Transparency News 1/6/14

Monday, January 6, 2014
 
State and Local Stories

 

The group dedicated to preserving history in Washington County islooking for a new home after a town study suggested a different use would be better for the building it currently calls home. The Historical Society of Washington County, Va., is located in Abingdon’s historic train depot, at the corner of Wall Street and Depot Square, where it has been since 2002. Prior to that, the society was in the county courthouse for nearly 40 years. A recent study of the town’s tourism and marketing departments suggested that the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau on Cummings Street, in the historic Hassinger House, was not the most ideal for visitors to find or use, said Garrett Jackson, assistant town manager, in an email.
Herald Courier

Pulaski County citizens will soon be able to go online to peruse documents contained in the Board of Supervisors’ monthly meeting packets. County Administrator Peter Huber said he hopes to be able to convert to using electronic agenda packets later this month or in February. Staff is reviewing software available to enable the packets to be placed on the county website,pulaskicounty.org. Board packets, which sometimes exceed an inch thick, are normally collections of copied documents that are presented to each board member, members of the media and anyone else requesting a packet. When they go online, the documents will be available to anyone who has access to the Internet.
Southwest Times

With Superintendent Ed Hatrick six months away from the end of his 22-year tenure, the Loudoun County School Board now knows what 4,181 community members want in the new leader of the county's public school system.  Search firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates presented the school board with the initial results of their community survey Jan. 2. HYA spent time in Loudoun Countygathering information from the general public through surveys, open forums and individual interviews.
Loudoun Times Mirror

Jim Icenhour will not go quietly into the night. During the public comment section of his final meeting as Jamestown supervisor on the James City County Board of Supervisors, some of Icenhour's most fervent critics were gracious, saying that while they differed with his decisions, they wished him well and would keep him in their prayers. In the parking lot afterward, Icenhour wondered whether they will be so kind when he starts showing up and commenting at every meeting himself.
Virginia Gazette

National Stories

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton rejected arguments by attorneys for the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Immigration Reform Law Institute that the e-mails, letters and memos they sent to lawmakers who crafted and supported Arizona bill SB 1070 are private. Bolton also said that communications from legislators to either group also cannot be shielded. The ruling is a significant victory for those who have been working since the law was enacted in 2010 to have it — and especially it’s “papers please” provision — declared unconstitutional. That’s because the lawsuit is based in part on claims that the Legislature acted in a way to purposely discriminate against Hispanics and other minorities, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Victor Viramontes of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said those communications could prove that the real intent was racial bias and not simply a bid to help the federal government enforce laws aimed at illegal immigration.
Arizona Capitol Times

A judge has sided with The Florida Times-Union in a lawsuit arguing that Jacksonville city officials broke Florida's open-government laws when they held private talks over proposed changes to police and firefighter pensions. In a ruling issued Tuesday, Circuit Judge Waddell Wallace said the talks held from March through May were subject to the state's Sunshine Law and should have been public. The ruling blocks the city from continuing private talks.
WINK News

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a confidential Justice Department legal opinion on the scope of the FBI’s surveillance authority can remain secret. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an effort by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to make public a January 2010 memo from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that allowed the FBI to informally gather customer phone call records from telecommunications companies.
Washington Post

When Gov. Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii was asked to appear in a video urging President Obama tomake the state the home of his presidential library, the governor’s appeal was simple and, he said, reflective of the state’s “Aloha spirit.”
New York Times

Jill Kelley still glances around for cameras before she leaves her large, six-columned house on Hillsborough Bay, and she rarely goes to the grocery store. Since November 2012, when the government released her name in connection with a scandal that brought down the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Ms. Kelley has yet to return to her children’s schools, she said, and could not even summon the courage to go to their holiday plays. In a lawsuit that is half legal document and half news release, Ms. Kelley seeks damages and a formal apology from the government for revealing her identity after she reported what she assumed was a crime: threatening emails sent by a woman with whom Gen. David H. Petraeus, then director of the C.I.A., was having an affair. The suit, filed in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, is also an attempt by Ms. Kelley to tell her side of a story that she says was distorted and dismissed, leaving her family as collateral damage.
New York Times
 

Editorials/Columns

Bernie Niemeier, Virginia Business: The reason we have uncompetitive races is that we have uncompetitive voting districts.  Boundaries are set once every 10 years (most recently in 2011) by the General Assembly after the release of population counts by the U.S. Census.  Growth in data on voters and their habits has enabled legislators — particularly those in power — to choose voters by how district lines are drawn.  These lines help ensure re-election and protect party power. At Virginia Business, we say, “Why wait?”  If the General Assembly wants to pursue fairness and put aside partisanship, then pass a bill in 2014 to start the process of constitutional reform.  The closer we get to 2021, the more difficult it will be for legislators to give up the power to pick voters.  Let’s do the right thing now.

Virginian-Pilot: Virginia Beach has much more on its agenda for 2014 than capital projects. It's trying to reduce the numbers of homeless. It's working to improve its embattled child welfare services. It's trying to determine how to manage the cost of employee benefits. It needs to map out a specific plan for increasing research and development in medicine, transportation and energy - which will require money. The city has opportunities in 2014 for bold moves that will make Virginia's most populous city more enticing, more accessible and more attractive to young people. But as Beach leaders do the fact-finding, vetting and brainstorming, they must invite citizens to the table.

Times-Dispatch: The nation’s spooks have been trolling through World of Warcraft, Second Life and other online games, on the supposition that would-be terrorists might be using them to plot attacks. While that is a possibility, nothing has surfaced to indicate that terrorists actually are doing so. Nor has there been any indication that lurking in the MMORPG — massively multiplayer online role-playing game — community has enabled authorities to foil a plot in the offing. On the other hand, the public now knows there were so many federal agents in the MMORPG community they had to set up a “deconfliction” process to keep from tripping over one another. We’re reminded of the old joke about how, after a certain point, most of the members of the KKK were either FBI agents or undercover journalists.

Gene Policinski, Daily Progress: Seven tapes of 911 calls from Sandy Hook teachers and staff at were released at 2 p.m. on Dec. 4, under a court order following a request by The Associated Press, which had sought the tapes’ disclosure since the day of the shooting. There is a difference between having public access to such calls and the public broadcast or online posting of the calls themselves. There are strong First Amendment reasons for disclosure of 911 calls — from the plain fact that in many cases such recordings are public records in the first place, to holding police and other emergency responders accountable for their response, to in some cases debunking conspiracy theories or defusing wild rumors. The First Amendment also protects news operations from government interference what they do with 911 tapes. Fox News was first cable outlet to air Newtown 911 audio clips, about one hour after their release, but only used short excerpts. CNN first report featured a reporter describing the audio. ABC and NBC said they would not use the audio, while CBS used some audio segments, but nothing in which gunshots could be heard.