Transparency News 2/10/15
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
State and Local Stories
Attorney General opinion on mugshots: "For the foregoing reasons, it is my opinion that local law enforcement agencies must disclose adult arrestee photographs pursuant to a valid FOIA request if they are contained in a database maintained by the local law enforcement agency, regardless of whether the defendant is still incarcerated or has been released, unless disclosing them will jeopardize a felony investigation. However, photographs may not be drawn from the Central Criminal Records Exchange for disclosure at any time to comply with a FOIA request."
VCOG website
A Richmond judge has thrown out a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the city related to the departure last year of former chief administrative officer Byron C. Marshall. But the judge's ruling makes clear that the city is on shaky legal ground with its refusal to disclose the confidentiality agreementsCity Council members were asked to sign before being briefed on Marshall's exit in September. In a ruling dated Wednesday, Richmond Circuit Court Judge Joi Jeter Taylor said she had reviewed the confidentiality agreement privately, and she concluded it is not protected by public-records exemptions related to personnel records and attorney-client privilege, as the city had argued. But Taylor said the issue of the confidentiality agreement was not properly before the court because Carol A.O. Wolf, the former Richmond School Board member who filed the suit, had technically asked for the names of all council members who signed it, not the document itself.
Times-Dispatch
Legislation that would allow the state to prevent public disclosure of nearly every aspect of the drugs used in lethal injection executions in Virginia narrowly survived a Senate committee Monday. The Senate Courts of Justice Committee voted 7-6 to advance Senate Bill 1393, sponsored by Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax and supported by Gov. Terry McAuliffe's administration. It now heads to the full Senate for consideration. The bill would give the Department of Corrections the authority to contract with pharmacies to compound the drugs used in the lethal cocktail used in state executions. But it would also protect from disclosure the identity of the pharmacy compounding drugs, the names of the drugs, the identity of the companies that produced the drugs, and the concentration of the drugs used.
Times-Dispatch
The trio of pipeline bills introduced by Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, died in committee Monday. The bills — which sought to open up project records and restrict or repeal a controversial 2004 surveying law — attracted little support in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, though individual lawmakers expressed sympathy for the property owners. The concept behind Senate Bill 1166, an open records bill, was referred to the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council for study.
News & Advance
It isn’t news to anyone paying tuition at one of Virginia’s public universities that different schools charge different tuition rates. It turns out those different price tags apply to requests for public information, too. In light of a recent state audit pointing out universities’ massive travel tabs, Watchdog.org requested the employment contracts and two years’ worth of travel expense records for all of Virginia’s 15 public university presidents. In the end, public records estimates were not created equally. Virginia law allows public bodies charge a “reasonable” amount that doesn’t exceed the actual cost of producing the documents. But that word “reasonable” is up for interpretation, and can be settled only by a judge. The University of Virginia wants to charge the most for its president’s contract and travel records — $510. They reached that figure by estimating it would take seven hours at $45 an hour for the “staff time searching and collecting potentially responsive records.”
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
National Stories
The mass records requester from Washington state has struck again. Computer programmer Tim Clemans is making new headlines in the state after asking every state agency to publicly release all emails that don’t require redaction. Clemans first gained attention in November when he anonymously made mass video requests of most police and sheriffs' departments in the state, causing agencies and regulators to rethink the state’s aggressive transparency rules. Now, he’s once again pushing government on the bounds of transparency -- and he's getting the same cold reception as he did before. “I'm so sick of reading about this guy abusing the public records act,” Billbo77 commented on a local news story about Clemans’ latest project. “Total control idiot wasting our state's money. How 'bout you move to another state!” mtnviewgal wrote. “Another dumbass wanting to waste taxpayers money,” dkgiovenco wrote. But Clemans said he’s taking a big picture approach – it’s not about him and his requests, it's about challenging how government looks at transparency.
Government Technology
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) walked into court in Minnesota last week and asked a judge to issue an order to stop the federal agency from sharing information about some of the biggest polluters of our nation's waterways with the American public. That's right, the agency that is charged with protecting your environmental health is working hard to make sure you're not protected and that you don't have access to information. It would be shocking if it weren't so sadly commonplace. The court case, which has been going on for a year and a half, was decided in EPA's favor at the end of January when the judge dismissed the plaintiffs -- the American Farm Bureau Federation (FB) and the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) -- because the industry groups could not show that they or their members were harmed by EPA's 2013 release of factory farm data to concerned citizens. EPA had released the data to several environmental NGO's pursuant to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, before asking for it all back when industry threw a temper tantrum. Then EPA released some of it again, before asking for it all back. Again. On their third attempt, they finally released a subset of data that largely conformed to industry's demands.
