Transparency News, 12/21/20

When America's state legislators begin meeting for their 2021 sessions, the blunt fact is that many of them won't be meeting at all. They will be sitting at Zoom screens, talking on their iPhones and looking for other ways to simulate the bill-writing and deal-making that they are supposed to do face-to-face. Not all the states have made up their minds yet, and all the plans are subject to change, but it's already clear that there will be at least a fair amount of virus-driven separation. Virginia's House of Delegates expects to hold all of its sessions virtually. Washington's legislature is talking about voting in person but running its hearings and markup sessions by remote control. Vermont will call its lawmakers together once, but only to authorize virtual meetings after that. New Jersey, which actually passed a worker-assistance bill this year entirely by phone, will be doing some of that again. There seems almost no doubt that other states will be following suit. Will remote-control legislating have a significant effect on the nature and quality of what gets passed? A better question would be, how it could not have a significant effect? Listen to Aubrey Layne, the Virginia state finance director, describe his experience with virtual consideration of serious issues. "I've watched committees where speakers have thirty seconds before they're cut off," Layne told a reporter recently. "This is not the environment to write the budget. Regarding risk and fiduciary responsibility, I might as well talk to the wall."
Governing

Current coronavirus outbreaks in a multitude of settings across the commonwealth, including long-term care facilities, schools and medical facilities, will all be included in a new dashboard on the Virginia Department of Health’s website. The outbreak dashboard was created in response to HB 5048, passed during the recent coronavirus special session in Richmond. The bill required VDH to make current outbreak information publicly available and up to date on its website. Virginia had previous just shared current specific outbreak data for long-term care facilities and schools. Local school districts and some employers are also reporting their own individual data.
WAVY

A new contract between West Virginia and Google for cloud-based communications and productivity services could open the state up to security issues when transmitting sensitive information, according to our neighbor to the east. The Virginia Information Technologies Agency’s Supply Chain Management Division put together an overview in May regarding the commonwealth’s messaging environment. The agency expressed concerns about the security of using Google for secure messaging. The document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Weirton Daily Times
 

 

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled that federal immigration agencies have a “systemic problem” of failing to timely respond to individuals’ FOIA requests for copies of their immigration records, and ordered them to process tens of thousands of requests in the next 60 days. U.S. District Judge William Orrick on Thursday in a class action lawsuit filed last year said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have for years routinely failed to meet the deadlines for responding to document requests laid out in the federal Freedom of Information Act.
Reuters

The Colorado Supreme Court’s adoption Thursday of a statewide standard for sealing or suppressing court records in criminal cases “is an extremely positive development that increases transparency and builds public trust in our judicial branch,” said Steve Zansberg, a First Amendment attorney and president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition. When Rule 55.1 goes into effect May 10, 2021, criminal courts in Colorado will be required to publicly docket motions to limit access to court files and any hearings convened to consider such motions. Even more significant: A judge’s written order justifying the suppression of records will be made public.
Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition
 

 

At a time when the federal government is collecting and creating massive amounts of digital data that can implicate people’s privacy and free speech rights, it is crucial that the public know what the government is doing with that information. A ruling from a federal appellate court earlier this month ensures that the Freedom of Information Act, one of the most important legal tools citizens and reporters have for furthering government transparency, allows the public to understand the government’s use of digital data. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit came in a case brought by the Center for Investigative Reporting against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) seeking aggregate data about the number of weapons used in crimes that could be traced back to being originally purchased by law enforcement. The district court below ruled that ATF did not have to produce the data because the search query of the agency’s data would have amounted to creating a new record, something that FOIA prohibits. In rejecting the district court’s interpretation of FOIA, the Ninth Circuit concluded that “if running a search across these databases necessarily amounts to the creation of a new record, much government information will become forever inaccessible under FOIA, a result plainly contrary to Congress’s purpose in enacting FOIA.”
Aaron Mackey, Electronic Frontier Foundation

According to legal experts, a new bill filed by Kentucky State Rep. John Blanton would “turn open records upside down.” And if enacted, it would make it illegal for any web site to use the name of any current or former judge, prosecutor, or law enforcement official, or the names of their immediate family members – including the governor. In addition to outlawing the use of those first and last names in any open records response, AND requiring any content that includes those names to be removed from ALL web sites, RS BR 595 would make doing so a Class A misdemeanor if done unintentionally, and a Class D felony if done intentionally.
Forward Kentucky