The Virginia House of Delegates will have the chance to cure a mistake by the Senate:
The House can and should reject a bill that would shroud the Virginia execution process in secrecy and darkness. Senate Bill 1393, filed by Sen. Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, allows the state Department of Corrections to contract with any “external entity” to compound the drugs used for execution by lethal injection. But a provision of this bill exempts the contracting process, the identity of any providers and the drug components used for execution from the Freedom of Information Act. If there is any solace to be taken, Saslaw’s original bill was worse – the whole process would have been secret. A condemned person, or his or her family, could not find out the details about the state-imposed death. But an amendment took out wording that would have exempted from FOIA all information relating to the execution process, including details of the buildings used during an execution and all records about the equipment used. The execution process should not be fogged by secrecy. We urge members of the House of the Delegates to reject this bill.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly
Those who didn’t know better might think the administration of Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones was having a contest with the Richmond Economic Development Authority for the title of Most Opaque Government Body in Virginia. After much pressure, the city has released its vise-like grip on the confidentiality agreement the administration asked the City Council to sign regarding the departure of Byron Marshall, the former city administrator. The actual terms of that departure have not been released themselves, of course. The confidentiality agreement is sweeping — so sweeping that those who signed it are not even supposed to acknowledge it exists. Meanwhile, the EDA has just voted to change the terms of the lease with Stone Brewing it approved a couple of months ago. It still hasn’t signed the construction contract for the brewery, even though site work on the project is now underway. And it is using the lack of a signed contract as an excuse not to reveal any of the terms. Evidently the public is not supposed to see what it is getting for its money until the deal is irrevocable.
Times-Dispatch
While many Virginians and the editorial pages of many newspapers, including The News & Advance, argued for a total ban on gifts — as Central Virginia’s Sen. Steve Newman and Del. Ben Cline voluntarily impose on themselves — and an ethics commission with real enforcement powers, the reforms now taking shape are steps in the right direction. Yes, there are “loopholes” and exceptions, but the package likely to pass the Assembly is better than what existed before, which was absolutely nothing at all. But the debate and political back-and-forth preceding each chamber’s final votes reveals degrees of cynicism and political tone-deafness on the part of many Virginia legislators that is absolutely astounding.
News & Advance
With a few grumblings here and there, we agree with most of the law up to this point. But the new law also creates an ethics advisory panel to oversee mandatory filing of disclosure forms and offer advice on appropriate conduct for officials. That panel, however, has no actual power to investigate misconduct. It’s hard to believe that the legislature would go through the motions to pass new laws and then create no actual oversight to ensure the politicians stick by them. If they were trying to restore voters’ faith in the system, they needed to take that extra step.
Herald Progress
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the FOIA Improvement Act of 2015. Like a similar bill in the House, it would require that agencies operate under a “presumption of openness” when considering the release of information and would limit the exemption for so-called deliberative letters and memos — written by policymakers during the decision-making process — to those less than 25 years old. These and other proposed changes in the bills — including a requirement for a single online portal for all requests — don't address all the problems with the FOIA. At some point Congress also must limit the effect of a court decision that lets agencies refuse on privacy or national-security grounds to acknowledge whether a requested document even exists. Nevertheless, this legislation deserves to be passed.
Los Angeles Times