body worn cameras may reduce the likelihood of complaints against officers and allow for the swift and sure resolution of any complaints that are made.” As for access to the public and media, video footage will not be made available in ongoing investigations if its release would jeopardize the investigation, prosecution or safety of an individual or if its release would cause a suspect to flee or evade detection or result in the destruction of evidence, except pursuant to a court order, according to the policy. As for retention of taped footage, the Culpeper PD will follow Library of Virginia guidelines, according to Settle. He said how long the footage would be retained depends on what type of video it is.
Star-Exponent
Norfolk Councilman Paul Riddick testified Tuesday that a developer told him in the lead-up to a controversial vote in 2011 that the city’s vice mayor was asking for bribes. Specifically, Riddick said Dwight Etheridge told him Councilman-turned-Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot was “asking for money to support the project.” Riddick added that he told the then-president of Tivest Development and Construction “not to pay Mr. Burfoot a red cent” but took no other action. “I thought it was over,” he said, explaining he did not believe at the time any money had changed hands.
Virginian-Pilot
Tom Walls has been named executive director of the Thomas C. Sorensen Institute of Political Leadership, a University of Virginia program that trains Virginians in the skills of politics and public policy and promotes ethics and civility in public life. Walls succeeds Bob Gibson, who has been named senior researcher of UVa’s Academy for Civic Renewal at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Daily Progress
(Note, Gibson is a member of the VCOG board of directors)
Appomattox Town Council this week unanimously approved a measure to double the length of the current two-year council term beginning in 2019. The plan, which requires General Assembly approval, also would move council elections, currently held in May, to November. If the General Assembly approves the change, the final May council election will be in 2018. Council held a public hearing on the amendments prior to Monday’s meeting; no one spoke for or against the change. The town notified the public with two weeks of ads in the local newspaper and a notice in the town office, as required by state code, but no residents attended the meeting who were not presenters.
News & Advance
National Stories
The government serves the people of Oklahoma and the law says the people have a right to know how and why the government makes its decisions. “That means being able to look at records and if we see government doing something we don't think it ought to be doing, reacting to that and that means at the ballot box,” said Brady Henderson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma. The ACLU of Oklahoma is representing two groups suing Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin for failing to provide records under the Oklahoma Open Records Act. “We asked on July the 15th of 2014 for access to records of two death penalty cases in Oklahoma where inmates were recommended for clemency by the state pardon and parole board and the governor rejected those claims and those two inmates were subsequently executed,” explained Arnold Hamilton of the Oklahoma Observer. Nursing home reform advocate Wes Bledsoe has been waiting longer than Hamilton; more than 900 days between requesting records and now. “The transparency of our government and the actions of our government is essential to the proper well-being and welfare of every citizen in this state,” Bledsoe said.
Fox 25
Editorials/Columns
Even if things at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership are only half as bad as a legislative oversight agency’s report indicates, they are still quite bad indeed. Lawmakers who sat through a 90-minute presentation of the findings on Monday had to pick their jaws up off the floor after hearing about VEDP’s lack of oversight, accountability, strategy, and leadership. House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones said the presentation “made me sick to my stomach.” Lawmakers seem likely to withhold funds from the quasi-independent agency until it can get its house in order — or at least make a start on doing so. That’s probably wise. But the state’s political leaders will fail in their responsibility if they do not look deeper than that.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
A legislative report this week found that the economic improvement powers of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to be near zippo. Oversight? Accountability? Performance? All wanting, according to a scathing report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. If this report accurately describes the potential for fraud, especially when it comes to the provision of incentive grants to new and expanding businesses, then legislators are duty-bound to fix it and fix it fast. Likewise, when public money gets handed out under specific conditions, with fixed expectations, then Virginia must have a mechanism in place to ensure that happens. The legal equivalent of a baseball bat would be nice.
Virginian-Pilot
Damning. That’s the word we were going to use to describe the report that a watchdog agency issued this week about the state’s main economic development agency — except that a lot of legislators used it first. The audit says these problems have been going on for a long time. From its founding in July 1995 until January 2016 — when The Roanoke Times reported on the Lindenburg case — the agency “awarded grants without a formal due diligence process to protect the state from fraud and financial loss.” The governing board “did not clearly monitor or document the performance of VEDP or its chief executive officer for the first 18 years of VEDP’s history.” Lots of people deserve the blame here. Perhaps Virginia shouldn’t have even privatized this agency under Gov. George Allen back in 1995. In theory, that was done partly to provide more continuity in economic development policy from one administration to the next. The idea was also that appointees from the private sector would offer more business expertise than politicians could. In fact, however, it sounds like the private sector appointees have treated VEDP the same way they do when appointed to the governing boards of state universities — they’ve simply been rubber-stamps for the administrators they’re supposed to supervise.
Roanoke Times
Donald Trump’s victory has so delighted the U.Va. community that several hundred of its members have already begun working to get him re-elected. The other day 469 faculty members and students sent a letter to university president Teresa Sullivan rebuking her for quoting Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
UVa’s own president should not quote the man who not only founded the university, but also helped found the nation? UVa’s president should not quote the man who articulated the ideology of liberty that not only is fundamental to the nation he helped establish, but that also has inspired freedom movements across the globe? UVa’s president should not quote the man whose concepts of independence not only eventually helped create the “moral compass” that led to freedom and civil-rights movements within this flawed nation, but also thus generated the very freedoms now enjoyed by his critics? Puh-leeze.
