Transparency News 4/11/16

Monday, April 11, 2016


State and Local Stories

Two subcommittees of the FOIA Council will meet today in the General Assembly Building — 6th Floor Speaker’s Conference Room. The meetings subcommittee starts at 10:00 and the records subcommittee starts at 1:30. Agendas can be found here. In short, the meetings subcommittee will talk about meeting notice and closed meeting procedures, while the records subcommittee will be covering the exemptions found in 2.2-3705.4 (educational records and certain records of educational institutions). The public is encouraged to attend. 

The Virginia Press Association will file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of a reporter’s effort to gain access to compilations of Virginia trial court records. VPA executive director Ginger Stanley told attendees at a journalism conference here Saturday that the organization would use money from its First Amendment fund to support an appeal of a judge’s decision that denied access to the records. “This issue is of great statewide importance, and it’s the type of case the First Amendment fund was set up to take on,” Stanley said.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly

State Sen. Rosalyn R. Dance, D-Petersburg, told her hometown mayor in a personal phone conversation in February that she would work to cut all federal and state funding for the city if the mayor failed to rally the City Council around a motion to fire the city’s nonelected leadership. “You will get no state money. You will get no federal money. You will not because my reputation is out there,” Dance told Mayor W. Howard Myers, according to a notarized transcript and recording of the conversation obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “There’s no project that you’ve got out there that the state will support unless Lashrecse and I say, Governor, yes, we want you to support this,” said Dance, referring to Del. Lashrecse D. Aird, D-Petersburg.  As an elected official, Myers cannot be taken off the City Council, but his fellow council members, who elected him mayor, could strip him of that role and vote one of their own into the office. Dance did not know the conversation was being recorded. Myers said in an email Sunday that he recorded the call to “have a record of her threats.”
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The recent ouster of Petersburg City Manager William E. Johnson III and the subsequent departure of City Attorney Brian K. Telfair mark the first major victories for a growing network of local activists seeking changes at the top in a troubled city. Some say this group of concerned residents, who primarily organize on social media, may be the largest civic movement the city has seen since 1973, when Petersburg elected a majority-black City Council, the first in the state’s history. “We have 400 to 500 people now, and it is going to be 1,000 in the future and they will make sure that the course of the city government is right,” said Larry Akin Smith, administrator of a Facebook group called C2C Call to Citizens.
Richmond Times-Dispatch



National Stories

The state Attorney General's Office has paid a New Jersey gun rights group $101,626 in legal costs and released documents describing the state's firearms background check process after fighting their disclosure in court for years, NJ Advance Media has learned. The payment was ordered by a judge after a lengthy legal battle between the state and the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, which was seeking the State Police's guide for local departments performing checks on those applying for gun permits. It comes after a commission formed by Gov. Chris Christie issued a December report finding New Jersey's permitting process was opaque and inefficient. 
NJ.com

The personal information of thousands of low-level sex offenders could soon become public after Washington’s highest court ruled in favor Thursday of releasing a statewide database to a Franklin County woman. The Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision reverses a ruling in King County Superior Court that the State Patrol couldn’t release the names, addresses and other information of Level 1 sex offenders to Donna Zink. The decision clears the way for Zink, of Mesa, to reveal the identities of thousands of Level 1 offenders — considered the least likely to reoffend — whose names were previously protected by law-enforcement agencies.
Seattle Times

The agenda did not have potential for a lot of news, but the Arizona state House hearing was noteworthy for how it was covered. Reporters were barred from the House floor in an apparently unprecedented new limit on media access, as a security policy based on concerns for officials' safety clashed with ideals about freedom of the press. Under a new rule that would bar reporters who had been convicted of certain crimes, members of the Capitol press corps had been asked this week to authorize background checks of their criminal and driving histories and "other public records." Instead, those reporters  covered the Thursday morning session from the balcony that overlooks the floor. The 14 reporters and photographers shared the space on Thursday with students from an elementary school and a high school.
The Arizona Republic

In Fairfield County, Wisc., three concerned citizens say their rights were violated in a Wednesday afternoon county council meeting.  Council was meeting at Fairfield County's Commerce Park to talk about picking a new county administrator. The main thing on the agenda was an executive session, a session where members of the public aren't allowed in.  "We had no intention of staying. We had no intention of being there while the executive session was on or when they were in executive session. Our intention was to simply come, be a voice, and say, 'Look, this is an important issue,'" said Jeff Schaffer, another one of the citizens.  But the three say things went south before the executive session – fifteen minutes before the meeting was even convened.  Councilman Kamau Marcharia called Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office on them. An incident report says he told deputies he wanted the three removed.  "We need an officer down here now!” Councilman Marcharia says in the recording. “They're intervening in the process even though we haven't gone into executive session! They're in there questioning us an demanding information, and they need not be here!"  
Live 5 News

The Arkansas Supreme Court will weigh in on whether the state's largest law enforcement agency violated the state's Freedom of Information Act by withholding driver information from crash reports. On Thursday, the arguments were wrapped up and submitted to the state's high court in the Arkansas State Police appeal of a 2015 ruling that found the agency had improperly redacted personal information on traffic crash reports that were requested under the state's sunshine law. State police contended the information redacted on the reports was required by a federal law that protects drivers' information. The attorney who requested and then sued for the information argued it fell squarely under the law.
Democrat-Gazette