Transparency News, 4/23/20

 

Meeting under a tent, wearing masks and keeping as far apart as possible, the House of Delegates met Wednesday afternoon to address several amendments to bills Gov. Ralph Northam proposed earlier this month. After a few technical glitches that delayed the initial roll call votes, Del. Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, asked delegates to consider temporarily suspending a House rule to allow delegates to participate electronically. Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Springfield, said she was proud of the delegates not letting a pandemic get in the way of them fulfilling their duty. She noted that the Virginia legislature met during the Spanish flu epidemic and members going to work days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. “None of these disasters interfered with our predecessor’s work,” she said. “Nor will the pandemic of today.” Herring’s move to temporarily suspend the House rule was approved by a 50-44 vote but failed because it did not meet the two-thirds threshold required.Del. C. Todd Gilbert, R-Mount Jackson, said little technological issues like the ones experienced when checking in could seriously derail the deliberative, legislative process if delegates did not physically come together to work.
The Northern Virginia Daily

A briefly unconscious House leader, a senator inside a plexiglass box and incessant honking from protesters contributed Wednesday to one of the most extraordinary gatherings of the Virginia legislature in recent memory. From behind cloth masks, lawmakers in the House and Senate gathered in Richmond for a veto session in which they considered the sweeping impact of COVID-19 on Virginia, as well as Gov. Ralph Northam’s proposed changes to legislation they passed during the winter session. House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn came into the day with a proposal that would have allowed the House’s 100 members to quickly adjourn and vote on legislation remotely on Thursday. Republicans united to block that proposal, arguing that technical challenges could doom the effort.
Richmond Times-Dispatch

The coronavirus upended a Virginia legislative session Wednesday as lawmakers in surgical masks met in unprecedented circumstances and voted to delay some long-sought Democratic priorities amid uncertainty about the pandemic’s effect on the economy. Proceedings in the House quickly stalled when members encountered technical issues with their voting machines that lasted about 40 minutes. At the start of the House session, Democrats proposed a rules change that would have allowed members to participate remotely. Republicans objected, and the measure failed.
The News & Advance

This winter, regulators scheduled a public hearing on a proposed natural gas pipeline expansion for May 12, and an evidentiary hearing for May 13, with a deadline for public comments of April 28. With the spread of the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 shutting down normal operations and throwing the economy into turmoil, however, the State Corporation Commission has adjusted many cases’ timelines. After the John Tyler Building the SCC calls home closed to public traffic March 20, proceedings were shifted online. Some hearings have been canceled, with parties agreeing to resolve pending issues through briefs submitted electronically. Others have had their deadline for public comment pushed back. One case, involving a petition by Dominion Energy, will be heard via Skype after a pre-hearing conference that tested the use of the technology. The SCC has not yet made any decisions about the Virginia Natural Gas case, although its scheduled hearings are slated to occur just shy of a month before Gov. Ralph Northam’s stay-at-home order forbidding the gathering of more than 10 people in any place is set to expire.  That has left some Virginia residents who oppose the pipeline expansions nervous they won’t have their day in court. 
Virginia Mercury

Virginia Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver announced Wednesday that nursing homes and long-term care facilities across the state can now share information on COVID-19 outbreaks, including “case identification and contact investigation efforts.” The information is still considered “confidential” and won’t be released to the general public, according to a news release from the Virginia Department of Health. But the decision reverses the department’s previous policy of not disclosing information on outbreaks even to other facilities requesting the information .
Virginia Mercury

California lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are requesting details from Gov. Gavin Newsom regarding a $1 billion deal to buy hundreds of millions of coronavirus protective masks from a Chinese manufacturer, according to a report. Two weeks after announcing the plan on cable news, Newsom has given few details about the deal, which will cost taxpayers 30 percent more than the governor’s January budget allotted for infectious diseases for the whole fiscal year, The Los Angeles Times reported. Newsom has said California is leveraging the state’s purchasing power to buy the masks that would be distributed to health care workers through the summer. “We made a big, bold bet on a new strategy, and it is bearing fruit,” Newsom said on April 8. Democratic state Sen. Holly Mitchell, chair of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, said Newsom needs to be more transparent. “Under normal circumstances, the Legislature would have had more time to deliberate an expenditure of this magnitude and would have been allowed to thoroughly vet the details of the contract before proceeding,” Mitchell wrote in a letter to Newsom’s finance director. Lawmakers have yet to see a copy of the contract that Newsom’s office signed with BYD.
Fox News

