Transparency News 4/29/15

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

State and Local Stories


The Norfolk City Council has had enough of Danny Lee Ginn. The council voted Tuesday night to amend the rules for conduct at its meetings, allowing Mayor Paul Fraim to halt speakers who deliver "personal attacks," among other changes. The revision comes on the heels of a confrontation at the last formal council meeting between Councilman Paul Riddick and Ginn, who has been berating Riddick - and sometimes other council members - for the past three years. Riddick had ignored Ginn's sharp criticism until the April 14 meeting. He threatened Ginn, daring the retired pharmaceutical salesman to come within 5 feet of him. He did so after Ginn heckled Riddick about being found in contempt for failure to pay nearly $40,000 in spousal support to Riddick's ex-wife. While Ginn is pursuing a criminal case against Riddick, the council on Tuesday voted unanimously, with Councilman Andy Protogyrou absent, to revise the ordinance that several council members didn't even know existed. "It's simply to bring some civility to the council chambers," Fraim said. "That's all this issue is here tonight."
Virginian-Pilot

The FBI and Virginia State Police are conducting joint interviews in their separate criminal investigations of votes taken by Virginia Beach Councilman John Uhrin and Mayor Will Sessoms, and the city has turned over more than 5,000 pages of documents subpoenaed by a federal grand jury. FBI Special Agent Chris Emsley has questioned at least one elected official and a local businessman as part of a federal grand jury investigation into Uhrin's July 2, 2013, vote giving tax breaks to renovate the historic Cavalier Hotel.
Virginian-Pilot

Tuesday night’s Lynchburg city council meeting provided a short primer on what is, and what is not, considered a conflict of interest. The discussion came in the wake of media reports that the husband of Director of Economic Development Marjette Upshur is employed by the developers of the Virginian hotel. Last month, city council approved entering into a performance agreement between the city, the Lynchburg Economic Development Authority and the Virginian’s developers. The agreement authorizes $5 million in gap financing for the $25 million project. City Manager Kimball Payne drafted the initial terms of the agreement and served in a key role in the agreement’s final negotiations. He said the city has tried to be open in the process, and called the failure to disclose the employment of Marjette Upshur’s husband an oversight.“I can honestly tell you that this did not cross our minds as an issue prior to the day public hearing on this matter on March 24,” Payne said.
News & Advance

Winchester City councilors said a resolution “discouraging” one-on-one meetings with applicants with business pending before the board will not prevent them from fielding constituent concerns. In fact, the move should create an atmosphere of greater transparency, City Manager Eden Freeman said at Tuesday’s work session, by bringing more of council’s decision-making process to a public forum.
Winchester Star

The Virginia State Police’s aging IT network that covers sensitive data like the Virginia Criminal Information Network is failing — and it has been for about a decade. A new audit from the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts elevated concerns over the VSP’s network to the level of a risk alert, something not unheard of, but definitely not common, to emphasize how serious the “deficiencies related to the state police’s information technology environment” are. “It’s something we’ve been addressing for a while now with the state police in our audits,” Laurie Hicks, audit director for local government and judicial systems, told Watchdog.org. “We worry about the integrity of the data in their systems.”
VirginiaWatchdog.org

Police Chief Kelvin Wright of Chesapeake, Virginia, was an early adopter of police body cameras, and he says it is within a citizen’s rights to tape police officers, as long as the citizen doesn’t interfere with police duties. Chief Wright speaks with Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson about the role cameras have played in the recent use of police force in Baltimore, Ferguson and North Charleston. [Wright talks about access to police cam video towards the end of his interview.]
Here and Now


National Stories
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Only one-in-three Americans knows how many women serve on the Supreme Court, but 91 percent can identify Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years after his assassination. That’s according to the latest Pew Research Center News IQ survey released Tuesday, which tests how well the American public knows the world in words, maps and pictures. Almost all millennials surveyed — 96 percent — could pick out King from a list of names that included Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson and Thurgood Marshall. Older generations could mostly identify the slain civil-rights leader, as 89 percent of Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation did. But millennials apparently aren’t so great at identifying the current party makeup of the Senate. Only 47 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 were able to do so, compared to 52 percent overall. Those who described themselves as more politically engaged were more likely to know the upper chamber’s composition. (For the record, Republicans hold 54 seats; Democrats 44 seats; and Independents two seats.)
Politico

A man who has been arrested several times for loud political protests in Washington — including in 2013 when he climbed a tree and yelled during President Obama’s inaugural speech — was arrested again Tuesday for shouting during the gay marriage arguments in the Supreme Court. Rives Miller Grogan, 49, was immediately arrested by Supreme Court police officers after he began shouting, “If you support gay marriage, then you will burn in hell,” and called same-sex relationships an “abomination.” Grogan was charged with using loud, threatening or abusive language in the Supreme Court building as well as demonstrating with the intent of interfering with the administration of justice.
Washington Post

Washington D.C.’s Mayor Bowser has largely upheld the refusal of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to produce body camera videos in response to a D.C. Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Reporters Committee. In its D.C. FOIA request, the Reporters Committee asked the police department for specific categories of body camera videos, including videos that have been used for training purposes, flagged for supervisory review, submitted to the D.C. Office of Police Complaints, or used in connection with criminal and civil proceedings. The department responded to the request by denying access to all body camera videos. It cited several exemptions to justify the withholding of certain information within the bodycam videos, and stated that because it has “not yet been able to obtain the necessary resources to perform the necessary redactions,” none of the video could be released.
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press


Editorials/Columns

President Obama has routinely promised greater transparency within the federal government. Now, Congress is making strides toward achieving this critical goal. The House of Representatives and the Senate are considering nearly identical bills to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, which provides the general public, including journalists, with access to federal government records. This legislation has received broad support across media organizations, including the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of which the Newspaper Association of America is a member. And here’s why:
Caroline Little, Times-Dispatch