Transparency News 4/21/14

Here’s delicious news for data connoisseurs: The state has launched a new site as a repository of data compiled by state agencies and available for public consumption. Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s office announced the launch of Data.Virginia.gov on Friday. There were links to several Department of Education compilations, including school report cards, the dangerous dog registry, fire incident reporting system data and the charitable solicitors registry. “Virginia is generating more data on a daily basis than ever before. Much of that information is intended for public access, but is often buried and hard to find,” McAuliffe said in the announcement. “With this new initiative, Virginians will have a one stop shop to get access to data from a variety of sources.
Times-Dispatch

Lawmakers return to Richmond on Wednesday to consider Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s amendments and vetoes to legislation passed during the General Assembly session. But don’t be surprised if there is little or no debate on McAuliffe’s amendments to the bipartisan ethics legislation that cleared the assembly in March. It’s not just because the changes proffered by the governor are largely technical. It’s also not because critics — and there are many — say the law may be better defined by what it allows in terms of lawmakers’ gifts and conflicts than by what it restricts. Although it passed the assembly unanimously, there seems little enthusiasm for the legislation. A number of lawmakers — some privately, others in public — have questioned whether it is even necessary. Those who think changing the law was important question whether there is the political will to make additional, substantive changes to how gifts are received, reported and regulated.
Times-Dispatch
 
Tomorrow, Tuesday, April 22nd, the FOIA Council holds its first meeting of the year (in House Room D of the General Assembly Building, 201 N 9th St, Richmond). The main item on the agenda is the beginning of the much touted study of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, as required by 2014 House Joint resolution 96. The study is to take 2 years, with meetings completed by November 30, 2016, and a report to be submitted by the first day of the 2017 legislative session. The study is a huge task.  The press thus far has usually cited a figure of 172 exemptions.  That figure apparently is the sum of the 127 exemptions to FOIA’s open records provisions in Va. Code §§ 2.2-3705.1 – 2.2-3705.8 and the 45 purposes for which Va. Code § 2.2-3711 allows closed meetings. But that figure is NOT the whole story.  FOIA exemptions are all over the place.
Open Virginia Law

National Stories

Colorado has created a website that provides the public with child-protection and child-abuse data for each county, making the state one of four in the nation to make such information accessible to the public. The creation of the website is one part of a series of reforms in Colorado after news reports on problems with the state's child-protection system by The Denver Post and 9News. "At the end of the day, the goal is to be transparent with the public and to keep our families safe and healthy," said Julie Krow, the director of the Office of Youth and Families in the Colorado Department of Human Services. "This is something we can't do alone. We need our community to help us." California, Arizona and Iowa are the other states with similar websites available to the public.
The Denver Post

The U.S. Department of Justice faces new pressure to make lawyer-misconduct investigations more transparent and less subject to potential conflicts of interest. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have backed legislation that would shift oversight of misconduct investigations away from the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which is under the attorney general, to the independent Office of the Inspector General. Similar proposals have been kicked around Main Justice and Capitol Hill for decades but failed to advance. The push was given new life following the publication last month of a study that highlighted the secrecy of prosecutorial misconduct inquiries — even in instances when OPR concluded that an attorney violated rules.
National Law Journal

A New York appellate court struck down on Thursday a trial judge’s order forbidding Lifetime Entertainment Services from airing a drama based on a 2004 murder case. Lifetime had already aired the program last year after the court stayed the restraint pending resolution of the appeal. Christopher Porco, convicted of murdering his father and attempting to murder his mother while they slept in their home, filed a pro se law suit from a New York prison to stop Lifetime from airing “Romeo Killer: The Christopher Porco Story." Porco, who is serving 46 years to life, had claimed that the movie was an unauthorized and fictional account and that use of his name violated civil rights law, the Times Union, in Albany, reported. The Supreme Court Appellate Division court found that a trial judge’s acceptance of Porco’s argument was an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. Justice Karen Peters wrote in Porco v. Lifetime Entertainment Services that the film was of public interest, and that Porco failed to show “immediate and irreparable public harm” that would require censorship. 
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
 

Editorials/Columns

“Read the ruling without thinking about . . . global warming,” says Megan Rhyne, director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government. She offered that sage advice about the Virginia Supreme Court’s recent ruling in a case concerning Michael Mann’s emails.
Times-Dispatch

So far as I’ve been able to determine, Thomas Jefferson has not yet made it into the Virginia Commonwealth University Communications Hall of Fame. That may be, in part, because he committed the error of founding the University of Virginia instead of the real University of the Commonwealth of Virginia, VCU. Or could it be that Jefferson did not make the Hall of Fame short list because he wrote some dumb stuff? … Unlike, of course, true Hall of Fame members. Here’s an example of something really dumb from the pen of Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Norvell in 1807: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” I, like many another journalist, prefer to overlook Jeffersonian quotes like that. My rationalization goes like this: If Jefferson had the temerity to edit the Bible to his liking, we in the newspaper business can certainly pick the quotations that suit us.
Lawrence McConnell, Times-Dispatch

Ever flashed your lights to warn oncoming drivers of a speed trap you just passed? Did you know that in some places, cops consider that illegal? A judge in Oregon just ruled that flashing lights to warn drivers of police presence is a protected right of free speech under the state constitution. Under the federal Constitution, too, we’d say.
Daily Progress