Friday
February 24, 2023
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state & local news stories
VCOG’s annual conference
FOI Day — March 16
Charlottesville
Info and registration here
A member of the Spotsylvania County school board was arrested Thursday on two charges, including a felony offense. Kirk E. Twigg, 65, is charged with forging a public record, a Class 4 felony that carries a potential prison sentence of between two to 10 years. He is also charged with a misdemeanor offense of tampering with a county record. Virginia State Police Sgt. Brent Coffey said Twigg was indicted this week by a Spotsylvania grand jury before turning himself in Thursday at a magistrate’s office. He was released on a personal recognizance bond. Court records do not specify what Twigg is suspected of doing, but both alleged offenses took place on or about June 21 and involve a county contract, police said. Twigg was the chairman of the School Board at that time. The School Board met on June 21, and board members finalized a contract for interim Superintendent Kelly Guempel.
The Free Lance-Star
A businessman appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin to University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors called UVA administrators “schmucks” last year and vowed to fight a “battle royale for the soul of the school” in a series of newly revealed text messages. The text messages were uncovered by transparency advocate Jeff Thomas, who took the school to court to force their release under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. They were first reported by the Washington Post. Thomas also provided VPM News a second batch of text messages he received that have not been previously published, which he received through a separate public records request. Thomas, who authored The Virginia Way: Democracy and Power after 2016, said UVA’s decision to fight the release of the documents was strategic. “I think their strategy was to delay release and these horrible messages until Mr. Ellis, the board member, was appointed formally to a four-year term,” Thomas said in an interview, noting that the university appears to have succeeded.
VPM
stories of national interest
“Fulfilling the request stands to be a gargantuan task for an office that’s puny by federal government standards.”
FOIA FOIBLES: The branch of the Labor Department that oversees federal contractors has been mired in a public records saga that predates the pandemic and has only gotten messier of late. In 2019, a reporter for Reveal, a part of the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for Type 2 EEO-1 data — a wonky report that contains information about the demographics of a company’s workforce broken down into broad job categories — filed by contractors dating back to 2016. These reports could be potentially used to glimpse at how some of the country’s largest employers, many of whom do business with the U.S. government, rate in terms of hiring and promoting women and people of color. The situation has put the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs in a bind, one with a strong potential to infuriate businesses and their Republican allies that this corporate diversity data will be made public. At the same time it is facing a FOIA lawsuit for not turning over these reports, and fulfilling the request stands to be a gargantuan task for an office that’s puny by federal government standards.
Politico
A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to comply with a request for documents from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger under the Freedom of Information Act. Shortly after passage of Georgia’s Elections Integrity Act, the Justice Department sued Georgia, seeking to strike down provisions of the new law. In response to the Justice Department’s lawsuit against SB 202, Raffensperger requested any communications that may have influenced the Department’s decision to challenge Georgia law.
Yahoo! news
The Los Angeles Unified School District disclosed Wednesday, Feb. 22, that “approximately 2,000 student assessment records” were posted on the dark web as a result of a recent cyberattack, including those for 60 who are currently enrolled. The posted records also included an unspecified number of driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers. The district statement did not say to whom those numbers belonged, but the school system does not routinely collect Social Security numbers from students. Separately, the Long Beach school system, one of the state’s largest, notified families Wednesday of a data breach that, so far, appears to contain the email addresses of students and student ID numbers.
Governing
editorials & columns
“A legislative branch that passes laws without assessing how well the executive branch carries them out is one that has failed our system of checks and balances.”
Investigations into Hunter Biden. A modern-day “Church Committee” to tackle the weaponization of the federal government. An accounting of what went wrong in Afghanistan. New year. New Congress. New investigations. The balance of congressional power flipping to the president’s opposing party brings about investigations quicker than the FBI can find the next batch of classified documents. This is a tradition in America as old as the “factions” that worried some of the Founders and evolved into today’s political parties. Whether you think it’s a process necessary to hold government accountable or mere political theater probably depends on who you voted for and who sits in the White House. But while political gamesmanship may drive the headlines, legislative bodies conducting proper oversight in a consistent manner is a necessary function if our government is to control itself as our Founders intended. A legislative branch that passes laws without assessing how well the executive branch carries them out is one that has failed our system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, this describes not only the U.S. Congress but also too many state legislatures.
Steven Johnson, Governing