Transparency News 2/25/15

In a vote of support for transparency in state-sponsored executions, the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday killed a bill that opponents said would have shrouded lethal injection in unprecedented secrecy. The controversial measure was intended to keep drugs used for lethal injection flowing into Virginia by shielding manufacturers from public scrutiny and political pressure. Despite bipartisan support from Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and the Senate, the overwhelmingly Republican House killed the bill, 56 to 42. The bill, sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), passed the Senate, 23 to 14, earlier this month. Saslaw said he was surprised to see the bill fail but cited opposition to the death penalty and concerns about government secrecy.
Washington Post

A longtime homeless man in Henrico County who has been fighting the county’s prohibitions against median-based panhandling won a major victory Tuesday from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Aided recently by an international law firm that agreed to take on his case, Robert S. Reynolds, who is nearing 60, has been fighting county police and other officials since 2008 in their bid to shut down allegedly unsafe panhandling operations at some county intersections. But on Tuesday, the appeals court vacated and remanded back to a Richmond federal judge an opinion upholding the county ordinance, concluding that the ordinance is too broad and may limit free speech.
Times-Dispatch

A bill to add a ninth member to the Halifax County Board of Supervisors so that votes don’t deadlock in a tie was killed Monday after the Senate recommitted the legislation to the committee on local government for further review. The legislation, sponsored by Del. James E. Edmunds, R-Halifax, had sailed through the House and was on the Senate floor when an email sent to Sen. A. Donald McEachin brought the legislation to a halt. According to Halifax County ED-8 Supervisor W. Bryant Claiborne, he along with ED-3 Supervisor Hubert Pannell, ED-5 Supervisor Barry Bank and ED-7 Supervisor Lottie Nunn signed off on the email that asked Sen. McEachin to oppose the legislation “because local matters should be decided by the local people and not state government.” For the past two months, the board of supervisors has been unable to elect a chairman and vice chairman because votes have ended in a 4-4 tie. Moreover, relationships among board members have been extremely tense. At this month’s meeting, a citizen had to be escorted from the meeting after making inflammatory allegations about the county administrator and finance director, and then two board members got into an argument – with one accusing the other of slander.
Gazette-Virginian

The General Assembly has passed legislation restricting Freedom of Information Act requests regarding cybersecurity. Senate Bill 1129 was approved unanimously by the House on Thursday. The bill, which passed the Senate unanimously on February 5th, extends FOIA exemptions to “plans and information to prevent or respond to terrorist activity or cyber attacks, the disclosure of which would jeopardize the safety of any person.” The legislation also would exempt from disclosure “information not lawfully available to the public regarding specific cybersecurity vulnerabilities or security plans and measures of an entity, facility, network, software program, or system.”
RVA News

National Stories

Records custodians who don’t make a good faith attempt to seek out and provide information requested from government officials may soon find themselves in violation of Texas’ sunshine law. State Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, filed a bill Monday allowing citizens to sue for the release of information when a government employee refuses to provide it to a records custodian in fulfillment of a Texas Public Information Act request. The bill, open records advocates say, would close a loophole in 2013 legislation proposed by Hunter that made communication from any phone or device used for official business — whether personal or government-owned — subject to the Public Information Act. “What’s happened in the interim is that government officials have claimed that, in some instances, their private devices are out of reach from the entity because the entity is not the custodian of the private device,” said Laura Prather, an Austin attorney who works on behalf of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. “It’s a loophole in the law. It’s certainly not consistent with what the AG rulings were, nor is it consistent with the legislative intent behind the bill that was passed last session.”
Dallas Morning News

A government oversight group on Tuesday filed a motion in federal court to force the Obama administration to release thousands of records linked to the IRS’s targeting of conservative-leaning groups. Cause of Action is seeking the enforcement of a prior court order requiring the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) to produce more than 2,500 documents. The group argues that TIGTA continues to protect the White House by denying the disclosure of the records through the Freedom of Information Act. TIGTA had asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia earlier this month for permission to withhold documents under Section 6103 of the tax code.  But the nonprofit group argues that section of the tax code is designed to protect taxpayers, not the government. 
The Hill

Editorials/Columns

Few issues better demonstrate differences of opinion among the states than capital punishment. There are states like Texas, with a virtual revolving door to the death chamber, and Michigan, which abolished the death penalty in 1846, nine years after it became a state. The one statistic that applies nationwide is that the number of executions has been dropping in recent years. A key reason the number of U.S. executions has dropped in recent years is that the sources of lethal injection drugs have dried up. They were produced largely by pharmaceutical companies in Europe where the death penalty is frowned upon and the companies that made them were seeing a consumer backlash at home. It has been speculated that death penalty opponents believe “painless” lethal injection assuages the guilt of those who would otherwise oppose it. Botched executions would counter that, and the legislation would protect the companies that produced the faulty drugs from bad publicity. Politics doesn’t get any more convoluted than this. Legislating secrecy is hardly the way to address an issue that merits straightforward debate.
Free Lance-Star

Here’s what happens when you FOIA West Virginia University. You send in a FOIA, lets say, at 8 p.m. on Sunday evening. You wait for five business days, not including weekends, legal holidays or the day WVU receives the request. Instead of sending a request to the actual person who holds the record, you send an email to Harry Montoro, West Virginia University’s freedom of information act officer, at FOIA@mail.wvu.edu. You wait patiently. On the fifth day or sometimes after, you receive an email, always around 4:40-4:46 p.m., with a response. Often, one waits all of these days to have a request denied or to find out it will only take longer.
The Daily Athenaeum