Transparency News 4/28/16

State and Local Stories

A Richmond Circuit Court judge recently ruled in favor of a Loudoun County Public School parent for his request for the Virginia Department of Education to release test score data showing student growth. The court ruled VDOE must release LCPS’ Student Growth Percentile (SGP) data, including student test scores and the names of their teachers. The judge said LCPS failed to prove the burden  of proof to establish an exemption to Virginia’s Freedom of Information laws. Brian Davison, a parent of two LCPS students, says he initially sought the SGP data so “parents and citizens could objectively evaluate the effectiveness of their schools, teachers and principals.” Davison says he will make the entirety of the data available to the public to analyze themselves.
Loudoun Times-Mirror

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday seemed prepared to overturn the 2014 corruption conviction of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and perhaps make it harder for prosecutors to bring charges against politicians who provide favors for their benefactors. Justices on both sides of the ideological divide expressed concern about federal corruption laws that could criminalize what they variously called “routine” or “everyday” actions that politicians perform for campaign contributors or supporters who have provided them with gifts. “For better or for worse, it puts at risk behavior that is common,” said Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested that the federal corruption laws are so vague that they might be unconstitutional.
Washington Post

The York County School Board likely violated state open meetings laws during an April 18 closed meeting where it moved to appoint an interim board member to replace R. Page Minter, who died April 4, an expert says. "As a general rule, they're not supposed to discuss procedure," said Alan Gernhardt, staff attorney for the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council.  "As long as they're discussing people as possible employees, they're exempt." The board didn't discuss the appointment procedure during the short, open portions of the meeting that bookended the roughly hour-long closed session, and hadn't met since Minter's death. Yet, after the meeting, George was able to detail a process for the appointment, including sending notification to the public about submitting their names, what should be submitted, when it should be submitted and a tentative timeline for the appointment. "That's pure process, they're not talking about an individual," Gernhardt said. "There was no violation, as far as I was concerned," said Melanie Economou, the school division's attorney. "They picked dates for when (applicants) needed to turn things in." Economou said people had already given their names to the board for consideration before the meeting, and that setting dates for interviews and the eventual appointment wasn't a discussion of process, but simply "common sense."
Daily Press

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Richmond, recently introduced a measure in Congress seeking to provide greater transparency of the federal budget. House Resolution 698 would require that a single, master spreadsheet of budget and appropriations information is posted online, providing current figures and data for the past decade. “The point is to empower members of the House and the public with historical context for all of the different federally funded programs,” Brat said.
Star-Exponent

Shenandoah County’s top law enforcement and school officials faced off against each other Wednesday in a courtroom drama sparked by a lawsuit filed by the School Board against Sheriff Timothy C. Carter. The School Board wants Carter to allow its members and a few students and parents to view a videotape at a disciplinary hearing. The hearing stems from an incident on a school bus carrying members of the Strasburg High School boys junior varsity and varsity basketball teams. The incident led to the filing of charges of assault or battery by mob against seven students on the bus and school suspensions and possible expulsions against a total of eight students. Carter, backed by advice from Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda McDonald Wiseley, has refused to grant board members access to the tape, citing laws governing the confidentiality of juvenile court cases, protection of victims and other legal issues.
Northern Virginia Daily

Pittsylvania County citizens Deborah Dix of Blairs, Phillip Lovelace of Gretna, and Karen Maute of Danville appeared in Pittsylvania County Circuit Court at 9 a.m. Wednesday, April 20, for a hearing in their civil suit against the Pittsylvania County Agricultural Development Board for Freedom of Information Act violations; however, none of the defendants in the case was present and neither were their attorneys nor the judge who had continued the case for six months following a Sept. 15, 2015, hearing. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Barbara Hudson, said she had no prior knowledge that the case was going to be continued. “That’s ex parte communication with the court on the part of opposing counsel. Obviously, we weren’t contacted,” she said. On Virginia’s online judicial web site, the hearing was still on the docket for April 20. The docket has since been revised to show that the two-hour hearing was continued to July 28.
Chatham Star-Tribune

The Legislative Committee of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors voted Thursday, April 21, to recommend changes in the way the supervisors’ agenda and meeting notices are publicized. Pittsylvania County Administrator Clarence Monday suggested that the county still send out a meeting notice a week ahead, but not the agenda. The agenda would be included in the downloadable board packet, which usually is posted just a day or two before meetings.
Chatham Star-Tribune



National Stories
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The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has lost its attempt to block state agencies from permanently deleting emails after five days. The state Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Commonwealth Court decision from July that rejected the newspaper’s argument that emails should be retained. The newspaper had filed suit in September against the governor’s Office of Administration and the state Department of Education, asking the court to halt the practice of executive branch agencies destroying emails. The suit asked that they instead be preserved for two years on a central server. The Post-Gazette and other media outlets said the practice violated the due process rights of the public seeking records under the state’s Right-to-Know law. The Commonwealth Court rejected the argument, saying the Right-to-Know law doesn’t have a record-retention requirement, doesn’t outlaw destruction of records and governs only whether existing records should be made public.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The chancellor of the University of California, Davis, was removed from her post and put on administrative leave on Wednesday pending an independent investigation into possible violations of university policies, including using university funds to scrub negative references to the school on social media.
New York Times

The House voted unanimously Wednesday to overhaul a 30-year-old electronic privacy law to prevent government agents from reading Americans' old emails without a warrant. House members voted 419-0 to pass the bipartisan Email Privacy Act, which requires government agents to get a warrant before they can gain access to Americans' email, texts, photos, videos and other electronic communication, regardless of how old the data is. Local, state and federal police agencies currently have the authority under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to peruse emails at will if the communication is at least six months old. Critics say that law, written before email was commonly used, violates Americans' constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
USA Today

Editorials/Columns

Honesty is the best policy, but for municipal and government officials, there’s a second best: keeping their records open. That isn’t what Harrisonburg police are doing in the case of Michael Pierce Jr., whom police shot to death after responding to a disturbance on Sept. 20. Michael Pierce Sr. appeared before city council on Tuesday to ask the city to release body camera footage of his son’s shooting. City police, again, have said no. The other night, City Council deferred. The details of the shooting do not concern us here as much as the principle of open government. Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst cleared the officers, and neither Mr. Pierce nor others who seek the footage accuse the police of wrongdoing. The city has no legal justification for withholding the footage and officers’ identities. Claiming the shooting is “still under investigation” is a dodge, given that Ms. Garst cleared the officers shortly after they shot young Pierce. What else is there to “investigate?” The further claim that body camera footage is a “personnel record” exempt from the FOI law is refuted by experts in that field. If such were the case, a municipality would never have to release any information related to any employee. That, clearly, is not what the FOI law says.
Daily News Record