Transparency News 12/11/14 – Virginia Coalition for Open Government

Thursday, December 11, 2014

State and Local Stories

House Republican leaders said Wednesday that they'll back a $100 gift cap for legislators and other government officials as part of an evolving ethics reform package planned for the upcoming legislative session. That would bring the legislature and other state and local officials subject to the cap roughly in line with Gov. Terry McAuliffe's administration, which has a $100 cap set by executive order. It would go further than a McAuliffe-appointed ethics advisory group suggested last month, and further than the General Assembly agreed to go earlier this year, when it tackled this same issue.
Daily Press

A judge said he’s reviewed thousands of plea agreements and never saw one as unusual as the document a prior judge rejected in the case of a former Washington and Lee University student charged with killing a classmate in a crash last December. Judge Jay Swett ruled on Wednesday that if he were to allow the public access to the document, it would taint the jury pool in Rockbridge County and that Nicholas Hansel’s trial in January would most likely need to be moved to another county. “Not in the course of my career have I seen such stipulations in a plea agreement,” he said. While Swett praised W&L journalism professor Brian Richardson for seeking to have the plea unsealed, he said that its terms would remain a secret until the case against Hansel is resolved.
Roanoke Times

The chairman of the Louisa County Board of Supervisors takes offense at being described as a “bully.” The word has been used by a few Industrial Development Authority members when referring to recent actions by the supervisors. Before going into closed session at the board’s regular meeting on Monday, Dec. 1, Chairman Willie Gentry (Cuckoo district supervisor) chastised The Central Virginian for a front page article the newspaper published on Nov. 25. “Maybe it’s just one person’s opinion, but I was very disappointed in the article in the paper that called this board of supervisors bullies of the IDA, when in fact the IDA several times said that they wanted more communications,” Gentry said. “[Supervisor Richard) Havasy and I went specific to the … IDA authority, to talk about an issue that we had not made a decision on to get their input, and then it shows up in the paper that we’re bullies.” “I think it was quotes,” Supervisor Troy Wade (Louisa district) said to Gentry.
Central Virginian

National Stories

The Obama administration has urged a court to reject a request to disclose thousands of pages of documents from a Justice Department investigation into the torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency, including summaries of interviews with about 100 witnesses and documents explaining why in the end no charges were filed. The administration made the filing late Tuesday in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times, hours after the Senate Intelligence Committee made public a 524-page executive summary of its own investigation into C.I.A. torture. The committee based its report on a review of C.I.A. documents but did not conduct any interviews.
New York Times

Citing concerns about "international terrorism" and "threats of lone terrorists," the public has been barred from approaching Harford County, Maryland, Council members at regular meetings where they decide matters such as school budgets, taxes and development. The move immediately stirred outcry Tuesday from residents and advocates of open government, who said the policy flouts the nation's founding democratic principles. "I never heard of such a thing, and obviously I am totally against it. How else can you get information from them?" said Bel Air resident Bill Wehland, a regular at meetings who often approached council members afterward and always felt welcomed.
Baltimore Sun

The State Department has failed to turn over government documents covering Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state that The Associated Press and others requested under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act ahead of her presumptive presidential campaign. They include one request AP made four years ago and others pending for more than one year. The agency already has missed deadlines it set for itself to turn over the material. The State Department denied the AP's requests, and rejected the AP's subsequent appeals, to release the records sought quickly under a provision in the law reserved for journalists requesting federal records about especially newsworthy topics.
Fox News

A Tallahassee judge opened the door Monday for a new complaint against Florida Gov. Rick Scott that alleges the governor intentionally withheld public records in violation of state law. Leon Circuit Court Judge Charles Francis ruled Monday at a hearing in his chambers that Tallahassee attorney Steven R. Andrews may amend his existing public records lawsuit against the governor because Scott turned over 197 pages from his private Google mail account after he and his attorneys previously told the court the records did not exist. “It’s a violation of the public records laws to wait 18 months to produce records … and then two years after we request them, they suddenly produce emails,’’ Andrews told the court. The case will now turn on whether the governor intentionally withheld the documents.
Miami Herald

Editorials/Columns

More than a year ago, a Fairfax police officer shot and killed John Geer, who was unarmed and standing in his own doorway. To date, the department has obeyed the code of omertà and refused to release any information whatsoever about the killing — not even the responsible officer’s name. You probably won’t find any record of the killing in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, either. That’s because Fairfax does not report slayings by the police. The police department does not consider justifiable homicides by its officers actual offenses — i.e., crimes — and therefore does not report them to the state or the FBI. Law-enforcement agencies compile statistics by the bucketful, and there is no reason they cannot add a couple of more columns to their spreadsheets. If the federal government can lavish local agencies with money and surplus military gear, then it also can insist they report detailed information any time one of their officers kills a citizen.
Times-Dispatch

There’s a reasonable discussion to be had about whether any particular instructional item belongs in any particular classroom. But there should be no doubt about whether parents should have a voice in that discussion.
Times-Dispatch

Harford County, Maryland, residents were likely surprised by this week's decision of the Harford County Council to bar the public from approaching council members at regular meetings, particularly because the justification was the threat of "lone terrorists." Lone wolf terrorist attacks in places like New York City and Ottawa have gotten considerable attention this year, but death by lightning strike or snake bite remains far more common. We are left scratching our heads to imagine what scenario Council President Richard Slutzky might have had in mind when he adopted the new rules to keep the county's elected officials a safe distance from proletarian spectators. Here's the best we could come up with.
Baltimore Sun