Transparency News 3/19/15

Thursday, March 19, 2015

State and Local Stories


Virginia residents have a hard time getting information on everything from police records to statistics about apple production. That's because the Virginia Freedom of Information Act has a long list of exemptions. The state agency that regulates entities from payday lenders to health insurance companies is exempt from public records requests. So are the correspondence and working papers of university presidents. Not to mention dashboard video footage taken from police cruisers. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. "The apple producers. They don't have to reveal their apple production numbers. Or the subscribers to the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries magazine," says Megan Rhyne, director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. "I would like to see fewer of them, and I would like to see them narrowed and tightened up quite a bit."
WAMU

A B-minus may not be the worst grade to bring home to mom and dad. But when the grade falls from a B-plus on last year’s report card, while classmates continue to improve, things start to look bad. That’s what’s happening in Virginia, according to the latest annual report on state spending transparency online from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund. As states such as Ohio — which soared from a D-minus last year to an A-plus this year — build on their online transparency presence, Virginia is stagnant. “In order to become a leader in state budget transparency, Virginia would need to expand its disclosures about such economic development programs and allow for bulk downloads for all data,” a portion of the report’s Virginia summary reads.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau

After eight months of haggling with Virginia Supreme Court staff for a statewide criminal case file database — a document the court once made available as a public record — Daily Press reporter Dave Ress found a way to get directly to the source. More correctly, he found a person who could help him extract the data. Ben Schoenfeld, who works for nonprofit Code for America, offered to help after hearing about the situation at a Virginia Coalition for Open Government conference. Using the data that Schoenfeld scraped together, Ress found that African-American defendants in Virginia had a harder time striking a plea deal for a lesser charge than white defendants.
Daily Press

Several Richmond City Council members say they were not notified in detail that the Richmond Economic Development Authority was planning to face higher-than-anticipated costs for the Stone Brewing project. Authority officials did not give a specific time frame Wednesday after being asked when the authority realized that the first phase of the brewery project would cost more than the $23 million allocated last year by the council. The timing issue is significant because it would show how long the authority has been anticipating the cost overruns before council members learned the details this week. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported details of the extra costs Tuesday evening after the authority released a signed version of the Stone lease, which showed the authority was already expecting costs to exceed $23 million.
Times-Dispatch

The City Council on Wednesday failed to approve an amendment to the city's code of ethics that would have provided guidance on avoiding the appearance of impropriety while voting. Councilman Mike Duman proposed the amendment earlier this month. The motion failed on a 4-4 vote without debate. In his closing comments, Duman said he would've appreciated discussion in open session. He also asked why no one had approached him before the meeting to express objections in light of his original motion, which had been moved forward by a 7-1 vote. "One has to ponder as to why certain members of council voted against it," Duman said.
Virginian-Pilot

LewisGale Hospital Montgomery paid $1 million to settle allegations of medical negligence in connection with the death of radio personality Joseph Seth Williamson at the hospital in 2011. Hospital officials released settlement details Tuesday at the urging of The Roanoke Times. The newspaper argued successfully that the document had been improperly sealed from public view at its signing more than two years ago, in late 2012.
Roanoke Times

With just days to go before the public hearing on the $5 million Virginian loan proposal, Lynchburg City Councilman Jeff Helgeson is taking his case directly to the people, appearing before several local groups to explain his concerns. “Right now, I’m fighting pretty hard to stop the city from giving $5 million to some millionaires to fund a multi-million dollar luxury hotel, the Virginian,” he said Wednesday while speaking to the Lynchburg Democratic Committee. Helgeson, a hardline conservative, was in enemy territory at the Democratic meeting, but requested a spot on the schedule to speak about the Virginian proposal. It was the three-term councilman’s first time addressing that group. Other organizations he’s reached out to include the Lynchburg Tea Party and League of Women Voters of Lynchburg.
News & Advance

Unelected committees are doing economic-development deals without the public’s input or consent, complains a Hanover County citizens group. “This is taxation without representation,” said Dale Taylor. Taylor and other activists, including tea partyers, point to Hanover’s Winding Brook development as Exhibit A. Behind closed doors, $39 million in bonds for the commercial project, anchored by a Bass Pro Shop, were renegotiated to $89 million last year. Hanover’s Board of Supervisors ratified the larger debt over one dissenting vote by Supervisor Sean Davis. Citing the restructured deal, Davis said it was not the job of government to save bondholders from default. The board’s public vote comported with the letter of Virginia law. In fact, city and county officials across the state routinely take on debt obligations through bond sales made without voter approval. Taylor maintains the spirit of the open-meeting law is breached when such deals are negotiated or, in the Winding Brook case, renegotiated outside of public view.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau


