Transparency News 4/28/15

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

State and Local Stories


Statewide court records maintained by the Supreme Court of Virginia should be publicly available in compiled form, according to an opinion issued by the state's Freedom of Information Advisory Council. The Supreme Court's Office of the Executive Secretary refused to release compiled court records to the Daily Press and instead required case-by-case requests. The Daily Press has been pushing for access to the entire database for nearly a year, arguing that the information is a public record with critical information about how well and fairly the state's courts work.
Daily Press
Read the opinion on VCOG’s website

National Stories
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If Republican lawmakers really want to read Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, they have a long way to go to get their hands on them. Congressional power only goes so far. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives could vote to sue the former secretary of state to force her to turn over the emails or her computer server. But legal experts say that could take years, well after the 2016 presidential race is over. And the other options – throwing her in a Capitol jail cell or getting the Justice Department to prosecute her – appear unlikely. “Their ability to get things enforced is virtually zero,” said Stanley Brand, a Washington lawyer who served as general counsel to the House. “They don’t have any attractive options.” The House Select Committee on Benghazi subpoenaed the emails while asking that Clinton voluntarily turn over her personal email server to a “neutral, detached and independent” third party. Clinton’s attorney told the committee she gave work emails to the State Department, then permanently deleted all emails from the server and refused to turn over the server to Congress.
McClatchy

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and eight news media organizations have asked a federal court in North Carolina to unseal a sentencing memorandum and related letters in the case of retired General and former CIA Director David H. Petraeus, who pleaded guilty to mishandling classified materials. The news groups noted that while the sentencing proceeding was open to the public, a memorandum Petraeus filed and letters submitted to the court regarding his sentencing are sealed. The media coalition is asking the court to immediately unseal those documents. “Because Petraeus served as a high-ranking government official, and pleaded guilty to a charge involving the mishandling of classified information, the public has an especially strong interest in obtaining a full understanding of the circumstances surrounding his prosecution, guilty plea, and sentence. Indeed, the prosecution and outcome of Petraeus’s case has garnered significant attention from the press and the public,” the media coalition argued. “Moreover, in other, similar prosecutions of defendants who have pleaded guilty to charges relating to alleged leaks of classified information, the sentencing memoranda are public.”
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by beginning the secret warrantless surveillance of international phone calls, emails and data without going through the Judicial Branch of government. This surveillance evolved into a program called Stellarwind. Now, newly declassified documents show that the data obtained from Stellarwind was so secret that it was not useful in tracking terrorists. The report was prepared jointly in 2009 by the inspector general offices of the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It was dumped, with large portions blacked out, late Friday on the weekend of the White House Correspondents’ dinner after a Freedom of Information request by The New York Times.
All Gov


Editorials/Columns

In the General Assembly campaigns coming this fall, you’ll hear incumbents proudly saying they voted for this bill and that bill and stood against those other bills over there. Challengers will surely say the same thing, just in reverse — that the incumbent shouldn’t have voted for this bill and that bill but should have voted for those over there. What neither side can talk about, though, are all the bills that die without any recorded vote at all — the legislative equivalent of a tree falling in the forest without making a sound because there’s no one there to hear it. Just in case you’re interested — and we hope you are — that would be approximately 76 percent of the bills and resolutions in the House of Delegates. Yes, 76 percent. About three out of four. Remember “Schoolhouse Rock” and “How a Bill Becomes a Law”? Or any of those lessons you might have learned in civics class long ago? Well, this isn’t like that. This is the Virginia General Assembly. Whether you’re on the left, right or somewhere in-between, though, the group’s 20-page report on the most recent legislative session is eye-opening — except, perhaps, for those who are familiar with how things are done in Richmond, in which case the report simply documents business as usual.
Roanoke Times

There are many groups across the political spectrum advocating for more open and more transparent government in Richmond; it’s not a partisan issue. Each senator, each delegate and each chamber of the Assembly should see it that way. Virginia’s Patrick Henry put it best when he said “The liberties of people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” Transparency only helps the political process in the commonwealth. When citizens can clearly see how their government works and that it responds to their concerns, all of us benefit.
News & Advance

Between the two of them, the press office for Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones and the city school system’s public-information department have 10 employees and a budget of nearly $1 million. So why did the city spend $60,000 for an outside PR firm to make a big splash over the opening of a new high school? Does it have anything to do with the fact that Johnson Inc. is run by one of Jones’ parishioners at First Baptist Church of South Richmond? Or that Ken Johnson has contributed nicely to the mayor’s election efforts? Many city residents might wonder, even though Johnson Inc. is a subcontractor for another firm, AECOM, which is doing project-management work for the city’s school-construction effort. As The Times-Dispatch’s Graham Moomaw has reported, Johnson’s firm has raked in more than $3 million from the city through AECOM. It also has been paid more than $24,000 by Jones’ election campaign. Even if all of this turns out to be on the up and up, there’s still a question as to why the city would shell out 60 grand for routine publicity work: planning official walk-throughs at Huguenot High, writing news releases and so forth. 
Times-Dispatch