Transparency News 3/26/15
Thursday, March 26, 2015
State and Local Stories
At a Wednesday afternoon hearing, Sussex County Circuit Court Chief Judge W. Allan Sharrett found that the Town of Waverly’s mayor and town clerk had knowingly violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act and failed to comply with a provision of the state’s open meetings law. C. Taylor Everett, a resident who had repeatedly asked the town to produce public documents and notify him of upcoming meetings, brought the legal challenge. In his ruling, Sharrett prohibited the Town Council from meeting unless it followed the open meetings law’s provisions, including notifying Everett and others. The judge specifically pointed out that the town hadn’t notified Everett of the meeting scheduled for Wednesday evening. Shortly afterward, the town announced that the meeting, which was called to discuss an unspecified personnel matter, had been cancelled. The judge also ordered the town to pay roughly $7,000 in legal fees and costs Everett had incurred. He imposed suspended fines of $1,000 each on Town Mayor Barbara Gray and Town Clerk Taneka Womble. The fine is suspended on the condition that, for the next two years, the two respond properly to any FOIA requests they receive.
Times-Dispatch
The former public information officer for Richmond Public Schools is suing seven members of the Richmond School Board and Superintendent Dana T. Bedden for defamation related to her dismissal last year. In a suit filed Friday in Richmond Circuit Court, Felicia D. Cosby alleges that the public dissemination of details regarding an allegation that she served homemade wine to an underage intern in school offices irreparably harmed her reputation. She is seeking $1 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages. In the lawsuit, she claimed that the allegations were false and that the School Board had an obligation to keep the details secret.
Times-Dispatch
The attorney representing National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden warned against about the future of privacy if citizens aren’t protected from government and corporate overreach. "It used to be possible to live lives of what you might call practical obscurity," said attorney Ben Wizner. "Most of our activities were unobserved. They were unrecorded except by the people immediately around us."
Daily Progress
Jennifer Ujimori wasn’t happy with the dog obedience class she booked for her pint-sized puppy, so the Springfield woman dashed out negative reviews on Yelp and Angie’s List to inform consumers about her experience. “In a nutshell, the services delivered were not as advertised and the owner refused a refund,” Ujimori wrote on Yelp. Burke’s Dog Tranquility never did offer a refund, but Ujimori got something else: a $65,000 defamation lawsuit. Dog Tranquility’s owner, Colleen Dermott, claims Ujimori’s statements were false and damaged her small business, which had great reviews until that point. Ujimori stands by her reviews and said she is fighting the lawsuit because too many businesses are turning to the courts to try to intimidate customers into erasing critical comments on review sites.
Washington Post
National Stories
A bill that would make significant changes to the Freedom of Information Act got a lift this morning when it was approved by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This legislation represents the biggest amendment to America’s federal open records act since 2007 and comes months after a similar proposal failed to clear Congress near the end of last year. Here’s what you need to know:
Poynter
One of the many unanswered questions of the Hillary Clinton email story has been: Whose job was it to raise and address concerns about her exclusive use of a private account? According to open government advocates, it would have been the agency's permanent, independent Inspector General - someone nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate - if such a person had existed. For five years, including all of Clinton's time as secretary, the State Department's Office of Inspector General never had a confirmed inspector. Instead, it was led by acting inspector Harold W. Geisel, a former ambassador who was accused of being too cozy to agency leadership by transparency groups like the Project on Government Oversight. Throughout the first half of President Barack Obama's first term, the absence of a State Department Inspector General while internal scandals and Benghazi rocked the department drew bipartisan criticism.
McClatchy
The District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education is planning to notify parents Wednesday that personal information about students was inadvertently sent to a reporter, education officials said. District officials released an Excel file in response to a Freedom of Information Act inquiry from the Web site Buzzfeed, that included audited enrollment data about individual students and information about suspensions and expulsions. Personal information was redacted, and the file was locked when it was sent, but education officials later realized that the file could be unlocked. Briant Coleman, a spokesman for OSSE, said the information was only sent to one media outlet, and staff there agreed not to unlock the file.
Washington Post
Buried for decades under millions of pages of nearly forgotten old court documents lay a political treasure. The nearly forgotten gem - an old Tarrant County court file that included documents trying to prevent the late, famed attorney Melvin Belli from representing Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald - was unearthed last week. Tarrant County workers, who were continuing a yearslong effort to make electronic copies of old case files and destroy their paper counterparts, found the file and told Tarrant County District Clerk Tom Wilder. "I thought it was a great piece of history," said Wilder, who said the case belongs in the "famous files" category to ensure the paper version isn't destroyed. "We don't want to destroy a historical case."
