Transparency News 11/27/17

Monday, November 27, 2017


State and Local Stories

A Daily Press reporter has written a new book that explores the history of fighting for access to public records in America long before open records laws existed. Dave Ress, the newspaper’s resident expert on open records laws, delves into how citizens pushed for access in the post-Civil War era and beyond. Even though those rights weren’t spelled out on paper, citizens often had “unvoiced assumptions and informal notions” about how the government must answer to the people, Ress writes.
Daily Press

The Haysi Partners organization has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Dickenson County Public School’s supervisor of business and finance for a long list of documents connected to the system’s handling of money from and contracts with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Coalfield Progress

The state parole board is changing how it interprets Virginia’s three-strikes law in a way that could free hundreds of inmates – many of them nonviolent – who are serving prison terms significantly longer than the typical first-degree murderer, the board’s chairwoman said Saturday. The announcement comes after a Virginian-Pilot investigative story reported that a high percentage of three-strikes inmates have served two to three decades in prison for crimes in which no one was injured.
Virginian-Pilot



National Stories
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency must make public the names of people who sold property through a flood mitigation program and will be required to disclose the exact locations and sales prices of those properties, a federal judge ruled this week. National Public Radio reporter Robert Benincasa sought the data about the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program under the Freedom of Information Act back in 2014, but FEMA refused, saying release of the data would intrude on the privacy of those who sold the property.
Politico

The Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research has paid nearly $60,000 to a Little Rock law firm over the past five months for the assistance the firm has provided regarding an ongoing FBI probe into legislative records. Invoices released by the bureau this week detailed some of the work handled by lawyers for the Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates and Woodyard law firm in relation to the federal investigation. The total cost of that work, dating back to June 13, was $59,301, records show.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Long before Mayor Bill de Blasio started to define New York City as the nexus of anti-Donald Trump sentiment, the mayor and other senior officials in his administration maintained friendly relations with the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request show. The emails, spanning from de Blasio’s first year in office in 2014 through the spring of 2017, show de Blasio’s occasionally fawning overtures to Kushner and others in the Trump Organization in the weeks after the 2016 election. 
Governing



Editorials/Columns


It’s encouraging that one of the very first bills filed for the 2018 General Assembly addresses a gap in our Freedom of Information Act. Del. Mike Mullin, D-Newport News, has proposed a bill – H.B. 4, which means it was the fourth bill filed for the 2018 session – that requires that the Office of Executive Secretary of the Virginia Supreme Court's case information database be open to the public for inspection. Specifically, it says the OES case management system shall be searchable by party name, charge (for criminal cases), filing type (for civil cases), hearing date, and case number across all localities and that the entire compilation of records contained in the system shall be made available.
Daily Press

MERE WEEKS after elections across Virginia dramatically shifted power in the House of Delegates, and more than a month before lawmakers convene in Richmond, the 2018 General Assembly session is shaping up to be a consequential moment for transparency in the commonwealth. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have a decidedly mixed record on bills that would improve access to records or to meetings — measures which defend the public’s right to have access to their government — and should be judged by those records rather than their party affiliation. But this should be an opportunity for lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, to commit to making Virginia a leader in transparency, in keeping with its egalitarian traditions and reputation for responsible, responsive governance.
The Virginian-Pilot

A week ago former president Barack Obama spoke at the Richmond Forum. The Times-Dispatch ran a short news story about it, but it included few details — because Obama had asked that the media be barred from the event. Once upon a time, the Obama White House boasted of being “the most transparent administration in history.” The claim was a bad joke then, and it hasn’t gotten any funnier now that Obama is hitting the lecture circuit.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Since last Thanksgiving, MuckRock users have filed a collective 14,852 requests – a little over a thousand requests per month, helping release 479,842 pages of documents that were, in most cases, hidden from public view. But none of that would have been possible without the hard word of dedicated public servants. This holiday, please take a minute to thank a FOIA officer who helped make government open and accountable. Maybe a records officer waived a fee or helped point you in the direction of the documents you actually wanted. Maybe you were able to get your question answered even when the underlying data might have been technically exempt. Every day, in hundreds of different ways, Freedom of Information Act staffers and public information officers help ease the process. A quick note letting them know that someone appreciates their work can go a long way — it can go an even longer way if you send it to their boss and let them know a particular staff member was helpful.
MuckRock