Transparency News 4/19/16

State and Local Stories

The Virginia attorney general has some advice for local governments trying to keep a lid on critical public comments: Don’t overreach. The AG says rules that limit criticism of individuals go too far. Across Virginia, tempers often flare at meetings of city councils, county supervisors and school boards. Speakers voice gripes about government employees. Feelings get hurt; emotions run high. To keep the pot from boiling over, some local governments ban citizen comments that refer to individual government employees or school students. He concluded the school board “may not constitutionally bar speakers from discussing personnel issues or identifying individual school employees or officials during public session.”
Virginia Lawyers Weekly
Read the opinion on VCOG's website

Religious leaders urged Virginia lawmakers on Monday to put an end to capital punishment and reject Gov. Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s proposal to shield the identities of pharmacies that supply lethal drugs for executions. About a dozen members of an interfaith coalition and a former death row inmate denounced McAuliffe’s proposal, which replaces a bill that sought to force condemned inmates to the electric chair if execution drugs were not available. Faith leaders said shielding suppliers from public scrutiny would increase the risk of botched executions.“When you have to result to secrecy or brutality to keep the machinery of death going, it’s a sure sign that what we’re doing is not right,” said Bishop Carroll Baltimore, former president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Several states have adopted secrecy laws in an effort to make the drugs easier to obtain by protecting suppliers from critics.
Washington Times

The Virginia Senate has spent $180,000 in taxpayer dollars on a court battle over whether state election maps illegally protect incumbents from primary challenges, according to documents obtained under the state’s public records law by an advocacy group. According to invoices addressed to Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment (R-James City County) the Senate hired the firm Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, where one of their own, Sen. Jill Vogel (R-Fauquier), is managing partner. Norment defended the hiring of Vogel’s firm, calling it one of a few firms qualified to represent the state in election and redistricting law.
Washington Post

A pair of senior division officials told Landstown staffers that an in-house survey had raised concerns about school safety, according to four teachers at the meeting. The officials did not take questions and said human resources employees would conduct interviews the next day. After the meeting, groups of staffers clustered in the hallway whispering about what sparked the meeting, the teachers said. Many had the same question: Where’s Principal Brian Matney? The division acknowledged Friday that Matney was placed on leave, but declined to comment, calling it a personnel matter. Parents received an alert on Friday afternoon about a “short-term administrative change.” On Monday, the division again declined to comment further. In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot on Monday, Matney raised concerns about the negative impact a lack of transparency has on students, teachers and his own reputation.
Virginian-Pilot

One Newport News City Council member has resigned from the Peninsula Airport Commission to avoid a conflict of interest during an upcoming vote, while another was just appointed. City Manager Jim Bourey, the current chairman of the commission, was also just reappointed. "In the past, we haven't had zoning issues come before council while I was an airport commissioner," said Councilman Bert Bateman, who has served on the commission about 10 years.  Bateman said he still plans to recuse himself from the council vote, due to his employment at TowneBank. The City Council last week appointed Councilwoman Sharon Scott to the airport commission and reappointed Bourey. The airport commission bylaws require five representatives appointed by the Newport News City Council and two appointed from the Hampton City Council. The bylaws do not require that any members be on the city councils or staffs of either locality.
Daily Press


National Stories
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Department of Veterans Affairs investigators conducted spot checks at 10 veterans benefits offices around the country and came to a disturbing conclusion: The VA has been systemically shredding documents related to veterans' claims -- some potentially affecting their benefits. The VA Office of Inspector General conducted the surprise audit at 10 regional offices on July 20, 2015, after an investigation into inappropriate shredding in Los Angeles found that staff there was destroying veterans' mail related to claims, according to an OIG report released Thursday.
Military.com

South Carolina’s high court has shed light on documents in a dispute between Attorney General Alan Wilson and a special prosecutor he appointed to oversee a legislative corruption investigation.  Unsealed late Thursday were papers that Wilson had filed in response to Solicitor David Pascoe. The documents include Wilson’s legal defense for his decision to dismiss Pascoe, saying the prosecutor doesn’t have authority to challenge the chief of the state grand jury in court and also reiterating previous comments that the attorney general recused himself, not his entire office, from the probe.
Aiken Standard



Editorials/Columns

GOV. TERRY McAuliffe is proposing that pharmacists in Virginia and elsewhere secretly agree to assist with executions. It isn’t the first time this has been suggested: Lawmakers from both parties rejected this proposal last year because — in the words of Del. Rick Morris from Carrolton — “the people ought to know how the government transacts its business.” Despite this, McAuliffe is trying again to pass his secrecy proposals. Professional pharmacists remain central to his plans. This Virginia pharmacist of 40 years has a message for the governor: What you’re asking undermines everything our profession stands for, and is actually against the law. Pharmacists’ personal views on the death penalty are as varied as everybody else’s. But secretly preparing or providing chemicals to end people’s lives is the opposite of the ethical and legal obligations of our profession.
Leonard Edloe, Virginian-Pilot

Electrocution is barbaric, hideous and error-prone, and Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants no part of it. But the alternative he proposes is scarcely much better. He would allow the state to contract with compounding pharmacies that would produce new lethal-injection cocktails — in secret. The public would not be able to learn either the identity of the pharmacies or pharmacists, nor the nature of the chemicals they produced. As the ACLU of Virginia has pointed out, this amounts to little more than human experimentation. It’s the sort of thing that might get you hauled before The Hague on charges of committing war crimes if you did it to an enemy combatant. Is this a road Virginia really wants to go down? Regardless of the answer to that question, the secrecy is unnecessary and wrongheaded. Virginia made information about its lethal-injection drugs publicly available for years, and nothing has changed that would require a shift in policy now.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

Under the amendments to HB 815, neither the public, the press, nor the legislature – not even the person to be executed – would ever know what lethal drugs were used or who was responsible for making them. The process being urged on the legislature would put the Department of Corrections in the position of engaging in an unregulated, secret drug experiment with human beings as the subjects. Those implementing the death penalty would be authorized to inject new, unapproved, never-before-used, undisclosed drugs into the veins of a living person with the intent to kill.
Claire Guthrie-Gastañaga

When Mayor Dwight C. Jones enlisted Richmond City Council members in a conspiracy of silence over the departure of his former chief administrative officer, he had no problem with their lack of transparency. But now that the mayor and council are at odds over school funding, that confidentiality agreement he persuaded some of them to sign to remain mum about Byron Marshall is an inconvenient memory. During a news conference last week, Jones called for increased transparency from council members in pushing them to release the changes they submitted to the council staff to close an $18 million deficit between the school budget and the mayor’s. Jones, on transparency, has suddenly gotten religion.
Michael Paul Williams, Richmond Times-Dispatch