Transparency News 3/12/15

Thursday, March 12, 2015

State and Local Stories

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After nine months in office, the simmering tensions among Purcellville Town Council members came into full view during their meeting last Tuesday. During the council’s Feb. 24 work session, Councilman Doug McCollum used the council member comment portion of the meeting to air his concerns about the conduct of some of his colleagues. He was particularly concerned about the widespread use of behind-the-scenes emails by a council that has emphasized the need to improve transparency in government. McCollum, and later Councilwoman Joan Lehr, expressed their concerns that too much council debate is being conducted through emails, rather than in a public forum. “This is not the way to develop true transparency,” he said. Those statements sparked objections from Mayor Kwasi Fraser, who said McCollum was making a personal attack on him and that some of his remarks were patently false. Fraser later said, “We’ll sit down, one on one, and discuss this like gentlemen.”
Leesburg Today

At first glance, the display in a courthouse security office looks like an American flag. Alternating red and white firehoses make up most of the piece. A thin blue line runs through its middle in support of law enforcement and emergency personnel. That makes it a work of art, said Portsmouth Chief Circuit Judge Johnny Morrison. Sheriff Bill Watson wanted it to hang in a courthouse hallway, but the city’s four circuit judges put a stop to it. They filed an order to remove the display from public areas of the judicial center. Watson hung up the phone when reached by The Pilot on Wednesday. Cynthia Morrison, Portsmouth’s Circuit Court clerk, said she considered the display art, not a flag. It bore a sign supporting public safety, she said.
Virginian-Pilot

A Culpeper County systems administrator claims the county’s top prosecutor grabbed him two years ago after he shut down her access to electronic case files at the sheriff’s request. Todd Houston Frazier, 50, is seeking $25,000 and legal costs in an assault and battery claim against county Commonwealth’s Attorney Megan Frederick. He claims Frederick grabbed him March 4, 2013, as he left her offices. He filed suit March 2 in General District Court. That left the case just within Virginia’s two-year statute of limitations for filing personal injury lawsuits. Frederick denies Frazier’s claims, calling the suit an attempt to smear her as she seeks re-election. "If I truly harmed him and caused $25,000 in injuries, why wait two years, if I hurt him that bad?" she said Wednesday. County Sheriff Scott Jenkins said he asked that a program providing access to case files both for his office and the Culpeper Police Department be deactivated after Frederick claimed someone broke into her offices in January 2013. The sheriff said he was concerned about the security of the case files.
Star-Exponent

National Stories
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The Associated Press on Wednesday sued the State Department to force the release of email correspondence and government documents from Hillary Rodham Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. The legal action follows repeated requests filed under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act that have gone unfulfilled. They include one request the AP made five years ago and others pending since the summer of 2013. The suit in U.S. District Court comes a day after Clinton broke her silence about her use of a private email account while she was America's top diplomat. The FOIA requests and the suit seek materials related to her public and private calendars; correspondence involving aides likely to play important roles in her expected campaign for president; and Clinton-related emails about the Osama bin Laden raid and National Security Agency surveillance practices.
Associated Press

No single emoji seemed quite adequate to capture the collective flip-out over the admission by Senator Lindsey Graham that he has never, ever sent an email. “I don’t know what that makes me,” Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. A card-carrying member of the Flip Phone Caucus, perhaps. A first-team all-Luddite, maybe. And, without doubt, one of a small circle of members of Congress who shape 21st-century policy and legislation but do not actually send or receive email. The email quirks of politicians burst into view in recent days, after news broke that Hillary Rodham Clinton, a likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, used a private email address during her time as secretary of state. On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton held a news conference to try to quell the controversy. But in a city where aides and operatives take an almost perverse pleasure in checking their email in the middle of the night when they wake up to go to the bathroom; in a Capitol complex where lawmakers are often trailed by “purse boys” and “body men”; and in a building that still employs staff to press the elevator buttons for the senators, some members seem to take pride in not emailing.
New York Times


Editorials/Columns

A VIRGINIA Commonwealth University student served as an intern for an open government group at the recent General Assembly. Near the end of the session, Zhina Kamali wrote a blog for the Virginia Coalition for Open Government sharing her observations of the legislature in action. This is how she described a House Privileges and Elections subcommittee in which recorded votes are not taken and delegates tend to outshout each other: “ 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? This is our government and with bills that individuals put up to be heard with the expectation that they would be given an equal chance. Is that what our leadership has succumbed to? The idea that the loudest voice must be the leader is the philosophy that runs dysfunctional and unproductive high school student organizations and has no place in our government.” Some high school student organizations likely would be offended by such a parallel, but this first-time observer found out what some have known for years: that Virginia’s legislature does not rank transparency highly.
Free Lance-Star

However, say this for Florida Gov. Rick Scott: He might be onto something. Instead of calling a problem by its actual name, or spending actual money to fix it, you can solve it by euphemism! Everybody hates "public corruption" - especially officials who get caught. Excise the phrase, and you'd have "a gift exchange - including Anatabloc - among friends." Don't like congestion on the region's oft-clogged freeways, right? Banish the words "traffic jam," and replace them with: "slow-moving-cars-whose-engines-hum-like-a-choir." Suspected drug dealer caught with thousands of dollars? Nope, that's just "walking around money. Nothing to see here, Officer." Bad: Shoveling 8 inches of snow and ice. Good: Bicep-building precipitation removal.
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot