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Friday
March 2, 2018
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state & local news stories
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The petition that two years ago aimed to remove Montgomery County’s circuit court clerk from office was constructed improperly and a judge was right to dismiss it, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Thursday. Writing for a majority of the court, Justice Bernard Goodwyn’s opinion affirmed a 2016 circuit court decision to throw out the petition that sought to remove clerk Erica Williams.
The Roanoke Times
A Franklin County man’s criminal conviction for displaying a noose will stand, the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled. The decision, published Thursday, marks the end of a three-year legal debate and cements Jack Eugene Turner of Rocky Mount as the only person in the state to be found guilty of using a noose to intimidate others. Defense attorney Holland Perdue initially had maintained that the conviction was a violation of Turner’s First Amendment rights. But at a hearing before the state Supreme Court in January, he concentrated on contesting the wording of the law, which prohibits nooses from being displayed “on a highway or other public place” or “on the private property of another without permission.” Justice Elizabeth McClanahan’s eight-page opinionruled that "under the construction of the statute," the noose display was in a public place, affirming Turner's conviction. "We conclude that Turner's noose display located in his front yard and clearly visible from a public road unmistakably falls within the purview of the Code ... proscribing a noose display located on a public place," it said. “[W]hether a noose display is on privately or publicly owned property is not determinative of whether it is located on a public place,” McClanahan wrote, and later added, “Indeed, the General Assembly has repeatedly demonstrated that it knows how to make a proscription apply specifically to public property when that is desired.”
The News & Advance
The NAACP’s chair of legal redress, Tanja Thompson, lodged a complaint of discriminatory harassment, intimidation and bullying against Leesburg Town Councilman Thomas Dunn Tuesday night after Dunn criticized her husband, NAACP President Philip Thompson, at a previous council meeting. “I don’t think a member of the audience should ever be attacked from the dais,” Tanja Thompson told council. During its Feb. 13 meeting, council voted to approve a memorandum of understanding among the Leesburg Police, the NAACP and the town. The police and NAACP had previously agreed to a memorandum in 2006, but as Tanja updated it, she decided to involve Mayor Kelly Burk and Town Manager Kaj Dentler so the town could collaborate. When the memorandum came to a vote, however, Dunn tried to share personal emails he exchanged with Phillip Thompson in September 2017 and accused Mr. Thompson of calling him a KKK member. In the email chain arguing about the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, later released to the Times-Mirror, Phillip Thompson wrote to Dunn, “Now run along and dry clean your white sheets for your next rally.” Mayor Kelly Burk called a point of order, saying the information was not relevant to the vote at hand. Dunn was the lone dissenting vote for the memorandum, later saying that he had told council about the emails and would have considered voting for the measure if council had requested a different NAACP representative to meet with police each quarter. “I couldn’t allow my signature, my vote to be associated with an individual who made such demeaning comments,” Dunn later said.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
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national stories of interest
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After a week of fierce public outcry, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee Thursday night vetoed a controversial public-records bill that Washington state lawmakers hurriedly approved last week. Inslee’s veto came as part of a broader deal between lawmakers and the news organizations that in September brought a legal challenge to the Legislature’s longstanding claim that it’s exempt from Washington’s voter-approved Public Records Act. In a news release, Inslee declared that lawmakers, plaintiffs and others would work together on a more deliberate approach to crafting transparency laws for the Legislature. The veto marks a stunning turnaround since last Friday, when legislators voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill that would have exempted the Legislature from the Public Records Act. Between then and late Thursday afternoon, about 19,000 phone calls, emails and letters had poured into the governor’s office — almost all of them urging Inslee to oppose the bill. “I applaud Washingtonians for making their voices heard as well as legislators’ thoughtful reconsideration,” Inslee said in his veto message of Senate Bill 6617.
The Seattle Times
Washington Governor Jay Inslee's statement
Even before President Trump officially opened his high-profile review last spring of federal lands protected as National Monuments, the Department of Interior was focused on the potential for oil and gas exploration at a protected Utah site, internal agency documents show. Most of the deliberations took place behind closed doors. The internal Interior Department emails — more than 25,000 pages in total — were obtained by The New York Times after it sued the agency in federal court with the assistance of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale University Law School. The lawsuit cited the agency’s failure to respond to an open records request in August asking for internal records related to the deliberations.
The New York Times
New D.C. schools Chancellor Amanda Alexander told lawmakers on Thursday that she already has directed the troubled school system to release timely performance information in order to not repeat the grade-inflation scandal that erupted last year. “I’ve issued two orders,” Ms. Alexander said Thursday in her first testimony since being put in charge of the school system. “The first is transparency. The second is accountability. As it relates to transparency, we have already released the graduation data.”
The Washington Times
Shortly after the controversial Bayou Bridge pipeline received its final major permit to begin construction in Louisiana, the head of the state’s Homeland Security office forwarded seemingly benign details on the activities of an environmentalist group opposing the pipeline to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, the State Police, and the National Guard. The FBI also received a copy. The January 4 email, authored by an intelligence officer with the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, pulled information from the social media page and email list of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. It highlighted a local pastor’s planned participation in an anti-pipeline Facebook livestream and described the fundraising efforts of Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who coordinated military relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina and now runs the environmental justice group GreenARMY. The emails were among a larger set turned over by the state’s environmental protection department in response to a public records request filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The Intercept
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 March 16, 2018
Virginia Credit Union House
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editorials & columns
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 "It’s FOIA. The point is to make you look bad if you do bad things."
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After the tragic shooting in Parkland, Fla., last month, the high school students in many cases have acted more like adults than the adults themselves. And while the situation is not close to comparable, it was a high school student who sounded like the only adult in the room during a Prince William County School Board meeting Feb. 21. More than four hours into a five-hour meeting, the board was discussing issues surrounding the recent dispute between its chairman, Ryan Sawyers, and School Superintendent Steve Walts. Specifically, the question was about whether discussion items could be placed on the board’s agenda without approval of the chair or vice-chair. As the conversation grew tense, Kate Arnold, a senior at Hylton High School serving as the board’s student representative, spoke up. “Students watch,” she reminded the board. “Students watch this meeting, and seeing this type of infighting within their board is not necessarily encouraging.”
InsideNoVa
Yesha Callahan was not merely satisfied that her son was spared an execution. Callahan is a writer for the Root and shared her experience there. She tweeted about it. She made herself an issue for the Chesterfield County Police Department. She filled out a FOIA request demanding that the department release the body cam footage of her son’s nearly deadly traffic stop. The Department denied her request. Callahan’s son was not charged in connection with the incident. He didn’t even get a ticket. But Chesterfield police denied the request, saying the footage was subject to an “ongoing investigation.” Most of the time, we can only guess at what the real motives are for turning down a FOIA request. Here, these cops actually made the mistake of telling the truth about their motives. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch: "[Chesterfield Chief of Police, Col. Jeffrey S. Katz] says part of the reason the department has not released the video to Callahan is that she has 'an anti-law enforcement agenda.'” You can’t just deny a legitimate request for government records because you’re afraid the person who wants the documents wants to make you look bad. It’s FOIA. The point is to make you look bad if you do bad things.
Elie Mystal, Above the Law
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