Transparency News 12/1/16
Thursday, December 1, 2016
State and Local Stories
Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring said Wednesday he will not seek criminal charges after a 10-month investigation into potential overlap between city business and the church where Mayor Dwight C. Jones serves as senior pastor. But in an at-times-harsh report on the investigation, Herring raises questions about Jones’ credibility; the appearance of cronyism in his administration; and overall poor judgment on the part of Jones and his aides. “Although the investigation raises suspicion and concern about opaque governance, and calls into question the credibility of many of the involved parties, these facts do not constitute probable cause for prosecution under the Commonwealth’s public corruption laws,” Herring said in his report. “As a colleague reminded me, ‘the governing norm is that the criminal courtroom is not the public square — what may rightly provoke the public ire is not sufficient for criminal prosecution.’”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot complained to a senior Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority official several years ago that he didn’t like a light fixture a builder had installed on a house in the Broad Creek community, according to testimony Wednesday in the former vice mayor’s public corruption and perjury trial. It was among several complaints Burfoot relayed to Bruce Leuthold over the months and years they worked together on the redevelopment project. The councilman, Leuthold said, often wanted builders to change details after he had approved them. But this one was a little different. In order to appease the vice mayor, Leuthold personally paid about $65 for the light fixture to be replaced.
Virginian-Pilot
City Council agreed Tuesday to upgrade the city’s Geographic Information Systems by creating a new job and downgrading another at a net addition to the budget of about $100,000 a year. “GIS can be the backbone of managing data and information for a local government,” Councilman Kai Degner said Wednesday. Degner is a real estate agent and the council’s resident expert on GIS, which creates maps of locations and then layers data such as taxes and school districts on top of the maps.
Daily News Record
Lawyers for journalist Katie Couric have asked a federal judge to throw out a defamation suit filed by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, arguing that a brief span of misleading footage in a gun-control documentary didn’t damage the gun-rights group’s reputation. In a 34-page response filed Wednesday, Couric’s legal team said that even though the gun-rights advocates may be offended by their portrayal, the implication that they hesitated to answer a question does not qualify as an “odious” or “contemptible” allegation under Virginia law. Epix, the premium movie channel that distributed the film, filed a separate motion to dismiss, saying the channel had no knowledge of the edit before the documentary’s release. The suit centers around a 2015 interview with VCDL members in Northern Virginia. The group claims the filmmakers used “deceptive editing methods” to make the interviewees appear at a loss for words. By creating that impression, the suit claims that VCDL as a group and individual interview participants were defamed as ignorant on gun-policy issues.
Daily Progress
Despite objections from two local officials, a joint meeting between the Washington County Board of Supervisors and the Virginia Highlands Airport Authority was held in closed session Wednesday night. The closed session was announced by Board of Supervisors Chairman Randy Pennington, who said it would involve a presentation by Appalachian Power on its proposed 138 kilovolt transmission line. Abingdon Mayor Cathy Lowe and Town Councilman Rick Humphreys were invited to attend as well. Supervisor Vernon Smith made a motion to allow Town Councilwoman Cindy Patterson, who was also present, to attend the meeting. County Attorney Lucy Phillips said she was informed that only Lowe and Humphreys would be able to attend and any gathering including at least three members, which constitutes a quorum, of the council would have to be announced at least three business days before the meeting. Smith made a motion that the meeting be open, saying the public is aware of the project and he doesn’t understand why it needed to be private. He was outvoted 6-1 by the other supervisors. He added that the sections of Virginia Code used to conduct the meeting in private suggested that legal advice would be given. After the meeting, however, he said no legal advice was given and he felt the meeting violated the Freedom of Information Act. Phillips told the Herald Courier that there was no FOIA violation because Virginia Code sections 2.2-3712(F), 2.2-3711 (A)(7) and 2.2-3711 (D) allow people to present information in closed meetings that would benefit governing bodies, but may be harmful if presented in a public meeting, such as legal strategy or construction plans.
Bristol Herald Courier
A formal complaint from the parent of a student has been filed in the Accomack County Public School system against the use of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird" for their use of racial slurs. A racial slur appears 219 times in Mark Twain's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and 48 times in Harper Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird." The use of both novels in both classrooms and libraries has been temporarily suspended per the Accomack County Public Schools policy manual.
