Transparency News 3/23/15
Monday, March 23, 2015
State and Local Stories
Virginians are realizing the so-called ‘Virginia Way,’ the longstanding tradition of back-room deals and implicit trust in gentlemanly public officials, is failing commonwealth residents. But public records aren’t always as accessible as open government advocates would like. Here’s what you need to know about your rights to accessing public records in the Old Dominion.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
During a February James City County Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Mary Jones received a flurry of text messages to her county-issued phone. According to public records obtained by the Gazette, Jones sent or received nearly a dozen text messages during the course of the meeting. Later, at a Feb. 21 Saturday morning board retreat to discuss the budget, Jones also received an influx of messages on her phone. What those messages were about is unknown. The Virginia Gazette recently requested all of the text messages sent from county phones issued to the James City County Board of Supervisors. It was informed by county officials that the only record the county could provide is a log of messages sent to and from county phones with the date and time each message was sent, and the sending and receiving phone numbers.
Virginia Gazette
Decisions made by governing bodies affect Virginia residents every day whether they know it or not. Public documents often can be the key to interpreting those choices and their impact. County spending, construction projects, school enrollment, test scores and countless other topics are of interest to many Virginians, but the challenge lies in ferreting out the information. Sometimes asking is all it takes. Government agencies are required to respond to all sunshine requests within five business days and may charge a fee for document printing and labor. "Everything that is done in a community that is not done by a private business is being done by the government," said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. "Whether they are building facilities or making decisions about how property is zoned, all they are doing is generating documents that the public is entitled to see." Rhyne said an average family has contact with the subjects of public records almost daily. She said parents can find out how many students in the school division receive free and reduced lunches, how many students are considered homeless or what the latest bus inspections turned up. Motorists questioning the safety of bridges and dams can get safety data from the state. Diners can learn if their favorite restaurant received a favorable health inspection. And that's just a taste of what's available.
Tidewater Review
The Fairfax County School system is taking the position that it has the authority to redact information from school officials' financial disclosure forms — an idea that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are saying violates the law. Elected officials from the Northern Virginia school district first said they had the power to redact names and information about family members. When asked to explain that decision to WAMU 88.5, they revised the policy, and now say they have the power to redact the names of children of elected officials if they are under the age of 18. The officials declined to be interviewed for this story. "There have been instances of nepotism of people getting positions in schools or benefiting from connections to parents and it happens in government and it happens all over the place," says Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation. "The reason why the names of the children are there is because we've seen cases where children have been the beneficiaries of gifts from lobbyists and because it goes to children it's not looked at as closely."
WAMU
A federal grand jury ordered Virginia Beach to turn over computer records, emails and phone logs surrounding City Council member's vote on the Cavalier Hotel renovation project.
Virginian-Pilot
Jim Bourey says he's not like most city managers. The man who leads Newport News city government — after rising each morning at 4 a.m. to get in a 15- to 18-mile run — believes it is important for a city manager to have a high profile and to move fast. He did just that in Greenville, S.C., working on projects that echo his priorities here — from a big endurance athletic event to using a piece of city property as a keystone for a politically influential developer's mixed-use project. There, like here, council members complained about being left in the dark too often.
Daily Press
Oatlands Executive Director Andrea McGimsey recently announced the next phase of the Telling All of Our Stories project, a database that contains the names of enslaved people referenced in documents associated with the Carter family who lived at Oatlands in Leesburg and Bellefield in Upperville, Oatlands was built by George Carter. As a commitment to telling the diverse stories of Oatlands, the property and the National Trust for Historic Preservation launched an umbrella project, Telling All of Our Stories, three years ago. The goal is to fully interpret and educate the public about the untold – or seldom told – stories of the Native Americans and African Americans associated with Oatlands. The next step was launched two years ago when Oatlands introduced a daily tour that focused on the enslaved community at Oatlands. Using archival material at Oatlands and other institutions, the half-hour tour provides an overview of slavery and what life would have been like for an enslaved person at the property. The database currently contains more than 800 records of individuals named in the diary of Elizabeth O. Carter (wife of George) kept from 1860-1872, providing a glimpse into the people and their activities before, during and after the Civil War. After achieving their freedom, several individuals remained with the Carters as employees.
Loudoun Times
Brenda Stewart is a Matoaca resident who questions Chesterfield governmental spending practices. Says Stewart: “I’ve been telling them for a dozen years they have problems.” More than a decade ago, Brenda Stewart pored over school construction records and found a nearly half a million dollars that Chesterfield County Public Schools couldn’t account for. Midlothian Supervisor Daniel A. Gecker said the audit confirms most of what Stewart has been saying for the past year. To Gecker, Stewart performs a valuable service. “I don’t know of a time where she’s been proven to be inaccurate in her assertions,” Gecker said. “The supervisors can’t investigate the school division the way that she’s been able to.”
Times-Dispatch
National Stories
For the end of Sunshine Week, I emailed a handful of reporters and asked them a few questions about their experiences with Freedom of Information requests. Most remembered the first request they made, most had one or two really odd experiences, including basically having a baby sitter assigned to watch while looking through records, and they all had great advice on getting the information they ask for. Here are the weirdest FOIA experiences some journalists have had so far, as well as their smart advice.
Poynter
Data about more than 120 million people has been compromised in more than 1,100 separate breaches at organizations handling protected health data since 2009, according to Department of Health and Human Services data reviewed by The Washington Post. Hacking-related incidents disclosed this year have dramatically driven up the number of people exposed by breaches in this sector.
Washington Post
Texans can select their license plates to declare themselves as “Animal Friendly.” Their plates can urge passersby to “Be a Blood Donor” or to “Choose Life.” The state plates, though, cannot depict a Confederate flag, as sought by the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Consequently, the Supreme Court on Monday must confront the question of whether Texas is illegitimately discriminating against certain speech. The court’s eventual answer will settle, in turn, on the more basic and surprisingly complicated question of whether it’s the driver or the government that speaks with a license plate.
McClatchy
Behind the counter of auto repair shops, you'll see signs, bolted to the wall, explaining your rights to a written estimate, an itemized bill and the chance to inspect replaced parts. But when you walk into many government offices where public records are kept, your rights don't appear in 3-inch type. Maybe they should. Those rights are just as real — and often, more important. Luckily, some help is on the way July 1, when amendments to the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, take effect. Local governments won't have to put up billboards explaining FOIA, but they will be required to create a public summary of their procedures under the law and post it on their website or provide free copies.
Detroit Free Press
Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn struck a blow for increased transparency within his department last week — Sunshine Week, as it happens — when he rebuked the Maryland Transit Administration for withholding public records and initiated their release. The 156 pages of documents were related to the MTA's Bus Network Improvement Project, which is nearly a year late in producing a plan for improving the agency's Baltimore-area bus system.
Baltimore Sun
The federal government had no duty under the Freedom of Information Act to produce emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent or received on a privately maintained account, Justice Department lawyers suggested to a federal appeals court late Thursday. The filing Justice submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit says that the State Department is now processing for release under FOIA 55,000 pages of work-related emails Clinton sent to the agency in December. The roughly 30,000 messages had been sent or received on a private email account during her tenure as secretary.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
During the past week, in honor of Sunshine Week, this page has featured a variety of guest columnists and editorial cartoons explaining the importance of various facets of the state and federal freedom of information acts. Some folks may have thought we went a bit overboard by devoting as much time and space to the topics of government transparency and freedom of information as we have done this week. Surely there are other important issues we might have chosen to focus upon instead. And there are certain folks in Suffolk who probably wish we had done just that. Some of them probably even consider it a bit self-serving for the Suffolk News-Herald to have beaten this drum all week. But transparency in government isn’t just a matter of appeasing the media. In fact, the media’s claim to government transparency only gains legitimacy in relationship to its role as a representative of the people.
Suffolk News-Herald
Editor's note: "DP Buzz is an interactive feature of the Daily Press Opinion Page. We email weekly questions on issues and topics affecting Peninsula-area citizens. Each week, subscribers can choose whether to weigh in or not with a short answer. Here is a sampling; all responses are posted at dailypress.com/opinion. This week's question: What would be the most important change to make government more open and accessible to the people? (Click below to read the responses.)
DP Buzz, Daily Press
Last week, Virginia Beach agreed to study ways to bring ultra-high-speed Internet service to the city, and possibly the region. The move is essential if the Beach expects to lure biomedical research and health care businesses.
Virginian-Pilot
State and Local Stories
Virginians are realizing the so-called ‘Virginia Way,’ the longstanding tradition of back-room deals and implicit trust in gentlemanly public officials, is failing commonwealth residents. But public records aren’t always as accessible as open government advocates would like. Here’s what you need to know about your rights to accessing public records in the Old Dominion.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
During a February James City County Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Mary Jones received a flurry of text messages to her county-issued phone. According to public records obtained by the Gazette, Jones sent or received nearly a dozen text messages during the course of the meeting. Later, at a Feb. 21 Saturday morning board retreat to discuss the budget, Jones also received an influx of messages on her phone. What those messages were about is unknown. The Virginia Gazette recently requested all of the text messages sent from county phones issued to the James City County Board of Supervisors. It was informed by county officials that the only record the county could provide is a log of messages sent to and from county phones with the date and time each message was sent, and the sending and receiving phone numbers.
Virginia Gazette
Decisions made by governing bodies affect Virginia residents every day whether they know it or not. Public documents often can be the key to interpreting those choices and their impact. County spending, construction projects, school enrollment, test scores and countless other topics are of interest to many Virginians, but the challenge lies in ferreting out the information. Sometimes asking is all it takes. Government agencies are required to respond to all sunshine requests within five business days and may charge a fee for document printing and labor. "Everything that is done in a community that is not done by a private business is being done by the government," said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. "Whether they are building facilities or making decisions about how property is zoned, all they are doing is generating documents that the public is entitled to see." Rhyne said an average family has contact with the subjects of public records almost daily. She said parents can find out how many students in the school division receive free and reduced lunches, how many students are considered homeless or what the latest bus inspections turned up. Motorists questioning the safety of bridges and dams can get safety data from the state. Diners can learn if their favorite restaurant received a favorable health inspection. And that's just a taste of what's available.
Tidewater Review
The Fairfax County School system is taking the position that it has the authority to redact information from school officials' financial disclosure forms — an idea that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are saying violates the law. Elected officials from the Northern Virginia school district first said they had the power to redact names and information about family members. When asked to explain that decision to WAMU 88.5, they revised the policy, and now say they have the power to redact the names of children of elected officials if they are under the age of 18. The officials declined to be interviewed for this story. "There have been instances of nepotism of people getting positions in schools or benefiting from connections to parents and it happens in government and it happens all over the place," says Bill Allison of the Sunlight Foundation. "The reason why the names of the children are there is because we've seen cases where children have been the beneficiaries of gifts from lobbyists and because it goes to children it's not looked at as closely."
WAMU
A federal grand jury ordered Virginia Beach to turn over computer records, emails and phone logs surrounding City Council member's vote on the Cavalier Hotel renovation project.
Virginian-Pilot
Jim Bourey says he's not like most city managers. The man who leads Newport News city government — after rising each morning at 4 a.m. to get in a 15- to 18-mile run — believes it is important for a city manager to have a high profile and to move fast. He did just that in Greenville, S.C., working on projects that echo his priorities here — from a big endurance athletic event to using a piece of city property as a keystone for a politically influential developer's mixed-use project. There, like here, council members complained about being left in the dark too often.
Daily Press
Oatlands Executive Director Andrea McGimsey recently announced the next phase of the Telling All of Our Stories project, a database that contains the names of enslaved people referenced in documents associated with the Carter family who lived at Oatlands in Leesburg and Bellefield in Upperville, Oatlands was built by George Carter. As a commitment to telling the diverse stories of Oatlands, the property and the National Trust for Historic Preservation launched an umbrella project, Telling All of Our Stories, three years ago. The goal is to fully interpret and educate the public about the untold – or seldom told – stories of the Native Americans and African Americans associated with Oatlands. The next step was launched two years ago when Oatlands introduced a daily tour that focused on the enslaved community at Oatlands. Using archival material at Oatlands and other institutions, the half-hour tour provides an overview of slavery and what life would have been like for an enslaved person at the property. The database currently contains more than 800 records of individuals named in the diary of Elizabeth O. Carter (wife of George) kept from 1860-1872, providing a glimpse into the people and their activities before, during and after the Civil War. After achieving their freedom, several individuals remained with the Carters as employees.
