Transparency News, 4/18/2022
Monday
April 18, 2022
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state & local news stories
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More than 800 Suffolk residents have signed a petition filed in the city’s Circuit Court to recall School Board Chairwoman Dr. Judith Brooks-Buck. The petition was filed Tuesday by Margaret Rankin of the group Suffolk Citizens for Accountability. A show-cause order for the case was issued two days later and a show-cause hearing has been scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Friday, April 22. The petition alleges that Brooks-Buck “has knowingly, willingly and purposefully violated the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and allowed the City of Suffolk School Board to do the same, on repeated occasions,” and also “repeatedly silenced any critic” of the board and the school division, “including threatening the removal and arrest of citizens exercising their Constitutional rights as School Board members.” It also alleges that Brooks-Buck has censored and restricted other board members from questioning her actions, and “has deflected her own responsibility for the School Board’s failures.”
Suffolk News-Herald
A Chesapeake woman pleaded guilty to bribing a government official in return for a contract valued at nearly $1.37 million. Jennifer A. Strickland, 47, agreed to bribe a General Services Administration official to win federal construction contracts for her company, SDC Contracting LLC. She is the president of the company, which contracted with the federal government to provide construction and renovation services at federal buildings throughout the Eastern District of Virginia, including the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. United States Courthouse in downtown Richmond — one of two buildings to survive the devastating 1865 fire marking the evacuation of the Confederate Army. From July 2018 until December 2019, Strickland made cash payments to a GSA contracting official totaling $43,500 in return for the award of the contract, the Department of Justice said.
Daily Press
A special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate whether a Chesterfield County police detective violated state law in altering seven search warrants tied to a drug and firearms investigation that resulted in the seizure of contraband and five people being charged. Following the police search of multiple homes, the Chesterfield Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office discovered in February that search warrants issued by a Chesterfield magistrate didn’t match the warrants that narcotics Detective Robert Sprouse had filed in Chesterfield and Richmond circuit courts, where records are kept of search warrants executed by police. In reviewing the altered search warrants, Chesterfield authorities don’t believe Sprouse added any false information to the documents. However, after the search warrants were served, the detective is alleged to have added details to the warrants that Virginia law requires be included before any search warrant can be issued. Those details may have been left out by mistake, authorities said.
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Members of the public will be able to enter Charlottesville’s City Council Chambers on Monday for the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city is planning to hold its first hybrid City Council meeting since March 2020. Up to 23 members of the public who pre-register will be able to attend Monday’s meeting in person, while the virtual Zoom option will remain for people who prefer to watch from home. If more than 23 people sign up, those who register will be put in a lottery, and 23 will be selected to attend. Dillehunt said mask-wearing is strongly encouraged but not mandated, and attendees are encouraged to social distance when not seated. All members of City Council, the Interim City Manager, the Clerk of Council, the city attorney and two preselected media representatives will be in council chambers alongside the members of the public. All presentations by other parties will be given virtually.
The Daily Progress
stories of national interest
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's office said Friday it will no longer release to media the driving records of "victims of violence," including a 26-year-old Black man shot by a Grand Rapids police officer during a traffic stop April 4. The announcement broke with the office's past practice and prompted concerns about whether public access to government information was being restricted. The Michigan Press Association has "grave concerns about the way this is worded," said Lisa McGraw, the group's public affairs manager. In a statement Friday, the Michigan Department of State said it had released 26-year-old Patrick Lyoya's records to three media outlets. But the government agency argued the information was "irrelevant" and was used in a way "that wrongly suggests he is culpable for being shot in the back of the head." It was not immediately clear how the department would discern who qualifies as a victim or how the directive complied with Michigan open records policies.
Hastings Tribune
editorials & columns
"Any number of city and county attorneys could have advised the governor that claiming a FOIA exemption for this terrible idea would only lead to legal headaches and public embarrassment."
Not long ago in this very space, we suggested that Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s flouting of Virginia Freedom of Information Act requirements was a lawsuit waiting to happen [March 30, “Virginia earns ‘F’ on FOIA test”]. In Youngkin’s mere three months in office, the new governor has refused to hand over hundreds of pages of documents requested by news outlets. We called it: “It’s like he’s daring the press to take him to court.” Not that it took great powers of prognostication to predict, but just two weeks later, here we are. This matter should never have gotten this far. The “tip line” itself is at best a farce — supposedly, it’s been flooded with sarcastic “tips” by incensed opponents — at worst a tactic that calls to mind such humanitarian organizations as the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police in the time before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Any number of city and county attorneys could have advised the governor that claiming a FOIA exemption for this terrible idea would only lead to legal headaches and public embarrassment. What a tremendous waste of the state’s time, money and energy.
The Roanoke Times
The last place where the free expression of ideas and robust debate about them should be inhibited is a college campus. And the last institution that should call for such a thing, particularly at a university founded by one of the nation’s earliest champions of unfettered speech, is a newspaper. But that’s what happened at the University of Virginia recently ahead of a speech there last week by former Vice President Mike Pence. The paper, The Cavalier Daily, asserted in a March 17 editorial that Pence, a Republican who was former President Donald Trump’s understudy, was not entitled to a platform at UVa. Its editorial board went far beyond disagreeing with or even impeaching Pence’s politics. It made the unsupported assertion that Pence’s words were tantamount to “violence” and an “impermissible” threat to the “wellbeing and safety of students.” The editorial would be defensible if there were an actual risk of violence. (It’s worthy of note, however, that the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, said that the “tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”) Pence’s brand of conservative politics alienates a lot of people, including me for the most part. However, it’s an untenable leap to equate it with violent hate speech. Yet the student editorialists attempted that, poisoning their argument by hyperbolically likening Pence’s UVa appearance to the brutality of neo-Nazi thugs who left serious injuries and death in the wake of their Charlottesville riot in August of 2017.
Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury
