Transparency News 2/4/15

 

Wednesday, February 4, 2015






Click here for VCOG's annual chart of access-related legislation
State and Local Stories

NOTE: A hearing on a Hopewell citizen’s FOIA suit against the city council is scheduled for this morning at 9 a.m.Janice Denton claims the council violated FOIA’s closed meetings provisions when it went into closed session to discuss who the council would select as mayor and vice mayor.

In 2014, entertainment spending peaked in January and February, when legislators gathered in Richmond for the annual General Assembly.
VPAP

Monday night’s meeting of the Halifax County Board of Supervisors was unlike any other meeting ever witnessed by county residents. Just one minute into the meeting, Halifax County Administrator Jim Halasz announced that regardless of what transpired during the evening, “It is very important for the board to meet (in closed session) with the sheriff, law enforcement officials and the county attorney sometime before the board adjourns this evening.” Some 25 minutes into the meeting, the service of a deputy was required to escort former commissioner of revenue employee Lisa Mosier Newbill, a lifelong resident of the county, from the meeting room. Newbill stood before the podium several minutes before imploring the board to let her speak. However, when she was allowed to address supervisors, she attempted to make accusations against the county administrator as well as Finance Director Stephanie Jackson, and at that point, supervisors lost all control of the meeting. “This is exactly the reason we were hesitant about doing something like this,” Supervisor J. T. Davis said referring to allowing public comment during a meeting before any chairman or presiding officer had been selected. “That does not have any place in this board room. This lady is evidently a disgruntled employee. Is she going to come up here and praise everybody? No. But now we’ve allowed her to use this soapbox and let the papers exploit whatever and only hear one side of the story. This is exactly why Robert’s Rules of Order is in place. This is why you have sergeant-at-arms to control this,” Davis said. According to Davis, personal agendas were responsible for actions of board members during the first half of the hour and a half long meeting when the board deadlocked 4-4 once again in electing a chairman.
Gazette-Virginian

Henry County Public Schools has updated its website to make it more user-friendly. “It’s very, very different,” said Monica Hatchett, HCPS coordinator for family and community engagement. “We made a shift on Jan. 16. It’s a totally changed format. The Parent Connect area of the website, which contains information about resources, information and links, is now called Family Connect. For example, a new link on Family Connect provides information about STEM Fair, such as procedures and important dates. One feature on Family Connect is a weekly informational blog, Family Five: five things parents need to know about a particular topic, and the topics will vary. It’s five “quick and easy” points for families to know. For example, the current topic is five things to remember about FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid).
Martinsville Bulletin

National Stories

Voting mostly along party lines, the Kansas House rejected an amendment that would have made private e-mails by public officials about official state business open to public scrutiny. Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, offered the amendment Monday after The Eagle reported last week that Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget director had e-mailed a draft of the state budget to two lobbyists and several top administration staffers from a private e-mail account on a private computer. The communication is exempt from Kansas Open Records Act because of a loophole. “It’s come to our attention recently that private business is being done on private e-mail accounts. What this (amendment) does is say we don’t care what e-mail account you use … if you’re doing public business that’s subject to KORA,” Ward said. “It is a transparency issue. It is fundamental to a democracy that people know how decisions are made.” Ward’s proposal, which would have made private communications by public officials open records when a substantial public interest can be shown, failed by a vote of 86-30.
Witchita Eagle

Journalists and legal professionals from media groups in and around the state testified at a Maryland House of Delegates Judiciary Committee meeting Tuesday to argue for an expansion of the state's reporter's shield law. House Bill 8, sponsored by Del. Sandy Rosenberg, D-Baltimore, would apply the shield law, which excuses journalists who reside in Maryland from disclosing their sources' identities in court, to subpoenas from states with different standards. Representatives of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association, the Maryland D.C. Delaware Broadcasters Association, the Prince George's Sentinel and Montgomery Sentinel newspapers and The Washington Post all voiced their support. The journalists' star witness was an out-of-stater: New York resident Jana Winter. The former Fox News reporter, now with The Intercept, fought a Colorado subpoena for nearly two years to maintain the confidentiality of a source in a story about the 2012 mass shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater. New York's high court eventually sided with Winter, rejecting the subpoena.
Fox News

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have partially rescinded their effort to classify previously public oversight information concerning the status of coalition operations in that country after the move drew sharp criticism. In a report issued last week, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) had called the classification action "unprecedented" and said that it left SIGAR "for the first time in six years unable to publicly report on most of the U.S.-taxpayer-funded efforts to build, train, equip, and sustain the ANSF." Some officials in the Department of Defense were said to be unhappy with this unexpected development, especially after its negative impact was magnified in editorials in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and in critical assessments in the Washington Post and elsewhere. And so a modification was made. The specifics and the extent of the change in classification policy were not immediately clear.
Secrecy News

