Transparency News, 4/14/20

 

The Virginia House of Delegates will reconvene outdoors on the grounds of the state Capitol complex for the annual veto session on April 22, according to the office of House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, delegates will meet “in the area roughly bounded by the base of the Capitol’s South Portico steps and the east entrance of the Capitol,” spokesman Jake Rubenstein said in an email. The gathering will be moved under a tent in the event of inclement weather, he said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A new announcement from the Supreme Court of Virginia could open doors for remote hearings to keep litigation moving during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Chief justice of the Supreme Court says judges may, in their discretion, conduct any civil or criminal matter by electronic audio-visual communication with the consent of the participants. The guidance in an April 10 memo may eliminate hesitation on the part of some Virginia trial judges to schedule remote hearings in non-emergency matters during the COVID-19 outbreak. Some judges – interpreting judicial emergency orders from the Supreme Court – had declined to schedule any hearings on proceedings that were not deemed urgent. The near-shutdown of the judicial process left attorneys frustrated that even routine non-evidentiary matters could not be resolved through a video or telephone conference with the court.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly

The previously announced Chesterfield County School Board business meeting at 6 p.m. April 14 will not take place in the county government’s Public Meeting Room, as originally scheduled. The April 14 School Board in-person business meeting has been changed to an electronic meeting, where School Board members are not assembled in one location to help mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus. The April 14 School Board business meeting will take place electronically in accordance with Continuity of County Government Ordinance adopted by the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors on March 25 and the adoption of the Resolution of the School Board confirming the County ordinance that will take place during the business meeting. The April 14 business meeting agenda starts at 6:30 p.m. Prior to the adjournment of the business meeting, the School Board will adjourn into closed session in accordance with the Virginia Freedom of Information Act for the discussion and consideration of employee matters. 
The Progress-Index

An employee at Accordius Health in Harrisonburg said Monday the facility she works at is the long-term care facility being investigated by the Virginia Department of Health’s Central Shenandoah Health District for a possible COVID-19 outbreak. Kanesha Hamilton, a 25-year-old certified nursing assistant, said multiple people are sick at the facility on South Avenue. Two other employees, who refused to provide their names in fear of being fired, confirmed Accordius is the nursing home being investigated. In a press release Saturday, state officials say they collected specimens from symptomatic residents of a city long-term care facility. The specimens were sent to the state lab in Richmond. Several were positive for COVID-19. The department, which is working to determine a possible source of exposure, hasn’t released the name of the facility.
Daily News Record
The state’s Central Shenandoah Health District is working with a long-term care facility in Harrisonburg on a COVID-19 outbreak investigation. But it is keeping the name of coronavirus outbreak nursing home a secret from the public, even as the virus runs through the vulnerable population. Health district staff collected COVID-19 specimens from symptomatic residents at the facility. The specimens were sent to the state lab in Richmond and several were positive for COVID-19, a press release said.
News Leader

Some county residents and organizations are questioning the Fairfax County Board of Supervisor’s decision to proceed with voting on land use cases and other development matters at a meeting tomorrow (Tuesday). The board is considering an ordinance that would allow the county to proceed with some land use work that would “otherwise expire or require time-consuming, case-by-case attention to extend at the expense of operations.” The ordinance is intended to automatically extend the validity of expiring director-approved plans, pats, grading permits, parking reductions, and modifications or waivers for specific public facilities stands until nearly two months after the board ends the local state of emergency. Some say the wording of the ordinance leaves too much room for interpretation, regardless of how well-intentioned the proposed ordinance is. In a letter to the board, former Fairfax County Planning Commissioner James Hart said the ordinance was “so broad and flexible that it invites abuse of that streamlined emergency process and an expansion into land use matters.” Residents say that members of the public cannot meaningfully comment on the application or rebut information presented by staff or the applicant by submitting written testimony or comments via YouTube in advance of the meeting.
RestonNow.com

 

 

 

C-SPAN on Monday said it will broadcast audio of Supreme Court oral arguments live next month when justices hear cases via teleconference amid the coronavirus pandemic. “C-SPAN is committing to airing live each of the Supreme Court’s just-announced schedule of oral arguments for May, which will be held by teleconference,” the channel said in a statement. “The audio of the arguments will be accessible live via one of the C-SPAN TV networks, online via C-SPAN.org, and on the free C-SPAN Radio app, which will allow them to be heard via anyone’s cellphone.” The Supreme Court earlier Monday said it will hear 10 cases over six days in May, with the justices and lawyers interacting over teleconference in an effort to adhere to social distancing policies set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Hill

The names of businesses that collectively will receive hundreds of billions of dollars in coronavirus relief from the federal government may not be disclosed publicly, an omission that critics say could make the massive spending program vulnerable to fraud and favoritism. The $2.2 trillion Cares Act approved by President Trump last month requires that the names of recipients of some forms of federal aid be published, but those requirements do not extend to significant portions of the relief. Chief among the omissions is the $349 billion expected to be doled out to small companies in chunks as large as $10 million. The rescue legislation does not compel the Small Business Administration to disclose the identity of the recipients. So far, the agency has said it received about 487,000 applications totaling $125 billion in requests. A potentially even larger gap involves the trillions going out to businesses under the auspices of the Federal Reserve.
The Washington Post

At the beginning of the April 6 Denver City Council meeting, Councilman Chris Hinds noted that he and other members were about to do something unprecedented: “I am so excited to be part of history. Tonight, we are doing our first virtual conference in the history of Denver City Council. I am excited to be here, to participate. I’m excited to have my colleagues here as well.” For the first time, members were allowed to call in to Denver City Council’s weekly meeting. The emergency rules facilitating this format had been approved at the end of March, allowing for virtual meetings to help stop the spread of COVID-19. While seven members of council had opted to come to the Denver City & County Building (where they observed proper social-distancing protocol in council chambers), six called in via Zoom. “I’m excited that we will have no technical glitches at all,” Hinds predicted. And that’s when the chaos began.
Westword
 

 

There’s so much we don’t know but should if we are to safeguard our own health. And the secrecy makes us feel like we are in this alone. We don’t know the location of the single death so far in our health region. It’s somewhere the the 115-mile span between Bergton and Natural Bridge. Did the person die in Newtown or in Hillcrest subdivision? In Crimora or in the Tree Streets? At a local facility? The public should know. We don’t know if Augusta’s cases are in our northern tier areas which are, in effect, suburban to Harrisonburg, or clustered around our population centers in Staunton, Waynesboro, Fishersville or Stuarts Draft. Or maybe just dotting the landscape of a mostly rural county that’s 80% of the size of the smallest state. The public should know, at least by ZIP code, where the infected people live and where they might share common connections, such as workplaces.
News Leader

In an important win for access to public records, Knox County (Tennessee) Chancellor John Weaver found the Knox County Sheriff’s Office violated the public records law in its responses to a sociology professor seeking access to records related to immigration enforcement. After a public records case that stretched on for a year, Weaver issued a court order on April 9 in Meghan Conley v. Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler that requires the sheriff’s office to comply with provisions of the law governing responses to public records requests, produce records that it had not yet produced and implement a new system to enable public inspection of arrest records. Weaver’s order also prohibits the sheriff’s office from “treating any written request for inspection or copies generally phrased in terms of information sought as insufficient for lack of specificity or detail.”
Deborah Fisher, Tennessee Coalition for Open Government