Daily Progress
Star-Exponent
Norfolk Councilman Paul Riddick testified Tuesday that a developer told him in the lead-up to a controversial vote in 2011 that the city’s vice mayor was asking for bribes. Specifically, Riddick said Dwight Etheridge told him Councilman-turned-Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot was “asking for money to support the project.” Riddick added that he told the then-president of Tivest Development and Construction “not to pay Mr. Burfoot a red cent” but took no other action. “I thought it was over,” he said, explaining he did not believe at the time any money had changed hands.
Virginian-Pilot
Tom Walls has been named executive director of the Thomas C. Sorensen Institute of Political Leadership, a University of Virginia program that trains Virginians in the skills of politics and public policy and promotes ethics and civility in public life. Walls succeeds Bob Gibson, who has been named senior researcher of UVa’s Academy for Civic Renewal at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
Daily Progress
(Note, Gibson is a member of the VCOG board of directors)
Appomattox Town Council this week unanimously approved a measure to double the length of the current two-year council term beginning in 2019. The plan, which requires General Assembly approval, also would move council elections, currently held in May, to November. If the General Assembly approves the change, the final May council election will be in 2018. Council held a public hearing on the amendments prior to Monday’s meeting; no one spoke for or against the change. The town notified the public with two weeks of ads in the local newspaper and a notice in the town office, as required by state code, but no residents attended the meeting who were not presenters.
News & Advance
National Stories
The government serves the people of Oklahoma and the law says the people have a right to know how and why the government makes its decisions. “That means being able to look at records and if we see government doing something we don't think it ought to be doing, reacting to that and that means at the ballot box,” said Brady Henderson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma. The ACLU of Oklahoma is representing two groups suing Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin for failing to provide records under the Oklahoma Open Records Act. “We asked on July the 15th of 2014 for access to records of two death penalty cases in Oklahoma where inmates were recommended for clemency by the state pardon and parole board and the governor rejected those claims and those two inmates were subsequently executed,” explained Arnold Hamilton of the Oklahoma Observer. Nursing home reform advocate Wes Bledsoe has been waiting longer than Hamilton; more than 900 days between requesting records and now. “The transparency of our government and the actions of our government is essential to the proper well-being and welfare of every citizen in this state,” Bledsoe said.
Fox 25
Editorials/Columns
Even if things at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership are only half as bad as a legislative oversight agency’s report indicates, they are still quite bad indeed. Lawmakers who sat through a 90-minute presentation of the findings on Monday had to pick their jaws up off the floor after hearing about VEDP’s lack of oversight, accountability, strategy, and leadership. House Appropriations Chairman Chris Jones said the presentation “made me sick to my stomach.” Lawmakers seem likely to withhold funds from the quasi-independent agency until it can get its house in order — or at least make a start on doing so. That’s probably wise. But the state’s political leaders will fail in their responsibility if they do not look deeper than that.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
A legislative report this week found that the economic improvement powers of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership to be near zippo. Oversight? Accountability? Performance? All wanting, according to a scathing report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission. If this report accurately describes the potential for fraud, especially when it comes to the provision of incentive grants to new and expanding businesses, then legislators are duty-bound to fix it and fix it fast. Likewise, when public money gets handed out under specific conditions, with fixed expectations, then Virginia must have a mechanism in place to ensure that happens. The legal equivalent of a baseball bat would be nice.
Virginian-Pilot
Damning. That’s the word we were going to use to describe the report that a watchdog agency issued this week about the state’s main economic development agency — except that a lot of legislators used it first. The audit says these problems have been going on for a long time. From its founding in July 1995 until January 2016 — when The Roanoke Times reported on the Lindenburg case — the agency “awarded grants without a formal due diligence process to protect the state from fraud and financial loss.” The governing board “did not clearly monitor or document the performance of VEDP or its chief executive officer for the first 18 years of VEDP’s history.” Lots of people deserve the blame here. Perhaps Virginia shouldn’t have even privatized this agency under Gov. George Allen back in 1995. In theory, that was done partly to provide more continuity in economic development policy from one administration to the next. The idea was also that appointees from the private sector would offer more business expertise than politicians could. In fact, however, it sounds like the private sector appointees have treated VEDP the same way they do when appointed to the governing boards of state universities — they’ve simply been rubber-stamps for the administrators they’re supposed to supervise.
Roanoke Times
Donald Trump’s victory has so delighted the U.Va. community that several hundred of its members have already begun working to get him re-elected. The other day 469 faculty members and students sent a letter to university president Teresa Sullivan rebuking her for quoting Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
UVa’s own president should not quote the man who not only founded the university, but also helped found the nation? UVa’s president should not quote the man who articulated the ideology of liberty that not only is fundamental to the nation he helped establish, but that also has inspired freedom movements across the globe? UVa’s president should not quote the man whose concepts of independence not only eventually helped create the “moral compass” that led to freedom and civil-rights movements within this flawed nation, but also thus generated the very freedoms now enjoyed by his critics? Puh-leeze.
Daily Progress
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