Transparency News 4/2/14
State and Local Stories
State Del. Tag Greason, a leading Republican lawmaker and state budget negotiator, shot off a testy email to a disagreeable constituent March 28, calling the Leisure World parent community resident “the problem,” saying she was wasting his time and questioning “how intellectually lazy” she is. When asked Monday about the exchange, Greason apologized and said he should have “handled it differently.”
Loudoun Times-Mirror
PORTSMOUTH School division Superintendent David Stuckwisch put his budget and finance director on administrative leave this week in connection with an investigation by The Virginian-Pilot into allegations of financial mismanagement. For the past three months, The Pilot has been looking into whether the division has used its money in ways that run contrary to state law and proper accounting practices – and to a grand jury report released in 2013 that chastised the division for failing to return year-end surplus money to the city. On Friday, Stuckwisch gave the latest in a series of interviews about the financial matters to The Pilot. Monday morning, he called to say that key details provided Friday were inaccurate. The incorrect information, Stuckwisch said, was provided to him by the finance director, Meera Phaltankar.
Virginian-Pilot
Advocates and opponents of expanding Medicaid in Virginia revisited familiar arguments Tuesday at a lengthy public hearing over Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s proposed budget. The governor wants a roughly $96 billion, two-year budget that includes expanding Medicaid eligibility, which most Republican lawmakers oppose. The impasse could lead to a state government shutdown if the budget is not passed by July 1. More than 100 people signed up to speak at Tuesday’s Virginia Senate Finance Committee hearing on the governor’s proposed budget. Politically active nonprofits, including the liberal Moveon.org and the tea party group Americans for Prosperity, had urged their supporters to attend.
Free Lance-Star
Ray Reed, The News & Advance’s political reporter since 2007, retired Tuesday, capping off a newspaper career spanning more than 40 years. Reed came to the Lynchburg newspaper from The Roanoke Times to cover the Virginia General Assembly.
News & Advance
Loudoun Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling) and his controversial conservative lobbying group Public Advocate of the United States will likely not be forced to pay financial damages for the unauthorized and doctored use of a gay couple's photo in campaign literature. A federal district court judge in Colorado, where the campaign flyers were used in state elections in 2012, ruled March 31 largely in favor of Public Advocate, finding that it had no commercial purpose in using the photograph because “it was involved in an important exercise of its First Amendment rights with respect to a controversial issue in the context of an election,” according to Delgaudio. "Public Advocate['s] actions are evidence that same-sex marriage can at the very least be considered as relating to political concerns of the community. Therefore, I find that the mailers reasonably relate to a matter of public concern," Senior Judge Wiley Y. Daniel stated.
Loudoun Times-Mirror
After this Watchdog.org reporter learned some local Northern Virginia police departments are randomly scanning — and storing — the date, time and location of license plates, I decided to file a records request for my own data in my own city. Sometimes, understanding a story means being a part of it. So, following the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia’s appeal to citizens across the Old Dominion, I made a Freedom of Information Act request for all data related to the instances Alexandria police had captured my license plate. After all, every Virginian has the right under the Government Data Collection and Dissemination Act to access all of his or her personal records the government has on hand. When I called the police department’s public information office, the pleasant woman who answered the phone said she’d never heard a person make that request before, and directed me to a data department. The woman who answered the phone there told me flat-out that I couldn’t have those records.
Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
Hopewell City Councilwoman Brenda Pelham is asking that a $2.35 million lawsuit filed against her by a former candidate for sheriff whom she accused of being “part of the Klan” in a Facebook post be dismissed. Pelham, who is African-American, also asked in court papers that the “racially charged” case be moved to Hopewell from Colonial Heights, where the lawsuit was filed, because Catherine Mitchell, who filed the suit, is looking for an unfair advantage.
Times-Dispatch
James City County launched a new website this week for the Comprehensive Plan review and also began accepting applications from landowners wanting to change their land use designations, according to releases. The website for “Toward 2035: Leading the Way” is available atjamescitycountyva.gov/comprehensiveplan and features information about the Comp Plan and how to get involved.
Virginia Gazette
National Stories
Duke Energy is asking a judge to prevent citizens groups from taking part in any enforcement action that would make the company clean up nearly three dozen coal ash pits across North Carolina. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources filed a complaint against Duke last year. Several citizens groups got involved in the case, saying the waste dumps polluted groundwater. But Duke filed a motion Monday to remove the citizens' groups from the case. The company said the groups have an "independent right" to file claims and seek relief. But they are "prohibited from expanding this enforcement action beyond the claims asserted and relief sought by" the state environmental agency.Times-Dispatch
A watchdog group may be a step closer to obtaining Justice Department files concerning former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, following a Freedom of Information Act victory in federal court. In a 31-page decision Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The Justice Department cannot simply categorically reject CREW’s FOIA request, according to the court. CREW has been seeking various types of documents related to the FBI’s investigation of DeLay. In August 2010, DeLay announced that DoJ had informed him it had decided not to bring criminal charges against him related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Here comes the hoist-on-one’s-own-petard alert. Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, writing for the three-judge appellate panel, noted that DeLay’s public proclamation may have opened the door to more.
Miami Herald
A survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing is suing Glenn Beck and his network for defamation for allegedly calling him a suspect in the bombing after he was cleared by authorities. Saudi Arabian student Abdulrahman Alharbi alleges the conservative radio and TV personality and his network, TheBlaze, falsely identified Alharbi as a participant in the crimes after he was exonerated, according to Boston Magazine.
Politico
In a settlement reached last week in Nevada, a 501(c)(4) social welfare group that ran ads in that state's 2010 gubernatorial race agreed to pay a $40,000 fine and disclose the donors that fueled its spending. Even coming four years after the fact, the settlement should have been a victory for voters, since it could have discouraged other dark money groups from spending in state races. Yet the resulting disclosure was more evidence of how hard it is to get to the true source of contributions to politically active tax-exempt groups.
OpenSecrets.org
Editorials/Columns
Christian Parks is ready and willing to preach the Gospel to his fellow college students whenever the Holy Spirit moves him. But administrators at Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton do not recognize Parks and the Holy Spirit as an official campus group. Even if they secured that status, they'd still have to fill out a demonstration request form, appropriately in triplicate, and hand it over to the college president four days before any sermonizing could commence in the campus courtyard. If those rules seem in conflict with the spirit of the First Amendment, that’s because they are. And they apply not only to the Peninsula campus, but to all 23 community colleges in the state.Daily Progress
