Transparency News 3/8/16

State and Local Stories

A slew of gay-rights bills have been introduced in the General Assembly this year – all of them now dead for the session. But anyone looking to see which lawmakers voted them down will be disappointed. Whether trying to prohibit anti-gay discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodations, whether passed by the state Senate or not, all of the failed measures shared a single fate in the end: killed by a House of Delegates subcommittee on an unrecorded voice vote. In the arcane language of Virginia’s 400-year-old legislature, the anti-discrimination measures were “laid on the table” in Subcommittee No. 4 of the House General Laws Committee. The reality is they will receive no further consideration in this legislative session. Instead, on orders from Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, chairman of the General Laws Committee, the bills were referred for further study to the Virginia Code Commission, an obscure body that supervises the codification of state laws. Gilbert said he was acting in accordance with a request last summer from House Speaker Bill Howell, R-Stafford County, that the Code Commission evaluate whether Virginia’s laws need to be updated to conform with the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
Virginian-Pilot

The General Assembly appears poised to roll back a short-lived ethics measure barring the governor from accepting most political donations from businesses seeking money from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund. The restrictions, part of last year’s ethics reform legislation, caused some consternation among economic development officials who said it put an unprecedented burden on companies and weakened the protections for confidential state negotiations. “The moment you can’t ensure confidentiality is the moment they walk away,” said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones. The new language proposed this year aims to simplify the process while observing the spirit of the ethics law by seeking greater public disclosure after deals are closed, said Jones, whose office requested the changes.
Roanoke Times

National Stories
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People who do not have regular access to the Internet can fall behind in school, at work and in other everyday tasks. The Federal Communications Commission is close to what it hopes will be a solution to address that gap: $9.25 a month. The agency on Tuesday will circulate a final proposal to F.C.C. members to approve a broadband subsidy of $9.25 a month for low-income households, in the government’s boldest effort to date to narrow a technological divide that has emerged between those who have web access and those who do not. While more than 95 percent of households with incomes over $150,000 have high-speed Internet at home, just 48 percent of those making less than $25,000 can afford the service, the F.C.C.’s chairman, Tom Wheeler, has said.
Washington Post

The United States said on Monday that in coming weeks it will publicly release an assessment of combatant and non-combatant casualties from U.S. counter-terrorism strikes in areas outside active war zones since 2009. The decision, which follows years of criticism by human rights groups and others that drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya have caused civilian casualties, was taken in the interest of transparency, according to Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama's homeland security adviser. The data would be released annually in future, she said.
Reuters

The state legislature no longer will charge thousands of dollars for copies of its annually updated database of the Colorado Revised Statutes and ancillary information such as source notes and editors’ notes, the Committee on Legal Services decided Friday. The committee, which includes members of both the House and Senate, also voted to stop copyrighting the ancillary information. There is no copyright on the laws themselves. Now, anyone who wants the giant database of state laws to create an online search engine or some other application can get it for free. The Office of Legislative Legal Services has been charging vendors $2,000 to $6,000 for the database, depending on the version.
Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition

Editorials/Columns

VIRGINIA LAWMAKERS from both parties joined forces recently to reverse the effects of a pernicious state Supreme Court ruling that could give state and local officials a free hand in hiding the workings of government. That apparent legislative victory for transparency has now been put at risk by Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who has threatened to gut a good bill. The stakes in the legislative fight in Richmond are high, although the McAuliffe administration asserts the opposite. The governor argues that the legislation goes too far to correct what he sees as a ruling whose impact is limited, and lawyers for his administration say it would saddle state and local agencies with excessive administrative burdens and costs. Brian Coy, a spokesman for the governor, called the measure a “sledgehammer solution to a tadpole problem.” In fact, the risk is that the governor’s amendments, which are still being negotiated with the legislature, would impose a sledgehammer of a problem on the state.
Washington Post