McClatchy
If you are lucky enough to win the lottery here, there is one thing you are virtually certain to lose: your privacy. Like most of the 44 states with lotteries, North Carolina considers the identities of winners of large prizes to be a matter of public record. But this year, in which winners already have come forward more than 40 times to claim awards that the state later publicized, lawmakers have considered whether the winners should be allowed to collect their money without having their names disclosed. At the urging of lottery officials who warned that anonymity would threaten the appeal of the games — and ultimately the revenue that flows into the state’s treasury — a legislative committee rejected the proposal last week. The issue, though, has surfaced in at least 10 states in recent years, and industry executives believe it will continue to be a subject of debate at a time when dozens of state governments rely on lotteries to relieve their strained budgets.
New York Times
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent about $600,000 on six drones that had so many defects they were never used for video surveillance as planned, and were eventually ditched, the Justice Department's internal watchdog reported on Wednesday. The Office of the Inspector General said it was "troubled" that the ATF, a Justice Department agency, spent money between September 2011 and September 2012 on drones that were rendered unsuitable. ATF officials spent $315,000 on one gas-powered drone that was never used "due to multiple technical defects," the audit found. In other instances, a $90,000 drone was found to be unreliable and another model had a flight battery time of only 20 minutes, less than half the time the manufacturer claimed.
Reuters
Tennessee is suing the Federal Communications Commission over its attempt to block a state law limiting the growth of government-run Internet providers. The state filed a petition with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals claiming that the agency’s action violates the Constitution and the federalist approach to governance.
The Hill
Editorials/Columns
At Monday's [U.S. Supreme Court] argument, the lawyer for Texas warned that if specialty license plates were treated as a public forum, the state would have to permit pro-Nazi or pro-Al Qaeda messages simply because it offered a license plate that said “Fight Terrorism.” To which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. replied, “Well, but there is an easy answer to that, which is they don't have to get in the business of selling space on their license plates to begin with.” That's not a statement about constitutional law, but it does point to a common-sense solution if states are worried that ugly or offensive messages will find their way onto license plates. If the court rules for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, states could go back to basics and limit the content of license plates to letters, numbers and maybe a noncontroversial slogan or image chosen by the state. If motorists wanted to make a political statement, they'd have to buy a bumper sticker.
Los Angeles Times
State and Local Stories
At a Wednesday afternoon hearing, Sussex County Circuit Court Chief Judge W. Allan Sharrett found that the Town of Waverly’s mayor and town clerk had knowingly violated the state’s Freedom of Information Act and failed to comply with a provision of the state’s open meetings law. C. Taylor Everett, a resident who had repeatedly asked the town to produce public documents and notify him of upcoming meetings, brought the legal challenge. In his ruling, Sharrett prohibited the Town Council from meeting unless it followed the open meetings law’s provisions, including notifying Everett and others. The judge specifically pointed out that the town hadn’t notified Everett of the meeting scheduled for Wednesday evening. Shortly afterward, the town announced that the meeting, which was called to discuss an unspecified personnel matter, had been cancelled. The judge also ordered the town to pay roughly $7,000 in legal fees and costs Everett had incurred. He imposed suspended fines of $1,000 each on Town Mayor Barbara Gray and Town Clerk Taneka Womble. The fine is suspended on the condition that, for the next two years, the two respond properly to any FOIA requests they receive.
Times-Dispatch
The former public information officer for Richmond Public Schools is suing seven members of the Richmond School Board and Superintendent Dana T. Bedden for defamation related to her dismissal last year. In a suit filed Friday in Richmond Circuit Court, Felicia D. Cosby alleges that the public dissemination of details regarding an allegation that she served homemade wine to an underage intern in school offices irreparably harmed her reputation. She is seeking $1 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages. In the lawsuit, she claimed that the allegations were false and that the School Board had an obligation to keep the details secret.
Times-Dispatch
The attorney representing National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden warned against about the future of privacy if citizens aren’t protected from government and corporate overreach. "It used to be possible to live lives of what you might call practical obscurity," said attorney Ben Wizner. "Most of our activities were unobserved. They were unrecorded except by the people immediately around us."
Daily Progress
Jennifer Ujimori wasn’t happy with the dog obedience class she booked for her pint-sized puppy, so the Springfield woman dashed out negative reviews on Yelp and Angie’s List to inform consumers about her experience. “In a nutshell, the services delivered were not as advertised and the owner refused a refund,” Ujimori wrote on Yelp. Burke’s Dog Tranquility never did offer a refund, but Ujimori got something else: a $65,000 defamation lawsuit. Dog Tranquility’s owner, Colleen Dermott, claims Ujimori’s statements were false and damaged her small business, which had great reviews until that point. Ujimori stands by her reviews and said she is fighting the lawsuit because too many businesses are turning to the courts to try to intimidate customers into erasing critical comments on review sites.
