Transparency News 2/1/16

State and Local Stories

Tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon, the Senate subcommittee for FOIA will hear eight bills that VCOG is following, including public employee salary data, extra response time for small localities ann access to the names of chemicals used in fracking. You can read our positions on the bill here.

Can you contact the subcommittee members (especially if they are your legislator) to voice your opinion?

Can you come to testify on any of these bills? The time is set for "1/2 hour after adjournment," which would probably be around 2:00. Let me know!

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Reporters who cover the state Capitol will return to the Senate floor Monday, nearly three weeks after Republicans who control the chamber had consigned them to its gallery. “On Monday morning it is my expectation, after some significant and fruitful discussions with our friends from the Fourth Estate, that they will be returning to the floor of the Senate in a little bit of a reconfigured fashion,” Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, said Friday on the Senate floor. “We’ve come to a good mutual resolution,” Norment said. The Virginia Capitol Correspondents Association said in a statement: “Denying reporter access to the Virginia Senate floor session was a mistake that could have been avoided; restoring it was the right thing to do. “While the revised floor access arrangement places additional limitations on our members’ flexibility to cover proceedings, it is workable — and returning is an important step toward ensuring we can do our jobs and provide accurate and timely reporting.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Richmond Public Schools administrators and School Board members say they are disappointed that Mayor Dwight C. Jones used altered images of district advocates to underscore his points about school funding during his annual State of the City speech Thursday. The original photo taken at a City Council meeting last month shows a group of mostly district teachers holding aloft signs that say, “SUPPORT OUR SCHOOLS.” In two modified pictures shown Thursday, the signs have been altered to say, “CUT OUR SERVICES” and “RAISE OUR TAXES.” “We need to honor the fact that our citizens are exercising their rights,” said 7th District School Board member Donald Coleman. “I don’t see how this should have happened. I mean, wow. I just don’t get it.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The trial of a Culpeper man at the heart of one of the county's largest heroin busts in recent memory is scheduled to begin March 9 in General District Court. Rodney Allen Simms, 41, faces two counts of manufacture or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance, possession of a gun while in possession of a schedule II narcotic and possession of a gun by a convicted felon. The charges stem from a traffic stop Jan. 8 on U.S. 29 in Culpeper County that ended in the seizure of 106.1 grams of heroin, 249.1 grams of crack and 13.3 grams of cocaine from a town residence. According to information obtained by the Star-Exponent through a Freedom of Information Act request, a search of the car Simms was a passenger in led deputies from the Culpeper County Sheriff's Office to a residence in the Highpoint subdivision, off of Orange Road, on the town's south side. During a search of the residence, the drugs were found hidden in the kitchen.
Star-Exponent

Hot-button political issues provided fertile territory for moral dilemmas as students from Randolph, Lynchburg and Sweet Briar colleges discussed doing the right thing during an ethics bowl held before an audience at Lynchburg College last week. The Lynchburg, Sweet Briar, and Randolph Ethics Bowl teams were preparing for the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges Ethics Bowl contest, which started Sunday and concludes today. The theme “Ethics and Civic Responsibility” also served as the theme of the exhibition debate.
Free Lance-Star

Turns out Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s commerce secretary wasn’t the only administration official who got to take in a playoff game this month in the Washington Redskins’ luxury box. The team provided the entire 31-seat suite to the governor’s office for that Jan. 10 playoff — information the administration did not disclose a little over a week ago, when Commerce Secretary Maurice Jones’s attendance became a subject of public controversy. Who else got to go? State Sen. Mark D. Obenshain (R-Rockingham) thinks that should be a matter of public record. He wrote to the governor asking about it, but most of his questions went unanswered.
Washington Post

National Stories
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For too long, government has made unrealistic demands of citizens when it comes to their participation in the process. The only choice many citizens have had was to speak for no more than three minutes at a podium -- often on live television, after hours of waiting, minutes before a vote. At one city council meeting in Texas, a speaker at a public hearing asked, in a nearly empty chamber at 11 o'clock at night, "Will there be an opportunity to weigh in on this issue? "I believe you're doing so now," replied the mayor. "With any power?" she asked, to applause from fellow citizens. At work, we don't limit input to those who can make a speech right before we make a decision, and we shouldn't impose that limit on the American people either; that helps "the most extreme voices get all the attention," as President Obama put it. What do we expect when we ask citizens to sit as they would in church, court or a college lecture, listening to elected officials opine from a dais on high? Only the bravest would openly and brazenly challenge a pastor, a judge or a professor in those settings.
Governing

Editorials/Columns

The 2016 session of the Virginia General Assembly opened with the state Senate banishing the press corps from its traditional spots on the chamber’s floor. The body adopted rules proposed by Majority Leader Tommy Norment that relegated reporters to the gallery, thereby reducing their direct contact with members. On Friday the leader announced the press will return today, Feb. 1. We are tempted to cite an unlikely source. Malcolm X said: “How can you thank a man for giving you what’s already yours?” The people of Virginia are the winners. They have learned something about their government, too.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Stewart Bryan’s heart pumped ink. He devoted his life to newspapers. A life devoted to print is a life devoted to time and place. Bryan loved Richmond. He considered The Times-Dispatch and News Leader vehicles of public service. When the press does its job, it improves its surroundings. Bryan may have belonged to a newspaper family but he answered a vocation’s call.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

RUBY BRABO is already making her presence felt as the new chairwoman of the King George County Board of Supervisors. Her initial actions promise a positive philosophical change — and an unmistakable breath of fresh air — in the way the board and county government operate. An inaugural decision: The regular meeting time has been moved from 6 p.m. to 6:30 to give more working folk the opportunity to attend. That simple change had always been given short shrift in the past. She’s also instituted public comment periods during work sessions to encourage greater community involvement. Board meetings and town halls will be spread around the county, making it more convenient for residents to attend and discuss the issues that matter to them.
Free Lance-Star

The Flint water crisis perfectly, tragically illustrates why FOIA is vital, and why the public’s right to know what government is doing in its name should never be compromised. It’s an example that Indiana lawmakers, claiming that the state’s Access to Public Records Act doesn’t apply to them, should consider. In shielding their internal communications, including emails, voice mail and notes from public view, House Republicans have cited concerns about the privacy of constituents who communicate with them. Michigan legislators have put forth similar arguments in response to calls, in light of the Flint tragedy, to get rid of the FOIA exemption. In both cases, lawmakers seem to be ignoring the obvious solution of protecting sensitive information while still adhering to the goal of transparency. Without a commitment to open government guided by law, we’re left to count on officials to do the right thing and voluntarily make requested information public. That’s unacceptable, and the situation in Michigan shows us why. 
South Bend Tribune