Transparency News 1/28/14
State and Local Stories
A state investigation into whether former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell violated the commonwealth’s disclosure laws in his financial relationship with a dietary company executive will end without charges, Richmond’s chief prosecutor said Monday. He said the investigation would be closed to allow a federal criminal case against McDonnell and his wife to proceed without complications. There has been no conclusion about whether McDonnell broke state laws, the prosecutor said.
Roanoke Times
King George County residents continue to chastise Board of Supervisors members over recent decisions as well as their use of personal email accounts. Two residents, Sylvia Hudson and Jeff Bueche, spoke Thursday about the board’s recent decision to not appoint Ruby Brabo vice chairman of the board, even though she was told last year she was next in line for the post. Hudson accused the supervisors of making decisions outside of the boardroom. She said that when the meeting began, Joe Grzeika—who was eventually elected chairman—already was sitting in the center seat where the board leader sits. Emails sent through official government accounts are archived. When someone files a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence on certain topics, those emails can be searched because they’re part of the public record. Private accounts used by government officials are susceptible to the same searches, depending on what individuals choose to save. “With a private email, you simply provide what you wish and delete what you wish,” resident Mary Trout said.
Free Lance-Star
For three years, the former Buena Vista fire chief taught swift water rescue classes that he was not certified to teach while collecting more than $200 from each student and rewarding them with forged certificates, according to a grand jury indictment. Butch Lawhorn began teaching the classes in the summer of 2011, but it wasn’t until this past August when firefighters were injured during a training exercise that authorities began to look into his credentials. Last week, a Buena Vista grand jury returned 77 true bills against the 38-year-old firefighter claiming that he falsely obtained tuition and then forged certificates for those completing his classes. He was released on a $10,000 bond and faces an April 7 hearing. At least 50 rescue workers with multiple fire departments were left holding one of the allegedly forged certificates.
Roanoke Times
A former top executive at red-light camera company Redflex Traffic Systems said in court documents that the company bribed officials in at least 13 states, including Virginia. From Albemarle County to Virginia Beach, officials across the state Monday denied any knowledge of improprieties with the Phoenix-based company. In a lawsuit against Redflex, the company’s former executive vice president Aaron Rosenberg said “providing government officials with lavish gifts and bribes” was a longstanding part of the company’s standard practices and procedures.
Daily Progress
At the request of universities in the state, Virginia legislators have introduced legislation that would create freedom of information act exemptions for certain higher education records. One set of bills, HB 703 and SB 78, would create an “exemption for certain administrative investigations by higher educational institutions” under the state’s public records law. These would amend a section of the act related to existing exemptions that apply to other agencies conducting employment discrimination complaints and would create an exemption for records obtained or created by “the auditors appointed by any public institution of higher education” during an investigation. Rob Lockridge, UVA’s executive assistant to the president for state governmental relations, said the push for the exemption was more preemptive than reactionary — the school has received FOIA requests for reports on closed investigations, he said, but it hasn’t yet had a FOIA request for an ongoing investigation.
Student Press Law Center
A $200 leather jacket, an $18,000 Caribbean vacation rental, $350 in hunting gear — just a few of the valuable things given to the governor of Virginia in recent years. But the items weren’t accepted by Bob McDonnell, whose indictment on federal public corruption charges has renewed attention to the comparatively lax laws over Virginia’s culture of gift-giving. They were made to his predecessors, Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine. The former Democratic governors accepted thousands of dollars worth of tickets to professional football, basketball, hockey and auto racing events, as well as countless bottles of wine, rounds of golf and an odd assortment of goods that includes a train set, a weed eater, a fishing rod and at least one basket of soft-shelled crabs. As the public is fast becoming aware, all were legal under ambiguous state disclosure laws that invite a host of legal and ethical questions around their application.
Washington Times
Local Democrats have made good on their promise to work through official avenues to remove controversial Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) from public office; Leesburg attorney and Democrat John Flannery filed a recall petition against Mr. Delgaudio in circuit court late Monday afternoon. The petition, organized through an activist group called Sterling Deserves Better, presents the signatures of more than 680 Sterling district voters -- well more than the minimum amount needed -- pressing for a recall of Mr. Delgaudio. Mr. Delgaudio will have up to 10 days to respond to the petition, followed by a decision from the court to hold a trial on the case or dismiss it, Mr. Nevarez added.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
In the end, a list of 2,261 “duplicate voters” in Chesterfield County boiled down to 468 names eligible for cancellation. Registrar Larry Haake came under fire for refusing to purge ineligible voters before the November election. Two groups – True the Vote and the American Civil Rights Union – threatened to sue Haake if he did not act. Haake defended his delay, saying an initial perusal of the state-generated list found at least 17 percent of the voters were, in fact, eligible to cast ballots in the Richmond suburb.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
The Virginia Department of Planning and Budget website provides an excellent overview of the Commonwealth’s budgetary process. Virginia has a biennial budget system, which means it adopts a two-year budget. The biennial budget is enacted into law in even-numbered years, and amendments to it are enacted in odd-numbered years. This process takes months and has five distinct phases: agency budget preparation, budget development, legislative action, governor’s review, and execution. The governor has vast authority in shaping a budget that reflects the administration’s priorities. A great example from the collection is a 15 October 2007 email from Governor Kaine to his leadership team with the subject line: “Budget Issues I Care About.” Kaine writes, “I’ve been keeping a list of the budget items I really care about and want to make sure and discuss during the course of our meetings over the next 6 weeks. I wanted to send them your way so that you could see them and make sure we address them in some way during our deliberations.”
Virginia Memory
Two U.S. jurisdictions -- Arlington County, Va. and Columbus, Ohio -- made the finals in the run-up to "Intelligent Community of the Year," an international competition designed to showcase those communities that use information technology to build prosperity and solve social problems while enriching local culture. Each year, the New York-based Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) selects 21 communities, then narrows it to seven. Finally, in July, one community takes the top prize, but everyone benefits from shared best practices and innovation.
Governing
With the indictment last week of the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell on fraud and conspiracy charges, one might surmise that high-level political scandal is breaking out all over. And in a way, one would be right: It has been a good year, or perhaps a bad one, for hauling politicians before judges. Political malfeasance grabs headlines, and few public failings are as colorful as a House legislator who stores $90,000 in marked bills in his basement freezer. Nevertheless, political analysts say, one rotten apple — or even the scores of them picked up in the past two decades — does not spoil the barrel. “I’ve studied American political corruption throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and, if anything, corruption was much more common in much of those centuries than today,” said Larry J. Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
New York Times
National Stories
A state task force in Connecticut that spent months studying how best to balance victims' privacy and the public's right to know Friday proposed new limits on what records must be disclosed to the public under Connecticut's Freedom of Information Act. The panel's recommendations sets up a heated legislative battle and clashes in the upcoming session over the public's right to information. Debate on the proposed changes to the FOI law are expected when lawmakers return to the state capitol next month. In a 15-2 vote Friday, the panel approved four recommendations, the most significant of which would restrict public access to crime scene media, including recordings of 911 calls, dispatch tapes, and photos or videos depicting homicide victims. Members of the public could view the media and obtain transcripts of recordings, but would be prevented from obtaining a copy unless they could prove that the release does not invade privacy. Victims' family members would be notified of any requests for copies, and would have an opportunity to object. The task force also suggested making unauthorized reproduction of the records a crime.Hartford Courant
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a $1.4 million defamation verdict that a former airline pilot won against his employer. The nine justices ruled on a 6-3 vote that Wisconsin Airlines Corp, a subsidiary of Harbor Diversified Inc, was immune from a defamation claim after employees reported a disgruntled colleague, pilot William Hoeper, to federal authorities as a possible security risk. In December 2004 Hoeper was pulled from a flight on which he was a passenger by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration after colleagues said he was in a mentally unstable state and could be carrying a gun. Earlier that day, Hoeper lost his temper during his fourth attempt at a training test he had to pass to keep his job.
Reuters
A bill that would increase legal protections for reporters and their sources failed Monday to get enough votes to advance in the Colorado senate. The bill, introduced by freshman Colorado Springs Republican Sen. Bernie Herpin, and inspired by FoxNews.com reporter Jana Winter, would have changed the criteria in Colorado to make it tougher to subpoena a reporter, thereby eliminating the choice of revealing confidential sources or going to jail. Herpin told FoxNews.com he introduced the bill in the state legislature after he saw Winter’s struggle. Winter was threatened with jail time for not giving up sources for a report about the Aurora, Colo., movie theater shooting. Winter’s reporting came under scrutiny after she reported that suspect James Homes had mailed a notebook to a psychiatrist depicting the violence before he had committed the crime.
Fox News
When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spies may be lurking in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence documents. In their globe-spanning surveillance for terrorism suspects and other targets, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications: With each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies can pick it up.
New York Times
In a breach involving Social Security numbers, the Connecticut Department of Labor said Friday that a printing error caused nearly 27,000 people to receive someone else's information on unemployment compensation forms. Since unemployment compensation is taxable, the labor department is required to inform individuals annually about the amount they had received on a tax form. On 27,000 of the 250,000 forms — known as UC-1099G — that have been mailed out to people who applied for unemployment benefits, information on the top portion of the form is correct. But in a case of double-printing, the bottom half includes the name, address, and Social Security number of another person.
Hartford Courant
Editorials/Columns
Times-Dispatch: Never let it be said that the General Assembly is a do-nothing legislature.Lawmakers have been doing a great deal in the short time since they convened. Herewith, some brief comments on a few items:Virginian-Pilot: Public school students in Virginia can pray on school grounds. They're free to initiate prayers and religious gatherings such as "See you at the Pole," when Christian kids meet around the flagpole to pray, read scripture and worship. They can express religious beliefs in what they write, the art they create and in assignments. In 2008, Virginia's General Assembly wrote those rights into law. The U.S. Supreme Court also affirmed students' rights to lead religious events and activities before or after school.
Pete Candland, Prince William Board of Supervisors, Inside Nova: In my two years as a county supervisor, I have witnessed resolutions that get introduced and voted on in a matter of minutes with zero public review. I have personally witnessed millions of taxpayer dollars get spent outside of the formal budget process with little discussion by the board, let alone input from the citizens who pay the taxes. I’ve had to learn about proposals for board consideration from the newspaper instead of finding them within the meeting materials. Simply put, it’s time to usher our county government out from behind closed doors and start shedding more light on how our government works. We owe it to every taxpayer to become as transparent as possible.
