Transparency News 11/23/15

State and Local Stories

In response to a television news report suggesting Prince William County is a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants, county officials have called for an independent inquiry into whether police report people found to have warrants for civil immigration violations. Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart ordered the inquiry after the supervisors met in closed session during a special weekend meeting Nov. 21. In an interview Saturday evening, Stewart said the county must determine the accuracy of a WJLA report that said Prince William County police “do not cooperate” with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
Inside NOVA


National Stories
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Lawmakers say they want voters to decide if privacy and open-government protections should be added to Wyoming's Constitution. The Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Interim Committee voted unanimously Wednesday to support a bill that would put the proposed constitutional changes on the 2016 general election ballot. The proposal states that individual privacy is "essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest." It goes on to say that the amendment "will not deprive a person of any right provided by law to examine documents or to observe the deliberations of an agency or political subdivision of the state, except in cases in which the demand of individual privacy clearly exceeds the merits of public disclosure."
Wyoming Tribune Eagle

The man helping to write a book on Arkansas’ Freedom of Information Act says the dean of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock law school is not complying with the open-records law in a lawsuit filed against the university Tuesday. Law professor Robert Steinbuch sued both the university and Michael Schwartz, dean of the William H. Bowen School of Law, in a Pulaski County court, stating Schwartz failed to turn over public records that Steinbuch is seeking to research student admissions. The records are a spreadsheet showing individual test scores, college grade-point average, law school grade-point average, race, gender and age for all students who graduated from the law school and took the bar exam over a seven-year period. To comply with both the Freedom of Information Act and federal student privacy laws, Steinbuch said he wanted student names redacted from the report, which already had been compiled to be used for a September faculty meeting. According to the lawsuit, the school has twice before given Steinbuch the same records, with Schwartz himself approving their release in 2013. But Schwartz declined to release all the information this year, instead releasing a version with the ethnicity, Law School Admission Test score and law-school GPA redacted. The reason Schwartz, a 10-year Bowen faculty member, provided for withholding the information is that Steinbuch, as a former member of the law school’s admissions committee who had access to students’ scores and personal information, could use the information to glean the identities of minority students, the lawsuit states.
Arkansas Online

The Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust has sued Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez for trying to pay a $4,000 fine with 28 buckets of pennies and nickels, the commission said Wednesday. The Commission also doubled the fine imposed on Hernandez, saying that he intentionally broke its regulations by sending the 360,000 coins even though he knew the panel accepts only checks. The commission ruled in July that Hernandez lied to citizens — in both Spanish and English — about his charge of usurious interest rates on a $180,000 loan to jewelry salesman Luis Felipe “Felipito” Perez, jailed in a massive pyramid scheme fraud. The panel fined the mayor $3,000 plus $1,000 for the costs of the investigation. Perez pocketed about $40 million from various people, including Health politicians like Hernandez, through a fraudulent scheme in which investors were supposed to receive 36 percent in annual interest, according to authorities.
Miami Herald


Editorials/Columns

Fixing the law, however, still might not fix the problem with the state’s high court. The concept of checks and balances is fundamental to America’s notion of good governance. But it means little if the judicial branch will not check assertions of unbridled authority by executive agencies — or its own.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

IT’S HARD TO DECIDE what’s more outrageous about Virginia’s performance on a test of integrity: that the commonwealth got a D, or that such a terrible grade was good enough to rank Virginia 16th in the nation.  “Virginia again scored poorly on information access, lobbying disclosure and political financing,” the report concludes. “The state’s Freedom of Information Act has many exemptions, notably including all work conducted by the major regulatory body for businesses, insurance, financial institutions, utilities and railroads, known as the State Corporation Commission. Elected officials can also invoke exemptions that cover working papers or correspondence.” Despite the state’s sorry grade, the fact that Virginia ranks higher than it did last time is some small cause for encouragement. But for Virginia’s performance to truly match its rhetoric about integrity, it has much work to do.
Virginian-Pilot

In an age of outrage, state and local government secrecy does not rank highly on the public’s lists of concerns. As journalists, we’re passionate about the topic, not because of mistrust, but because we believe open government is good government. When evidence goes missing in the county sheriff’s office or the local Child Protective Services office deletes a backlog of voice mails, the public has a right to know. The News Leader was able to expose these incidents earlier this year because of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests that forced agencies to release related information. Unfortunately, Virginia’s FOIA is laughably weak. It doesn’t apply to enough people, and deliberately violating it is not a criminal offense. People holding some 170 state government positions — from the governor to members to the General Assembly to university presidents — can refuse to release their “working documents.” [sic]
News Leader

Like a hammer, FOIA can be used for harm or for good. And because the wheels of academia and science grind a lot more slowly than vengeance seekers traveling the internet superhighway, academics at public universities seem to be playing catchup. A few scientists who work for public universities (and thus fall under the government umbrella) have already been the target of ‘weaponized’ FOIA. Naturally, vulnerable researchers and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), an advocacy organization, are wary and fearful of the consequences of unrestricted use of FOIA, or what UCS calls “freedom to bully.” They make the argument that the risks associated with unfettered FOIA—including inhibiting research, silencing controversial voices, and dampening academic freedom—weigh heavily against the benefits. These threats and real-life examples have led to calls for various limits on how FOIA is applied. But this law exists for demonstrable reasons, as the many lies and deceits—and FBI surveillance of John Lennon—it’s helped to uncover illustrate. Scientists, even those breathing rarefied air from ivory towers, benefit from these revelations, just like anyone else. The balance here must tilt toward the rights of the many over discomfiting (a little or a lot) the few.
Emily Willingham, Forbes