Huffington Post
For the first time, the United States government has agreed to release what we believe to be the largest index of government data in the world. On Friday, the Sunlight Foundation received a letter from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) outlining how they plan to comply with our FOIA request from December 2013 for agency Enterprise Data Inventories. EDIs are comprehensive lists of a federal agency’s information holdings, providing an unprecedented view into data held internally across the government. Our FOIA request was submitted 14 months ago. These lists of the government's data were not public, however, until now. More than a year after Sunlight’s FOIA request and with a lawsuit initiated by Sunlight about to be filed, we’re finally going to see what data the government holds. Sunlight’s FOIA request built on President Obama’s Open Data Executive Order, which first required agency-wide data indexes to be built and maintained. According to implementation guidance prepared in response to the executive order, Enterprise Data Inventories are intended to help agencies “develop a clear and comprehensive understanding of what data assets they possess” by accounting “for all data assets created or collected by the agency.”
Sunlight Foundation
Jeb Bush is planning to launch a website Tuesday that will contain the emails from his two terms as governor of Florida, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bush announced the website, which will also include the first chapter of his forthcoming e-book about his administration, during a call on Monday with a few hundred former staffers and members of his office, the Journal said. Bush previously said that he would release about 250,000 emails from his time as governor from 1999 to 2007. People close to the former Florida governor said last month that he is also prepared to release an early disclosure of his personal tax returns.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
You might call it the closed session that opened a can of worms for the Richmond School Board. Behind closed doors at the board’s Feb. 2 meeting, member Mamie Taylor offered to withdraw a disciplinary complaint against member Kimberly Gray if the board would keep a policy that Taylor has used to collect $4.15 in reimbursements for her travel to board meetings, according to people at the meeting interviewed by Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Zachary Reid. After last week’s closed session, Taylor opted to close her mouth to the media and have a Chesterfield County-based public relations firm, Cruz Inc. Global, act as her intermediary in dealing with reporters on a pro bono basis. People who value transparency look askance when an elected official hits the mute button. No one forced Taylor to sign up for her job, which comes with meager pay and the taxing task of fielding questions from reporters. Local attorney Steve Benjamin said a failure to adhere to open meeting law may stem from a lack of adequate training of elected officials on what the law requires in their official capacity. But without an investigation in this situation, no informed decision can be made on whether to take further action.
Michael Paul Williams, Times-Dispatch
After the House of Delegates agrees, consumers will have to trust Dominion not to overcharge, despite its recent history of doing just that. The SCC caught them in 2009 and 2011, and customers received refunds. Friday's vote illustrates what the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline debate has shown since its beginning: People are practically powerless in the face of a huge public utility that has governmental eminent domain privileges without accountability and citizen oversight. Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, introduced a bill asking for any public service corporation trying to use eminent domain subject to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act on projects for which it is exercising eminent domain. A House of Delegates committee tabled the bill on a voice vote, with no record of who supported it and who didn't. Virginia's citizenry simply does not have the influence over her General Assembly that Dominion does.
News Leader
State and Local Stories
Attorney General opinion on mugshots: "For the foregoing reasons, it is my opinion that local law enforcement agencies must disclose adult arrestee photographs pursuant to a valid FOIA request if they are contained in a database maintained by the local law enforcement agency, regardless of whether the defendant is still incarcerated or has been released, unless disclosing them will jeopardize a felony investigation. However, photographs may not be drawn from the Central Criminal Records Exchange for disclosure at any time to comply with a FOIA request."
VCOG website
A Richmond judge has thrown out a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the city related to the departure last year of former chief administrative officer Byron C. Marshall. But the judge's ruling makes clear that the city is on shaky legal ground with its refusal to disclose the confidentiality agreementsCity Council members were asked to sign before being briefed on Marshall's exit in September. In a ruling dated Wednesday, Richmond Circuit Court Judge Joi Jeter Taylor said she had reviewed the confidentiality agreement privately, and she concluded it is not protected by public-records exemptions related to personnel records and attorney-client privilege, as the city had argued. But Taylor said the issue of the confidentiality agreement was not properly before the court because Carol A.O. Wolf, the former Richmond School Board member who filed the suit, had technically asked for the names of all council members who signed it, not the document itself.
Times-Dispatch
Legislation that would allow the state to prevent public disclosure of nearly every aspect of the drugs used in lethal injection executions in Virginia narrowly survived a Senate committee Monday. The Senate Courts of Justice Committee voted 7-6 to advance Senate Bill 1393, sponsored by Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax and supported by Gov. Terry McAuliffe's administration. It now heads to the full Senate for consideration. The bill would give the Department of Corrections the authority to contract with pharmacies to compound the drugs used in the lethal cocktail used in state executions. But it would also protect from disclosure the identity of the pharmacy compounding drugs, the names of the drugs, the identity of the companies that produced the drugs, and the concentration of the drugs used.
Times-Dispatch
The trio of pipeline bills introduced by Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, died in committee Monday. The bills — which sought to open up project records and restrict or repeal a controversial 2004 surveying law — attracted little support in the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee, though individual lawmakers expressed sympathy for the property owners. The concept behind Senate Bill 1166, an open records bill, was referred to the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council for study.
News & Advance
It isn’t news to anyone paying tuition at one of Virginia’s public universities that different schools charge different tuition rates. It turns out those different price tags apply to requests for public information, too. In light of a recent state audit pointing out universities’ massive travel tabs, Watchdog.org requested the employment contracts and two years’ worth of travel expense records for all of Virginia’s 15 public university presidents. In the end, public records estimates were not created equally. Virginia law allows public bodies charge a “reasonable” amount that doesn’t exceed the actual cost of producing the documents. But that word “reasonable” is up for interpretation, and can be settled only by a judge. The University of Virginia wants to charge the most for its president’s contract and travel records — $510. They reached that figure by estimating it would take seven hours at $45 an hour for the “staff time searching and collecting potentially responsive records.”
