Transparency News 12/8/17

Friday, December 8, 2017


State and Local Stories

City officials say they won’t identify the local and national developers that have signaled interest in submitting plans to replace the Richmond Coliseum and redevelop a valuable swath of city-owned land downtown. The Department of Economic and Community Development denied a Times-Dispatch request for the list of entities that registered to receive updates about the city’s call for downtown redevelopment proposals, saying in its response that disclosing the list would “adversely affect” Richmond’s ability to negotiate with the businesses, as well as its financial interest.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Police cleared the audience from a Henrico County community center auditorium Thursday afternoon after a state board’s approval of a water-quality certification for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline triggered an eruption of shouts and profanity.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

In August, a bubbling discourse stemming from identity politics in America took a deadly turn in Charlottesville — weeks before the fall semester began at public universities across the commonwealth. Since that day, the fervor of public debate on college campuses relating to free speech has only intensified, saddling administrators and instructors with the task of facilitating productive political conversation among students, faculty and staff while avoiding censorship. Next semester, a new joint-course commissioned by Radford and James Madison universities aims to shape that conversation among students across Virginia. Thanks to a $4,000 grant from 4-VA — a statewide program created by former Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2011 allowing public colleges and universities to collaborate on research and other educational projects — the two schools will offer a class focusing on respectful disagreement amid the changing dynamics of public life.
The Roanoke Times

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., called this week for the public release of information that would shed light on the scope of sexual harassment claims in the Senate. In a letter to the Senate Office of Compliance, Kaine asked for information on the number of harassment claims filed against senators or Senate staff members and the sums of any monetary settlements, details that would not identify accusers or the accused. “Admittedly, the challenges we face to resolve these widespread problems appear daunting, as each successive week reveals another leader, celebrity or media personality accused of reprehensible behavior,” Kaine said in the letter dated Wednesday. “Viewing the data behind the problem, however, will shed light on the issue and help us develop solutions to combat sexual harassment and ensure true accountability.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Purcellville Town Council, still reeling from the town's biggest scandal in decades, made efforts to calm the storm Thursday night. Council voted to spend up to $80,000 for a new investigation to include: an audit of a suspect investigation of the police chief; a review the actions and job performance of an on-leave town manager; and an inquiry into claims of sexual harassment made by the embattled interim town manager against the current town attorney.
Loudoun Times-Mirror


National Stories
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A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent lawsuit filed against the US Justice Department for the release of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates' emails revealed mess, including a prominent prosecutor who praised Yates' decision not to enforce President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban earlier this year. Judicial Watch released emails sent from multiple Justice Department employees to Yates during her tenure as acting attorney general in the first week of the Trump administration. On January 27, Trump implemented an executive order intended to temporarily bar refugees and people from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US.
Business Insider

Several groups are suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for failing to provide documents regarding an Alabama immigrant detention center. The lawsuit was filed in federal court Wednesday. The Adelante Alabama Worker Center, Detention Watch Network, Greater Birmingham Ministries, Immigrant Defense Project and Southerners on New Ground were named as plaintiffs; the defendants were named as the DHS and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. According to a press release from the plaintiffs, they filed a Freedom of Information Act request in September 2016 for a memo issued by the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The memo described "long-standing and continuing concerns" regarding the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, the lawsuit states.
AL.com

A chiropractor and his wife on Thursday admitted bribing at least four St. Louis police officers for years to get nonpublic information on hundreds of accident victims, and one former police officer admitted in court that she’d accepted some of those bribes. The chiropractor’s wife, Galina Davis, used the information to solicit patients for her husband, Mitchell E. Davis, who then pressured some of those victims into exaggerating their symptoms to win larger insurance settlements, according to his plea. Mitchell Davis focused on low-income patients because he thought they would be more receptive to his solicitations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Dorothy McMurtry said in court. Former Officer Terri Owens pleaded guilty to a felony bribery charge Thursday and admitted taking thousands of dollars in bribes from 2011 to 2016. During one 10-day period in February 2016, she accessed 168 accident reports and provided them to Galina Davis, her plea says. Owens left the department Sept. 17, but it’s not clear under what circumstances.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Michigan could end up being the only state in the country where legislators pass and reject laws without the public knowing about their personal finances, a distinction that good government watchdogs say is an embarrassment that must be changed. Forty-seven states now require lawmakers to file some type of financial disclosure that lists their occupation, income or business associations — information that indicates if a legislator might benefit personally from supporting or opposing legislation. Vermont will begin mandating disclosure reports next year. And in Idaho, a group of lawmakers recently agreed that elected officials should disclose financial information and forwarded a proposal to the full Legislature for consideration in 2018.
Governing



Editorials/Columns


Not everything that moves around in the dark is Santa Claus, said Henry Howell, the late Virginia populist. That warning against closed-door deal-making applies with just as much force in our day as his. And it applies to Virginia’s pitch to land the second headquarters of Amazon, Inc., the announcement of which has public officials across the country salivating. As Mark Robinson reported in this newspaper, states are offering the company billions of dollars’ worth of incentives in the hopes of enticing it. Virginia officials won’t say what sort of package they are offering, even though state law permits them to. They claim they don’t want to hurt the commonwealth’s competitive position. That’s understandable, up to a point. Complete transparency could encourage a bidding war, and nobody wants that. New Jersey already has pledged $7 billion to land a $5 billion expansion. But keeping taxpayers in the dark about a deal they could have to underwrite does not look good. It looks worse when seen in the light of recent events.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

It has been a busy year for a Richmond School Board whose actions have too often appeared to be too fast, too furious or too shrouded in mystery. The same might be said for this facilities plan, approved by a divided board that was missing one member, Liz Doerr, who left the meeting early. Another member, Kenya Gibson, was freshly sworn in. The board aborted a plan to delay its vote until it could solicit public input next week. I can understand its desire to get off the schneid and get something done — schools are crumbling in plain sight. But would a slight delay have mattered that much? All this is unfortunate, because the problem is not so much what the board did but how it went about it. What should be a moment of celebration and anticipation is clouded by the perception, fair or not, that this board’s defining trait is its opacity.
Michael Paul Williams, Richmond Times-Dispatch