Transparency News, 11/22/2022
Tuesday
November 22, 2022
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state & local news stories
Fairfax County released its annual report of FOIA requests. They received 16,160 in FY 2021-22, up 25% from the previous year. Requests made for police records were up by 27%, half the requests come from out of state and $2,956 was the most expensive request paid for.
Fairfax County
stories of national interest
To understand how gambling moved onto campuses, The New York Times reviewed school records and interviewed students, professors, administrators, sports conference officials, gambling executives and counselors. The deals came together largely in private, The Times found, with minimal discussion on campus about their potential impact on students, athletes and the integrity of college sports. To secure these partnerships, athletic departments depend on the companies that handle the promotional and advertising rights for their teams. These companies, which arrange all kinds of deals with sponsors, act as middlemen. They negotiate the agreements with betting companies and take a cut, sometimes in the millions of dollars, of whatever money changes hands. Unlike public universities, which are subject to government disclosure rules and freedom of information requests, the sports-marketing companies are privately held. That means the terms of the deals they strike don’t have to be publicly disclosed if the universities are not a party to the contracts.
The New York Times
Donald Trump's White House blocked dozens of federal agencies from creating new government websites aimed at aiding homeless people, fighting human trafficking, and helping people vote, according to records obtained by Insider through a Freedom of Information Act request. The requests for new websites came from agencies small and large at a time when Trump had grown openly hostile toward his own administration, often deriding the federal government's executive branch as an out-of-control "deep state" conspiring to undermine him. The Department of Defense, Department of Labor, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Central Intelligence Agency, and Environmental Protection Agency are among the more than two-dozen agencies that Trump's Office of Management and Budget rebuffed. Proposed websites that Trump's Office of Management and Budget rejected include HumanTrafficking.gov (Department of State); ReportFraud.gov (Federal Trade Commission); Telehealth.gov (Department of Health and Human Services), FindShelters.gov (Department of Housing and Urban Development), and FiscalData.gov (Department of the Treasury), according to federal records.
Business Insider
Newly released federal audits reveal widespread overcharges and other errors in payments to Medicare Advantage health plans, with some plans overbilling the government more than $1,000 per patient a year on average. Summaries of the 90 audits, which examined billings from 2011 through 2013 and are the most recent reviews completed, were obtained exclusively by KHN through a three-year Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which was settled in late September. The government's audits uncovered about $12 million in net overpayments for the care of 18,090 patients sampled, though the actual losses to taxpayers are likely much higher. Medicare Advantage, a fast-growing alternative to original Medicare, is run primarily by major insurance companies.
NPR
WHO IS YOUR FOI HERO?
VCOG is seeking nominations for its open government awards for citizens, press and government.
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editorials & columns
"The public and their elected officials do not trust or respect each other."
If the McCoart Building had a sign saying, “It has been this many days since the Board of County Supervisors’ meeting went past midnight,” there would be a large zero on it. The occasional long meeting isn’t unusual, but the pattern that has become the norm with the Board of Supervisors exacerbates the growing tension between the people of Prince William County and their government. Many factors appear to contribute to the length of the meetings, but chief among them is a disconnect between the elected officials and the people, the physical manifestation of which is the continued placement of the microphone used by citizens as far from the dais as possible. From behind the backs of most in the chamber, the public comment period has become coarser and more heated, followed by the “Wizard of Oz”-like disembodied heads of people commenting remotely, positioning them even farther from their elected officials. However, the physical distance is only a symbolic representation of the actual problem: The public and their elected officials do not trust or respect each other.
Kristina Nohe, InsideNoVa