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
National Stories
The mass records requester from Washington state has struck again. Computer programmer Tim Clemans is making new headlines in the state after asking every state agency to publicly release all emails that don’t require redaction. Clemans first gained attention in November when he anonymously made mass video requests of most police and sheriffs' departments in the state, causing agencies and regulators to rethink the state’s aggressive transparency rules. Now, he’s once again pushing government on the bounds of transparency -- and he's getting the same cold reception as he did before. “I'm so sick of reading about this guy abusing the public records act,” Billbo77 commented on a local news story about Clemans’ latest project. “Total control idiot wasting our state's money. How 'bout you move to another state!” mtnviewgal wrote. “Another dumbass wanting to waste taxpayers money,” dkgiovenco wrote. But Clemans said he’s taking a big picture approach – it’s not about him and his requests, it's about challenging how government looks at transparency.
Government Technology
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) walked into court in Minnesota last week and asked a judge to issue an order to stop the federal agency from sharing information about some of the biggest polluters of our nation's waterways with the American public. That's right, the agency that is charged with protecting your environmental health is working hard to make sure you're not protected and that you don't have access to information. It would be shocking if it weren't so sadly commonplace. The court case, which has been going on for a year and a half, was decided in EPA's favor at the end of January when the judge dismissed the plaintiffs -- the American Farm Bureau Federation (FB) and the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) -- because the industry groups could not show that they or their members were harmed by EPA's 2013 release of factory farm data to concerned citizens. EPA had released the data to several environmental NGO's pursuant to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, before asking for it all back when industry threw a temper tantrum. Then EPA released some of it again, before asking for it all back. Again. On their third attempt, they finally released a subset of data that largely conformed to industry's demands.
Huffington Post
For the first time, the United States government has agreed to release what we believe to be the largest index of government data in the world. On Friday, the Sunlight Foundation received a letter from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) outlining how they plan to comply with our FOIA request from December 2013 for agency Enterprise Data Inventories. EDIs are comprehensive lists of a federal agency’s information holdings, providing an unprecedented view into data held internally across the government. Our FOIA request was submitted 14 months ago. These lists of the government's data were not public, however, until now. More than a year after Sunlight’s FOIA request and with a lawsuit initiated by Sunlight about to be filed, we’re finally going to see what data the government holds. Sunlight’s FOIA request built on President Obama’s Open Data Executive Order, which first required agency-wide data indexes to be built and maintained. According to implementation guidance prepared in response to the executive order, Enterprise Data Inventories are intended to help agencies “develop a clear and comprehensive understanding of what data assets they possess” by accounting “for all data assets created or collected by the agency.”
Sunlight Foundation
Jeb Bush is planning to launch a website Tuesday that will contain the emails from his two terms as governor of Florida, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bush announced the website, which will also include the first chapter of his forthcoming e-book about his administration, during a call on Monday with a few hundred former staffers and members of his office, the Journal said. Bush previously said that he would release about 250,000 emails from his time as governor from 1999 to 2007. People close to the former Florida governor said last month that he is also prepared to release an early disclosure of his personal tax returns.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
You might call it the closed session that opened a can of worms for the Richmond School Board. Behind closed doors at the board’s Feb. 2 meeting, member Mamie Taylor offered to withdraw a disciplinary complaint against member Kimberly Gray if the board would keep a policy that Taylor has used to collect $4.15 in reimbursements for her travel to board meetings, according to people at the meeting interviewed by Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Zachary Reid. After last week’s closed session, Taylor opted to close her mouth to the media and have a Chesterfield County-based public relations firm, Cruz Inc. Global, act as her intermediary in dealing with reporters on a pro bono basis. People who value transparency look askance when an elected official hits the mute button. No one forced Taylor to sign up for her job, which comes with meager pay and the taxing task of fielding questions from reporters. Local attorney Steve Benjamin said a failure to adhere to open meeting law may stem from a lack of adequate training of elected officials on what the law requires in their official capacity. But without an investigation in this situation, no informed decision can be made on whether to take further action.
Michael Paul Williams, Times-Dispatch
After the House of Delegates agrees, consumers will have to trust Dominion not to overcharge, despite its recent history of doing just that. The SCC caught them in 2009 and 2011, and customers received refunds. Friday's vote illustrates what the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline debate has shown since its beginning: People are practically powerless in the face of a huge public utility that has governmental eminent domain privileges without accountability and citizen oversight. Del. Dickie Bell, R-Staunton, introduced a bill asking for any public service corporation trying to use eminent domain subject to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act on projects for which it is exercising eminent domain. A House of Delegates committee tabled the bill on a voice vote, with no record of who supported it and who didn't. Virginia's citizenry simply does not have the influence over her General Assembly that Dominion does.
News Leader
Categories:
