Transparency News 11/28/17

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

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State and Local Stories

A visiting judge on Monday apparently dismissed all defense motions challenging the validity of the underlying indictments against Councilman Mark Whitaker. “The road to vindication is a long road,” Whitaker said after walking out of a three-hour hearing. He said a trial date set for March remains on the docket. What prosecutors and defense attorneys argued and what retired Hampton Circuit Judge William Andrews III said remains unclear. Andrews ordered the public out of the courtroom about 45 minutes into the hearing so that the attorneys could argue two motions in private. They involved the discussion of grand jury testimony the court previously ordered to be sealed. A Virginian-Pilot reporter tried to object to the move, prompting Andrews to ask a deputy to escort everyone out. The Pilot filed an objection with the court and requested transcripts of the proceeding.
The Virginian-Pilot

Embattled Judge Kurt Pomrenke was ordered removed from his position on the 28th District juvenile and domestic relations bench Monday by the Supreme Court of Virginia. The court ruled unanimously that Pomrenke, 63, violated the Virginia Canons of Justice by attempting to influence potential witnesses in his wife’s 2016 federal corruption trial. The court could have either censured Pomrenke or removed him from office but Chief Justice Donald Lemons wrote in the opinion Pomrenke’s actions were of “sufficient gravity to warrant removal.” “What Judge Pomrenke did strikes at the heart of the judicial system,” Lemons wrote. “It is particularly damaging to the integrity of the judicial process and the confidence of the citizens of the Commonwealth that a sitting judge in the Commonwealth would attempt to improperly influence two potential witnesses in his wife’s federal criminal trial. That his transgressions may not have actually affected the criminal trial of his wife does not mitigate the gravity of his conduct.”
Bristol Herald Courier



National Stories
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Last week, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Time Inc. won a lawsuit to secure the unsealing of four court documents from the 1999 settlement of a class action lawsuit relating to the construction of Trump Tower.  The class action lawsuit alleged that undocumented, non-union Polish workers were employed in connection with the demolition of the Bonwit Teller building in Manhattan to make way for Trump Tower, and that the businesses responsible for the demolition failed to make agreed-upon payments for those workers’ wages to construction union insurance trust funds and pension funds.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Former President Barack Obama’s family travels cost the U.S. a total of $114 million during his presidency, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group. President Donald Trump has, so far, cost taxpayers $10 million. Trump, though he has only been in office for nine months, is so far on track to come out ahead of the Obama administration’s expense record. He, too, has had his fair share of trip splurges. The new total was calculated by adding newly released documents to previous expense documents Judicial Watch had requested. Judicial Watch sued because the Air Force and Secret Service did not respond to its public records requests in time, as required by law.
Newsweek



Editorials/Columns


Information is more accessible than ever. If you are curious about the cast of a TV show from 1975, or lyrics to your favorite ‘80s pop song, you’ll be satisfied in seconds. Yet if you want to read scientific research articles, you are likely to come up empty-handed. And that "open access" model that was supposed to offer a solution? It’s created new problems. Academic publishing has fallen into disequilibrium and desperately needs a new approach. Time and again, when new efforts have emerged to facilitate broad access to publicly funded research, private companies have intervened and fought to restrict it. In our information age, it is simply unacceptable that the public cannot readily gain access to research paid for with public dollars.
Andrew V. Suarez and Terry McGlynn, Chronicle of Higher Education