National Stories
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The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the State Department to explain how Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails were managed when she was secretary, and to say what was being done to retrieve any federal records that may have been lost because she communicated over a private email server. In a letter sent March 3 — a day after The New York Times reported that Mrs. Clinton exclusively used a personal email account for official business when she was secretary of state — the federal records agency asked the State Department to account for its handling of email during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure and today.
New York Times

The personal BlackBerry that Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state was likely much less secure than the State Department-issued devices used by her staff and subordinates, according to knowledgeable former officials and executives. And the security risks were magnified because Clinton used her personal BlackBerry on travel in foreign countries where State Department employees are routinely cautioned about the use of mobile devices. A POLITICO review of press pool photos turned up instances of Clinton using her Blackberry in Vietnam, Brazil and South Korea. The risk of targeted theft of an official’s data is greatest in nations with telecoms that are owned or largely controlled by the government, said Martin Libicki, a cybersecurity expert and senior scientist at the Rand Corporation. That’s because state-aligned hackers could pull any unencrypted data, such as the metadata connected with a phone call, straight off the cell towers.
Politico

When it comes to governance that powerfully affects people’s daily lives, cities are often where the proverbial rubber meets the road. Presently, American cities -- the frontlines of our democracy -- are experiencing dramatic shifts in population size, age, and ethnic and income diversity. With this changing reality comes a new set of challenges -- and opportunities -- that require innovative approaches to city government. An important focus on this front will be for cities to evolve their civic engagement practices, creating more inclusive processes that better harness and utilize the knowledge and ingenuity of city residents toward solving today’s complex urban problems.   Recognizing the opportunities that come with moving away from traditional public engagement practices, more and more local governments are exploring ways to partner more effectively with city residents to identify, understand and solve public problems. Simultaneously, residents are becoming ever more accustomed to influencing the community around them through technology such as social media. This trend is creating new avenues for governments to be more responsive and creative in their engagement practices. 
Governing

Last year, Poynter’s News University presented the seminar “How to Request Data from Public Agencies: Data Analysis for Journalists” with Phillip Reese, a computer-assisted reporting specialist at The Sacramento Bee and a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting. Since it’s Sunshine Week, here are five tips from his seminar: 1. Get your request to the right person; 2. Keep it simple; 3. Let the agency know if you can make adjustments to what you’re asking for; 4. Email your requests; and 5. “keep fighting.”
Poynter


Editorials/Columns

THIS WEEK is Sunshine Week, the 10th year of a national focus on our access to public information. Across the country, an assessment of the state of that access is occurring. First adopted in 1968, The Virginia Freedom of Information Act has been modified numerous times since. At its core, though, is the concept that the people of Virginia have "ready access to public records... and free entry to meetings of public bodies wherein the business of the people is being conducted." Sounds impressive, right? In practice? Not so much. First, the act has a lot of exclusions. Some make perfectly good sense, like the exemption on disclosing state income tax returns. I can imagine political opponents making hay of each other's returns if this information were readily available. Medical records are exempt, as are college grades and scores on state licensing exams. But some of the exclusions are big enough to drive a truck through. One is the exemption for working papers and correspondence. Perhaps more disconcerting: It's often clear that decisions have been made in those closed meetings. Members, required to vote in public, often do so without any public debate.
Vivian Paige, Virginian-Pilot

It’s not clear exactly what Al Gore meant the other day when he said those who question climate-change orthodoxy should be punished. Others, less circumspect, have suggested such “deniers” be arrested and jailed. Now congressional Democrats are getting in on the fun. Rep. Raul Grijalva recently sent letters to several universities demanding information about any grants to academics who have questioned some aspect of the climate-change consensus. Then three senators — Ed Markey, Barbara Boxer and Sheldon Whitehouse — wrote to more than 100 companies and organizations demanding details about all “grants, fellowships, scholarships, consulting contracts, contracts,” and so on regarding climate science. It’s obvious what’s going on here: Public officials who don’t like somebody’s opinion about global warming are trying to use the power of their offices to shut them up, or at least greatly incommode them. It’s petty, it’s wrong, and it has a precedent right here in Virginia.
Times-Dispatch