Washington Post
National Stories
A bill that would make significant changes to the Freedom of Information Act got a lift this morning when it was approved by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This legislation represents the biggest amendment to America’s federal open records act since 2007 and comes months after a similar proposal failed to clear Congress near the end of last year. Here’s what you need to know:
Poynter
One of the many unanswered questions of the Hillary Clinton email story has been: Whose job was it to raise and address concerns about her exclusive use of a private account? According to open government advocates, it would have been the agency's permanent, independent Inspector General - someone nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate - if such a person had existed. For five years, including all of Clinton's time as secretary, the State Department's Office of Inspector General never had a confirmed inspector. Instead, it was led by acting inspector Harold W. Geisel, a former ambassador who was accused of being too cozy to agency leadership by transparency groups like the Project on Government Oversight. Throughout the first half of President Barack Obama's first term, the absence of a State Department Inspector General while internal scandals and Benghazi rocked the department drew bipartisan criticism.
McClatchy
The District of Columbia Office of the State Superintendent of Education is planning to notify parents Wednesday that personal information about students was inadvertently sent to a reporter, education officials said. District officials released an Excel file in response to a Freedom of Information Act inquiry from the Web site Buzzfeed, that included audited enrollment data about individual students and information about suspensions and expulsions. Personal information was redacted, and the file was locked when it was sent, but education officials later realized that the file could be unlocked. Briant Coleman, a spokesman for OSSE, said the information was only sent to one media outlet, and staff there agreed not to unlock the file.
Washington Post
Buried for decades under millions of pages of nearly forgotten old court documents lay a political treasure. The nearly forgotten gem - an old Tarrant County court file that included documents trying to prevent the late, famed attorney Melvin Belli from representing Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald - was unearthed last week. Tarrant County workers, who were continuing a yearslong effort to make electronic copies of old case files and destroy their paper counterparts, found the file and told Tarrant County District Clerk Tom Wilder. "I thought it was a great piece of history," said Wilder, who said the case belongs in the "famous files" category to ensure the paper version isn't destroyed. "We don't want to destroy a historical case."
McClatchy
If you are lucky enough to win the lottery here, there is one thing you are virtually certain to lose: your privacy. Like most of the 44 states with lotteries, North Carolina considers the identities of winners of large prizes to be a matter of public record. But this year, in which winners already have come forward more than 40 times to claim awards that the state later publicized, lawmakers have considered whether the winners should be allowed to collect their money without having their names disclosed. At the urging of lottery officials who warned that anonymity would threaten the appeal of the games — and ultimately the revenue that flows into the state’s treasury — a legislative committee rejected the proposal last week. The issue, though, has surfaced in at least 10 states in recent years, and industry executives believe it will continue to be a subject of debate at a time when dozens of state governments rely on lotteries to relieve their strained budgets.
New York Times
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent about $600,000 on six drones that had so many defects they were never used for video surveillance as planned, and were eventually ditched, the Justice Department's internal watchdog reported on Wednesday. The Office of the Inspector General said it was "troubled" that the ATF, a Justice Department agency, spent money between September 2011 and September 2012 on drones that were rendered unsuitable. ATF officials spent $315,000 on one gas-powered drone that was never used "due to multiple technical defects," the audit found. In other instances, a $90,000 drone was found to be unreliable and another model had a flight battery time of only 20 minutes, less than half the time the manufacturer claimed.
Reuters
Tennessee is suing the Federal Communications Commission over its attempt to block a state law limiting the growth of government-run Internet providers. The state filed a petition with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals claiming that the agency’s action violates the Constitution and the federalist approach to governance.
The Hill
Editorials/Columns
At Monday's [U.S. Supreme Court] argument, the lawyer for Texas warned that if specialty license plates were treated as a public forum, the state would have to permit pro-Nazi or pro-Al Qaeda messages simply because it offered a license plate that said “Fight Terrorism.” To which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. replied, “Well, but there is an easy answer to that, which is they don't have to get in the business of selling space on their license plates to begin with.” That's not a statement about constitutional law, but it does point to a common-sense solution if states are worried that ugly or offensive messages will find their way onto license plates. If the court rules for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, states could go back to basics and limit the content of license plates to letters, numbers and maybe a noncontroversial slogan or image chosen by the state. If motorists wanted to make a political statement, they'd have to buy a bumper sticker.
Los Angeles Times
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