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ administration has denied some requests for information about Iowa’s preparedness and response to the novel coronavirus by citing a broad exemption in the state’s public records law. Two Iowa agencies have denied Des Moines Register requests this month seeking documentation of the state’s pandemic response plan and daily reports regarding the state’s response to the virus and COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus. In their denials, the agencies, which are leading Iowa’s response to COVID-19, cited a broad confidentiality exemption in Iowa’s public records law that says information and records about “physical infrastructure, cyber security, critical infrastructure, security procedures or emergency preparedness” can be denied if “disclosure could reasonably be expected to jeopardize such life or property.”
Des Moines Register

 

In their defense, WTHD officials seem to be following the guidance of the Virginia Department of Health, which has opined that identifying facilities with outbreaks would violate privacy rights. That argument insults even average intelligence. No one, including this newspaper, is asking for the names of COVID-19 victims, who indeed have a right to privacy. But revealing that a certain number of cases occurred in a particular place violates nobody’s privacy and unquestionably serves the public’s interest in a pandemic like this one. Certainly, citizens’ right to know trumps any concern about embarrassment for the facility where an outbreak occurs. WTHD Director Dr. Todd Wagner defended the secrecy on the grounds that revealing names of outbreak locations “would greatly erode the necessary trust between those facilities and the local health departments to allow for them to confidently and securely report any issue or situation.” We say that any facility of any kind that refused to report such information to the health department in order to protect its reputation would deserve the severest of punishments. Confidentiality shouldn’t be a bargaining chip for full disclosure of data that could save lives.
Steve Stewart, The Smithfield Times (published on the VCOG Blog with permission)

The coronavirus has struck nursing homes in Virginia and elsewhere — those supported by public funding, primarily — with grievous, wretched effect. Too many people have died for lack of adequate staffing, lack of adequate equipment, lack of adequate understanding of what to do when confronted by a fast-spreading virus. Nearly 10% of the nursing homes in America have reported cases of the coronavirus and there’s an obvious need to do more than express outrage, which comes easy in this country and on a vast array of topics. The nursing home situation, with needless deaths occurring daily, requires considerably more than that. Now. Start with just telling us what’s going on in these facilities. Somehow, someway “privacy” appears to have trumped other public imperatives — a right to know when lives are threatened — and that has to stop. Our commonwealth, and this country, should never again confront a viral epidemic in the dark. And in the dark — governor take note, lawmakers take note — is where we too often presently find ourselves in the crisis.
Daily Press

Gov. Ralph Northam has gotten high marks from Virginians — 76% of them according to a recent survey — for his handling of the pandemic. Throughout, he’s emphasized the science and de-emphasized the politics. Still, we have some pandemic questions that don’t involve science. . . . 2. Why doesn’t Virginia identify which nursing homes and other long-term care facilities have outbreaks?  Under Virginia law, a nursing home is considered a “patient”— and the state can’t release information. In effect, corporations really are people. This seems an unreasonably strict interpretation of patient privacy.
The Roanoke Times

California law gives the State Legislature the authority to issue subpoenas. If Gov. Gavin Newsom won’t embrace transparency in his billion-dollar mask deal, perhaps it’s time for legislative leaders to dust off their rarely-used subpoena power. In March, Newsom announced his bold plan to spend nearly $1 billion to buy 400 million masks as well as other items of personal protective equipment (PPE) needed during the coronavirus pandemic. His announcement on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show surprised many state legislators. Citing a range of concerns, Newsom’s administration has refused to allow the Legislature to see the contract. But it’s the Legislature’s job to provide oversight. Can’t the governor figure out a way to allow legislators to put eyes on the contract while respecting any legitimate need to protect the public interest?
The Sacramento Bee