Transparency News 3/7/16

State and Local Stories

Facing substantial opposition from legislative leaders in both parties, Gov. Terry McAuliffe is backing off sweeping changes he recommended to a Freedom of Information Act bill designed to prevent a public record from being denied when only a portion of the record needs to be redacted. Sponsored by Sen. Scott A. Surovell, D-Fairfax, Senate Bill 494 was proposed to clarify FOIA following a Virginia Supreme Court ruling on a case Surovell brought last year that sought details on how Virginia carries out executions. The bill easily passed both chambers of the General Assembly, but was effectively gutted by the administration when it got to the governor’s desk.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Gov. Terry McAuliffe has agreed to sign an open government bill without the vast rewrite he recently pushed for. The governor’s attempt to heavily amend Senate Bill 494 was decried by its supporters as an effective veto of the measure. The bill seeks to reinstate a Freedom of Information Act principle that public officials should redact protected information when possible and release the remaining, public portions of a record rather than denying access wholesale to a document. Many believed that was already required by Virginia law. But in a ruling last year, the state Supreme Court found the duty to redact wasn’t uniform throughout the code’s language. The governor’s office contended only one FOIA section needed an update to fix the gap created by the court ruling and proposed to refer the rest of SB 494 for study. The bill’s sponsors and open government advocates disagreed with that reading and argued delaying action would weaken the state’s public records laws. On Friday, officials announced McAuliffe would sign the original version of the bill, with the understanding he may still seek changes to an identical House of Delegates bill also working its way toward his desk.
Roanoke Times

Only three Hopewell City Council members showed up at the Thursday special closed meeting to discuss a potential notice of appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court over a judge’s ruling that found council had acted “improperly” during a Jan. 6, 2015 closed session. The 2015 closed session discussed the election of councilors to the positions of mayor and vice-mayor. Council members who attended the meeting recessed for 15 minutes to attempt to get in touch with the four missing members Jackie Shornak, Wayne Walton, Jasmine Gore and Christina Luman-Bailey. After returning from a recess, Councilor Tony Zevgolis motioned to adjourn the meeting due to a lack of quorum. Zevgolis called the emergency meeting in an email to councilors and the city attorney. The purpose of the meeting was, according to the email, "to discuss in open session and vote as a body on the decision to or not to appeal this case." However, Zevgolis called for an open meeting. The meeting Thursday night was actually scheduled to be a closed meeting.
Progress-Index

A firefighter was recently suspended, according to union sources, for talking to the media about staff shortages. Nathan Clark, a member of International Association of Firefighters Local 539 and a City Council candidate, wouldn’t name the firefighter or say when or how long the suspension was. But it appears that firefighter is union President Rusty Quillin. Quillin talked to WAVY in December after a man died in a house fire around 2:40 a.m. in the Churchland area. He said he was concerned that “staffing issues created a problem,” and questioned whether the department could have responded faster to the fatal fire, according to WAVY. City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton suspended a firefighter because he spoke with reporters about “the numerous vacancies within the department,” Clark said.
Virginian-Pilot

Virginia State Police has denied a Freedom of Information Act request to release information concerning the recent death of 20-year-old D’Londre Minifield. Winchester police said Minifield died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Sunday afternoon, as he was being chased on foot by officers in the area of Roosevelt Boulevard, but some believe he was shot by police and have protested to know more about the circumstances of his death. Officers initially responded to the scene for reports of a fight. A Monday news release issued by state police — who are investigating the incident — indicated that “no law enforcement discharged their weapons in the incident.” A Tuesday release from the city of Winchester said that state police and the chief medical examiner in Manassas “continue to work this case as a suicide.” The Winchester Star made two separate FOIA requests to state police and city police on Tuesday. Both asked for transcripts of the 911 calls that brought officers to the scene on Sunday, an incident report, the type of weapon in Minifield’s possession and what caliber bullet killed him, as well as the names of the officers who responded to the incident. A Friday email from state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller stated that the information was “being withheld because the records are part of the Department’s criminal investigative file and exempt from mandatory release pursuant to Virginia Code.”
Winchester Star


