Transparency News 11/6/14

Thursday, November 6, 2014  

State and Local Stories

To learn what happened at yesterday’s meetings of the subcommittees reviewing FOIA’s exemptions, read tweets of the day.
Records meeting
Meetings meeting 

The mystery write-in winner in Tuesday’s Altavista Town Council election has been revealed. Micki Brumfield, who ran a write-in campaign, was announced as the third winner in the race Wednesday, electing her to her first term on council. She received 377 votes, about 27 fewer than initially pro-jected Tuesday night due to people not writing Brumfield’s exact name, including using her maiden name. Her final count and her name could not be released until Wednesday when the Campbell County registrar’s office was able to open the sealed envelopes to canvas the results.
News & Advance

Danville’s machinery and tools tax is one of the lowest in the state. During a Danville Utility Commission meeting Monday, Brett Vassey of the Virginia Manufacturers Association accused the city of having one of the highest machinery and tools tax in the state. Vassey corrected himself in an email to City Manager Joe King on Tuesday, saying he mixed up the machinery and tools tax numbers with real estate tax rates. Vassey said he appreciates the extra meetings being held to study the electric utility and determine its future in a “very transparent and participative way; this is the right way to go.” But machinery and tools taxes are not a problem.
Register & Bee

National Stories

Most of the justices seemed troubled by Supreme Court arguments on Wednesday about the prosecution of a Florida fisherman for throwing three undersize red grouper back into the Gulf of Mexico. The fisherman, John L. Yates, was convicted of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, a federal law aimed primarily at white-collar crime. The law imposes a maximum sentence of 20 years for the destruction of “any record, document or tangible object” in order to obstruct an investigation. Mr. Yates’s primary argument was that fish are not the sort of tangible objects with which the law was concerned. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. seemed to agree. He asked what people would say “if you stopped them on the street and said, ‘Is a fish a record, document or tangible object?’ ” Justice Antonin Scalia said, “I don’t think you’d get a polite answer.”  But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said it would be odd to let Mr. Yates throw fish overboard, destroying evidence, but to allow him to be prosecuted for tearing up photographs of the fish.
New York Times

Just how effective tax breaks and other incentives are at boosting economic development is a crucial question states and localities should answer when they look to expand or renew programs. Yet the extent to which local governments actually scrutinize economic development programs varies greatly, and many remain without basic accountability measures. Most published research focuses on tax incentives at the state level, where the largest packages are typically awarded. A new nationwide survey by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), though, provides a detailed portrait of how local governments use business incentives and employ accountability measures.
Governing

A damning audit report provides the latest evidence of IRS mismanagement of the flood of sensitive documents and data it gets from taxpayers despite having a $1.8 billion information technology budget. The federal tax agency doesn’t effectively keep track of the software it purchases, it buys more copies than needed and it sometimes deploys more copies than it is allowed, the report said.
Washington Examiner
 

Editorials/Columns

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has begun looking into a cellphone-data sharing program in Hampton Roads.  It’s troubling to learn of yet another program that stockpiles information about many law-abiding citizens that was collected through dragnet surveillance techniques. It’s even more troubling to learn that most of the city officials who signed off on the program did so with little or no discussion. It’s natural for law enforcement personnel to want every possible tool in the fight against crime. But police departments must operate within the boundaries of the law and constitutional liberty, too — and it’s the job of municipal leaders to make sure they do. We hope Herring will continue to press for answers — and that he will share with the public whatever he learns.
Times-Dispatch

Voters have ensured that significant changes in leadership are coming to Norfolk's and Virginia Beach's public schools. In both cases, power will shift. This is an opportunity for greater transparency, for new cooperation, for more diverse voices to be heard. In Norfolk, 85 percent of those who voted Tuesday said they wanted School Board members to be elected by the citizens, not appointed by the City Council. The Norfolk school division is among the poorest-performing in Virginia, with only 13 of its 44 schools fully accredited and graduation rates 11 percentage points below the state average. It's been plagued by controversies for years: answers changed on tests to improve scores, investigations that showed a culture of fear, rampant harassment among students, and secrecy by administrators and the School Board.
Virginian-Pilot