Loudoun Times
Brenda Stewart is a Matoaca resident who questions Chesterfield governmental spending practices. Says Stewart: “I’ve been telling them for a dozen years they have problems.” More than a decade ago, Brenda Stewart pored over school construction records and found a nearly half a million dollars that Chesterfield County Public Schools couldn’t account for. Midlothian Supervisor Daniel A. Gecker said the audit confirms most of what Stewart has been saying for the past year. To Gecker, Stewart performs a valuable service. “I don’t know of a time where she’s been proven to be inaccurate in her assertions,” Gecker said. “The supervisors can’t investigate the school division the way that she’s been able to.”
Times-Dispatch
National Stories
For the end of Sunshine Week, I emailed a handful of reporters and asked them a few questions about their experiences with Freedom of Information requests. Most remembered the first request they made, most had one or two really odd experiences, including basically having a baby sitter assigned to watch while looking through records, and they all had great advice on getting the information they ask for. Here are the weirdest FOIA experiences some journalists have had so far, as well as their smart advice.
Poynter
Data about more than 120 million people has been compromised in more than 1,100 separate breaches at organizations handling protected health data since 2009, according to Department of Health and Human Services data reviewed by The Washington Post. Hacking-related incidents disclosed this year have dramatically driven up the number of people exposed by breaches in this sector.
Washington Post
Texans can select their license plates to declare themselves as “Animal Friendly.” Their plates can urge passersby to “Be a Blood Donor” or to “Choose Life.” The state plates, though, cannot depict a Confederate flag, as sought by the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Consequently, the Supreme Court on Monday must confront the question of whether Texas is illegitimately discriminating against certain speech. The court’s eventual answer will settle, in turn, on the more basic and surprisingly complicated question of whether it’s the driver or the government that speaks with a license plate.
McClatchy
Behind the counter of auto repair shops, you'll see signs, bolted to the wall, explaining your rights to a written estimate, an itemized bill and the chance to inspect replaced parts. But when you walk into many government offices where public records are kept, your rights don't appear in 3-inch type. Maybe they should. Those rights are just as real — and often, more important. Luckily, some help is on the way July 1, when amendments to the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, take effect. Local governments won't have to put up billboards explaining FOIA, but they will be required to create a public summary of their procedures under the law and post it on their website or provide free copies.
Detroit Free Press
Maryland Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn struck a blow for increased transparency within his department last week — Sunshine Week, as it happens — when he rebuked the Maryland Transit Administration for withholding public records and initiated their release. The 156 pages of documents were related to the MTA's Bus Network Improvement Project, which is nearly a year late in producing a plan for improving the agency's Baltimore-area bus system.
Baltimore Sun
The federal government had no duty under the Freedom of Information Act to produce emails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sent or received on a privately maintained account, Justice Department lawyers suggested to a federal appeals court late Thursday. The filing Justice submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit says that the State Department is now processing for release under FOIA 55,000 pages of work-related emails Clinton sent to the agency in December. The roughly 30,000 messages had been sent or received on a private email account during her tenure as secretary.
Politico
Editorials/Columns
During the past week, in honor of Sunshine Week, this page has featured a variety of guest columnists and editorial cartoons explaining the importance of various facets of the state and federal freedom of information acts. Some folks may have thought we went a bit overboard by devoting as much time and space to the topics of government transparency and freedom of information as we have done this week. Surely there are other important issues we might have chosen to focus upon instead. And there are certain folks in Suffolk who probably wish we had done just that. Some of them probably even consider it a bit self-serving for the Suffolk News-Herald to have beaten this drum all week. But transparency in government isn’t just a matter of appeasing the media. In fact, the media’s claim to government transparency only gains legitimacy in relationship to its role as a representative of the people.
Suffolk News-Herald
Editor's note: "DP Buzz is an interactive feature of the Daily Press Opinion Page. We email weekly questions on issues and topics affecting Peninsula-area citizens. Each week, subscribers can choose whether to weigh in or not with a short answer. Here is a sampling; all responses are posted at dailypress.com/opinion. This week's question: What would be the most important change to make government more open and accessible to the people? (Click below to read the responses.)
DP Buzz, Daily Press
Last week, Virginia Beach agreed to study ways to bring ultra-high-speed Internet service to the city, and possibly the region. The move is essential if the Beach expects to lure biomedical research and health care businesses.
Virginian-Pilot
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