Transparency News 3/27/15
Friday, March 27, 2015
State and Local Stories
Gov. Terry McAuliffe said Thursday that he's planning to sign an ethics bill passed by the General Assembly but will make amendments to it first. "I'm going to have some amendments on the ethics bill, I think that's pretty clear," he said on WRVA radio's Ask the Governor program. The bill passed by lawmakers in the final minutes of this year's session would cap gifts they can accept from lobbyists at $100. But it has come under fire for perceived loopholes, including the elimination of an aggregate cap on gifts. McAuliffe will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. today to outline the major bills he's signing and vetoing.
Virginian-Pilot
Hampton School Board members are finalizing the system they will use for interviewing candidates for Hampton City Schools superintendent. The board briefly discussed the so-called interview "rubrics" Wednesday before going into closed session to talk about candidates for superintendent and terms of that person's contract.
Daily Press
The Augusta County Board of Supervisors passed a motion Wednesday to ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to extend the comment period on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline for another 30 days. The comment period for the scoping notice on the project is currently set to expire April 28. The scoping notice is necessary to prepare the project’s environmental impact. Supervisors also included a request in its motion that FERC hold a second scoping meeting. The first FERC meeting on the pipeline in Augusta County was held a week ago, but a number of speakers who signed up to comment on the pipeline could not speak.
News-Virginian
The agency that manages the region’s two airports was again criticized in a federal inspector general’s report released Tuesday. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates Washington Dulles International and Ronald Reagan Washington National airports and the Dulles Toll Road and is managing the ongoing construction of the Silver Line, has been subject to a series of reviews since 2009. In its latest report, the U.S. Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General found that MWAA’s internal audit office was not following industry best practices and had failed to establish policies and procedures to guide its operations.
Fairfax Times
National Stories
Physicist Kenneth W. Ford, who participated in the design of the hydrogen bomb in the early 1950s, has published a memoir of his experiences despite the objections of Energy Department reviewers who requested substantial redactions in the text. "Building the H Bomb: A Personal History" was released this month in softcopy by World Scientific Publishing Company. The dispute between the author and the government over the book's publication was first reported by the New York Times in "Hydrogen Bomb Physicist's Book Runs Afoul of Energy Department" by William J. Broad, March 23. The Times story immediately turned the book into something of a bestseller, and it ranks number one on Amazon.com in categories of Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Military Technology.
Secrecy News
Editorials/Columns
For two years during Bill Clinton’s presidency, investigators tried to obtain copies of billing records from the Rose Law Firm, where Hillary Clinton had once worked. Then one day a White House employee who also just happened to have worked at the law firm discovered the billing records, which had been moved from the first lady’s quarters in the White House six months before. Whoever had moved them apparently hadn’t noticed their contents at the time. Convenient, that. No one should be surprised, therefore, by the revelation that Clinton used a private email account for all her official business while she was secretary of state under President Barack Obama. Or that she had her own server, registered under a pseudonym.
Times-Dispatch