DelmarvaNow
National Stories
A D.C. Council member who promised to probe allegations of favoritism in city contracting plans to hold a “public oversight hearing” Thursday that she wants closed to the public. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) has taken the rare step, citing personnel issues related to the allegations. At issue is the abrupt Aug. 12 departure of Christopher Weaver, a retired Navy rear admiral who oversaw most government construction awards for the administration of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). The D.C. Open Government Coalition this week joined the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association and others in calling on Cheh to reconsider. Both say the public has a right to know whether the mayor’s office acted appropriately during the awarding of contracts and the removal of the men from their jobs.
Washington Post
Members of the House of Representatives get an annual budget for their Washington and district offices, but how they spend it is up to them. There are some rules: It can’t be used for personal or campaign expenses, and there is no reserve source of money if lawmakers spend all of their allowances. Lawmakers also are required to report the recipients of their office spending, and since 2009 the Sunlight Foundation has been taking the PDF files published by the House and converting them into text files useful for analysis and research. ProPublica has taken over both the collection and hosting of these files. They can be examined using spreadsheet or database software. You can download the files from this page.
ProPublica
Many public officials feel that much of the cynicism and distrust surrounding government exists because they haven’t properly “told their story.” Yet when the occasional media report surfaces about a jurisdiction engaging marketing or public relations professionals, the tone is usually critical, as if this is something that governments should not do. That’s odd when you consider that, more and more, public officials are being urged to see their constituents as customers. Certainly a case can be made that public officials should not spend public money to simply promote themselves. But devoting time and resources to communicating with constituents, understanding their needs and explaining what government is doing is vitally important. We could probably legitimize it by calling it transparency. With those thoughts in mind, it is worth considering the ideas in Jonah Berger’s recent book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On. To begin with, Berger says, word of mouth -- whether face-to-face or through social media -- is 10 times as effective as advertising. Policy is complicated, so public officials need to communicate complex ideas in the language of the people they want to reach. This is made more difficult by what Berger calls “the curse of knowledge.” We know a lot about what we’re trying to communicate and we think it is clear to others when it is not.
Governing
Editorials/Columns
Michael Herring, Richmond’s commonwealth’s attorney, understands. Indeed, he teaches a lesson in governance. When he announced Wednesday he would not seek criminal charges against Dwight Jones for work done for the mayor’s church, the prosecutor explained: “Although the investigation raises suspicion and concern about opaque governance, and calls into question the credibility of many of the involved parties, these facts do not constitute probable cause for prosecution under the commonwealth’s public corruption laws.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot complained to a senior Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority official several years ago that he didn’t like a light fixture a builder had installed on a house in the Broad Creek community, according to testimony Wednesday in the former vice mayor’s public corruption and perjury trial. It was among several complaints Burfoot relayed to Bruce Leuthold over the months and years they worked together on the redevelopment project. The councilman, Leuthold said, often wanted builders to change details after he had approved them. But this one was a little different. In order to appease the vice mayor, Leuthold personally paid about $65 for the light fixture to be replaced.
Virginian-Pilot
City Council agreed Tuesday to upgrade the city’s Geographic Information Systems by creating a new job and downgrading another at a net addition to the budget of about $100,000 a year. “GIS can be the backbone of managing data and information for a local government,” Councilman Kai Degner said Wednesday. Degner is a real estate agent and the council’s resident expert on GIS, which creates maps of locations and then layers data such as taxes and school districts on top of the maps.
Daily News Record
Lawyers for journalist Katie Couric have asked a federal judge to throw out a defamation suit filed by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, arguing that a brief span of misleading footage in a gun-control documentary didn’t damage the gun-rights group’s reputation. In a 34-page response filed Wednesday, Couric’s legal team said that even though the gun-rights advocates may be offended by their portrayal, the implication that they hesitated to answer a question does not qualify as an “odious” or “contemptible” allegation under Virginia law. Epix, the premium movie channel that distributed the film, filed a separate motion to dismiss, saying the channel had no knowledge of the edit before the documentary’s release. The suit centers around a 2015 interview with VCDL members in Northern Virginia. The group claims the filmmakers used “deceptive editing methods” to make the interviewees appear at a loss for words. By creating that impression, the suit claims that VCDL as a group and individual interview participants were defamed as ignorant on gun-policy issues.
