About two weeks ago, I attended my first Privileges and Elections Committee meeting and witnessed a practice that completely baffled me. I got there early, and patiently waited for something interesting to happen. As with other committee meetings, the bills were presented and voted on. I very much appreciated that in the appropriations meeting room there was a television screen that showed exactly how each delegate voted on each of the bills in real time. This was appreciated because there could be no hiding. Each delegate had to take full responsibility for his or her vote. I watched the red and green come and go on the screen attaching names to votes to action. Then something interesting happened breaking the routine. There was a motion to lay the bill on the table. I looked to the television screen in anticipation of if the motion would pass, but it was blank. Instead I heard delegates say “Yea” and then a few practically yelling “Nay” and then the bill was killed. I felt cheated.
Maybe the screen had spoiled me, but I had been interested in seeing how many delegates voted and in what way. Then it happened again. This time I was sure I heard more delegates say “Nay” than “Yea,” yet there was no way to tell for sure. And with that, the bill was killed. Are we at the GAB or at a concert where the band with the loudest crowd wins?
Roanoke Times
Virginia lawmakers are coalescing in bipartisan fashion around a terrible idea. That's not necessarily new, but the consequence of the plan embodied in SB1393 effectively seals critical information about the government's use of lethal injection on behalf of Virginians. It's wrong, and the twisted rationale offered by defenders, including the bill's patron, Democratic Sen. Dick Saslaw, underscores its moral bankruptcy.
Virginian-Pilot
Fear, uncertainty and money are powerful motivators. And no one deploys them more effectively in the General Assembly than Dominion Virginia Power. The electric utility is Virginia's biggest power provider and biggest corporate campaign donor. The mere mention of legislation or regulations that could lead the utility to raise its rates, forcing consumers – voters – to pay more, is sufficient to jolt most Virginia lawmakers into action. These factors helped persuade lawmakers to quash a series of alternative energy-related bills opposed by Dominion this session. They also helped sway most lawmakers to approve a bill that ensures Dominion's consumers won't have to pay higher electricity rates through the next five years, and ensuring the monopoly won't need to worry for five years about being forced to refund consumers for profiting more than the State Corporation Commission permits.
Shawn Day, Virginian-Pilot
The Fraternal Order of Police has brought a legal challenge that threatens to limit the reach of Kalven v. Chicago, the 2014 Illinois Appellate Court decision holding that documents bearing on allegations of police abuse are public information. If the police union prevails, hundreds of thousands of police misconduct files currently available to the public will be destroyed.
Chicago Sun Times
If you have ever been forced to call a government agency to obtain information or a service, e.g., the DMV, you have some idea of how well the government works when the agency in question exists, at least ostensibly, to provide a service to the public. Now imagine that the agency doesn’t exist to service you, and that they are annoyed by your very existence and your audacity in asking them for records on how they do their jobs. While we and many other requesters have been successful in prying records out of agencies, in many instances this did not occur until a substantial amount of attorney time had been expended. Like all things involving this Administration, FOIA processing has become politicized. Early in the Obama Administration, Gregory Craig, then Counsel to the President, sent agencies a memo requiring them to flag requests with “White House equities” and to obtain White House clearance before releasing responsive records on such requests. Because of this, agencies have gone so far as to attempt to not disclose the names of White House staff that attended meetings with agency personnel.
Nathan Mehrens, Washington Examiner
Lawmakers ignored the key recommendation made by the Governor’s Commission on Integrity and Public Confidence in State Government: Create an independent ethics commission with the power to investigate and initiate complaints. That legislators ignored it may have surprised no one. But it’s a failing, especially given the protests in the Senate that further reforms are not really needed at all. Sen. John Watkins, one of the most outspoken on this point, is a well-respected legislator whose remarks deserve thoughtful consideration. He is retiring from the state Senate at the end of his term, and can hardly be accused of self-interest in lamenting an end to the free travel, Redskins tickets and other perks that lobbyists lavish on legislators. Earlier in the week, he said, “I think it is going to drive people out of the legislative process.” We expect he speaks for others in the Senate who voted for the ethics bill not because they think it is a good thing, but because they are up for re-election and are afraid a vote against it would hurt them, in the press and at the polls.
Roanoke Times
Last week the Virginia Senate passed a bill — Senate Bill 1393 — to hide from public view both the components of the drugs used to execute convicted capital criminals in the commonwealth and the identity of the companies that supply these drugs. We think it the essence of bad government to enshroud the state in secrecy when it exercises the awesome power to extinguish human life. One of us (Lain) contends that there are serious constitutional problems with this bill. The other (Walsh) is unconvinced. But we both agree that passage of this bill will provide capital convicts with a new set of legal claims that could halt the administration of the death penalty in Virginia for months, maybe years. And for what? The Department of Corrections says that the compounding pharmacies now mixing the lethal concoction for Virginia’s executions will not sell the drugs if their identities are known. These companies do not want to feel the same heat that led large, publicly traded pharmaceutical companies to extricate themselves from executions several years ago. But shielding Virginia’s newer, less-regulated drug suppliers from public criticism would be just wrong. The death penalty is controversial, but the right answer to controversy in a free society is not to hide what the government is doing, or to protect for-profit companies from bad publicity from their unsavory deals.
Roanoke Times
In the January issue of The Atlantic, James Fallows describes how the effectiveness of the U.S. military has become a taboo subject in the political arena. Given the vital importance of our military's performance, Fallows' article is important and disturbing. Fallows writes that, in contrast to the military, the subject of effectiveness is readily admissible when the objects of attention are schools or other domestic government services. My own experience, however, is that there are powerful built-in barriers that work against discussing the effectiveness of government institutions regardless of service area. Let me explain. The salient obstacle is what seems like a universal compulsion to consider effectiveness only through political lenses. When government's institutions do things we approve of, we credit politicians we like; when these institutions do things we disapprove of, we blame politicians we dislike. When we do manage to look beyond politicians themselves, we look to the policies they have put in place and the political appointees they have selected for government's top jobs. In short, we contemplate institutional shortcomings as if there were only two possible causes: the directions given by politicians and the actions taken (or not taken) by their appointees. So it is that we have unwittingly excused ourselves from examining the bureaucracies of government.
Richard Clay Wilson Jr., Governing