Transparency News 12/20/13

The Danville School Board heard comments from the public Thursday night concerning a potential raise for board members. The proposal in question is to raise annual compensation for board members from $600 to $10,000, which would bring individual earnings to the same level as Danville City Council members. The school board chairman would earn $12,000 per year. The change would be effective July 1. Residents voiced their disagreement during an open hearing.
Register & Bee

Six-term delegate Republican Tom Rust holds onto his 86th House District seat following a recount today that left Democrat Jennifer Boysko 32 votes short. Rust was named the certified winner following the Nov. 5 election with a 54-vote lead over Boysko out of 20,775 cast. Boysko formally requested a recount Dec. 3, saying that she owed it to the voters to ensure it was a legitimate race. She picked up another 22 votes in the recount, according to her campaign communications director Dadly Corder.
Leesburg Today

National Stories

Who's Been Naughty and Nice to open government? A Sneak Peek at Santa's List.
OpenTheGovernment.org

The Florida Supreme Court ruled last week that the state’s legislative leaders must turn over their redistricting documents in the simmering legal feud, but legislators say that before the ruling theyturned over thousands of records they considered appropriate and destroyed everything else. It was all a part of the routine document destruction process allowed by law, lawyers for the Republican-controlled House and Senate said in court documents filed on Wednesday. The lawsuit was brought last year against the Florida Legislature by the League of Women Voters and 11 individuals. If the court agrees with the challengers, new maps may have to be drawn for the 2014 election cycle.
Miami Herald

A bill to ban the release of arrest mug shots has run into its first pushback from state lawmakers, and the measure so far doesn't have Gov. Chris Christie among its supporters. The state Assembly passed the bill Thursday on a 70-10 vote, with members of the GOP making up the bloc of votes against. The bill came out of committee last month on a unanimous vote.
USA Today

The Sheriff of Cook County, Ill., says he’s being excluded from a database he needs to do effective concealed carry screening. Sheriff Tom Dart expects one-third to one-half of the 360,000 FIOD card holders will apply for concealed carry permits after January 5 and he’ll only have a month to object or recommend further screening. Dart says he’s being excluded from using the state’s leads system that has information that could help. “State Police has in front of them all of the criminal background records. So they would have information that I don’t have showing an arrest for gun possession, arrest for domestic violence.”
CBS Chicago

An appeals court in Florida has ruled that a lower court may not put a 30-day delay on releasing documents to the media in a high-profile murder trial without first allowing media representatives to argue for openness. A trial judge in Jacksonville imposed a 30-day delay on the release of any records in the murder trial of Michael Dunn after reporters obtained copies of letters Dunn had written from prison and published racially sensitive comments from them, according to The Florida Times-Union. The judge imposed the delay out of concern that Dunn would not receive a fair trial otherwise.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

In its eighth biannual Transparency Report, Google once again observes a rise in government requests to remove content that’s critical of government behavior, even though the company is fighting government opposition to transparency and pushing for limits to secret government data gathering. Susan Infantino, legal director at Google, wrote in a blog post that government requests to remove political content have been a consistent concern for the company.
InformationWeek

Hackers broke into The Washington Post’s servers and gained access to employee user names and passwords, marking at least the third intrusion over the past three years, company officials said. The extent of the loss of company data was not immediately clear, although officials planned to ask all employees to change their user names and passwords on the assumption that many or all of them may have been compromised.
Washington Post

On Tuesday, press organizations met with officials at the White House to discuss access to the president. Frustrated news organizations hand-delivered a letter to the White House in late November, complaining that “Journalists are routinely being denied the right to photograph or videotape the President while he is performing his official duties.” David Boardman, Dean of Temple University’s School of Media and Communications and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, was there. In a phone call with Poynter, he said the White House showed it is taking the matter seriously by holding the meeting. What came out of the meeting was an agreement to form a working group of people from the coalition of media organizations and the White House to examine past issues of access and come up with specific guidelines for the future.
Poynter

