Transparency News 12/22/15

State and Local Stories

HB 141 (Del. R. Marshall)
Codifies an opinion of the Attorney General regarding the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Practices Act by limiting the ability of law-enforcement and regulatory agencies to use license plate readers to collect and maintain personal information on individuals where a warrant has not been issued and there is no reasonable suspicion of criminal activity by the individuals. 
http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?161+sum+HB141

Despite saying they have no legal basis to do so, Virginia state officials have denied the Center for Public Integrity immediate access to annual corporate reports filed with the state by the nation’s three major auto-title lenders. The title-loan companies TitleMax of Virginia; Anderson Financial Services LLC, doing business as LoanMax; and Fast Auto Loans Inc. argue that releasing the reports would seriously damage their businesses. In a filing made public on Monday, state officials, in reaction to petitions filed by the three loan companies that argued the information should not be made public, said they were “not persuaded” by objections from the title companies. Officials also said they “were unaware of any statutory or other legal basis preventing the reports from being treated as public records.” Still, the officials recommended that the issue be taken up as part of the rule-making process, which would give all parties time to make their case. In the meantime, they recommended that the records remain confidential.
Public Integrity

The Norfolk City Council did plenty of business at its last meeting. It voted to rezone land in Lamberts Point, to buy a $10 million parking garage downtown and to sell a vacant school so it could be redeveloped, among other actions.  But the most intriguing vote of the Dec. 15 meeting could have been the one that never happened. The council decided not to vote on rezoning land for a proposed apartment complex on Tidewater Drive, a project opposed by the city’s planning staff, its Planning Commission and the civic league that represents that part of town. Longtime Councilman Paul Riddick cried foul, claiming the postponement was to stall until after the city election in May. He compared the alleged ploy to “Chicago politics.” Riddick said he overheard a conversation in which a council member took credit for the delay. Riddick described the exchange he overheard as “a little conversation across the table” before the start of a work session a couple of weeks ago. “The only thing I heard was, ‘I’ve asked them to hold it until after May,’ “ Riddick said. Riddick said he “put two and two together” when he learned the vote on the proposed complex on Tidewater was being postponed “indefinitely.”
Virginian-Pilot

Petersburg Area Transit (PAT) announced Monday the participation in RouteShout, a mobile device application that allows transit customers to track the location of PAT’s transit buses from their mobile device. RouteShout allows PAT riders more ways to connect with PAT in real-time. Customers can access bus tracking, view PAT bus routes, view route maps, see bus stops along routes and see the arrival time of a bus on all stops along its route and notify a rider if a bus is running late.
Progress-Index


National Stories
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Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is calling for federal legislators to expand identity theft coverage to federal workers after the data security breach at the Office of Personnel Management. Ms. Norton, a Democrat and the District of Columbia’s nonvoting representative in Congress, and Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland Democrat, have introduced legislation that would provide free lifetime coverage for credit monitoring and identity theft protection for federal workers whose personal information was stolen in the OPM breach.
Washington Times

The fallout from the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald continues. The Chicago Justice Project (CJP), a nonprofit that analyzes data from criminal-justice agencies, is suing the Cook County’s State’s Attorney’s office alleging that it has repeatedly violated the state’s open-records law. If the suit is successful, it will force the office to turn over a multitude of public records that the CJP has been seeking since last year through the federal Freedom of Information Act. According to the lawsuit, between 2008 and 2009 the CJP requested demographic data on certain crimes involving sexual assault as the State’s Attorney’s office reviewed the cases to determine if felony charges were justified. For several years, the office demurred from providing the data, which is used in part to see prosecutorial trends. From January 2014 to July 2014, the organization filed five other FOIA requests, none of which led to a data release. According to the lawsuit, this lack of cooperation illustrates "a pattern and practice of circumventing the requirements of FOIA.”
Nonprofit Quarterly

Governments will not always be able to disguise which content they restrict across the Web thanks to a new error code that will warn you of censorship. The Internet serves up a range of status codes, numbered from the 100s to the 500s, to let you know when something goes wrong, such as server downtime, to keep you from getting to a given Web page. You're likely familiar with the common 404 error message that tells you a page cannot be found. It isn't always easy, however, to work out whether a Web page is down because of technical hiccups or governmental meddling. That's where the new 451 code comes in.
CNET News

Editorials/Columns

We generally focus our efforts to make government more open and transparent here on the Peninsula or in Richmond. However, we noted with interest that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is doing its part to make records more available to the public through a new website dedicated solely to that purpose. Beta testing recently began on eFOIA, a portal to file electronic requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act. By utilizing technology, the bureau hopes to improve efficiency and decrease administrative costs. Most importantly, it believes the new system will get records processed faster. Of course, that assumes whoever makes the request includes a copy of a standard government-issued ID through the site. Oh, did we forget to mention that? Yes, if you would like the FBI to provide you with public documents entitled to you by FOIA, the nation's premier national security and domestic law enforcement agency would like your papers, please.
Daily Press