Transparency News 3/14/17

Tuesday, March 14, 2017


State and Local Stories


For the third year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation presents “The Foilies,” our anti-awards identifying the times when access to information has been stymied or when government agencies have responded in the most absurd ways to records requests. Think of it as the Golden Raspberries but for government transparency, where the bad actors are actually going off script to deny the public the right to understand what business is being conducted on their behalf.
Electronic Frontier Foundation


National Stories
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The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government. For a second consecutive year, the Obama administration set a record for times federal employees told citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn't find a single page of files that were requested. And it set records for outright denial of access to files, refusing to quickly consider requests described as especially newsworthy, and forcing people to pay for records who had asked the government to waive search and copy fees.
Virginian-Pilot

Three out of five of all federal agencies are flouting the new law that improved the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and required them to update their FOIA regulations, according to the new National Security Archive FOIA Audit released today to celebrate Sunshine Week. The National Security Archive Audit found that only 38 out of 99 federal agencies have updated their FOIA regulations in compliance with the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 that was passed with bipartisan, bicameral support. The new law required agencies to update their FOIA regulations within 180 days of passage – that was June 30 so December 27, 2016 was the deadline. Updated regulations were supposed to include the law’s new improvements, such as requiring agencies provide requesters with no less than 90 days to file an appeal, prohibiting agencies from charging “search or duplication fees when the agency fails to meet the notice requirements and time limits set by existing law,” and mandating agencies notify requesters of their right to seek assistance from either the agency’s FOIA Public Liaison or to seek dispute resolution services with the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), the FOIA ombudsman.
National Security Archives

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Thursday issued an executive order making it easier for the public to find state government notices and meeting minutes. Walker in his order also asked state agencies to post the most commonly requested documents online to be readily available to the public, and to post how quickly their officials respond to records requests under the state's open records law. The order came ahead of Sunshine Week, a national celebration of open government that begins Sunday. Walker's order requires the Department of Administration to improve the state's public notice website by requiring all state government public notices and meeting minutes to be uploaded to the site. The order also requires each agency to post the total number of public records requests received, the total number of requests the agency responded to and the average time it took to fulfill the request.
Governing


Editorials/Columns


Virginia’s state government is sitting on $14 million that belongs to the taxpayers, thanks to a short-lived and problem-plagued refund system that offered debit cards instead of checks. Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Carol Hazard dug up the information. Nobody else had bothered to. No diabolical plot or official corruption accounts for the unclaimed tax refunds. It was just one of those things that happens when plans go awry. But diabolical plots and official corruption do exist, and news organizations spend ungodly amounts of time and money to ferret them out. The task is rarely easy and often unpleasant. In some parts of the world it can be deadly: Forty-eight journalists were killed in 2016 alone. Three-fourths of them reported on politics, corruption, and human rights.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Let’s begin today’s column with a look at numbers, and what they indicate about Chesapeake Public Schools. The division has more than 39,000 students, making it the seventh largest in the commonwealth. It has an operating budget of $422 million; the city’s general fund contributed nearly $189 million in the current school year. That’s public money provided by city residents. Other large amounts come from the state and sales taxes. Those numbers and more are readily available in public statements and documents. Some can be found easily on the division’s website. So it’s somewhat surprising the division has withheld the amount of a settlement in a federal lawsuit. It makes a mockery of the public’s right to know how public money is spent.
Roger Chesley, Virginian-Pilot

You’ll be reading a lot in the upcoming days about Sunshine Week, a national celebration of access to government-held information. Here in the commonwealth, such access is governed by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. In spite of its many flaws, that law produces a fountain of investigative stories that shine a light on government waste, fraud and abuse. But it also has entertainment value. Take the personalized license-plate program operated by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. One thing that will get a request immediately kicked is any hint of a traditional “four-letter word.” The same goes for excretory functions, drugs, and references to certain body parts or their size.
Dan Casey, Roanoke Times