The University of California is under no obligation to obtain and disclose information on the investment performance of venture capital funds in its portfolio, a California court ruled Thursday in a decision that could broadly affect how public-records laws are interpreted. The suit, filed last year in California state court in Oakland by Reuters America, a unit of Thomson Reuters Corp, argued that the state Public Records Act requires disclosure of investment-return information for the university system's $11.23 billion endowment fund.
Reuters

Verizon Communications Inc. says it will publish information on the number of requests for customer records it received from law enforcement agencies this year. The announcement Thursday from the largest U.S. cellphone carrier comes as debate over data-gathering by the National Security Agency intensifies in Washington. The NSA's collection of hundreds of millions of Americans' phone records under secret court order was revealed in June in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
USA Today
 

Editorials/Columns

Christian Trejbal, Reno Gazette-Journal: Lights play an important role in most winter holidays. Celebrants burn Yule logs, place stars atop trees and light candles to hold back the darkness during these longest nights. Perhaps, then, it was no coincidence that a century of “sunlight” was born at this time of year. On Dec. 20, 1913, Harper’s Weekly published “What Publicity Can Do” by Louis Brandeis. In it, he painted an image of transparency that still captures the imagination. “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman,” he wrote.

Daily Press: This month's Open Door Award goes to Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, for his decision to put his office's entire budget online in a manner that allow citizens to see how money is spent each month, line item by line item. The Daily Press Editorial Board gives the Open Door Award each month to a public official or organization in recognition of dedication to transparency and public access. We find ourselves both surprised and satisfied to be giving Mr. Cuccinelli this award as he winds down his term as the state's top prosecutor. We have taken issue with him for many reasons over the past four years, including his contention that the attorney general's office is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Times-Dispatch: Reports that federal authorities might bring indictments against Gov. Bob McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, over the gift scandal that has tarnished his legacy infuse the ancient story of Damocles with new currency. The McDonnells stand accused — at least in the court of public opinion — of using their power to help Jonnie Williams Sr. promote a dietary supplement. Williams, in turn, lavished them with expensive gifts. The governor insists he obeyed the letter of the law. Federal investigators believe otherwise, and would have brought charges by now had the governor’s lawyers not pressed them to reconsider.

Virginian-Pilot: The gift-giving scandal that has dogged Gov. Bob McDonnell's family and distracted state operations for the better part of the year is, apparently, headed for the courtroom. The question is, when? As The Washington Post reported this week, federal Justice Department officials in Washington have agreed to delay indicting Virginia's chief executive and first lady on felony charges after hearing a direct appeal from the McDonnells' legal team. It's not clear whether one particular argument was more effective than another. What is clear is that the governor's defense – supported by more than a half-million dollars in public funds – is earning its keep and that the feds' decision to delay succeeds only in perpetuating an erosion of public confidence in systems of government and justice.

News Leader: The words could not have come easily. After a hard-fought campaign with results so close they required a recount and the hopes of the entire state GOP on his shoulders, Harrisonburg State Sen. Mark Obenshain conceded defeat on Wednesday. Our next attorney general will be Mark Herring. In another age, we would have expected a gracious concession speech from whomever came up short. Unfortunately, honest admission of defeat and hearty congratulations to opponents with zero finger-pointing have become less the norm. Witness Ken Cuccinelli, unwilling to call the victorious Terry McAuliffe in the hours, days and now weeks after their race for governor was decided. Obenshain, though, did his family and his party proud.

Herald-Progress: According to the Library of Congress, the Constitutional Convention (the people who wrote the thing) came together because of dissatisfaction with the then-current Articles of Confederation and the need for “a strong centralized government.” The final seven articles, which built our federal government’s framework, were sent to the states only after four months of “secret” debate in Philadelphia. They did not emerge etched in stone from on high. Can you imagine the outcry today if a select group of individuals convened in secret to change the very structure of our national government? But, this was in 1787. Nearly 230 years later, these four pages of parchment are still looked to as sacrosanct, perhaps the best testament to our visionary Founding Fathers. Still, in many of today’s arguments about the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of some action by our federal government, most forget that our founding document was signed by quill and ink.