Transparency News, 12/20/21

Last weekend staffers at Virginia’s General Assembly noticed suspicious activity on their IT systems. It turned out to be a ransomware attack. Thursday evening, Delegate Marcus Simon tweeted that some websites that had been affected were coming back online. Delegate Will Morefield said in a text he understood good progress was being made on restoring the system. Officials won’t describe the extent of the damage. But it does affect how the legislators make laws. There’s not a whole lot of public information about those details: what’s exactly been affected and which steps were taken. A spokesperson for Mandiant, the company hired to work on the problem, wouldn’t say if the attack was linked to organized crime or a foreign state. The head of The Department of Legislative Automated Systems, the affected agency that that runs the bill tracking system said in an email they’re keeping the details quiet to preserve the integrity of the investigation. Legislative leaders are trying to keep things quiet as well. Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn and other legislative leaders met behind closed doors Thursday to talk about the breach. On her way out, a staffer said the speaker wouldn’t discuss the attack.
WVTF

Loudoun County School Board members are divided on whether to continue to allow remote participation by At-Large member Denise Corbo, who has been accessing meetings online since the board pivoted to virtual meetings early in the pandemic for medical reasons. For the third time since October, members voted against permitting her to participate remotely during Tuesday’s meeting for medical reasons, but allowed her to use one of her limited personal exemptions to participate remotely instead. State law allows an elected official to participate remotely using a personal exemption in two meetings a year or 25% of the body’s meetings, whichever is greater. According to school division spokesman Wayde Byard, the School Board met 52 times during the past year, meaning that a board member could have used the personal exemption to participate electronically for 13 meetings. School Board members began questioning Corbo’s absence from the meeting room after she appeared in public at another event.
Loudoun Now

It was Christmas Eve in 2018 when Derrick Rountree got on his bike and headed to a convenience store in downtown Norfolk. As the 43-year-old man rode past a police cruiser at about 9 p.m., an officer briefly sounded the vehicle’s siren, flashed its lights, and said something over a megaphone. Thinking the alert was meant for someone else, Rountree continued to ride on, then turned around to head back to a friend’s place at the Tidewater Gardens public housing complex where he was staying. What happened next was captured by Norfolk police officer Aaron Christie’s body-worn camera — and has become the subject of a $1.5 million excessive force lawsuit Rountree filed against the officer last year in federal court. The Virginian-Pilot obtained a copy of the nearly 30-minute body camera video, which was submitted as an exhibit to the case a few weeks ago by Rountree’s attorney, Christian Connell. The Pilot is publishing the first two minutes of the video, which show Christie exit his police cruiser and chase and tackle Rountree. Rountree’s right leg was broken in three places when the officer fell on him, according to the lawsuit.
The Virginian-Pilot
 

 

Three media organizations and their reporters sued Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Thursday, alleging she has repeatedly violated the state’s open records laws by ignoring requests for government records. The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa is representing Laura Belin, who operates the liberal-leaning Bleeding Heartland blog; Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council; and Clark Kauffman, a reporter for the Iowa Capital Dispatch. The reporters say they have tried to get public records from Reynolds’ office starting as early as April 2020 without success despite waiting for months and in some cases, well over a year. Often, the governor’s office didn’t acknowledge the records requests or respond to inquiries.
The Washington Post

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday sent an open records case back to circuit court, saying the lower court judge must decide which messages on a state-issued cellphone are public and which are personal. The Pulaski County Circuit Court ruling on Sept. 14, 2020, making the records public was reversed and remanded by the Supreme Court, where several justices found that what constitutes a “public record” has limits even when it involves a state-issued phone. The Supreme Court told the circuit court to perform a detailed content-based analysis and to separate the messages to determine whether they fall within the information act’s definition of public records. Once the circuit court has determined which, if any, individual messages are public records, Myers and Doe may raise their right-to-privacy arguments and the circuit court must conduct the appropriate weighing test for each item before ordering disclosure, justices ruled.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
 

 

Christiansburg Councilwoman Johana Hicks, also merits a 2021 Dano Award. She sued the town she helps preside over for nonexistent violations of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. After a judge dismissed the case, Hicks demanded an apology from her colleagues on town council. She’s still waiting. She wins the Dano category, “Most Brazen Attempt to Snatch Victory from the Jaws of Defeat.” The subcategory is, “She’s patient, though.”
Dan Casey, The Roanoke Times

Local and state contracting in the United States amounts to trillions of dollars each year. But we can’t build much of anything back, let alone better or quickly, on the outdated foundation of slow, bureaucratic, compliance-driven procurement and contracting systems that fail to include citizens, businesses and community members in planning and monitoring how public money is spent. According to an analysis by Citymart, only 0.5 percent of municipal procurement transactions in the United States could be classified as innovative and open to new ideas or different ways of doing things. We need to make public spending more transparent, effective and fair to help create sustainable and equitable societies.
Katherin Frauscher, Governing