Transparency News 12/5/14

A lawyer for Richmond Public Schools has sent a cease-and-desist letter to a community activist who has tried to maintain control of a task force that was disbanded by the superintendent. The letter, delivered Thursday by email from the office of Harrell & Chambliss, demands that Charles Willis “immediately cease and desist the unauthorized facilitation and operation of the Multicultural Task Force.” Willis was the co-chairman of the volunteer community task force from the summer of 2013 until Nov. 18, when Richmond Schools Superintendent Dana T. Bedden announced that he was disbanding the group. Bedden said then that it was time to move from recommendations, which the task force had made, to implementation. During a public meeting at a city office building in South Richmond, Bedden thanked the group. But Willis kept scheduling meetings, including one for Thursday afternoon. In a telephone interview Thursday while he was on the way to that meeting, Willis said he felt that he was being bullied and that he didn’t understand why he wasn’t being allowed to finish his work with the task force.
Times-Dispatch

Virginia Beach Deputy City Attorney Rod Ingram had one message for the city's Audit Committee on Thursday: "If you ever think you have a conflict, call me." The State and Local Conflict of Interests Act hadn't been on the small committee's radar until recently when, following a report by The Pilot, a special prosecutor was appointed to review votes taken by Mayor Will Sessoms. The committee, which reviews audit findings and makes recommendations to the City Council, asked Ingram for a briefing to ensure its members understand what it requires of them. They're not the only ones, said Ingram: He's been getting a lot of similar inquiries in the past few weeks. "There's a heightened awareness of the conflict act," he said.
Virginian-Pilot

The survey is performed by an independent company and assesses residents’ perceptions of quality of life and local government among other aspects of a locality. John Budesky, deputy county administrator, presented the 2014 results to the board of supervisors Nov. 25. Some of the areas that the county ranks highly in and has maintained over the years also include overall image and crime prevention. On the other hand, there were a few areas where improvement is needed. For example, the results showed that citizens are slightly unsatisfied with the county’s community engagement. In one topic, “openness and acceptance,” 56 percent believe that the county is doing a good job compared to the 68 percent of citizens that believed this in 2011. He said as part of staff’s analysis of the results, they will point out strategies to better connect and communicate news and information to the community, adding that asking what residents want to see happen will be more effective and successful.
Herald-Progress

National Stories

They have been called the Dead Sea Scrolls of physics. Since 1986, the Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to whom Albert Einstein bequeathed his copyright, have been engaged in a mammoth effort to study some 80,000 documents he left behind. Starting on Friday, when Digital Einstein is introduced, anyone with an Internet connection will be able to share in the letters, papers, postcards, notebooks and diaries that Einstein left scattered in Princeton and in other archives, attics and shoeboxes around the world when he died in 1955.
New York Times

A California community college has settled a lawsuit with a student who claimed it violated his First Amendment rights when an administrator threatened him for collecting petition signatures outside of a small, designated "free speech zone." Student Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle, with help from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, sued Glendora, Calif., Citrus College after the incident, which occurred on Sept. 17, 2013 – the day designated as "Constitution Day." Sinapi-Riddle was collecting signatures for a petition condemning the federal National Security Agency's domestic surveillance activities. When he left the area for a lunch break and headed to the student center, he and another student discussed the petition, prompting an administrator to intervene, according to FIRE. Claiming that a political discussion could not take place outside of the free speech zone, the unidentified school employee threatened to eject Sinapi-Riddle from campus for violating the policy. After a suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the school agreed to pay Sinapi-Riddle $110,000 in damages and attorneys' fees, as well as to revise its free speech policies. 
Fox News

Members of the Texas press will continue to be allowed on the state House floor in the upcoming legislative session, but they will now be required to affirm that they do not lobby, according to procedures adopted Thursday morning by the legislative panel that manages operations of the Texas House. The normally routine procedure of credentialing media organizations received more scrutiny than usual after the conservative group AgendaWise filed suit after being denied floor access last legislative session. That suit was recently thrown out by a state appeals court after judges decided that time had run out ahead of the upcoming session to consider the arguments. In a brief meeting, House Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, said the new credentialing application tries to address the growing prevalence of electronic media.
Governing

Cities like Boston, New York and Philadelphia have been hiring chief digital officers to tap technology to create more efficient processes and happier citizens. Not every local government has the resources to institutionalize innovation through a centralized CDO's office, but there are other effective ways to accomplish much the same thing. The rise and affordability of technology has brought accessibility to strategies such as easy-to-administer online programs, tools and educational resourcesto help foster conversation and bring more "community" to communities. And governments do not have to go it alone. Many of these programs can be implemented through public or private partnerships, taking much of the burden of implementation and planning off of government staff.
Governing