Transparency News 3/16/16

State and Local Stories

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO
JAMES MADISON!
His b-day also marks the official National Freedom of Information Day. Make it count!

Richmond officials are vigorously protesting a government transparency initiative that would require them to post documents and contracts for certain city projects on a centralized website. “It would be a burden we cannot afford,” said John Buturla, the city’s interim deputy administrator for operations, arguing that the cost of maintaining such a website would take away funding for the projects themselves. If adopted, the proposal would require officials to create a website for any capital project with a budget of more than $5 million that contains a description; its budget; and links to associated documents, such as contracts, related ordinances and other relevant items. The measure’s sponsor, Councilman Parker C. Agelasto, said those documents already are available publicly but typically are distributed over the course of a number of meetings and, as such, can be difficult for residents to find after the fact.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Thousands of convicted felons in Hampton Roads have got their hands on guns over the past decade, circuit court records show. There have been thousands of cases of using a firearm in a felony, thousands of cases of people carrying concealed weapons when they aren't allowed to and several hundred more of shooting in public. But most of these felonies are never punished, a Daily Press analysis of court records shows. Though people on either side of the gun debate agree that it's dangerous to let gun laws go unenforced, case status records show that many cases are dropped, dismissed or settled with a conviction on lesser charges that require no jail time. The court records are contained in a database of case status reports that the state court system and most of Virginia's circuit court clerks have refused to release. The Daily Press obtained those records — nearly 474,000 case status reports covering a 10-year period across Hampton Roads — with the assistance of an independent computer engineer.
Daily Press

A federal judge on Tuesday postponed Treasurer Anthony Burfoot’s public corruption and perjury trial until after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on former Gov. Bob McDonnell’s public corruption case. The high court is expected to issue an opinion in the McDonnell case in June, but U.S. District Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr. decided to hold off on scheduling a new trial because there is no guarantee when the court will rule. He also said he didn’t want to argue motions in the Burfoot case until after the Supreme Court’s decision.
Virginian-Pilot

Next Tuesday, the James City County Board of Supervisors will sit down with school division officials to discuss the fourth middle school project at James Blair. Behind the scenes, the project has been an active topic of discussion in emails between officials in the county, School Board and the city of Williamsburg. In honor of Sunshine Week – an annual celebration of the public's access to government documents – the Virginia Gazette asked James City County, the city of Williamsburg and W-JCC Schools for all emails discussing the fourth middle school in January and February.
Virginian Gazette


National Stories
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The Department of Defense last week asked Congress to enact a new exemption from the Freedom of Information Act for military tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as rules of engagement, that are unclassified but considered sensitive. A similar request by DoD last year was not acted upon by Congress. DoD justified its current proposal as a military necessity, and as a matter of common sense: “The effectiveness of United States military operations is dependent upon adversaries, or potential adversaries, not having advance knowledge of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that will be employed in such operations. If an adversary or potential adversary has knowledge of such information, the adversary will be better able to identify and exploit any weaknesses, and the defense of the homeland, success of the operation, and the lives of U.S. military forces will be seriously jeopardized.”
Federation of American Scientists

President Barack Obama would sign a Freedom of Information Act reform bill the Senate passed Tuesday, if it reaches his desk in that form, a White House spokesperson said. The measure cleared the Senate unanimously Tuesday afternoon and is similar, but not identical, to a FOIA bill that passed the House in January.
Politico

In Kentucky, state lawmakers will consider in coming days whether to make tuition at community colleges free. In Connecticut, they’ll look at laying off 3,000 state workers to cover a $200 million budget deficit. In Arizona, they will debate scrapping presidential preference primaries. And in those states, people can watch the debates unfold on television — sometimes to the chagrin of lawmakers. They are among the 20 or so states that have their own public affairs networks that broadcast state legislative proceedings in a fashion similar to C-SPAN’sbroadcasts from the U.S. House and Senate. The programming — mostly committee hearings, live gavel-to-gavel floor debate and votes — is on cable and public access channels underwritten by taxpayers or cable companies, usually at a cost of about $3 million to $5 million a year in each state. The coverage is designed to lift the veil on how laws are made, how taxes are raised and spent, and how viewers’ elected representatives are voting.
Governing

Editorials/Columns

James Madison, the fourth president and father of the U.S. Constitution, perhaps said it best in an 1822 letter to W.T. Barry: “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” That, in a nutshell, is why open and transparent government is so important in a democratic republic, especially in the United States, and why the news media is so passionate about open government, public access to public information and transparency in the business of governing. Madison knew that government’s natural instinct is to keep information from its citizens, for people kept in the dark are more easily governed, more easily made subjects. But Madison wanted citizens, not subjects, in the new republic.
News & Advance

NORTH CAROLINA offers drivers a license plate with the anti-abortion slogan “Choose Life” but for years has refused to offer a pro-choice plate. If you think the state is unlawfully choosing between the two viewpoints, you’re not alone. In 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the state had to play fair under the First Amendment and allow both. Last week, the appeals court reversed itself — and not by choice. It was following orders, by applying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that upheld a Texas license-plate program in which the state refused to allow a plate featuring a Confederate battle flag. The 4th Circuit’s decision is technically correct under the Texas precedent. But it shows a serious flaw in the Supreme Court’s free-speech jurisprudence.
Noah Feldman, Virginian-Pilot