Transparency News 2/19/15

Fairfax County is considering adopting a new policy for police shootings which would require release of the involved officers’ names within 72 hours of the incident, monthly public updates after the incident, and a public summary of facts when the case is turned over to the Fairfax prosecutor. Also Tuesday, Supervisor Pat Herrity (R-Springfield) demanded a full accounting of the money spent by the county on outside attorneys, after reading in The Washington Post that Fairfax had already paid $130,000 to the D.C. law firm Hunton & Williams to respond to a November letter about the Geer case from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Herrity said he had asked for the same information on four occasions since December from the county’s budget department, but had gotten no answer. He also asked for the costs of outside counsel in cases involving the Fairfax Water litigation and for the firing last summer of assistant county attorney Nancy Loftus. The board directed that Herrity be provided those figures within a week.
Washington Post

The Virginia Railway Express held its first public hearing on the proposed fare increase Wednesday night in Stafford County. No one showed except three VRE officials and a reporter. Was it the snow or are VRE riders OK with the coming fare increase? VRE’s Chris Henry thinks the no-show meeting is a good sign. “It’s certainly a good start,” he said. “It means we’ve done a good job of getting the message out.”
Free Lance-Star

The Nelson Board of Supervisors has opted not to meet with Dominion Resources — the company proposing a controversial natural gas pipeline through the county — or respond in writing to a request for future land use, growth projections and other information. Dominion had asked if board members would meet with the company’s representatives to discuss land uses within a quarter mile of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Dominion submitted a dozen questions inquiring about topics such as the nature of Nelson County’s growth trends, local concerns and whether any other projects are to be constructed near the route.Reporting back to Dominion, county staff declined to answer questions until the interaction was verified by the board. At the Board of Supervisors meeting last week, County Administrator Steve Carter said the board has received several comments from the public who had thought the meeting proposed by Dominion would be about local approvals and variances. Carter said that just isn’t the case. “We certainly don’t want to get ahead of the board in any way or suggest to the public that there are secret meetings being conducted with Dominion or that we are giving them information on how to get permit approvals,” Carter said. “That is absolutely not true and we would never do something like that.”
Nelson County Times

National Stories

Unauthorized disclosures of classified information by Edward Snowden have damaged U.S. intelligence capabilities, National Counterterrorism Center director Nicholas J. Rasmussen told Congress last week. "Due to the Snowden leaks and other disclosures, terrorists also have a great understanding of how we seek to conduct surveillance including our methods, our tactics and the scope and scale of our efforts. They've altered the ways in which they communicate and this has led to a decrease in collection," Mr. Rasmussen said at a February 12 hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "We have specific examples which I believe we have shared with the committee and the committee staff in classified session -- specific examples of terrorists who have adopted greater security measures such as using various new types of encryption, terrorists who have dropped or changed email addresses, and terrorists who have simply stopped communicating in ways they had before, in part because they understand how we collected," he said.
Secrecy News

The email that a Los Angeles Times reporter sent to Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida in April 2006 asked how his early years in Midland, Tex., had shaped him. Attached was an article the reporter had written about the immigration policies of Mr. Bush’s brother, President George W. Bush. Jeb Bush’s lengthy response had little to say about Midland, but he did have a lot to say about immigration. The tone of the message, and the mention of Columba, his wife, was so unlike what a reporter typically hears from a politician that the reporter, Peter Wallsten (now an editor at The Washington Post), wrote back to make sure that the email was on the record. The reply: “I don’t do off the record, Peter. You know that.” Conversations with reporters contained in the archive of Jeb Bush’s emails from his time as governor show a politician comfortable not only with using what was then a relatively new technology as a tool of governing, but also with discussing policy.
New York Times

A Saginaw County, Michigan, judge has approved a motion from the Michigan Attorney General's Office allowing the state agency to get involved in a case about the release of the names of approximately 100 Oakley Police Department reserve police officers.  The Attorney General's Office, representing the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards, submitted the motion last week that states reservists do not meet standards published by MCOLES to be considered police officers under the village law act.  That means the reservists' names cannot be withheld under the law enforcement exemption of the Freedom of Information Act, Assistant Attorney General John F. Szczubelek said before Saginaw County Circuit Court Judge Robert Kaczmarek on Tuesday, Feb. 17. 
MLive

The South Carolina House has given key approval to a bill that creates a new court to handle disputes over how government agencies handle open records requests. The bill approved 90-16 on Wednesday would cut the amount of time agencies can take to answer a request for public records to 10 business days. It also would require agencies to post fee schedules to assure they are not trying to block requests by charging excessive money for copying and research. The new Office of Freedom of Information Act Review would decide whether Freedom of Information Act complaints should be sent to an Administrative Law judge. If an agency breaks the law, it would have to pay damages. Similar measures have died in the Senate in recent years.
The State

Carmel,  Indiana, Mayor Jim Brainard is the latest politician to find that managing social media accounts is more challenging than simply posting messages for constituents. Supporters and detractors alike can — and often do — answer back. Brainard has received blowback in the last couple weeks because his campaign staff has been systemically deleting comments they perceive as negative — and blocking some users — from his campaign page on Facebook. Experts said that privately managed and clearly marked campaign pages such as Brainard's will not risk running afoul of the First Amendment if staffers remove comments. They're considered personal pages, not public forums. But political campaign managers say removing comments and stifling debate probably won't be a winning political strategy on social media — where users are accustomed to interaction.
USA Today


Editorials/Columns

Virginia's Senate has brought new meaning to the adverb “grudgingly.” Last week, The Senate passed an omnibus bill of anti-corruption measures. The vote was 35–1. The bill creates an ethics advisory panel, caps gifts at $100 and ends free travel and entertainment. Good for the Senate. Given a do-over, though, some senators might wish they had done this with a little more grace. They embraced ethical reform with the affection usually reserved for rattlesnakes. The people of Virginia have made it clear that they want reform. In a poll by the [Wason] Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in January, 71 percent said they wanted an independent ethics review commission. In the wake of former Gov. Bob McDonnell’s trial, conviction and sentencing on corruption charges, this was not surprising. What was surprising was the manner in which some legislators seem to have been dragged kicking and screaming to more transparency and less loot.
Free Lance-Star