National Stories
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A bill that would exempt police departments at the University of Notre Dame and other private colleges from following the same crime reporting requirements as public colleges is headed to Gov. Mike Pence for his signature. HB 1022, sponsored by state Rep. B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, was approved 49-1 Tuesday by the Indiana Senate. It passed the House unanimously in January. Bauer this week filed a concurrence, which signals agreement with a Senate amendment. The amendment states that a private university police officer will be granted the same protections and immunity for actions taken within the scope of their job as state police officers, and that private educational institutions and their governing bodies also would have the same statutory immunity granted to the state.
South Bend Tribune

In a unanimous vote, the Florida Senate on Wednesday passed a compromise version of what started as the session’s most contentious bill involving public records exemptions. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, would exempt agencies sued for public records violations from absorbing attorney fees if a judge determined a complainant was intentionally harassing or forcing a violation against that agency. Current law requires judges to automatically award attorney fees against an agency that has broken Florida's open records laws, even in cases where agencies appear to have been bombarded with requests by groups seeking to pocket attorney fees. 
Sarasota Herald-Tribune

A bill to make Congressional Research Service reports available to the public through authorized rather than unauthorized channels was introduced in Congress yesterday. http://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HEN16174.pdf The bill was sponsored in the Senate (S. 2639) by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and in the House (H. 4702) by Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) and Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL). While the support of these congressional sponsors of both parties is promising, the proposal to provide authorized public access to non-confidential CRS publications is not assured of passage.
Secrecy News

Editorials/Columns

Virginia lawmakers are well into the fourth quarter of this year’s session of the General Assembly — the most hectic period. In recent days they have made some commendable calls, and some others that were less so. Among them: A House committee wisely has spiked efforts to relax the loose ethics rules legislators adopted last year. Another good call: killing a bill that would have let localities keep the names of police officers secret. 
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Information, and specifically the public's open access to it, appears headed for the endangered species list in our commonwealth. Even when a battle is won (the state Senate and House almost unanimously passing legislation granting wide access), the victory can suddenly be declared temporary and moot (the governor declaring that bipartisan legislation to be unnecessary and slicing the guts out of it). Transparency in government is not some minor trifle. It is a basic underlying principle of American democracy, and when elected officials take aggressive steps to withhold information from the public, the public should be outraged. The public should ask why.
Daily Press

If the University of Virginia was right about an “inaccurate” report excoriating its handling of sexual assault issues, then the federal civil rights office was not just wrong but seriously wrong — and deserves censure. Nonetheless, the lobbying efforts of three of Virginia’s top elected officials to get the report changed raises questions about political interference. Last fall, the U.S. Education Department Office for Civil Rights issued a letter announcing, with the university, a resolution to a four-year investigation of UVa’s handling of sexual assault problems. But that letter, which emerged on Sept. 21, 2015, was a softened version of a document that was handed to the university on Aug. 31. It took just four days for the OCR to pull the original document, which it did on Sept. 4. The Washington Post recently obtained a copy through the Freedom of Information Act (“In secret letter, feds sternly criticized UVa for handling of sexual violence,” The Daily Progress, March 1 online). The initial letter was withdrawn “purely for accuracy reasons," said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant education secretary for civil rights. That’s the way the system should work. Accuracy, fairness and prudence should govern such documents, the release of which could have grave consequences. If UVa found inaccuracies and was able to get them corrected, then the system functioned properly. A question must be asked, however. The Office for Civil Rights labored for four years on its investigation. The University of Virginia was able to get the letter pulled in just four days, and rewritten for release less than a month later?
Daily Progress

On Feb. 26 — as chairman of the Danville Industrial Development Authority — I sent an email to persons that were present in a closed meeting of the authority to discuss a real estate property the economic development department had an interest in possibly purchasing due to it being directly across the street from the Galileo High School. It was apparent someone present at the meeting told someone else about the closed meeting discussion, and this is the second time this has occurred. I do not know if Danville City Council was informed of the discussion to be held in the closed meeting or not, but I cannot believe anyone on council would disclose this kind of information if they knew it came from a closed session of the IDA. Council holds closed meetings, and they know the importance of confidentiality of closed meetings. While the disclosure of the information in those two instances was not harmful, there are discussions about potential industries that are interested in locating in Danville where disclosure of that information could result in the project going elsewhere. 
T. Neal Morris, Register & Bee