Thousands of emails newly released by the California Public Utilities Commission present a damaging portrait of former PUC President Michael Peevey as a micromanaging, domineering leader who appears to have overstepped his role. Peevey involved himself personally in internal decision-making at Pacific Gas & Electric Co. — the state's largest utility — including its corporate leadership, political public relations strategy, safety policies and rate-setting cases, affecting billions of customer dollars, documents show. The 65,000 emails offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the commission and are likely to fuel ongoing state and federal investigations. Improper communications between the regulator and the utilities it regulates violate PUC policy. That's because in many proceedings they could be seen as giving unfair and one-sided access to decision makers, without equal access to other parties.
Los Angeles Times


 

Editorials/Columns

There is an “invasion.” Criminal gang activity is “exponentially increasing.” Police are “on the front lines.” There are “lives at stake.” It’d be understandable if you thought these militaristic and hysterical statements were describing a large and particularly dangerous Third World city. Apparently, according to Senator John Cosgrove, they describe Chesapeake, Virginia. (Not exactly the tourism ad most cities would want, but maybe that’s a problem for another day.) What bill do you think prompted these statements? No, it wasn’t a bill to address a need for new cross-jurisdictional gang task forces, to provide more money for law enforcement, or to take any other step to combat the supposed “invasion of localities.” It was Cosgrove’s SB1402, which would add a “very small exception” to FOIA, amending Va. Code § 2.2-3711(A)(19) to authorize a public body to hold a closed meeting for “consultation with or briefings by staff members, legal counsel, or law-enforcement or emergency service officials concerning criminal street gang-related activities.” You heard correctly. According to Cosgrove, lives are at stake because FOIA doesn’t let police talk to Chesapeake City Council members behind closed doors about gang activities.
Open Virginia Law
Meanwhile, in Harrisonburg: A joint effort of the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office and Rockingham County Parks and Recreation Department will seek to enlighten the community on gangs and what signs to look for in children who may show interest in joining one.
Daily News Record

In sports, everyone has to play by the same rules. It wouldn't make for a fair competition if one team was subjected to harsher scrutiny than the other or if individual players were held to different standards of conduct. We expect the same approach from state government when it comes to finding a balance between what electric monopolies say they need and the interests of consumers in receiving economical and reliable power. One side shouldn't be allowed to skirt the rules or duck regulations simply because it's more influential and decides to exert itself. Yet, with legislation now moving through the General Assembly, that's precisely what lawmakers would allow Dominion Virginia Power to do. The bill would allow the company to avoid the biannual state review of its finances and would freeze the base rate it charges customers for eight years. If power companies need relief in light of oppressive and expensive federal regulations, then let lawmakers address that through legislation — and cover all utilities. But gutting the SCC review process creates more problems and is itself not a solution.
Daily Press

The surprise announcement this afternoon that Del. Ed Scott, R-Madison, would not seek re-election in order to focus on his family and business highlighted what is best and what is most problematic about Virginia’s citizen legislature, Del. Dave Albo, R-Fairfax, said in a speech on the House floor. “I love the citizen legislature,” Albo said. “It is fantastic.” “It works because there’s someone here like everyone in Virginia,” he went on to say, pointing to lawmakers of every age, race, nationality, gender and career field. But, he said, serving can also put a tremendous amount of pressure on legislators worrying about how to serve and still pay their mortgages and raise their children. Delegates are paid $17,640 a year and are considered part-time, convening at the beginning of every year for 30- and 60-day legislative sessions. Albo said he didn’t know what the solution may be, but “it’s a shame to lose another member of the ‘stressed out, got to make my house payment’ club.”
Virginian-Pilot

On Jan. 20, the Charlottesville City Council unanimously approved a plan to appoint a University student liaison. The move to create this new student position was spearheaded by second-year student John Connolly, my colleague in the Opinion section who is also the co-chair of the Student Council’s Community Affairs Committee. In conjunction with City Councilor Bob Fenwick, he campaigned for the position in hopes to further engage University students with local government. While the specific duties and responsibilities of this new position are still in flux, its conception signals a critical shift in the agenda of the Student Council and a noteworthy step towards further interaction with Charlottesville residents and officials. It has always seemed strange to me that University students could claim to “live” in Charlottesville and yet do very little to earn their citizenship. 
Ashley Spinks, Cavalier Daily

Last week Kansans learned that the governor’s draft of a two-year state budget was shared with lobbyists and other outsiders as well as top administration officials in December via private e-mail accounts. Yet with that revelation still fresh in their minds, 86 GOP Kansas House members declined Monday to guard against official subterfuge in the future. Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, proposed considering private communications by public officials to be open records when a substantial public interest can be shown. If his amendment was not the answer, legislators can still stand up for openness at the highest levels of state government by otherwise passing legislation to slam shut this obvious loophole in the Kansas Open Records Act. The weak explanations offered by the Brownback administration – that the use of private e-mail addresses for the budget draft was not meant to skirt KORA, but because many staff members were at home for the holidays – are beside the point. Kansans should be able to see and scrutinize their government, and have confidence that open-records laws are keeping up with technology. Those doing the public’s business should not be able to hide their work by simply clicking from a government to a private e-mail account or switching to a different computer or other device. 
Witchita Eagle