Transparency News 12/14/16

State and Local Stories
 

Changes to Chesterfield County school policies regarding open-records requests, grading and safety procedures sailed through the School Board on Tuesday. The changes, which were approved unanimously, took effect immediately. One change shifts the responsibility to process and respond to Freedom of Information Act requests to the School Board attorney. “The revisions streamline the response process to align with the legal expertise of the School Board attorney,” a staff report read.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The special prosecutor overseeing an effort to force Norfolk Treasurer Anthony Burfoot from office said Tuesday that he will not ask a judge to suspend the city’s chief tax collector pending a recall trial – at least not given what he knows right now. Michael Herring, the Richmond commonwealth’s attorney, explained that most of the evidence federal prosecutors presented during Burfoot’s five-week public corruption and perjury trial is irrelevant to the recall case. That’s because while Burfoot was convicted Friday on six felonies, all of the crimes happened before he was sworn into office in January 2014.
Virginian-Pilot

The Lynchburg City School Board could have a new member by the end of January. Lynchburg City Council decided to begin the process to appoint an interim member for the remainder of former school board member Jenny Poore’s term, which expires in June. The vacancy is the result of Poore’s Nov. 13 resignation. Poore stepped down after posting a profanity-laced Facebook rant targeting President-elect Donald Trump following the election results. City Council decided at Tuesday’s meeting to open applications for an interim member after discussing what the options were, including leaving the spot vacant until the term expires in June. After more than 20 minutes of discussion, City Council unanimously agreed to open the seat up for applications. “Knowing how this person resigned, and all that stuff behind it, I just think it should probably be something that’s a little more open, more transparent, rather than just picking somebody without allowing citizens to hear from them,” Councilman Jeff Helgeson said during the discussion on the topic. While Poore said she stepped down of her own accord, emails obtained by The News & Advance via the Freedom of Information Act show Lynchburg citizens issued complaints about Poore’s Facebook post attacking Trump to City Council members Nov. 11. Some members contacted Poore, or the LCS administration, to express their disapproval of Poore’s social media outburst.
News & Advance



National Stories
​

A federal judge in Manhattan indicated on Tuesday that he may partially unseal a government search warrant and supporting documents stemming from the F.B.I.’s investigation of a large cache of emails belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton. The discovery of the emails occurred during an unrelated investigation of Ms. Abedin’s estranged husband, Anthony D. Weiner, the disgraced former congressman who has been under scrutiny by federal prosecutors in Manhattan over allegations that he exchanged illicit text messages with a 15-year-old girl.
New York Times

As he leaves office, President Barack Obama has decided to keep a controversial Senate report on CIA interrogation since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in his Presidential Records, a move that will preserve the document, but also keep it classified for more than a decade to come. The news comes according to a letter from House Counsel Neil Eggleston to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California, who along with other lawmakers and government transparency advocates, wants the president to either declassify the document or declare it an official record to ensure its preservation. While a partially redacted executive summary of findings was released to the public in 2014, the Obama administration has fought Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to declassify the entire document.
Christian Science Monitor

Michigan House-passed changes to voter ID and FOIA laws will be left on the cutting room floor this lame-duck session, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, confirmed. The House in September passed a series of bills that would have extended FOIA to the Governor and put the legislature under a mostly-parallel "Legislative Open Records Act." The bipartisan effort was led by Rep. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, and Rep. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield. But in the Senate the bills were referred to the Committee on Government Operations, controlled by Meekhof. And he won't be bringing them up this session, a spokesperson confirmed.
MLive

A secret U.S. military investigation in 2010 determined that Michael T. Flynn, the retired Army general tapped to serve as national security adviser in the Trump White House, “inappropriately shared” classified information with foreign military officers in Afghanistan, newly released documents show. Although Flynn lacked authorization to share the classified material, he was not disciplined or reprimanded after the investigation concluded that he did not act “knowingly” and that “there was no actual or potential damage to national security as a result,” according to Army records obtained by The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act.
Washington Post

The government mistakenly disbursed more than $137 billion in Fiscal Year 2015, the highest annual level of wrongful spending ever reported, the Congressional Research Service noted last week. Over $1 trillion in improper payments have been made by government agencies since 2004. Improper payments "are payments made in an incorrect amount, payments that should not have been made at all, or payments made to an ineligible recipient or for an ineligible purpose," CRS said.
Secrecy News

Google published a series of eight National Security Letters, in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation secretly requested subscriber information on specific accounts. The letters range from 2010 to 2015, but follow a nearly identical format, identifying a number of accounts and sometimes a specific time frame but providing no evidence or suspicion to justify the request.
The Verge

An Oklahoma County judge has agreed to conduct a closed-door review of material that was redacted from records made public by the governor and Department of Public Safety in response to a lawsuit filed by the Tulsa World and a former editor. The review will determine whether the governor’s office and DPS complied with the Open Records Act when it redacted some material before making the documents public.
Tulsa World

Editorials/Columns


If it is not wrong, in the eyes of the courts, to accept unaccounted for gifts and loans in return for setting up meetings and hosting promotional events for a supposed health care product whose promoter sought state university and state health officials sanction for his product, what then does cross the ethical or legal line? Before any of the many Virginians who have found, as we have, that our former governor can be a charming and earnest seeker after what is best for our state, decide to shout for joy and gladness over a Supreme Court ruling that uses the terms distasteful and tawdry to describe this episode, let's talk about another kind of restoration. Not the return of a head of state, or of a regime to power, that Dryden celebrated. Rather, the action of returning something to a former state or condition.  The something is Virginia political ethics.
Daily Press

NORFOLK TREASURER Anthony Burfoot belongs in jail, not in a city office. The scope and depravity of his betrayal to good government will take every day between now and his April sentencing to review. Burfoot’s conviction brings an end to a political career that at one point seemed limitless. He grew up in Berkley’s Bell Diamond neighborhood and was a football star at Lake Taylor High and an All-American at Virginia State. He was first elected to City Council in 2002, at the age of 34. He helped spur the Broad Creek development and the Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center in his ward. But it’s clear that it all went wrong. Almost from the beginning, Burfoot elevated his own avarice above service. “Anthony Burfoot violated the sacred trust we place in our elected officials and in doing so, his greed eclipsed his vision for building up his own community,” U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said in a statement. “The citizens of Norfolk have a right to nothing less than fair and honest government, and this conviction should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks about selling their office.” This is unlikely to be the last public corruption trial to arise from the Bank of the Commonwealth fraud and the resulting testimony and investigations. That’s as it should be.
Virginian-Pilot