Transparency News 1/12/15 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Monday, January 12, 2015

Transparency Virginia!

PRESS CONFERENCE

Tuesday, January 13, 2015, 11 a.m.

House Briefing Room, General Assembly Building

Invited: THE MEDIA, LEGISLATORS, AND THE PUBLIC

Learn why fair procedure in committee. . . every day, all the time. . . works for the people, and for lawmakers.

State and Local Stories

With more than 170 exemptions to state Freedom of Information Act requirement that public bodies do business in public and let Virginians look at the records of government bodies, you’d think there were more than enough ways for officials to get up to things without the public knowing. But apparently, there can never be enough.So, Del. Ed Scott, R-Culpeper and Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Woodstock, are proposing two more. Scott wants to let Soil and Water Conservation District Boards, the state board, resource management review committees go behind closed doors when discussing proprietary corporate or business records. (The act, at 2.2-3711-A.33 already allows public bodies to do just that). Gilbert wants to say “certain health care committees and entities” (not otherwise defined) can withhold privileged communications such as records of medical staff committees or utilization review committees. The standard legal definition of privileged communications is that they are confidential private records and statements and the person who receives it can’t be legally compelled to disclose it. On the other hand, state Sen. Chap Petersen is proposing to do away with an exemption that lets university presidents keep many of their records secret.
Daily Press

Though there is a smattering of social media activity by city council members in Hampton Roads,Twitter remains a largely untapped opportunity for local elected officials to reach and meaningfully engage with their constituents. Today, social media use in the U.S. transcends racial, age and gender populations. Seventy-three percent of all adults on the internet use social media. And Pew reports that 1 out of every 3 adults is already politically active on social media. Twitter, specifically, is a medium that presents opportunity for politicians to build coalitions with groups that are elusive at the ballot box, such as youth and minorities who use Twitter at the highest rates. Opportunity to increase engagement with the public is abundant even for those within the Twitterverse. Based on my qualitative review, the vast majority of posted content was of a one-way nature. Some treated the medium as if they were shouting into a megaphone as opposed to seeking engagement. Almost no questions were posed for public feedback. Some accounts did not post any original content, only links from other sites, such as Facebook.
James Toscano, Digital Dominion

Four citizens filed an injunction request to prevent Councilman John Hart Sr., Ward 7, from taking office after his residency was called into question, and following his late payment of fines from the Electoral Board. The injunction request, which was filed in Petersburg Circuit Court on Jan. 5, was denied by a judge two days later, according to court documents. The injunction was denied because Hart wasn’t given enough time by the petitioners to answer the injunction and to appear for a hearing, according to court records.
Progress-Index

National Stories

A state judge has ordered the New York City Police Department to release records on a secretive program that uses unmarked vans equipped with X-ray machines to detect bombs. The ruling follows a nearly three-year legal battle by ProPublica, which had requested police reports, training materials, contracts and any health and safety tests on the vans under the state's Freedom of Information Law.
ProPublica

Attorney General Eric Holder declined to confirm on Sunday the Justice Department and FBI have urged felony charges against former CIA Director David Petraeus, but insisted the investigation has been carried out appropriately. The recommendation for bringing charges, contending Petraeus provided classified information to his former mistress Paula Broadwell, were first reported Friday by The New York Times. “I don’t want to comment on what is an ongoing matter,” Holder said on CNN’s “State of the Union. “I will say that frequently those things that are leaked to the media are done by people who not in the position of know and are frequently inaccurate.”
Politico

An Arizona judge ordered the release of testimony made behind closed doors by convicted murderer Jodi Arias as she seeks to avoid the death penalty, following a ruling by the state’s supreme court, court documents showed on Friday. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sherry Stephens ruled that transcripts for Oct. 30 and Nov. 3 be unsealed after the Arizona Supreme Court denied a bid by defense lawyers to block the move, claiming it would hurt Arias' right to a fair trial.
Reuters

Editorials/Columns

Last June, city officials in Norfolk were sued because they refused to treat city-related text messages as public records. It seems that city employees said they hadn’t figured out how to retrieve and store text messages. At least that was the city’s response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which sought such messages and other correspondence from the city. The Norfolk Circuit Court judge in the case wasn’t buying it and refused the city’s attempt to have the suit dismissed. Somehow, the technical folks in Norfolk’s city government found out what most of us already knew—there are ways to retrieve and store text messages. As a result, the city and PETA have reached a settlement over the city’s refusal to treat text messages as public records.
Dick Hammerstrom, Free Lance-Star

In a recent story on voting patterns among the members of the Richmond School Board, reporter Zachary Reid noted that 9th District representative Tichi Pinkney Eppes “began to speak about her voting record … but stopped and said she wanted to think it over and would call back…. Instead, she sent an email that said, ‘Thanks for your questions. I have decided not to respond.’ ” That might seem curt, but Eppes is a veritable songbird compared with 5th District representative Mamie Taylor, who did not respond to inquiries at all. In the aftermath of a personal dispute with a fellow board member, Reid notes, “she said she would no longer talk to The Times-Dispatch.” We don’t envy school board members, who perform a great deal of public service — little of it fun and some of it unpleasant — while taking a lot of heat and receiving too little thanks for the work they do. But the burdens of the job are no excuse for stonewalling reasonable requests for information from the media and the public.If Eppes and Taylor will not provide information, others will fill in the blanks for them.
Times-Dispatch

Before this week, I'd never heard of Kirby Delauter, a politician in Frederick County, Md. What a difference a threat on social media makes. Twitter and Facebook enthusiasts know all about the councilman, who didn't believe the First Amendment applied to him – and who acted like a bully. "He has much less a right to privacy than other individuals," Stan Tickton, professor of mass communications and journalism at Norfolk State University, told me. Nor was Delauter new to this drill. He'd been a county commissioner for several years, a county spokeswoman told me. Sure, public officials can decline to be interviewed, even if that shortchanges citizens. The late Elizabeth Daniels, a Portsmouth School Board member, refused to speak to The Pilot for years. Chesapeake Vice Mayor John de Triquet, a pediatrician, often doesn't return my calls. But I don't recall them threatening to sue for publishing their names.
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot

In many ways the University of Richmond is everything a college ought to be, right down to the Gothic buildings nestled in a sylvan retreat. But in one regard it exemplifies the worst of contemporary academia. U of R has just been singled out for the dubious “Speech Codes of the Year” distinction from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). “While all of the Speech Codes of the Monthflagrantly violated students’ or faculty members’ right to free expression, two of them were so egregious that they deserve special mention,” the group says. The U of R joins Penn State as this year’s recipients.
Times-Dispatch

A legal spat over temporary signs informing people of upcoming religious services may not seem important to free-speech jurisprudence, but the upcoming case of Reed v. Town of Gilbert is significant and cuts to the heart of First Amendment doctrine. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case on Jan. 12. Pastor Clyde Reed and Good News Community Church contend that a Gilbert, Ariz. sign ordinance violates core free-speech principles. Under the ordinance, “qualifying event” signs arerestricted far more than political signs, ideological signs, and homeowner association meeting signs. The town imposed far more restrictive limits on size and the length of time such event signs can be displayed. Reed and his church argue that the town engages in content discrimination by treating noncommercial signs differently based on content. The town counters that its ordinance is content-neutral because it lacked a discriminatory motive and is not discriminating on the basis of viewpoint.
David L. Hudson Jr., Star-Exponent