Transparency News, 12/2/21

Columnist Gordon Morse says he was let go by the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press after VPM News published a story detailing payments he received from Dominion Energy. In a phone interview last month, Morse claimed he was let go after defying orders from the papers’ opinion editor, Brian Colligan, to not speak to VPM about the payments, which totalled over $60,000 per year from 2017 to 2020. VPM published a story about the payments on Sept. 29; Morse’s last column for the paper appeared Sept. 25. “On balance, I'd rather explain to people what I do, as opposed to just sort of letting them speculate,” Morse said. “They didn't want me to talk about it.” Morse said he bore no ill-will toward the papers and praised Colligan for a “heroic” effort to keep the Opinions section functional in the face of severe cutbacks and layoffs. Neither Colligan nor the papers’ editor in chief, Kris Worrell, responded to several emails seeking comment.
VPM
(Note: Colligan serves on VOCG's board of directors.)

County residents filled the Mathews High School media center Tuesday night to take the opportunity to speak in favor of their choice to replace Jeanice Sadler on the Mathews County School Board. In all, 22 people addressed the Mathews County School Board during the hour-long meeting, including five of the nine candidates who applied to fill the vacancy created when Sadler announced in October that she was stepping down from the board because she is moving out of the county.
Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal
 

Ten redacted passages in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — including one that discusses the decision not to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump Jr. and others — were ordered to be revealed following a yearslong legal battle by BuzzFeed News. In an 18-page opinion issued Tuesday, a three-judge of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit unanimously ruled that there is a “significant public interest” in lifting the veil of secrecy and that “disclosure would also show how the Special Counsel interpreted the relevant law and applied it to already public facts in reaching his declination decisions.”
BuzzFeed News

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court on Wednesday to force compliance with a request for documents which he believes will reveal the political machinations behind the government’s challenge to the Peach State’s controversial new election law. Filed by Raffensperger and state Attorney General Chris Carr, both Republicans, in Washington federal court, the lawsuit demands that the government turn over any communications, if they exist, between Department of Justice officials and dozens of political opponents, including some groups which have been involved in voting rights lawsuits against Raffensperger’s office. Raffensperger filed a Freedom of Information Act request in August seeking communications discussing the controversial voting restriction law between DOJ officials and 62 individuals and organizations, including Democrat Stacey Abrams, her organization Fair Fight Action, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Black Voters Matter Trust Fund, the Coalition for Good Governance, Latino Community Fund Georgia and other groups.
Courthouse News

In late 2020, the House passed a bill that would have made PACER free to most of the public and modernized the system to reflect 21st century digital and accessibility standards. That bill, the Open Courts Act, is set to be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, after having been reintroduced in both the Senate and the House earlier this year. While the Open Courts Act passed the House last Congress with strong bipartisan support, federal courts have vigorously opposed efforts to reform PACER, including arguing that the paywall is essential to the existence of the system and that modernizing it would be extremely cost-prohibitive. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office rebutted that false narrative: A 2020 analysis of the Open Courts Act found that modernizing the current system would cost a fraction of what the judiciary claimed it would. To charge hardworking Americans for court records that they already support with their tax dollars is unfair, especially when judicial branch transparency is an important piece of government oversight. 
Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette and Melissa Wasser, Government Executive