Transparency News, 3/5/20

Thursday
March 5, 2020

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state & local news stories

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BILL TRACKING CHART

Lawmakers have a few more days to get their homework done before the 2020 session adjourns. But there’s still a big pile of it to get through. And the policy negotiations that are happening happen before that pile can shrink mostly happen out of the public eye, through emails and phone calls, quick huddles in hallways or meetings in unknown rooms at unknown times. As of early Wednesday, nearly 100 pieces of legislation had already been sent to conference committees. That’s General Assembly jargon for the small, ad hoc legislative panels designed to resolve lingering differences of opinion on bills that just need a final push. At this point in the session, the main question isn’t whether bills in conference live or die, but whether they’ll pass in the form favored by Senate Democrats, the form preferred by House Democrats or some combination of the two. “The reality is there isn’t really a committee meeting for most these, aside from the budget conferees,” said Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, part of Transparency Virginia, a collection of advocacy groups focused on improving transparency in a legislature whose members enjoy broad exemptions from the state’s Freedom of Information Act.  Conference committee usually just means lawmakers exchanging drafts, she added.  “The general public and the news media aren’t going to be in on that until they actually offer the report, at which times it’s often impossible to weigh in or cover,” Rhyne said.
Virginia Mercury

Danville officials have been meeting with casino company representatives in closed sessions this week, the Danville Register & Bee has learned. The meetings, the city mayor confirmed, have included presentations from four casino company finalists who had responded to a request for proposals issued by the city Dec. 2 to bring a gambling facility here. The presentations included proposed locations for a casino, Jones added. He would not say where in the city the companies wanted to open one. Jones said he could not reveal which companies made presentations to Danville City Council during the closed sessions, held on both Monday and Tuesday. City Manager Ken Larking would not give details about the closed sessions that took place Monday and Tuesday. He also would not confirm whether city officials met with casino company representatives. “All I can say, it is an unannounced project,” Larking said. “We cannot talk about unannounced economic development projects until they’re announced.” Vice Mayor Lee Vogler also would not say whether the closed meetings involved casino companies. He confirmed, however, the city received “several” bids in response to the city’s request for proposals.
Register & Bee

Former City Manager Jim Bourey testified that when People Express’ plans for private airline funding fell apart in the spring of 2014, then-Airport Executive Director Ken Spirito determined that the airport could use taxpayer money to back a private loan to the airline. It was Spirito, Bourey said, who led the discussion about the deal during a closed-door meeting of the Peninsula Airport Commission in June 2014. “It was his idea and his presentation, and the tactics and the entire strategy was coming from Ken,” Bourey testified. Florence Kingston, Newport News’ top economic development official, testified last week that Bourey told her not to tell a local regional air service board — the so-called “RAISE” group — how a $700,000 grant from the entity would be used. That is, Kingston testified that Bourey, her direct boss, didn’t want her to tell board members that the money would go to a collateral for the People Express loan guarantee. Asked about that on the witness stand Monday, Bourey testified that his view at the time was that since “the money was already out the door," it "wasn’t pertinent” how exactly it would be spent. “Some people might disagree with me,” he acknowledged. (The $700,000 grant wasn’t “out the door” until the vote was actually taken). A few months later, when news reporters began asking questions after People Express collapsed, Bourey sought assurances from Kingston that a reporter didn’t ask about the loan guarantee — and that Kingston hadn’t “volunteered” it. “Heck no and no,” Kingston wrote back in answer to Bourey’s questions. “We kept it high level.” Bourey testified Monday that Kingston did not want to tell the media about the loan guarantee, either.
Daily Press

Three Fairfax County public schools — Chantilly High School, McLean High School, and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) — are among nine schools nationwide — and the only schools in Virginia — selected as recipients of the 2020 First Amendment Press Freedom Award. This is the sixth consecutive award for Chantilly High, and the fourth award for McLean High. #The award is bestowed by the Journalism Education Association (JEA), the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA), and Quill and Scroll International Honorary Society. #The First Amendment Press Freedom Award recognizes public high schools that actively support, teach, and protect First Amendment rights and responsibilities of students and teachers, with an emphasis on student-run media where students make all final decisions of content.
Connection Newspapers

stories of national interest

“It’s embarrassing for them to have to admit that. They don’t want to announce the breadth of cyber insurance coverage and what they’ve had to pay.”

New research from Pew Charitable Trusts points to the need for involvement from all levels of government to help close a digital divide that has left 21 million Americans without broadband access.
Governing

The majority of publicized ransomware attacks in the United States last year targeted local governments, according to a recent report by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Yet no one knows how many local and state governments have been hit by a ransomware attack. There is no national clearinghouse that collects all that information. Nor is every attack publicly reported. The FBI, which tracks national crime data, couldn’t be reached for comment before publication. “Ransomware attacks against state and local governments were the top cybersecurity industry story in 2019, and it will continue to get worse in 2020, with new forms of ransomware,” said Dan Lohrmann, chief security officer for Security Mentor, a national security training firm that works with states. Threats also are evolving. Rather than just encrypting data and demanding ransom in exchange for providing a decryption key, experts say some cybercriminals will threaten to make public sensitive information if they don’t get their money. It’s hard to know how much state and local governments have spent dealing with ransomware attacks. “It’s embarrassing for them to have to admit that,” said Tom Holt, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University who specializes in cybersecurity. “They don’t want to announce the breadth of cyber insurance coverage and what they’ve had to pay.”
Governing