Transparency News 4/17/14

The sealing of the identity of a company that fought to block public access to a consumer safety report was improper, a federal appeals court in Richmond said Wednesday in ordering the disclosure of its name and publication of case documents. "Company Doe," represented by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, sued in Maryland federal district court to prevent the Consumer Product Safety Commission from posting an incident report on a government-run online database of product complaints. The report, which is under seal, attributes the death of an infant to one of the company's products. The company's lawyers argued that publication of its name would cause reputational and economic harm. The Gibson team also disputed the accuracy of the product incident report, which the safety commission intended to include online with tens of thousands of incident reports that involve other companies and products. A trial judge agreed to allow the company to litigate under a pseudonym. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected the secrecy of the litigation.
National Law Journal
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Albemarle County police are inviting the public to sit and sip a spell. Officers are planning to sit down April 18 in North Garden for a morning cup of coffee and a chat at the Crossroads Store at U.S. 29 and Plank Road from 7 to 8:30 a.m. They will discuss everything from sports to crime prevention with citizens who stop in.
Daily Progress

Virginia Tech has paid federal fines totaling $32,500 for failing to issue a timely alert when a gunman began his killing rampage on campus seven years ago Wednesday, leaving 33 people dead. The U.S. Department of Education said Tech has paid fines for two violations of the Clery Act, which requires universities to issue timely warnings of campus threats.
Register & Bee

State transportation officials are taking their six-year, $13.1 billion draft transportation plan on the road. Their first stop Thursday is Chesapeake, followed by eight other stops across the state through May. The Staunton District hearing will be April 29 in Harrisonburg. The final plan will be adopted on June 18. Projects listed in the draft plan include the Exit 91 project on Interstate 64. The entire plan is searchable on VDOT’s website.
News Leader

A proposed Pittsylvania County Youth Commission would give high school students a voice in local government and forum to present ideas and plan activities. Brenda Bowman, who represents the Chatham-Blairs District on the Board of Supervisors, is backing the youth commission. Bowman recently received the blessing of fellow supervisors to explore the idea, which would be modeled after a program in York County.
Star-Tribune

Robert Bain stood holding a bourbon in a red plastic cup as Virginians munched on smoked shad and a bluegrass band called Common Ground played amid the pines. The Shad Planking — the commonwealth’s long-running annual political meet-and-greet — was winding down Wednesday after months of work corralling volunteers and drumming up ticket sales, and Bain, a burly real estate broker, allowed a potentially Pollyannaish sentiment to emerge. Sen. Mark Warner (D), in boots and rolled-up sleeves, had given the keynote address behind red, white and blue bunting, the fourth time he has spoken here in this Republican-leaning community in southern Virginia. And Warner’s highest-profile potential challenger in November, longtime GOP strategist and former White House adviser Ed Gillespie, had made the rounds among the crowd of old friends, mostly Republicans but some Democrats, too. “People say, if the people lead, the leaders will follow,” Bain said. “If we can come out here and all get together . . . maybe those folks up in Washington and Richmond can do the same, take a lesson out of our playbook.”
Washington Post

National Stories

Judicial Watch yesterday released a new batch of internal IRS documents revealing that former IRS official Lois Lerner communicated with the Department of Justice about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities. The documents were obtained as a result of an October 2013 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013.
Judicial Watch

When a Geneva, Ill., alderman asked for information at an open meeting, Mayor Kevin Burnsadmonished him for violating a standard the council members had agreed upon. According to the policy, elected officials would not request additional work from professional staff if it falls outside action taken at a meeting. And later, a private citizen filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and 3rd Ward Alderman Dean Kilburg said the citizen got the information Kilburg had asked for. Kilburg requested workman’s compensation information relating to injuries that required time off work for each department. “I don’t have a bone to pick with anyone,” Kilburg said. “I had asked for the information a couple of years earlier, and they provided the information. I thought it was time to revisit it. … I did not think it was too much to ask for information that could be pulled out of a file and forwarded in 30 seconds. It was provided to a citizen. Why not provide it to an alderman?”
Kane County Chronicle

A federal appeals court has upheld a contempt citation against the founder of the defunct secure e-mail company Lavabit, finding that the weighty internet privacy issues he raised on appeal should have been brought up earlier in the legal process. The decision disposes of a closely watched privacy case on a technicality, without ruling one way or the other on the substantial issue: whether an internet company can be compelled to turn over the master encryption keys for its entire system to facilitate court-approved surveillance on a single user.
Wired

A bipartisan group of congressional leaders filed court papers Tuesday defending the constitutional shield that protects members of Congress and their staff from being forced to provide information about legislative activities. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives filed the amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., is challenging his conviction on public corruption charges. A federal jury in Arizona found Renzi guilty in June 2013 of extortion and bribery in connection with a federal land swap. He was sentenced to three years in prison. As part of his appeal, Renzi’s lawyers at Mayer Brown and Steptoe & Johnson LLP argue prosecutors violated the “speech or debate” constitutional protection by questioning one of his former aides.
LegalTimes
 

Editorials/Columns

There's no easy way to part company with an employee. For whatever reason the decision is made, unless it's voluntary on both sides,there's going to be hurt feelings and irritation. Still, when someone is let go after bringing in $200,000 in lodging tax revenue, thousands in grant funding, establishing multiple tourism initiatives and being recognized as a “Trailblazer” by the Virginia Tourism Corporation over the last three years, it's hard to imagine that things couldn't have been done in a better way. The city of Waynesboro is currently taking applications for a new assistant economic director, after parting company with tourism director Katie McElroy earlier this month. McElroy says it wasn't her decision, that she was fired after not making it back to the office by a mandatory date of April 4. She had been on leave for the better part of six months, after adopting an infant child with Down's Syndrome in November. Since that adoption, her son had required multiple surgeries, which had kept her out of the office, although McElroy says she was still working. City officials meanwhile aren't giving their side, as is standard procedure in issues that involve personnel matters. The date of McElroy's termination is also curious since up until late last week, both elected officials and city staff members told members of the News Virginian staff that she was still on leave. If she in fact had been let go before that, why not just come out and say so?
News Virginian