Transparency News 1/8/14

If your agency or locality has been struggling with records management policy and procedures development – help is here! The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce a new section of its Web site devoted to records management policies and procedures.Here you will find a records management policy template that can be used as-is or edited to suit the needs of a particular agency or locality, as well as a guidance document on developing specific records management procedures.
Library of Virginia

This is a strange time for Gov. Bob McDonnell, and for Virginia. The ordinarily bittersweet transition from one administration to another comes with a dark cloud this time for the outgoing governor: the threat of federal indictment. McDonnell will give his final State of the Commonwealth Address on Wednesday night. On Saturday, Terry McAuliffe will replace him. Then McDonnell, after 22 years in state government, will await the judgment of federal prosecutors, and probably a grand jury. "His gubernatorial epitaph is written," University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said Tuesday. "McDonnell was a hard-working governor who achieved a major transportation program, but his unethical actions stained his governorship. Even if he's not indicted, this will be the public's lasting memory of him."
Daily Press

Lawmakers on Tuesday outlined the details of a bipartisan ethics reform plan meant to address the kinds of lapses they say have marred Virginians' trust in their elected officials. The agreement between House Democrats and Republicans is the product of roughly six months of work to parse out more than a dozen changes aimed at strengthening Virginia's ethical standards without making public office unduly onerous, said Del. Jennifer McClellan, a Richmond Democrat who worked on the compromise. The proposal, which would apply to local officeholders, members of the General Assembly and the executive branch.
Virginian-Pilot

A sweeping bipartisan ethics reform agreement wrought by leaders in the House of Delegates offers a framework, but also illustrates the intricacies involved in such a task. A proposed cap of $250 per item on gifts to lawmakers from lobbyists and others with business before the state depends on the kind of gift. And while the legislation would ban solicitation of gifts from lobbyists, receiving some gifts would still be OK. The $250 cap would apply per item — so lawmakers could receive more than one item worth less than $250 from the same person — and the cap would apply only to tangible items. “Under current law a lobbyist can give you a car, and there’s nothing wrong with it. At least legally,” Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, one of the House members who worked on the package, said at a news conference Tuesday. Intangible items related to official business, such as trips, legislative conferences or association dinners, might not be covered under the cap, but they would be subject to enhanced reporting requirements.
Times-Dispatch

A request by The New & Advance to interview Randy Allen Taylor, a Lovingston man indicted on first-degree murder charge in connection with the disappearance of Nelson County teenager Alexis Murphy was denied Tuesday. An Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail representative said access to Taylor would not be granted, citing a gag order by Nelson County Judge J. Michael Gamble that prevents parties in the case from divulging information.
News & Advance

Loudoun County school officials have responded to a data breach that made personal information about students and staff members, as well as detailed emergency response plans for each school, publicly available through a webpage that was thought to be protected by a password. More than 1,300 links that could be accessed through a Google search led to thousands of documents that detail how each school will respond to a long list of emergencies—everything from an active shooter and a hostage situation to a nuclear attack—and specify staging areas for response teams, as well as where students and staff members will take shelter at each school.
Leesburg Today

The Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled yesterday that Yelp must reveal the identity of seven pseudonymous reviewers so that a company may sue them for defamation. Hadeed Carpet Cleaning received numerous negative reviews on Yelp, and it singled out seven reviewers that it suspects were never actually customers. The company brought a defamation claim against them, subpoenaing Yelp for their identities. Yelp refused to disclose their identities. Attorneys for Yelp argued that the Virginia court should adopt what is known as the Dendrite standard, followed in several other states, which requires those claiming defamation to provide sufficient evidence to support that claim before the court will force anonymous speakers to reveal their identities.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Full text of opinion

National Stories

The FBI's creeping advance into the world of counterterrorism is nothing new. But quietly and without notice, the agency has finally decided to make it official in one of its organizational fact sheets. Instead of declaring "law enforcement" as its "primary function," as it has for years, the FBI fact sheet now lists "national security" as its chief mission. The changes largely reflect the FBI reforms put in place after September 11, 2001, which some have criticized for de-prioritizing law enforcement activities. Regardless, with the 9/11 attacks more than a decade in the past, the timing of the edits is baffling some FBI-watchers. Kel McClanahan noticed the change last month while reviewing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the agency. The FBI fact sheet accompanies every FOIA response and highlights a variety of facts about the agency. After noticing the change, McClanahan reviewed his records and saw that the revised fact sheets began going out this summer. "I think they're trying to rebrand," he said. "So many good things happen to your agency when you tie it to national security."
Foreign Policy

The Unites States Navy inadvertently sent a memo to a local NBC News reporter this week detailing how it intended to try and deter requests he had filed under the Freedom Of Information Act. Scott MacFarlane, a reporter for NBC 4 in Washington, D.C., tweeted out a screenshot of a portion of the memo on Tuesday morning, where the name of Robin Patterson, the Navy's FOIA Public Liaison is visible. The Navy FOIA office confirmed that MacFarlane had made the FOIA requests mentioned in the memo.
Politico

Sullivan County, Tenn., commissioners are considering several ways to preserve old county records. At the commission’s Executive Committee meeting Tuesday, a proposal to renovate the former county jail received support and another proposal to impose a fee on filing records with the county did not. The archived records are currently housed in an old county building miles from the courthouse. The building has no heat or air conditioning. Commissioner Dwight King, of Piney Flats, told Executive Committee members that the old jail is not being utilized and has 4,500 square feet of space. The jail needs some renovations before records could be stored but it won’t cost the county much money.
Herald Courier

Police records of incidents involving juvenile suspects must be made available for public inspection as long as a child's identifying information is redacted from the report, the S.C. Attorney General's Office said in an opinion. The opinion came in response to questions by the City of Aiken on whether or not Aiken Public Safety could release information regarding a sexual assault at a middle school last year.
Aiken Standard
 

Editorials/Columns

Daily Press: But, regardless of which party holds sway in Richmond, both can be expected to try and chip away at public access and government openness. Whether it's the Republicans' annual assault on the requirement that government bodies publish legal ads disclosing plans to rezone land and issues that may impact your home, or measures to restrict access to information about public employees, the drive to make it harder for citizens to learn about their government seems to be a constant in our legislature. It is an unwanted annual tradition that sees transparency encroached, not by some sweeping legislation, but through a series of small erosions that, like the Colorado River carving the Grand Canyon, result in gaping voids in our knowledge about how our tax moneys are spent. Virginians need public officials willing to defend the right to public access. On that front, particular scrutiny will be reserved for Mark Herring, the incoming attorney general, whose enforcement of the law should honor the need for openness in government.

Virginian-Pilot: The plan is the legislature's response to the gift-giving scandal that has engulfed Gov. Bob McDonnell for much of the past year. McDonnell has apologized for receiving, with his family, more than $150,000 worth of gifts and loans from the then-chief executive officer of Star Scientific, a supplement maker that until recently had been involved in a tax lawsuit with the state. Federal and state investigators are looking into whether the governor or his wife broke any laws. Delegates appeared to incorporate ideas similar to those offered by Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling and others, with one noteworthy exception: creation of an independent ethics commission. House members have offered to create an ethics advisory body. It's a toothless substitute for an independent entity empowered to research complaints and initiate investigations.

Times-Dispatch: Stung by public outrage over the NSA’s storing and trolling of communications metadata, Washington officials are exploring an alternative: making phone companies store the data for them.