Transparency News 11/9/16

Wednesday, November 9, 2016


State and Local Stories

ACCESS '16
James Madison's Montpelier
December 8, 2016
10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (exact schedule to be determined)

Earlybird Registration through Nov. 18:  $30 members; $40 non-members
After Nov. 18:  $35 members; $45 non-members
Students:  $25
Donations, sponsorships: Any amount is welcome!!

Tentative line-up of panels and speakers:

  • Legislative privilege -- the Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled in a case that legislative privlege shields communication with third parties in certain circumstances. Find out more about the case and contrast it with FOIA's working papers exemption.
  • Proactive disclosure -- Is government information moving from an ask-and-receive model to an on-demand one? How does government decide which data sets it will make available? Can government be simultaneously transparent and opaque?
  • Government and social media -- Is social media a great way to engage citizens, a quagmire for records management purposes, or a potential legal minefield of deleted comments or blocked "friends," a combination of all three. Or something else entirely?
  • The business of confidentiality -- Whether it's the chemicals used in fracking, who farms hemp or what type of development a utility is proposing, businesses often don't want government to release trade secret or proprietary information about them. How accommodating should government be?
  • Information in the age of Madison -- James Madison is considered the patron saint of open government. But when he said the people must have access to information, just what did he mean?


PANELISTS (Invited and confirmed)

  • Mark Barham, City of Williamsburg
  • The Hon. Wyatt Durrette, Former member of the Virginia House of Delegates
  • Prof. Michael Gilbert, University of Virginia School of Law
  • Eric Gregory Hefty, Wiley & Gore
  • The Hon. Edd Houck, Former member of the Virginia Senate
  • Mike Mather, Southern Environmental Law Center
  • Andria McClellan Norfolk City Council
  • David Ogburn, Capital Results
  • Chad Owen, Library of Virginia
  • Dale Peskin, Loudoun Times-Mirror
  • Emily Shaw, Sunlight Foundation
  • Julie Tate, The Washington Post
  • Dr. James Toscano,  Tidewater Community College
  • Josh Wheeler,  Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression
  • Jake Williams, StateScoop


And many thanks to our conference sponsors:

  • AARP Virginia
  • Andria McClellan
  • Richmond Times-Dispatch
  • Thomas H. Roberts & Associates, P.C.
  • Virginian-Pilot
  • Wason Center for Public Policy 


Register or Donate here


Janice Denton, co-founder of Hopewell Citizens for Good Government, will trade her regular seat from the audience of council meetings to one next to other council members. Voters also handed Mayor Brenda Pelham and Councilwoman Jasmine Gore another term. Seven candidates total vied for three open City Council seats.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) Office of Drinking Water notified Pulaski on Friday that the town’s annual water quality report was delivered to customers three months late. The Environmental Protection Agency requires that every community water system inform customers how the Consumer Confidence Report (CCR) on water quality will be distributed, and that it be published in a local newspaper of general circulation by July 1. According to the notification from VDH, Pulaski’s CCR wasn’t distributed until Sept. 30.
Southwest Times



National Stories

Texas State Board of Education member David Bradley, R-Beaumont, is under fire for allegedly not releasing board-related emails from his private server in response to an open records request. The Texas Freedom Network says Bradley did not hand over all of his emails in October when the organization filed a request under the state Public Information Act. Bradley said Texas Education Agency staff is responsible for handling those requests, and that he is sure they have been thorough.
Texas Tribune

In Baltimore, it’s recently gotten significantly more expensive to ask the police department for emails under freedom of information laws, which allow journalists and the public to request public governmental records. Here’s the kicker: that change comes shortly after the release of an embarrassing email exchange revealing an officer and a prosecutor making fun of a sexual assault victim. A journalist using MuckRock discovered the change while making an unrelated request for records. Now, two months after the embarrassing emails surfaced, it’ll cost reporters and other members of the public $50 before even starting a search for emails.
Fusion

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