Transparency News 11/7/16

Monday, November 7, 2016


State and Local Stories

Attorney General Mark Herring issued an opinion last week that says §24.2-107 of the Code of Virginia requires local electoral boards to post on an official website whatever kinds of minutes they keep, including both draft and final minutes.
VCOG Website

A federal jury on Friday found Rolling Stone magazine, its publisher and a reporter defamed a University of Virginia administrator who sued them for $7.5 million over a discredited story about gang rape at a fraternity house. The 10-member jury in Charlottesville sided with administrator Nicole Eramo, who claimed the article portrayed her as a villain. Jurors found that journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely was responsible for libel, with actual malice, and that Rolling Stone and its publisher were also responsible for defaming Eramo.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The opening line still hurts across the years. “Dear Mother — I am here a prisoner of war & mortally wounded.” John Winn Moseley was writing home from the Gettysburg battlefield on July 4, 1863. He was a 30-year-old Confederate from Alabama being cared for by his Yankee captors. “I can live but a few hours more at farthest,” he wrote. “I was shot fifty-yards of the enemy’s line. They have been extremely kind to me.” Moseley died the next day. His letter — on delicate blue paper, stained with what might be blood — made it to his mother in Buckingham County, Va., and the family kept it ever after. Now it has come to light in a trove of Civil War documents that the State Library of Virginia discovered in a surprisingly straightforward way: It asked state residents to bring them out of their homes.
Washington Post

Chesapeake will now offer closed captioning services on all broadcasts of City Council, Planning Commission and School Board meetings. The change is "an effort to reach additional residents and address the concerns of unique audiences," according to a news release. At a town meeting in South Norfolk in June, one resident spoke out on the issue and requested the change so he could better understand council meetings on WCTV Chesapeake Television. The new service will use a device called Encaption3 to automatically generate text from speech. There is a slight delay between spoken words and text conversion, according to the statement.
Virginian-Pilot

A Virginia Beach panel tasked with looking into complaints made by residents against police officers took up a case for the first time in two years on Monday after a mayoral candidate complained about his interaction with an officer. The reason the Investigation Review Panel hasn’t looked into any complaints in so long, a city staffer says, is because no one has appealed the outcome of the Police Department’s Internal Affairs investigations in that time. In 2012, an audit revealed the Investigation Review Panel went dark for about seven years and failed to review more than 60 complaints. At the time, City Manager Jim Spore said “such a serious mismanagement of this important body is deeply troubling and cannot be defended.” Two human resources staffers responsible for the backlog were forced out of the department and the panel began meeting again. But there haven’t been many cases. Between 2012 and 2014, 10 complaints were filed with the Investigation Review Panel. One case trickled in during 2015, but it was ineligible for review because internal affairs had not finished its investigation, said Shelley Johnson, the executive assistant for the Human Resources Department. The only case dealt with this year came from Richard Kowalewitch, a candidate for mayor. Kowalewitch complained an officer inappropriately grabbed his arm and wrist to try to stop him from heading to the podium to speak out against light rail during a packed City Council meeting on April 5.
Virginian-Pilot

Charlottesville residents can now use an online tool to assist officials in shaping the next annual city budget. Balancing Act allows people to make a mock version of a new municipal budget based on the adopted budget for the current fiscal year. Much like the actual city budget, the mock budget must be balanced. According to a news release, staff will present a report on the citizen-made budgets to the public and the City Council in January. The tool can be found at charlottesville.org/budget.
Daily Progress

More than a month after the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors’ first Strategic Planning Retreat as a governing body, supervisors agreed Nov. 1 to make some minor changes to its vision statement and strategic areas of focus.  During the Sept. 16 planning retreat, supervisors struggled with a request by Chairwoman Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) to add the word “learn” to its guiding vision statement for the county.  Randall has continued to stand by her request to add “learn” to the board’s vision statement, while other supervisors have requested other additions, such as “run a business” and “raising a family.” 
Loudoun Times-Mirror

The public may not find out who the new Williamsburg-James City County School Division superintendent will be until the final decision is announced in February. Consultants hired to seek candidates and facilitate a search to replace former superintendent Steve Constantino are recommending the process be done confidentially. Tuesday evening, the School Board agreed privacy would bring a larger pool of candidates than holding the search in public. Community input within the initial phase will help develop the list of qualities and characteristics, according to the search firm’s, BWP, plan. Residents can voice their opinions during public forums, by completing an online survey and by attending meetings with targeted groups.
Virginia Gazette


National Stories

People who publish information about births, deaths, marriages and divorces gathered from Iowa public records would no longer face the threat of jail under a proposed revision to a state rule. The revision follows a June memo written by an Iowa Department of Public Health executive who warned some county recorders to immediately stop providing lists of the records to the public. Melissa Bird, the bureau chief of health statistics for the department, cited an administrative rule that prohibits publication of the records. Violations of the 2012 rule cited by Bird could be punished by up to 30 days in jail and up to a $625 fine. The original intent of the rule was to prevent a person or business from obtaining a massive quantity of records, indexing and publishing them, according to a document the health department provided to the Register in explaining its proposed changes.
Des Moines Register

Big-money corporate lobbying has reached into one of the most obscure corners of state government: the offices of secretaries of state, the people charged with running elections impartially. The targeting of secretaries of state with campaign donations, corporate-funded weekend outings and secret meetings with industry lobbyists reflects an intense focus on often overlooked ballot questions, which the secretaries frequently help write.
Governing

A federal judge in Colorado blocked enforcement of a 19th-century state law that bans voters from showing a completed ballot to others, the latest in a flurry of mixed legal rulings on whether to restrict election "selfies" on social media. U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello in Denver issued a preliminary injunction against an 1891 Colorado statute that makes it a misdemeanor offense to reveal the contents of one's ballot. The ruling came in response to two separate lawsuits by voters challenging enforcement of the law on grounds that it violates their free-speech rights.
Reuters


Editorials/Columns

In May, 1,300 people in Norfolk took a questionnaire to help them determine which municipal candidates best matched their opinions and passions. In the past 10 days, more than 3,000 have taken a questionnaire about Virginia Beach. If you haven’t done so, please go to okcandidate.code4hr.org and answer about 20 questions about issues and how important they are to you.  Then let us know what you think: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com, @donaldluzzatto on Twitter, or on Facebook.
Virginian-Pilot