Daily Progress
Despite objections from two local officials, a joint meeting between the Washington County Board of Supervisors and the Virginia Highlands Airport Authority was held in closed session Wednesday night. The closed session was announced by Board of Supervisors Chairman Randy Pennington, who said it would involve a presentation by Appalachian Power on its proposed 138 kilovolt transmission line. Abingdon Mayor Cathy Lowe and Town Councilman Rick Humphreys were invited to attend as well. Supervisor Vernon Smith made a motion to allow Town Councilwoman Cindy Patterson, who was also present, to attend the meeting. County Attorney Lucy Phillips said she was informed that only Lowe and Humphreys would be able to attend and any gathering including at least three members, which constitutes a quorum, of the council would have to be announced at least three business days before the meeting. Smith made a motion that the meeting be open, saying the public is aware of the project and he doesn’t understand why it needed to be private. He was outvoted 6-1 by the other supervisors. He added that the sections of Virginia Code used to conduct the meeting in private suggested that legal advice would be given. After the meeting, however, he said no legal advice was given and he felt the meeting violated the Freedom of Information Act. Phillips told the Herald Courier that there was no FOIA violation because Virginia Code sections 2.2-3712(F), 2.2-3711 (A)(7) and 2.2-3711 (D) allow people to present information in closed meetings that would benefit governing bodies, but may be harmful if presented in a public meeting, such as legal strategy or construction plans.
Bristol Herald Courier
A formal complaint from the parent of a student has been filed in the Accomack County Public School system against the use of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird" for their use of racial slurs. A racial slur appears 219 times in Mark Twain's “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and 48 times in Harper Lee's “To Kill a Mockingbird." The use of both novels in both classrooms and libraries has been temporarily suspended per the Accomack County Public Schools policy manual.
DelmarvaNow
National Stories
A D.C. Council member who promised to probe allegations of favoritism in city contracting plans to hold a “public oversight hearing” Thursday that she wants closed to the public. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) has taken the rare step, citing personnel issues related to the allegations. At issue is the abrupt Aug. 12 departure of Christopher Weaver, a retired Navy rear admiral who oversaw most government construction awards for the administration of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). The D.C. Open Government Coalition this week joined the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association and others in calling on Cheh to reconsider. Both say the public has a right to know whether the mayor’s office acted appropriately during the awarding of contracts and the removal of the men from their jobs.
Washington Post
Members of the House of Representatives get an annual budget for their Washington and district offices, but how they spend it is up to them. There are some rules: It can’t be used for personal or campaign expenses, and there is no reserve source of money if lawmakers spend all of their allowances. Lawmakers also are required to report the recipients of their office spending, and since 2009 the Sunlight Foundation has been taking the PDF files published by the House and converting them into text files useful for analysis and research. ProPublica has taken over both the collection and hosting of these files. They can be examined using spreadsheet or database software. You can download the files from this page.
ProPublica
Many public officials feel that much of the cynicism and distrust surrounding government exists because they haven’t properly “told their story.” Yet when the occasional media report surfaces about a jurisdiction engaging marketing or public relations professionals, the tone is usually critical, as if this is something that governments should not do. That’s odd when you consider that, more and more, public officials are being urged to see their constituents as customers. Certainly a case can be made that public officials should not spend public money to simply promote themselves. But devoting time and resources to communicating with constituents, understanding their needs and explaining what government is doing is vitally important. We could probably legitimize it by calling it transparency. With those thoughts in mind, it is worth considering the ideas in Jonah Berger’s recent book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On. To begin with, Berger says, word of mouth -- whether face-to-face or through social media -- is 10 times as effective as advertising. Policy is complicated, so public officials need to communicate complex ideas in the language of the people they want to reach. This is made more difficult by what Berger calls “the curse of knowledge.” We know a lot about what we’re trying to communicate and we think it is clear to others when it is not.
Governing
Editorials/Columns
Michael Herring, Richmond’s commonwealth’s attorney, understands. Indeed, he teaches a lesson in governance. When he announced Wednesday he would not seek criminal charges against Dwight Jones for work done for the mayor’s church, the prosecutor explained: “Although the investigation raises suspicion and concern about opaque governance, and calls into question the credibility of many of the involved parties, these facts do not constitute probable cause for prosecution under the commonwealth’s public corruption laws.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch
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